BradG

Yes 1/48.

Thank you. Not bad for a 30 dollar Temu special with 5 dollar .2mm tip and needle. I did some lubing and tweaking with brasso to get a better fit between parts which worked nicely. No idea how long it will hold out, but if the tip fails it's only another 5 dollars for a replacement.

A nice, easy OOB build here from Tamiya. I only decal I didn't use was the white fuselage band, which was masked and painted. Camouflage is gunze paints, RLM 80 green, RLM 78 blue and RLM 79 sandy yellow, all done freehand.

I've had this model kicking around the stash for many years and thought while I'm a bit crook with some head cold and currently high on cough medicine, it might be time to start a WW1 aircraft. I don't usually build WW1 so fitting the struts was interesting, I think I managed to get them mostly lined up. I also in my haze, decided rigging would be a good idea. I drilled small holes and threaded some stretchy line through them. It took me a day but it does look nice. A simple little base was made from a wooden thing i found at a good will shop, grout, some spares box stuff, CMK resin pilot and Mini Natur grass tufts. I left the aircraft pretty clean and glossy, I've read that WW1 paints were high gloss and then faded off, but as this aircraft was not in use long I figured a dead flat finish wouldn't be realistic. The aircraft is apparently one flown by Olivier Freiherr von Beaulieu-Marconnay in probably Jagdstaffel 18, some time in late 1917 or early 1918. He would score 25 victories flying mostly the Fokker DVII between March and October 1918. On October 18th he was hit in the leg, probably by friendly fire. He managed to get back to base but was not expected to survive his wounds. His recommendation for the Blue Max was rushed through, but he would not live to know he'd become the youngest recipient of the award at just 20, dying in hospital 10 days later, only a few hours before confirmation of the award arrived.

If I may put forward the tight arse end of the airbrushing spectrum here, I bought a 40 dollar Hobby Easy double action and 5 bucks worth of .2mm parts from Temu and have an airbrush that works like a charm. 1/72 free hand mottle and camouflage is done without trouble. I'm not knocking your purchase at all, I'd love a Iwata HP myself and very seriously considered dropping 340 bucks a few weeks ago on one, but just couldn't justify that at the moment.

A nice little kit from Hobby Boss, literally no filler required and most of the kit fits together with minimal glue. I really like how they molded the missle, using slide molds I'd say as it comes in only two pieces and glues together where the missile itself parts after launch, so no nasty seams down the length to fill and sand. I painted this up as a missile in Egypt I think, that's what the caption said anyway. It looks as though the missile itself had been camouflaged on the launcher itself, with the lower surface left in the original blue grey paint. If you like missiles this makes a good weekend build.

That was one of my favourites too.

Over the previous weekend, which was a long weekend over here, we had Model Expo on, which is the largest model competition in the southern hemisphere. 750 kits entered, about 15 traders (yours truly and dad were manning one trade stand) and multiple other club displays were on show. Below are a few pics from the show. I managed to pick up one gong; second place in 1/72 Out of Box Commonwealth Aircraft. We also had a good weekend selling second hand books for the museum, raising several thousand dollars to keep the museum running.

This is the reasonably new Miniart kit with crew figures in 1/35. If it's detail and parts you want, this is the kit for you. There's multiple decal options which require many different parts for different configurations of tank. There is also an extensive photo etch fret. I have deviated a little from the instructions; I changed the road wheels to the open kind and included the heavy machine gun on the cupola for this version as I liked the look. I also played around with the tools and stores on the tank. The kit includes 4 figures. I didn't use the bloke squatting down as I thought it looked like he was taking a dump. I did however cut off his hands and put them on the figure sitting in the turret as I liked them better than the closed fisted hands supplied. AK-47s come from the spares box. I decided to use a brush for this model as I figure it probably wasn't all nicely spray painted with and air gun, more likely being painted with a brush, or mop. I like the hard edge to the camo pattern this gives. Weathering was done with various washes and sandy pigments worked into the surface. These Miniart armour kits are very nice, but require a lot of work due to the high parts count and complexity of the build. I also found the plastic very soft and broke several smaller pieces trying to get them off the sprue. It's also worth noting these don't have anything like the Dragon Magic tracks, so every track link has 4 sprue attachment points to cut and clean, times by about 150 links. That said, patience will result in a nice looking model. I do have their T-55 and Panzer IV in the stash to build as well.

Just a little something I picked up cheap second hand and was building in between other models. For 1/700 Hobby boss it is pretty nicely molded with the rails for the hull and conning tower molded to their respective sections. Painted with WEM enamel in Hellgrau 50 and PSBF III, the standard for early war subs. Deck is black. The base even has the nice writing on it already printed.

This is the oldish Hasegawa 1/72 kit. Despite being nearly 50 years old, the kit is surprisingly decent, with fine engraved lines and good decals, this boxing I think is 1992. It does lack cockpit detail and the decals are incorrect in this boxing for Scott's P-40E. Supplied is a serial number for the tail, which despite being incorrect, this aircraft had no serial painted on it and it lacks the white 7 for the rear fuselage (this came from the spares box). The 2014 dual boxing of the kit corrects these errors. A quick look online sees not very many 1/72 P-40E's available so for it's simple buildability and being fairly easy to come across, it's still up there with the best in scale for it's type. I rather hope Airfix might continue their P-40 line.

I bought a cheap set of Russian pilots and ground crew, the ICM set is actually very nice for less than 20 bucks with 7 figures included. My figure painting is getting better. It definitely adds some realism to the scene.

This is the older Hasegawa Mk Vb in 1/48 that was issued with Russian markings. The fit is pretty decent as you might expect from Hasegawa, the only issue being some warp in the wing to fuselage fit on one side, requiring me to put some spacers in. Once this is done the fit is almost perfect. Decals however were a little difficult to work with, they silvered on me despite being almost melted into the gloss surface. If I were to build this again I'd go for aftermarket. I did use some colour etch seatbelts from Eduard that really make the cockpit look nice. I knocked up a little base for it to sit on using tile grout for the soil and various grass tufts put into some longer grass mat that was pulled apart a little and then glued onto the surface with white glue. Some accessories were added to the base from the spares box and although I don't have any Russian pilots or ground crew, I will rectify that this week and put them on the base too

This is the newish revell boxing of their Eurocopter in 1/72. My club was doing a competition where we all built models from James Bond films as Revell bought out the whole range again and as Goldeneye is my favourite Bond movie and one of the best FPS shooter games ever made on N64 (ahhh the times we sat around as teenagers with pizza and coke playing 4 player), I had to build it. The kit itself is not bad, the detail is pretty good but I did have some issues fitting the instrument panels in the cockpit and the exhaust inserts on the back. I solved the cockpit by leaving out the offending parts that you can't see anyway and good amount of sanding on the back. I do like the fact that Revell have designed the canopy so you don't have to install it half way into the build, the section that covers it is separate and can be glued on later. They also give you separate windscreen wipers, a nice little detail that allows easier masking of the canopy and painting of the parts. Decals are very good, they only have decals for the movie helo, but you do get all the other parts to make a later model helo with gun, radar and different weapons. This prototype did not carry a nose gun, even in the movie.