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Week four of the “Magic by Moonlight” was the painting and decaling of the aircrafts scheme. I started off by using kapton tape to mask the windows and liquid mask for all the lights. The aircraft was then sprayed with Testors Ferrari Red. In order to get the scalloped paint scheme I scanned in the kit instructions of the scheme then scaled them to match the model size. I then placed the scanned photos under the glass work surface and made the masks using kapton tape. With all the masks applied the aircraft was the sprayed with Testors gloss black. While the paint was drying I reviewed the reference photos of the actual aircraft. There are numerous company logos for the sponsors the aircraft near the tail and on the fuselage above the main wings. The kit decal set does not include these. I searched Google and found all the company logos. I then scaled and made my own decals. All the decals were then applied and the entire aircraft was sprayed with a clear gloss. I then detailed and painted the propellers and installed them. I used some 30AWG bare wire to make the small whip antennas for the top of the fuselage. I also ordered a brushed nickel nameplate which will be mounted on the base of the display stand. All that is left to do is to mount the aircraft, wire up the base, and then make the smoke trails to complete the project. Check out all the photos and details from the start in my build log at https://davidsscalemodels.com/build-log/1-48-c-18s-magic-by-moonlight/

Nice camo and weathering

Wow!

Nice! I too have been building without aftermarket. Ships especially seems to come at double the cost of the model. Did you add the reinforcement plates along the hull or do they come with the kit?

For anyone who wants to blacken brass and/or bronze parts, the demise of the product "Blacken it" caused a hectic search to find a replacement. I've seen all sorts of other things used, some useless and others dangerous, but I found this on the internet and it works great and a little goes a long way.

After some time, Maddog Manufacturing Shipyards launched another ship for her shakedown cruise. Here is the Tamiya 1/700 scale USS Indianapolis as she sails on by: She is pretty basic, mostly because I cannot afford aftermarket railings and rigging would bring about a bunch of breakage. Comments are welcome, thanks for stopping in. Stay tuned, more ships will be coming down the slipways soon!

As can be seen in my Maddog Manufacturing thread, I was able to get a lot of progress done. Here is the result of some of that work. I'm still practicing with Tamiya weathering powders, so these look a little more "rode hard and put away wet" than I like, but at least they are done. I might shoot a dullcoat on these later to see if that tones the dustiness down: First up, my Takom 1/72 scale Russian T-54B, which is the load for my MAZ534 tank transporter which hasn't been built yet: Revell of Germany 1/72 scale RussianT-55AM: Modelcollect 1/72 scale Russian T-80UE: Yes, the one fuel tank on the T-80 was sagging, but you can see I fixed it by the last pic. That's all the armor I finished up so far this month. Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome. Stay tuned to see if I can finish more before September!

