denders

Progress. I received my bottle of MRP-402 which, in the bottle, looks pretty good for use as RLM 77.

Perhaps I should be glad there aren't any really good LHS in the Nashville area. No, I really do wish there was a great LHS.

And a few more. There were a couple F1 cars there, but it appears that I was distracted and I didn't take photos of them. One of them can be seen in the background of one of these photos. I've seen this modeler's other entries at past shows and they are beautiful.

Some other models that I liked.

Here are some photos from the Chattanooga Show. They had a record number of modelers enter and a record number of models entered. Chattanooga is a Gold-Silver-Bronze format. There were 10 large scale planes entered. And I had my Hs123A-1 model there.

I picked these up at the Chattanooga show this past weekend.

It is this weekend, January 9 & 10. Anyone going?

I’ve used their lacquer on a car model. Straight from the bottle, no additional thinner. It sprayed very good. Clean up with hardware store lacquer thinner. edit: well, I guess I didn’t read very well, enamel. I think they sell thinner too. I would use their thinner just because I assume they have tested with their thinner and it probably works well.

Since I'm waiting for something to dry at the 109 build, I thought I'd get started in the cockpit of this one. The HGW belts are assembled for this and the 109. They went together pretty well.

Yeah, I had a look through MRP's grays and picked MRP402. I'll see how it looks when I get it.

Well, the recommendation to put the belt through the PE part before cutting it from the fret is a good idea. Until you realize you put it through the wrong way after you cut the PE from the fret. The first belt piece assembled. It even survived gluing it to the bench top matt. On to the next one. Then some weathering.

Thanks, Rob. Actually, it is a late war aircraft, and both the seat and cockpit floor would have been made of wood to save on the aluminum. I made a slip-up; I've glued the seat in position already. So it may become a bit of a chore adding the seat belts once I've assembled them.

Okay, all the cockpit decals except one are in place. After I took this photo, I airbrushed a coat of clear flat. Next will be clear gloss in the instrument dials. The seat was painted MRP Light Wood, oil paint added, Tamiya clear orange, chipping fluid, MRP Aqueous RLM 66, and chipped. First time.

Okay, all the decals are on the Instrument Panel (~25). There is one exception, the decal that should be on the red handle. That decal just didn't want to be there after the brush with Micro Sol claimed it. Next are all the little decals in the rest of the cockpit (~18). It's a really zoomed in phone photo.

Happy New Year!!!

Painting cockpit pieces while the neighbors are setting off fireworks.

Christmas Goodies. I used to buy two of the calendar for decades, one for my father until he passed. Hopefully the tools will help my modeling along. Lots of nice profiles in this book. It goes well with my current Spitfire project.

Saddened to hear this, Hubert. Prayers for you and your family. And prayers that your friends and others will wrap their arms around you to comfort you.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I haven't physically started, but I think these are the markings/aircraft I'm going to model. Lots of colors. I'm in the progress of deciding what color I'm going to use to be RLM 77 since MRP doesn't make it in their lacquer line. They do have it in their aqua line, but I don't want to mix paint types.

The seat belts have arrived, so it's time to get busy.

Okay, the HGW seat belts have arrived. The 1Man Army masks arrived last week. I guess it's time to really get started. I have not used either of the items before. Adventures here we come.

These came today. I'll have to spend some time and choose which aircraft.

Working away on the flaps yet. Slowly. These are the mirrored pieces that go into the wing. Should be interesting cutting the plastic. I really didn't plan the picture, but you can see where the cut out is located. I did receive the decal sheet that I ordered. They are DKdecals 32005. There are three aircraft shown in the colors that I want to use. There are markings for 12 Spitfires total. There is one Spitfire V, two Spitfire VI, four Spitfire IX, and five Spitfire VII. I've read that by the middle to late June '44 the extended wing tips had been removed, and they were repainted in the gray/green camouflage scheme. So, I'm going to paint this one Medium Sea Gray over PRU Blue with D-Day stripes. The stripes were 9" in the case of these aircraft. Since I have a Cameo cutter, I can pretty much mark it whatever particular aircraft that I want. And the 'Squadrons' book shown above contains a thorough list of matching Serial Numbers/Squadron codes too. I will stick to 131 Squadron because I have the impression that they were all the desired paint scheme around D-Day. It should be fun.

Okay, almost time to get started. I'm still waiting for a set of decals. I want to see what information it contains about the specific aircraft represented on the sheet before finally selecting a particular subject. I also started looking through the Barracuda resin addons that were in the kit. That will take some time to create a plan on what to use and what I'm not going to use. I've also found some variations in the colors. The top color is either referred to as Medium Gray or Medium Sea Gray. I'm assuming both references are really the same. The underside color has been called out at Azure Blue or PRU Blue. Obviously, they're not the same. I'll also note that I found color references to the Prototype VII noting that it was PRU Blue on top and Dark Sky undersides. Soooo, I decided to start with the PE flap set. I'll see how well I get them built before I do any cutting on the model.