Brews

Great work, gentlemen! Edit: I've resigned to the fact that I've probably thrown away my PE belts for the Eduard Albatros Dr.1, so I ordered a set of seats with belts from Barracudacast. While I was there, I ordered a set of wheels, too. We'll get this bird done eventually.

I thought that the Glencoe kit was a repop of Aurora's. i'll dig out my Aurora DIII and take some comparison pics. Edit: I don't know if pics are going to help - the plastic is fairly featureless on the underside of the wings. The struts fit snugly, though.

Thanks, John. I might take you up on that. If you've ever built a Pegasus / Blue Max / Silver Cloud kit, you know what this feels like for me. I'm not going to complain, but suffice to say that I can get the Revell kit for less than I could get this for, and it has all the parts of the Eduard (Weekend Edition, I presume). Still, this has the Arab cowling, so that's something. I've actually been enjoying fettling this thing together. I didn't start with the cockpit! I glued both nose halves and radiators together. I will not use the Eagle III nose, but it's nice to have it to hand. The nose sections have big seams to fill. Additionally, they will need putty to fair them into the white metal radiators. Both nacelles have some fairly large openings, but no engine or engine bay detail was provided for either version. Choosing the Arab, which looks similar to a Hispano-Suiza 8 (although different in key mechanical areas) may be a happy result - as the HS isn't a difficult engine to scratch, and its mounting is fairly simple, too. However, some black blanking pieces may be all that's really needed to prevent the see-through possibilities. The radiators have depressions for a prop shaft, but neither have open holes. The Eagle's radiator has circular depressions on the front and back, while the Arab's only has one on the front. The detail of the radiator is nice. You won't see it once the prop is in place - so a removable prop makes sense. The provision of two and 4-bladed props is handy. These could be interchanged on any particular machine, I'm fairly sure. The suggestions are to use the 4-bladed one for the Eagle, and the 2-bladed one for the Arab. t tried supergluing (butt joints) the wing pieces together. Apart from the centre-sections, the wings are identical. The centre-sections don't fit the outer wings in profile. They might, if the wings didn't have dihedral, but even after sanding the outer wing edges down to an angle, they don't fit anywhere near closely. I don't know how this can happen. Isn't a kit is built from the parts to test that they fit? If so, am I doing something wrong? I'm settling for the eventuality of a session with Milliput at a later date. At this point, a decision had to be made as to which surface fitted flush - the underside of the upper side. My decision was made for me quite accidentally, as it turned out. I drilled holes for pins in matching halves of the centre section and outer wings. On the lower wing, the upper surface mated better. On the upper wing, the lower surface mated better. That's not the way I would have preferred it, but it's the way it turned out. It means that I'm going to lose all the moulded surface detail on the most visible parts of each centre-section, but at least the final product should look ok. My next task will be to paint the insides of the fuselages in clear doped linen. I might use Tamiya Wooden Deck Tan or Deck Tan (the paler of the two). Xtracolour's CDL is nice, but takes days to dry. The timber structure is provided in white metal. I'll paint that in varnished wood colours. I think I'll use a Humbrol enamel for those - somehow I don't trust Tamiya paints to adhere well to metal - but it's worth a try. Painting these things is something I can do with a brush while watching TV with the beloved tonight. Here is the book that contains my reference drawings: Sample drawing: I made a crude jig out of a piece of stout sprue. View of the dihedral on the main planes. View of the fit between the radiator and the Arab's nose. Note the large holes! Comparison of the Eagle's nose (left) with the slightly less-aesthetic Arab's nose (no pun or offense intended) on the right. Remember, when the Blue Max kits came out, they were the only game in town for virtually the entire range - at least as far as injection-moulded kits go. Eduard and Roden have really raised the bar in 1:48 scale, let alone what Wingnut Wings has done for these birds, and the hobby.

