James H

Don't tell me it's ready for a test flight

1:32 Vickers machine guns GasPatch Models Catalogue # See article for price and code Available from GasPatch Models You may or may not be aware, but GasPatch models are responsible for more than the recent Salmson kit that we reviewed on SP&R, or those beautiful sintered metal turnbuckles. We've also taken a look at the rather remarkable 3D-printed anemometers, but today, we can show you a selection of Vickers machine guns from their new 1:32 range. Just for interest, these are also available in 1:48. In total, the range includes EIGHT Vickers MG variants, but for the purpose of this review, we elected to look at the following FOUR items: 13-32042, Vickers 11mm 'Balloon Gun', €14.50 13-32043, Vickers Colt-Built, €14.50 13-32044, Vickers French Extended Loading Handle, €14.50 13-32046, Vickers Hyland Type B Loading Handle, €14.50 Each of these gun sets, as with other GasPatch items we have seen, are supplied in attractive, clear blister packs, which unlike others of the ilk, are easy to open without breaking a finger nail. The parts within are carefully placed into laser-cut recesses within a piece of soft grey foam. A painting and assembly sheet is folded and placed within to act as part of the product pack display. While there are eight different Vickers guns available from GasPatch, they all represent slightly different permutations of this widely used weapon. The changes can be quite subtle, yet nonetheless important, whilst other differences between the gung are more stark, such as the one with an extended loading handle. Each of the four sets we have here include TWO Vickers guns per pack, including ammunition feed belts, whilst one set, the Vickers French Extended Loading Handle type, includes that unusual loading handle, represented in photo etch. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think the guns and ammunition belts themselves are 3D-printed. I know that can conjour up images of coarse layers which need to be refined, but the printer that GasPatch use must be of extremely high resolution. No where can I see any layering, with the guns themselves being super smooth, shiny and without any casting blocks which would be the tell-tale sign of a resin product. The delicate cocking levers are even printed as part of the main gun! These are quite delicate, but thankfully, the plastic from which these is made, means that they will flex a little before you experienced any breakage. Detail overall is simply astounding, with these being perfectly represented miniatures of the real thing. You'll be hard-pressed to ever find anything as good as these. The cooling jackets are hollow all the way down to the breech, despite there being a small plate at the forward end of the jacket. Seriously, these are like nothing I have ever seen before. You have to see them to believe. I hope the images I show here go some way to represent what I am trying to explain. Of course, I can't get a camera lens right into the jacket to show you the internals! With the exception of one set, all of the 3D printed parts are made from black plastic, with one of them, the Hyland Type B, being made from clear red plastic. It is this particular one that gives away the fact that the jacket is entirely hollow. Exterior gun detail is excellent, or even nigh-on perfect, with superb cocking lever and breech detail. The characteristic serrations of the cooling jacket are also perfect to my eye. Of course, you could represent this detail in resin too, but never perfectly with injection moulded parts, unless you were to employ serious slide-moulding technology. With the jacket itself, I would have to say that of course, you couldn't represent this in brass either, but the fact it has a delicate barrel running down through its length, is quite extraordinary. The ammunition belts are very delicate. Detail, again, looks perfect, with finely reproduced shells/cartridges, and the cloth belt being nicely represented. The ammunition belts also fit neatly into the breech of the gun, so no fiddly trimming to conduct here. As mentioned, the Extended Loading Handle set has a small PE fret, and this comprises FOUR parts. Two of these are for the handles themselves, whilst the last two parts need to be curved, and form the muzzle flash hiders. Photo etch quality is also extremely good. Inside each packet, a colour illustration of the Vickers is shown, with noted for painting. This also serves as your assembly drawing, for what little there is to actually put together. Conclusion Simply the most amazing MG sets I think I've ever seen. They aren't the cheapest aftermarket item for your model, but the overriding quality of these makes them a must have, stand-out item for enhancing that project, and in my eyes, that makes the cost absolutely justified. I sure hope we see these guys make some Spandau and Parabellum sets too. In fact, I'll suggest it to them anyway. VERY highly recommended James H Our sincere thanks to GasPatch Models for the review samples see here. To purchase directly, click THIS link.

