BradG

I am waiting for the 1/72 Type IX U boat...I know not an LSM but still big.

Gesus Rog, would you leave some for the rest of us! In all the turmoil of the last month I forgot I did buy something, the Hobby Boss 1/48 Avenger. I have a self imposed ban on buying Trumpeter/Hobby Boss kits unless they come at less than 50% of retail and I picked this up from a toy store that was relocating for 25 bucks down from 60. Now to find a nice firebomber conversion....

What's a plan? I just go with the flow and build what I feel like at any particular moment.

A local toy shop had one of those on sale for 150 bucks near me Nick, I was going to buy it but realised I just have nowhere to put it and I don't have a pool.

Looks well used Kent, great job.

Wow mate that looks tremendous.

Firstly, let me say that doing what I have done will void your airbrush warranty from Testors. However, if you are like me who tends to rip apart everything from fridges to washing machines, dryers etc to repair them when they break down (I am an extremely accomplished washing machine repairman!), read on. You may notice that your 470 starts to spatter, the trigger is stuck solid when you leave the airbrush for a week or the needle doesn't close off fully when it should, then your airbrush is probably gunked up on the inside. 1. To take the airbrush apart, you need a flat bladed screw driver. Just work it gently into the spot indicated to pry the sections apart. Do this carefully or you will scar the plastic badly. 2. It's apart, pull out the entire insides, they are not clipped or glued in. 3. Detach the air value from the unit. It just pulls out. You can also pull out the blue air tube, it is not glued or clipped in, just shoved in. 4. Now to get the trigger away from the front body, pull back on the red part. It is spring loaded so make sure when the trigger comes out of the grove it doesn't go flying accross the room. 5. Remove the plunger from the trigger, it just slips out. (Note that it appears clean here and still in place in the next pic as I took the pictures out of order) 6. Now you get to clean. The arrows indicate where the airbrush gunks up. This build up of paint causes both the airbrush trigger to stick solid when left and to foul the mechanism, not allowing the needle to fully close off when the roller is in the fully closed position. Once you clean out all the crap, put the airbrush back together in the reverse order. However, be careful not to pinch the airhose when you are closing up the airbrush.

Anywhere that will have me!

I think you're pressure is too low and paint not thin enough. You're almost there based on what I see in your pictures. Like others, I spray at about 20-25 PSI for everything and for mottling I'll have the paint at about a 60/40 or 70/40 split (thinner/paint) depending on temperature. My weapon of choice is the plastic fantastic Aztek A470. I use it in the single action mode and adjust the trigger until the smallest amount of paint is coming out and go to work, getting as close as I can to the surface of the model. The best way I can describe doing the mottle is if you had a pen and you are trying to scribble the smallest star possible on paper. I use Gunze Aqueous thinner with lacquer thinner. Sometimes, no matter what you do, you will get a little spatter around each mottle. To get rid of this, I spray a pretty 'hot' Humbrol gloss over the paint. The humbrol gloss thinned with lacquer seems to dissolve those annoying little flecks of paint. I don't have any 1/32 kits where I've done Luftwaffe mottle, but here is a 1/72 Hasegawa Focke Wulf that I painted freehand using the technique described above.

It looks pretty good, just maybe the way the 190 is sitting looks odd. I can't see under the fuselage so perhaps there is more broken ice under the fuselage to cause the aircraft to sit tail up. If I could build a diorama like that I'd be happy.

It's good stuff but I've had trouble finding it. It seems they like to produce the thinner type of tape, probably because it's cheaper, but I cleaned out a local Officeworks of their last stock so I'm set for a while if the stuff ever gets discontinued.

Patience grasshopper.

Recently I've been getting the attitude from some long term traders and supporters of our modeling event that the smaller events "aren't worth my time". I ruffled a few feathers with one when I mentioned the fact our members spend a good amount of coin with them each year and I always say to our members; support those traders who support us. Support for our event for anyone wanting to trade is less than the retail cost of a Hasegawa 1/48 scale fighter, keep in mind! This 'me me me' attitude seems to be growing my it also effects our sporting club where players want to get paid to play yet when asked to volunteer some time to help the juniors (we're talking a couple of days per year for each player and people like me are there almost every week), many just refuse to help out. Again, I tell blokes to stump up, drink less on a Saturday night and make an effort in the junior program Sunday mornings. Actually I edited out the profanity there as it is a cricket club so you know, we swear a lot. So I've copped a bit of flak (that happens pretty regularly) for basically telling someone "support our members because we line your pocket with our hard earned throughout the year". Am I just being a heartless, blunt, hard, SOB, or do I have a point that co-operation and support is a two way street?

Some really nice stuff there.

As complete as you might expect a recovered Wildcat can be I would think. The wings are underneeth the fuselage, smaller parts an be made or sourced and it does say it comes with other spares. It's a good price too for that package and I have a friend who restors airworthy warbirds....I'll have to wait and see how much my loaded grandmother has left me in her will and hope my greedy aunt doesn't clean her out before she carks it.

This use to be the norm back 40 years ago. Good hunting grounds were farmers paddocks as many aircraft were bought post war for their engines and tires which were hard to come by in the immediate post war world. A Beaufighter and Kittyhawk were found in a paddock here. Infact the Mk 1 Beaufighter in the USAF Museum was that paddock queen.

Use in scale dots though lol. No seriously there is no reason why it won't, obviously you will have to use less paint than say a 1/32 kit, but it's just the same as oil stains or exhaust smoke. Go for it I say.

Showcase Models Australia here in Melbourne, John had 1 on the shelf when I was there last week.

That Walrus looks interesting.

Damn, I saw them out here for $50.

I bought the old Hasegawa Mk Vb and took the spinner, prop and front windscreen from that. The back plate of the spinner is slightly bigger than the hobby boss kit, but that should be fairly easy to fix. The good thing is the Hasegawa kit has both internal and externally armoured windscreen and both types of prop/spinner, so you can still build a complete kit even after scavenging some parts.

Well there goes that idea. I trawled through my spares box looking for my extra cannon buldges too, oh well.

Yeh mate, good save.

Supurb.