I've abandoned the CMR BE2c for the time being. Straightening the bent resin without breaking it proved beyond me this time. I mentioned to Chris that I'd started an Eduard 1:48 Albatros Dr.1, but I have lost the PE seat belts. I suspect I threw them out, if it was stuck to some masking tape accidentallyI do have a habit of forgetting where I put things down, so they might turn up sometime, but I'm fully thinking that they won't. So, I started a Roden 1:32 Pfalz DIII, and that's been coming along ok. Then, last night, I opened a Blue Max 1:48 Bristol F2b Fighter. I like this for the Sunbeam Arab option. The decals look as if they're cracked, though. I don't know what I'll do for those as I don't have any in my spares. I might have to print some.

Matchbox/Revell in 1:76, too, with the Char B1.

Finished washing my resin parts, and the upper wing broke while trying to straighten it. I've straightened it, though. The break was nearly all on the starboard side of the centre section (the centre-section cut out on the trailing edge was a stress concentrator). As there is a dihedral, I'll probably break the port wing on this line, too, either accidentally or deliberately, depending on how the re-bending goes. Wishing the bent parts weren't bent.

Not quite. 2008 is only 6 yrs ago.

Here's my unopened kit - a CMR 1:72 scale RAF BE2c Bag Artwork: Instructions: Drawings (on reverse of Instructions): Resin Parts (including a sheet of 2-part moulded items joined by common flash at the mould seam. Yay.): First job will be to wash the resin and re-bag it into the conveniently-provided Ziplock bag that the whole lot came in. The upper wing should have dihedral, but it has a bend in the port wing about mid-span, so I'll get some hot water and clamps ready later on.

I've been pondering all sorts of things. I don't want to tackle the Dreadnought until I get something simpler under my belt. The last thing I need is an non-completed GB subject. Starting with 1914, then, I'm leaning towards either a CMR 1:72 BE2c or (if I can find it!) an Eduard 1:48 Sopwith Baby. Let's leave it at BE2c for the time being.

I'll be in on this. What to do, though. Lots of choices, from HMS Dreadnought to Wingnut Wingz planes and Emhar tanks. Maybe I should start with something from 1914 ... a BE-2 or something like that.

That's very nicely done, Ron. I dare say it's the best I've seen extracted from this very good kit that has been done by many modellers since its release. Cartograf made the decals, IIRC. Airfix finally did something after years of complaints about their decals which, to be fair, were made at Trun in France (Heller had a reputedly state-of-the-art decal machine which has never produced decent decals). The very old Airfix decals made in England were ok, the ones that came out of India and China a few years back (Brown backing paper) are reputedly useless, and so they went to what seems to be everyone's favourite decal manufacturer. They're not faultless, but they're very, very good. One thing that's apparent from your photos is that the inside of your carb air intake on the nose is unpainted. I would paint it RAF interior green, as even if it was not in that particular colour, it could pass for one of the many shades of ZCY.

Thanks for the quick reply. My particular kit's ID is 6283.

I think the P-40D onwards were "Kittyhawks", while the ealier ones were "Tomahawks". Clive Caldwell was an expert Tomahawk pilot and proponent (he once shot down two Bf 109Es that had bounced him and left him smoking, spirally earthwards) ... Stocky Edwards was a Kittyhawk ace. I got this book for free at one time, when Amazon were offering it at that price. Edwards said in that book that the Desert Air Force didn't get air supremacy until the Spitfires arrived in theatre, sometime around the 2nd Battle of El Alamein. Bf 109s from Jg 27 weren't be so interested in going after Blenheims and other bombers as the fighters, which might seem contrary to what most other Air Forces would think appropriate, but their tactics worked for them. Model Master British Interior Grey-Green might be a closer match to the Du Pont colour that was used for machines built to Air Ministry orders. It's a bit lighter which, even if the US colour was used, may look better in the Desert environment, where sand got into everything. I think it's a test of the kit's quality if, at the end of the build, you think you'd like to build another. The moulding of the wheel wells on this kit looks particularly nice.

That's a very Bavarian-looking tail on that bird! Nice.

Nice build! Question 1: Would a P-40E be a Tomahawk or a Kittyhawk? Question 2: What colour did you use for your interior green? Question 3: Did you have fun? Question 4: Would you build it again?