1:32 Oberursel U.0 and U.III rotary engines Taurus Models Catalogue # See article for price and codes Available from StoryModels After a short break from the heavy work of mastering and casting, Taurus Models are back. In one fell swoop, then have doubled their 1:32 WW1 aero-engine catalogue with the release of the Oberursel U.0 and U.III engines. These of course tie into the recent release of the Fokker E.I and E.IV kits which have been released by Wingnut Wings. The items we have been sent are: D3216, Oberursel U.III, £26.90 D3217, Oberursel U.0, £19.50 Each of these little masterpieces is packaged into a small box, hand constructed from very lightweight satin card. The lid top depicts the engine from a frontal view, whilst the box edges show close-up images of the finished engine that you would swear were in-service images of the real thing. Inside the box, a small instruction sheet is included. Whilst there isn't too much illustration, there is enough for the experienced modeller to be able to interpret and to be able to construct this properly. You really need to look at the parts alongside the instructions and study them thoroughly. The Taurus website does have a link for a set of detailed instructions, but these don't seem to be online yet. These would be interesting to see, but if you look at the instructions, along with the detailed photos of the completed engine, then you won't go far wrong. Parts count? Well, for the U.0, it is a very respectful NINETY-ONE parts, all cast in a flaw-free, medium grey resin. Now you can see how much of a project this is. What about the U.III though? Well, the parts-count increases drastically to ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN! Yes, you need a few evenings of peace and quiet and a steady hand, and then you might just be able to complete the build! The instruction sheet for the U.III does incorrectly say there are 91 parts, presumably carried over from the U.0 sheet. Some colour notation is given on the sheet, but this is a rotary engine, so it wouldn't be difficult to fathom yourself. The various parts within are all packed into a number of very small zip-lock bags. There is some order to the packing too, with cylinder head and piston crowns in one bag. Whilst the cylinders are cast individually, the crowns are cast over two blocks. Cooling fins on the cylinders are extremely fine, and of course, there is no issue with seams needing removal. A small indentation is included for inserting the ignition plugs. The base of the cylinder has a small tab which enables it to plug into the crankcase with the correct orientation. A neat recess on the top allows the crown to be inserted. Another bag contains the crankcase and associated parts, such as the tapered airscrew shaft and hub plates/insulating ignition ring etc. All parts are individually cast, and some parts lie very close to their casting block. I advise an extremely fine razor saw to remove these, and some final working by grinding in a circular motion on successively fine grades of grit-paper. Of course, each cylinder head is to be fitted with a rocker armature. These are cast over two blocks, and are extremely fragile looking. Some of the small holes on them would benefit from a micro-drill bit passing through them to clean them up. Again, use a razor saw to remove these, or a sharp scalpel blade, and work from both sides in order to minimise any clean up on them. As per the instructions, you will need to place these in slightly different positions on the piston crowns in order to simulate open or closed valves. These fragile parts are enclosed an a wallet with other similarly fragile parts, such as the actuator rod linkages, cups, and of course the rods themselves. Those cups are extremely fine, and almost a wonder of casting. The rods fit into them snugly with no need for clean-up, and I do tell you, those parts are extremely small. As mentioned earlier, the ignition plugs are cast separately, and in amazing detail. COMPLETED MODELS FROM TAURUS SITE Oberusel U.0 Oberursel U.III Lastly, a small wallet includes some amazingly thin copper filament wire for wiring up the ignition plugs and also for making the small clips which run between the piston crown and rocker part. Some of these last details are what will take the most patience, so don't rush things. Wire is supplied in 0.1mm and 0.2mm diameters. Almost seems a shame to lock it up into a model cowl, eh? Conclusion There's no one does replica WW1 aero engines like Taurus Models. These are simply the most detailed, most astounding reproductions available. To be able to pose the rockers to indicate an open or closed valve, and to be supplied with the valve-sequence so this can be properly represented is simply incredible. You would need to look closely to even see the difference between open and closed valves, but for Taurus, that's academic. They have designed these resin engine sets to be as close to authentic as possible. You will need some serious levels of patience, and some time set aside to construct these. The E.IV's Oberursel U.III has almost as many parts as the actual kit into which it will fit. It is true that these upgrade sets are certainly not designed with the beginner or intermediate modeller in mind. You really do need some modelling experience to get the very best out of these. We reviewed the previous Oberusel U.I and Gnome-Monosoupape engines from Taurus, and I do know that the use of the U.I with the E.II and E.III Eindecker kits means that you will need to thin the cowl out a little. My U.III engine has been constructed for my own Fokker E.IV project on Large Scale Modeller, so I'll be able to see if the same applies here. As we also like to build things up at LSM in order to show you how things go together, here is my build of the engine, alongside the Wingnut Wings kit parts: VERY highly recommended Our sincere thanks to Dawid at StoryModels for the review samples seen here. To purchase directly, click the links in the article.

Tamiya Flat White actually covers real well. Give a few thin misted coats for the main paint to bite onto, leave dry, then just build up the layers. It didn't take too long to paint white. It surprised me too!

Time for an update? Ok, but I warn you....I'm no armour modeller. It's all alien to me. I decided to throw some paint on that garish red plastic, but in all fairness, forget the plastic colour, this is a seriously nice kit, and some great fun to put together. The fit is mostly very good. Where it's less than very good, it's pretty close. This model has a full interior, and test fitting everything together shows that it slots together without any issue. An absolute dream to work with. My reference for armour is shit. In fact, it's non-existent. I asked the ever-amiable David Parker from AFV Modeller (and a member here) what colours he used, so he gave me some basic ideas of what to use, so I've gone with that. The main interior walls are sprayed with Tamiya Flat White, and to break it up, I used Gunze Radome, heavily thinned to bring out some of the plating and rivet areas in a sort of quasi-rust manner. I then accentuated this with some Tamiya XF60 Dark Yellow, again heavily thinned and worked in a similar way to compliment the Radome. I have now coated this in Klear prior to washing and doing a thinners drag to show running rust. That will be later. I still need to do a few paint chips around sharp corners etc, but for a non-armour modeller, I'm happy so far. I've used Alclad Aluminium for the driver floor area, and Alclad Dull Aluminium to simulate the cast metal effect of the engine block and transmission. It looks rather grey in these photos, but it is metallic....trust me I still need to add oil and grime washes yet. This is just part of the basic painting, which I still need to finish yet. There are other engine components to add too, all which still need paint. If the red plastic wasn't enough, Takom decided to paint their PE fret in red too, meaning you need to scrape it off if you wish to solder the chain guard, as I have here. This fret isn't too thin, so CA wasn't an option for me. Solder, done with my trusty gas soldering iron and Fry's Fluxite, means that part will last longer than the model probably will Whilst coats were drying, I glued the turret ring to the upper deck and decided to start removing that shit rivet detail on the turret. In all fairness, Takom have done their best with this, and without slide moulding, the result was the best they could achieve, but the rivets look distorted etc. Luckily, they added lots of spare rivets on their track sprues, so these will be what I'll use. I'm also thinking of subtly texturing the turret too, but I need to see if it's justifiable. If anyone can say yay or nay, please let me know.

I saw some pics of the Heritage one, and I might be wrong, but the engines look really slim looking. I've not heard great stuff about both the quality of Heritage stuff, and the attitude of the guy who runs it.

Damn, that looks good. Stop it, it I'll have to haul this from my stash....

WANT!

And our review is here too: http://forum.largescalemodeller.com/topic/1085-132-hannover-clii-decals/

Old Propeller do the centre section and wing loz as decals: Review HERE

That's far bigger than I thought it would be. Thanks for posting up Jeff.

That looks pretty neat Jeff, Any chance you could give us some in-box shots?

Nice work. Good to see this old bird getting an airing again. Looking forward to those finished images.

Cheers Bertl, I'll give it a try with some spare parts, and failing that, I'll ask for some spares from WNW. I really think that is a massive improvement.

Bertl, this is awesome. I don't think I ever saw such incredible attention to detail on one of these Mercedes engines. It's given me real conundrums for my next build. I feel I'm going to have to attempt some of these corrections. Can you tell me how you aligned the cylinders so you could drill the hole for the lower cooling pipe? To get every cylinder in line?

Your English is so good that you appear almost a native! No problem at all. I'm really looking forward to seeing you tackle this one. I might do the same for inside my Albatros, but the outside will be finished entirely in Bavarian blue/white diamond from the Pheon decal sheet. As a side note to the MG's again, the decal instructions do say 'appear to have been removed'. So, it wasn't entirely definite anyway!

Superb tip! Thank you very much! I have some model ship rigging thread here, and I never thought of using that for the HV leads. Your magneto wiring idea has cured me of the usual worry of doing that on my forthcoming Albatros.

The prop choice is more than likely up to you, as these things were replaced from time to time. Check the parts callout for the decal sheet. From what I can see, it says the Axial prop should be used for that machine. This bird will definitely have had its guns installed at some stage, but whether it did under those colours is another question. The ultimate question is 'did she have the guns removed, and then was given that scheme?', or 'was she given that scheme, then the guns removed?' If the latter, then there was a brief moment she would have been fitted with MG in that scheme. More importantly.....who will ever know? Superb work so war. Those Uschi decals have worked a treat. Just be careful with internal tolerances and ensure that everything squeezes between those fuse halves. What base colour did you use for the decal, and is that Clear Orange on top? oh....welcome to LSM!!

Nice selection and work. Puts me to shame. I'm not even counting mine

Beautiful, as always. Just makes me want to hit the cave again for mine, but too much vino tells me otherwise.

NOW you're talking. I've always wanted to see one of these being built. That's a serious plastic parts-count

Lovely work Kev. What a corking job of such a great kit. How do you find the wing fit? I'm too frightened to push mine fully home in case I can't get them out again!

Probably one of the best Spits I've seen. The the finish I always dream of getting. Thanks for sharing.

Nice looking work. I love those red gun patches

Great update Paul. I was only looking at this topic yesterday, and it's good to see your approach. I do prefer the painted interior of this than left in bare metal, and that's the way I'll go with mine.