There had been a previous update to this one, but for some reason it did not take no matter what I did. So I gave up. If you see something that looks further along than you remember, that is why. Anyway, on to the latest tour.... Wow, I finally found a couple free hours to get this latest tour ready to go! So, let's climb aboard the trams and get this party started! The Hangar has been idle for awhile, so we'll head to the Shipyards straightaway. Quite a bit has been happening there. First up, we tried to get a more even coat of grey on the massive Enterprise flight deck. That still eludes us: Not much else was attempted on that. However, we did get a lot done on the USS Indianapolis. First, we masked off as much of the deck as possible after masking the lower sides of the hull: Grey paint was shot on hull and superstructure, aiming slightly upward to help keep as much overspray off the decks as possible: I still had some overspray, but it was easy to touch up. After that dried, the masks came off. Now this was ready for more progress to be done: Moving on to one of our smaller slips, we took the time to mask off the upper cabin works and shoot grey paint on the hull of the Swift Boat. Here it is after the masks had been removed: Next we sprayed the cabin exterior while they were still on the sprues, as well as other exterior accessories. This was done before the windows were put in. I remembered to take this pic only after having added the windows to the front of the cabin: And the cabin is built! All the side walls were installed and adjusted as best as possible, but there are still a few discrepancies: Later we dry-fit the cabin roof to see what fit issues we'd have to deal with. The top gunner's position was also completed, which included the mast already molded to one part of it: I'm glad we completed the interior and tried to keep the windows as clear as possible. It doesn't show well in these pics, but you can see a lot of the interior through these big windows: That completes our tour of the Shipyards, let's check in to the Motor Pool... Here in the Motor Pool, we've been at least as busy as the shipyards were. The first thing we did was to shoot some base paint on the Geschutzwagen: Now to figure out the camouflage.... Meanwhile, we tried getting further ahead on the Rolls Royce armored car. We had shot a gloss on this car to prepare for decals. When I looked at the roundel decals that go on top of the turret, I noticed they did not print any white! So, we taped off the sides as best we could and shot some white on top of the turret: Yeah, parts of it are pretty rough; but after some sanding to smooth it out, it won't be seen under the decal. While that was drying, we added the markings to the rest of the car: When the top of the turret was dry, we added the roundel to the top of the turret. In this pic it is still wet with the Solvaset: Here it is all mocked up. There's going to be a bit of touch up to do: Another thing we did was to paint the underside details with Oily Black just for fun: Moving on, my Russian tank buildup is moving quite well so far. We'll be showcasing the next three by the steps we took. First thing was the application of a basecoat of green... T-54B: T-55AM: ...and the T-80 UE: Next step involved coating each of these with gloss for decals and a wash... T-54B: T-55AM: T-80UE: You can see we had a bit of trouble with the black paint on the photo-etch flaps. Because the green was not quite the shade of green I wanted; we have added an overall wash of medium dark brown over the whole tank to act as a filter and wash... T-54B: T-55AM: T-80UE: That looked much better in my eyes. so, moving on from here we added the decal markings. So many of these were ridiculously easy. These tanks also all got dusted first before we could take the pics. I think the crews got over eager and took them out for test drives early... T-54B: T-55AM: T-80UE: Finally, the last breakable detail parts were added to these tanks... T-54B: T-55AM: T-80UE: After some detail painting and extra touch ups and enhancements, these beasties will be done! The last projects on this tour of the Motor Pool are the final two Russian tanks I had in my stash. These are both ACE kits; the early ones before they went with the digital design. This first one is the Russian T-62 and we started on the lower hull tub: Next we added the upper hull to this to hold everything together: We then assembled the basic turret and used it to be sure the thing turns on the hull before adding any easily breaklable parts to it. After sanding the hull and turret a number of times, we had great movement: Later we added the containers and boxes to the upper hull and installed the main gun on the turret: Once that was done, the torsion bars went on: It took some doing, but I believe we have all of them lined up well enough so all the wheels will touch the ground and they will all look straight once they get installed: This last one is a unique tank that I'd never heard of before ACE brought it out. This is the Drakon IT-1 missile tank. Instead of a standard turret, they took a T-55 and gave it a smaller turret with a missile launching arm on it. After firing the missile, a hatch would open on the top of the turret, the launching arm would tilt up and drop into the turret where another missile would be loaded and the arm would swing back up to level again and fire it off. The Russians built some 100 of these before stopping production to focus on newer tank designs. As before, the lower hull tub was assembled: The basic turret was assembled and tested on the upper hull to make sure it turned well too. As before, it took a few sanding sessions to get it to turn smoothly: As on the T-62, one of the torsion arms is supposed to be reversed, but the peg on the torsion arm would not allow the arm to fit properly in the hole on the tub. Thus on both tanks, we had to do the following adjustment so it would sit right: The upper hull was then finished off: We then added the hatches and the launching arm to the turret: Here is everything mocked up again to see if the turret turned without interference from the cleaning rod holder. The missile it fires is sitting next to this: All that's left for these last two tanks is to add the wheels and tracks before we can slap paint on them. That concludes this tour of the facilities, thank you all for taking the time to tour us here and remember comments are welcome.

Reviewed by: Paul R. Brown Company: Quickboost As you would expect from Quickboost, the exhausts are very finely cast, and feature hollowed out ends for each exhaust stack which will greatly improve the look of the exhausts on your model. To get an idea of how the parts would look in use, I painted them Testor’s Metalizer non-buffing steel and then dusted them with a reddish-orange pastel powder. All that is left is to dust them with a little black or dark grey paint at the tips and to find a Arma Hobby Yak-1B kit to install them in. Highly recommended. Thank you to Aires/Quickboost for the review sample. more...View the full article

Reviewed by: James Kelley Company: Arma Hobby The P-51 Mustang was an excellent fighter, but it also proved to be a universal photo-reconnaissance plane. Its performance: speed, ceiling, armament, and great range meant that it could efficiently reach a distant target, photograph it and safely return to the base. To become a long-range aerial spy, the Mustang, unlike, for example, the Spitfire, required only the installation of photographic equipment. more...View the full article

Reviewed by: Paul R. Brown Company: Quickboost Company Website Title: http://www.aires.cz Direct Website URL: https://www.e-aires.cz/en/product/pe-2-exhaust/0-4011/ Provided by Title: Aires Hobby Models Provided by URL: http://www.aires.cz Kit made for: Zvezda This set supplies drop-in replacements for the kit exhausts for Zvezda’s Pe-2 kit. The set includes two sets of exhausts, left and right for each engine, and the coversheet lists the original kit part numbers that are being replaced by the new exhausts. more...View the full article

Reviewed by: Andy Taylor Company: Pen & Sword The Panzerkampfwagen V (abbreviated PzKpfw V), also referred as the Sd.Kfz. 171, was better known as the Panther. TankCraft 34, Panther Medium Tank, German Army and Waffen-SS Normandy Campaign, Summer 1943, although the fifth book on the Panther in the TankCraft series, introduces the famed tank with its combat debut in Operation Citadel in July 1943. The Panther tank was developed to counter the Russian T-34 and KV series tanks encountered during the invasion of Russia in 1941. more...View the full article

