rvchima

Fun with Photoshop Aerial view of the Prinz Eugen. Those red markings are just screaming to the Luftwaffe, "I'm German. Don't bomb me!" Dazzle camouflage in the fog. Which way is he going?

Q: What's Black and White and Red All Over? A: The Prinz Eugen in it's 1941 Baltic Camouflage! My Prinz Eugen model is complete! I've been very busy since my last post. Here's what I've done. Finished and attached all 8 ship's boats. Attached all the superstructure components. Attached dozens of smaller plastic components. Built some custom vents that go around the B turret, and found and attached a ship's bell. Rigged miles of antenna wires with EZ line. Here are some photos of the completed model. You can barely see some of the vent shafts around the second turret. Here are some of the 8 boats and the Arado 196 on the catapult. The ship's bell is hanging on the rear mast. I would not like to see this view in person! The Pontos props were worth their weight in gold. That's about how much the accessory kit cost anyway. And see, I really did install the aft anchor. The stern looks a lot like the bow. I rigged the antenna lines with EZ line. It's an elastic polymer thread that supposedly can stretch up to 7x it's original length. You can get it on Amazon but it's a lot cheaper on eBay from Burbank House of Hobbies. I bought the thick, 0.5 mm material but it still seems quite thin. I rigged the triple antennas first using tiny PE Delta-shaped fittings from the Pontos kit, but I ended up throwing out two complete antennas before I got it right. The line tends to curl so it was hard to control while gluing it to the fitting. The instructions say to use a fresh bottle of thin CA, but I had a large bottle that I'd been nursing for a couple of years. I pulled a new bottle out of my freezer and man, what a difference! I found that I if I licked the EZ line it would stick to a piece of wax paper. Then I dipped the PE part in the new CA and touched it to the line. Voila, instant attachment. The only trouble with the EZ line is that the lead wires from the antennas to the ship tend to bend the antennas. In a couple of places I used thread for the antennas to help keep them straight. I am concerned that the rigging might become brittle with age. Please let me know if you've had any long-term experience with EZ line. The Aeronaut plans were pretty worthless for rigging. One side view shows some rigging but you can't tell if you're seeing a single antenna or several side-by-side. Instead, I used The German Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen by Waldemar Goralski for most of the rigging. To be honest, I took some liberties with the rigging and left out a few lead wires. You'd never do this with thread rigging! I made a nice base out of quarter-sawn white oak. I bought the brass pedstals from Bluejacket Shipcrafters. The model should probably be in a case but you can only have so many big cases laying around your house. I'll probably put the model on top of a bookcase somewhere.

I am truly amazed - I had no idea that kits like this existed. Your meticulous work is just perfect, and it's only taken 14 months so far. I'll follow along to see the finished model.

Toy Boats The Prinz Eugen carried 8 small boats on board, and the Aeronaut kit had ready-made plastic models of each. In fact my kit had 9 boats, but I think that one was a mistake. You should always wash plastic parts before painting to clean off any residual mold release. I think I'll just play with the boats like this for a while. So far I have completely ignored the ships boats. When I looked at the plans I found that 6 of them were on racks on deck 2, right where my railings were. So time to construct some racks and deconstruct some railings. This rack holds 2 boats. This rack holds 1 boat. The boats look pretty dirty close up. That was another good reason to wash them. Those racks are duplicated on each side, accounting for 6/8 boats. The remaining 2 boats hang from davits. As usual, there is nothing in the kit for the davits so I soldered a pair up out of brass. Spent a few hours today painting toy boats.

Railings The Aeronaut kit came with 14 pieces of prefab railings, each 250 mm long. I knew that would not be enough but I wasn't sure how much I would need, so I avoided using it for miscellaneous railings. The 14 pieces circled the 1st deck completely and finished the second deck with inches to spare. One deck to go. A couple of stores in England sell the prefab railings but I was in a hurry, so I made my own using the brass stanchions and music wire included in the kit. I decided to use a shorter double railing on the 3rd deck, so I cut the 3-hole stanchions down a notch and sanded them smooth. I made this jig to solder the railings together.

Dazzling I bit the bullet and painted the dazzle camouflage. It took a full day to mask and paint each of the diagonal stripes. I stacked all the components with 3-M double-sided tape to hold them in alignment. I made a skinny pencil by gluing a bit of pencil lead in a 1mm brass tube. Then I used a thin ruler and my skinny pencil to mark the diagonal. Very difficult to keep the pencil perpendicular to the ruler as it stepped over each layer of the superstructure. Lots of Tamiya masking tape and several hours later I was ready to paint each stripe - by hand. I also painted the tops of the turrets red. They were painted red briefly for recognition by German aircraft. I didn't realize that this overview photo was so grainy until now. I'll try to get a better image later. Here are some other shots that look better. Forward superstructure Funnel Aft superstructure and mast Aft end with painted turrets All the components are stacked temporarily in position. I have been adding railings to the second and third levels. More on that in the next post.

Hi Yves, Welcome to the build log. It's a little short on detail but I wanted to get some information out there about the Aeronaut kits. And thank you for the the welcome to Asheville. Our son lives in Apex so I am very familiar with the Raleigh area. I am always interested in finding new shops, shows, or museums related to aircraft or ships. Please let me know if you have any suggestions. Rod

Oops, I Put the Platform on Backwards I've been standing the mast on top of the plans for a month and just realized that I installed the lower platform backwards. So how to fix it? I broke off 3 triangular gussets on the bottom, then gently twisted the platform until it broke loose. Cleaned up the glue, rotated the platform, glued everything back together, and touched up the paint. 15 minutes tops. And while I was fixing things I installed the rear anchor. Well, you can't see the anchor, but it's there.

Catapult and Arado 196 Floatplane I spent a full day building the brass aircraft stand that comes with the Pontos detail kit. They actually give you enough parts to build 4 of them although you only need 1. Good thing because I screwed up 2 1/2 of them before I settled on this one. Then I built the catapult (from scratch) and the Arado 196 floatplane (came with the Aeronaut kit). Hey! what happened to my aircraft stand? The real catapult rail is about 15 m long and the catapult launch speed is 130 km/hr. I did some quick calculations that show that the pilot would pull 4.3 g's at takeoff, about the same as an F-18 pilot on a modern carrier. Must have been quite a ride!

Bob, 1. Put a coat of primer on everything. Sand and touch up as necessary. 2. Paint the white stripe at the waterline. When it's good and dry, mask it off with high quality modelers masking tape. I like the Tamiya brand. Rub the edges thoroughly with a toothpick, then paint both edges of the tape with white to seal it. 3. Mask off above the waterline and paint the green below. If you're very confident of your airbrush skills you could skip the masking part, but I wouldn't. 4. Mask off the green, remove the tape above the water line, and paint the black. 5. Say a little prayer and remove the tape. Rod

Nelson, Could you post a photo of your porthole? I'd love to see it. Rod

References Since the Aeronaut plans show very little detail, I've searched online for anything I could find on the Prinz Eugen. Ironically, the main thing that comes up is this scantly-clad anime character named Prinz Eugen, from a side-scrolling shoot-em-up game called Azur Lane. It's set in an alternate timeline of WWII where the characters are anthropomorphic versions of WWII warships. Enough said about that. The German Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen by Waldemar Goralski is the best reference I could find for the model builder. It has 27 pages of detailed B&W line drawings of every part of the ship. The Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen, also by Waldemar Goralski, has an eight-page history of the ship and about 80 pages of color images of various parts of the ship. Mr. Goralski must have an amazing CAD model of the ship. It takes a while to find the view that you need, but the images can be very helpful. The last 8-10 pages are 3-D images that require Red-Blue glasses. They're fun but less useful for reference. Admiral Hipper Class Cruisers by Steve Backer has a little bit of everything - history, B&W photos, reviews of plastic models, photos of completed models, and camouflage patterns for 5 ships. 64 pages. This is the book that got me searching for a photo-etched detail kit. Warship Pictorial Kriegsmarine Prinz Eugen by Steve Wiper has a brief history of the ship and 74 pages of interesting B&W photos. Heavy Cruisers of the Admiral Hipper Class by Gerhard Koop and Klaus-Peter Schmolke is more of a reference book. At 205 pages it has a chapter on each of the five Admiral Hipper class ships, with technical specs, photos, and a few detail drawings.

Not at all! The photos are fascinating. Is that you sitting between the props?

I have also been away for too long. I am so pleased to see your completed Endeavour model. It is absolutely beautiful! Your attention to every little detail make for an outstanding model. Congratulations. Last November and early December my wife and I took a cruise down the east coast of New Zealand and over to Tasmania, Melbourne, and Sydney. I was so hoping to see the Endeavour replica in Sydney harbor, but I learned that it was on a tour of New Zealand for the 250th anniversary of Cook's voyage. Our cruise ship and the Endeavour replica were in the same ports on almost the same days. We probably passed each other one night, but I never saw her. However, I got to talking to a young man in the San Francisco airport who had just sailed on a leg of the Endeavour's tour. He had hundreds of photos on his phone and I saw them all.

I just got back to MSW after a long absence. Your Perseverance model is beautiful! I love the natural wood. Keep up the good work.