Daywalker

Cheers Dave, thanks for the warm welcome! Glad to see the forums up and running here. Thanks Mike, good to see you again! I really gotta get that big 109 out for the GB, perhaps next weekend when I get back from vacation.

Thanks Grant! They really are sweet kits, aren't they?

Moving on to the main gear bays, I dry fit all of the gear bay ribs into place. Each of these ribs has multiple ejector pin marks on them, so all of these were sanded out. MUCH better! I plan to try something a bit different with this build. I am going to model the aircraft with the clam shell doors closed. I cut the provided main gear bay insert for displaying the aircraft in flight on it's stand into three pieces, saving the center piece as this will be glued into position instead of the separate part assemblies. The wall dividing the gear bays will be fabricated from a piece of styrene sheet, as it will be mostly invisible. I will save the kit provided one for future builds in case I need them as spare parts. Next up is a bit of wiring, then painting the gear bays. On this build, I am going them natural aluminum, with a yellow chromate rear spar. Stay tuned for more updates!

I finished up the radiator assembly today, and installed it into the fuselage. Now, with that ready, I was able to close up the two halves. With minimal fuss, everything lined up perfectly (pretty much expected from this kit). In the radiator exhaust area, there were a couple of ejector pin marks which needed to be filled and sanded as these would be visible on the finished model. Some of the sub assemblies in the radiator area use sandwiches of plastic parts, PE inserts, and small linkages with metal pins. They look a bit complicated in the manual, but if you take your time they go together with minimal fuss. I annealed the PE parts before attempting to bend them to fit the slightly curved plastic bits, and this helped them to conform. I also gave them a good sanding to roughen up the surface to better accept the Alclad paint. In the end, they look like one piece. I also masked and painted the armored glass in front of the gunsight. This was a bit tedious, and I wish Tamiya had provided a mask for it on their printed masking sheet. The framework is very delicate, and masking entailed thin strips of Tamiya tape and punched out disks of tape for the radius ed corners. I also tried something different with the gunsight, instead of simply painting it it's final metallic black finish, I first cleaned it up and then masked off the lens. I then gave it a coat of Alclad aluminum, and then the black. This was followed up with a drybrushing of silver and raw umber, and then the lens mask was removed. Done this way, if you look down through the lens it looks like a metallic box with reflective properties inside. I think it turned out well, though the effect is difficult to capture with the camera.

On the back of the armor plate, I found period photos showing a small canvas pouch instead of the hardware provided by Tamiya (the kit parts represent part of the IFF system I believe, not fitted to this aircraft). I replicated this with a folded up piece of Tamiya tape. I also flipped the radio around, as it is backwards in the kit. I simply cut off the mounting lugs on the bottom, and flipped it 180 degrees. I also cut off the blob of plastic Tamiya would have you paint white (it is an overflow bottle for the battery) and fashioned a small clear "bottle" out of kit sprue, with a punched disk lid. I think it looks much better! I also plumbed the radio and battery. The rudder pedals also received the hairspray treatment. After installing the decal for the IP gauges, they looked a bit translucent so I painted a layer of black paint on top of them to make the detail pop. Now that the cockpit is nearly done, I can move on to the next hurdle- the gear bay. I found over 30 ejector pin marks on the main body and rear spar alone! I opted to sand and fill them, and this took many nights of tedious filling and sanding to eliminate. If only Tamiya had molded these parts 180 degrees on the sprue, the pin marks would be on the inside of the parts (and not visible). Why did they do it this way? The marks would be easier to fill too if they were raised instead of recessed, and located away from the delicate rivet detail. More to come!

Started this one back in March, what an amazing piece of kit! After building Tamiya's 1/32 A6M5 and Spitfire Mk.VIII, I knew this one would be very good too. Beginning with the cockpit, I followed the directions (mostly) and added a few details I thought would be noticeable. Side panels are as provided in the kit, even added the Tamiya placard decals. I purchased the Barracudacals set for the cockpit, but in the end I opted not to use it. I do not like decalling much, and the thought of adding over a hundred to the cockpit alone gave me chills! I took some white oil paint and tried to replicate the face detail on a few gauges around the cockpit, as well as some basic stenciling to spice it up a bit. The floor was painted with Tamiya buff, then oil paints were used to replicate the woodgrain of the floor. The black was sprayed over a layer of hairspray, and damaged with a brush and toothpick. I used the hairspray technique to "beat up" the seat, and added some seatbelts with PE hardware from the HGW set. I used their belts on the Spitfire and they worked flawlessly, but the ones in this set (US WWII generic belts) were not very good. The thin "plastic" on the top of the "fabric" belts kept separating from the bottom layer, and frayed badly along the edges. In the end, I used strips cut from the edges of a $1 bill as that paper has a fabric feel to it. I painted the bottom belts, and in hindsight I wish I had left them alone as the paint did not turn out as I had wished. My fault! I also left the seat pack off as I did not care for it's shape, and figured this aircraft would not spend much time over water. I figure the ground crew took it out at the pilot's request!