Reviewed by: Andy Taylor Company: Key Publishing Ltd As a former paratrooper and combat veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I was eager to read and review The Paras in Iraq, Operation Telic 1 by Craig Allen. The title of the book is self-explanatory and replete with fantastic photos of first and third battalions of the British Army’s Parachute Regiment in action; first in staging areas in Kuwait, then their move into Basrah and further operations in Baghdad. Knowing a rudimentary history of the British Paras and UK forces in Iraq, I was ready to jump (pun intended) into the book. I was not disappointed. more...View the full article

Reviewed by: Luke R. Bucci, PhD Company: Lion Roar Thanks to DragonUSA for supplying the resin/PE set for review and IPMSUSA staff for handling the request and publishing this review. Special thanks to Dave Morrissette who forwarded this kit to me after I and everyone else refused to review it in 2014. I said it would take me a while to get to it, but better late than never! Apologies to DragonUSA for the delay. YD98 is still available! Photoetch Set Review: more...View the full article

Reviewed by: Paul Bradley Company: Brengun The new Airfix 1/72 Tempest V kit is very nice but, in some areas there’s a slight lack of detail and sharpness. These two new releases from Brengun/Hauler in the Czech Republic can fix one of those areas of weakness. Cast in Brengun’s standard medium grey resin, there are two different items - what they term Early and Late Wheels. What this means is reality is that early Tempests had Typhoon main wheel hubs with 5 spokes. Sometime in the JN-series, this changed to a new 4-spoke design, but the exact cut off is not known. What is known is that the first 50 Tempest Vs (JN729 to JN773 and JN792-796) were built using the centre-sections from a cancelled Typhoon contract, so it would make sense that they, at least, had the 5-spoke wheels. more...View the full article

The Mad City crew will put on a fabulous convention. I have been to the event site numerous time-has plenty of space and it's easy to get to. Downtown Madison is a very short drive from the site and you couldn't ask for better restaurants, pubs, etc. If you're a beer aficionado, New Glarus Spotted Cow on draft is a must. I'm planning to drive up from Tucson, AZ. If I can do it.........

Reviewed by: Samuel Manriquez Company: Brengun Brengun is very well known for their wide range of photoetch and resin sets for aircraft. They also produce 1/72nd and 1/144th scale model kits. This photoetch set for the Roden Gotha G. IV and G.V includes replacement parts for the yoke, guns, instrument panel, and radiator. Additional parts include propeller details, bomb racks, skids and gun swivel ring. I was building the G.V and I was surprised to see that the bomb racks and skids for behind the landing gear were not used. The photoetch bends well on the fold lines and is not too thick to look out of scale. Painting is tricky on the mesh fins mounted near the rear gunner as the holes will plug easily. more...View the full article

Reviewed by: Paul Bradley Company: Key Publishing Ltd Subtitled ‘Air-to-Air Images,’ this book by Key Publishing is a photographic collection of such images of the RAF during the Seventies and Eighties, a period marked by tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in which the RAF was a major player in the defense of Western Europe through its forces in the UK and West Germany. Author Tony Paxton was a frontline RAF fighter pilot and was seemingly never without his camera, as all the 200 or so photos in this book are all by his hand. Most are of excellent quality, given the limitations of film types of the period, and many are produced full page and in full colour. more...View the full article

Reviewed by: Paul Bradley Company: Key Publishing Ltd The Battle of Britain was, it can be reasonably argued, the battle that saved Western Civilization over 80 years ago during World War II, and so is rightly lauded even at this time. There have been many books written about the battle, so what does this new book from Key Publishing bring to the table? more...View the full article

Reviewed by: Paul Bradley Company: Key Publishing Ltd The latest in Key Publishing’s ‘Historic Military Aircraft Series’, this slim volume looks at the McDonnel Douglas Phantom and English Electric Lightning in RAF service during the ‘70s and ‘80s when they were the mainstays of Britain’s air defence commitment. As explained in the introduction, author Chris Goss inherited the photo collection of noted aviation author and artist David Howley, who many will recall for his colour profile paintings for many modelling and aviation magazines. This book features 180 of Howley’s photos, mainly in colour and mostly of good quality. Most are taken at airshows but there are also some ‘in service’ shots dating from his time as an RAF Warrant Officer. more...View the full article

I know it was a formidable ship and the British greatly feared her breaking out into the Atlantic, but she just doesn't seem as powerful when compared to these other two Atlantis offerings.

Terrific T-Bolt, and in not often seen markings! Gil

I made it the same size as the one beside it...6ft long x 2.5ft deep x 6ft tall, and it'll hold 10 30"x20" glass shelves. Here's a pic of the one I just filled up....and it has 112 1/48 and 1/32 scale builds in it....

One more Yellow Wings acquisition…

To paraphrase and modify Pareto's Principle, 90% of the complaints come from 10% of the commenters. Many of whom won't participate anyway. My advice: