DocRob

As I drew a blank with the Cowboys game, bad team, bad deal, I nearly bit on a WNW Salmson, which was not discounted. But kept away from it, when I thought about flat wire rigging. I have a Camel and a Snipe in stash, that's enough of British flatliners , but the Japanese scheme... Cheers Rob

Thank you for your kind words Maru. To build, paint and weather these great models by WNW makes it easy to shine for the modeler. They are such a great canvas quality wise, it would be a shame to fail. Cheers Rob

Drinking yes, beer at the moment, go Cowboys . Cheers Rob

After some problems with water plumbing in the house and some stormfronts, first hot sandstorms to be followed with one day pause by a northern storm with rain, I found some time to continue with the Lada. I cleaned all the mayor components and started assembling the body. First I glued the hood to the sides, added the front for rigidity and after a lot of test fitting and cutting added the back door with the chassis loosely fit as a template. Last was the roof. General fit of the parts was good, but a lot of test fitting and sanding was necessary to get a good result. Next was the chassis with multi part front axles, rear axles, suspension and exhaust. The design of the parts is mostly well thought through. It starts to look like a real Lada Niva . Cheers Rob

One of the coolest rally cars ever, if not the coolest, a driving wedge with only one purpose, win and it shows, stunner, forget about actual design. Cheers Rob

A pin wash to my eye doesn't have to be darker than the surrounding base colour. I tried lighter tones on different occasions and liked it a lot. the effect is obviously the opposite of a dark pin wash emphasizing shadows. In natural light panel borders may also produce a little highlight against the base colour, which could be replicated, by using a lighter grey tone for panel lining. Grey would keep the tonal balance, with some olive panel wash you might get interesting effects too. Just a thought... Cheers Rob

A good looking girl at a model convention, you made my day . Cheers Rob

Now that's a kicking mule , bravo. Cheers Rob

Nice work with the details like the aerials Gaz. The black to me is impossible to judge on the pics. It looks really good to me on the indoor pics and I hope the uneven distribution of black patches will remain under a sealing coat as well as the matte look. By the time you demask crossings and markings it will come together, with the contrast of the markings, I'm sure. Cheers Rob

...indeed they are, with my two WNW builds, I had some troubles with their decals be it larger area Lozenge or German crosses. Nice turnbuckle Phil . I use Tamiya magnifiers which I like, because of the quality real glass lenses, which reduces distortions and the possibility of changing lenses, depending of the type of work. It seems like the set has changed though, mine includes four lenses of 1,7X, 2X, 2,5X and 3X. The only weak point is the head adjusting plastic thing, which is adjustable, but causes some headache after longer wear, but that's maybe only my cabeza (head) . Cheers Rob Magnifying Visor with 1.7x/2x/2.5x Lenses (tamiya.com)

The pit looks beautiful John. What type of Corsair are you building? A Corsair I, based on the Birdcage version or a Corsair II, which is based on the 1A or 1D version? In the book 'How to build...Tamiyas 1/32 F4U-1 Corsair', Brett Green builds a Corsair I and describes the differences between the Versions. Not exactly a historical based resource, but I thought, I should mention it. For his Corsair I he used an American seatbelt and mentioned, that these were not changed normally and even the flight gear was American made, often. His interpretation of the cockpit colour is a rather darkish green. For the Corsair II he describes the use of a Sutton Harnish and British radio equipment. Cheers Rob

These are my side orders, besides the Griffon set. I will build mine with the 20mm Oerlikon on it. I tried to figure my sources for the U-Models figures and ADV, but drew a blank. I bought mine some years ago, back in Berlin. Cheers Rob

That prototype is disgusting, too much methyl based moonshine Vodka consumed by the designer I guess. That's a Niva nientendoized and it is in one league with the Nissan J(P)uke . The x-theme, design wise should include an X for canceling . The background music fits the design though. Cheers Rob

Definitely WOW, like Hubert said, I rarely enjoyed pictures of a heap of debris more than this . Cheers Rob

Rear view mirrors are for losers . Cheers Rob

Never saw a single episode of Top Gear, I have to admit, I enjoy driving, but not watching people doing it . I would have preferred a completely cast body, as aligning everything might be not too simple. I'm actually thinking about using brass rods for alignment for some parts. Cheers Rob

Gratulations Mark, as said before in the RFI's nice builds all along and worthy candidates for their prizes. Good to hear that your Model Convention took place in these times. Cheers Rob

I have the very same in stash for a long winter stint, accompanied by a big Griffon PE and resin set and some resin sailors from U-Models and others. Cheers Rob

Meng's Ford GT40? Cheers Rob

Might be, did Top Gear exist in the 80's, cause that's the technological level of the Niva? There is no other car around, I know about, which is not retro, but true 80's stuff. Cheers Rob

Definitely Martin and reliable too, when handled with a little love. It has a way bigger coolness factor than the new Land Rover Defender, at leas to me Cheers Rob

Should have been, could have been,... Like the true Goddess of pop, Roisin Murphy sang with her former band Moloko Thanks Jeff, tell that my wife.... I read some minutes ago, that Lada completely stopped their Western European existence, pity. These cars will survive all these over sensored super electrified cam bus driven modern SUV's though. Out there in the wild nature all these gimmicks will not help. Gentlemen, tranquillo, it's not done yet Cheers Rob

To get the resin dust as soon as possible off the workplace, I removed all the pour blocks, which proved to be a simple task. The resin is forgiving, with a little flexibility and not as brittle as others, I worked with. Sanding was done roughly, to have little reserves for fitting the parts and I removed all the flash with a scalpel blade. After vac-cleaning my bench, I taped the main components roughly together, to get an idea about the general fit. I made some discoveries while test fitting, the positive were, that the general shape actually resembles a Lada Niva and the fit of the main body parts seems to be ok. It seems to be possible to build the body of the car separately from the chassis, which makes painting way easier. On the negative side, I found some shape issues around the front windscreen, it looks a little non symmetrical, but since it's only a vague test fitting, there is no verdict. That's where I am now.

The kit is a full resin kit, which I never did before, added with some photoetched parts, clear plastic sheet for the windows, clear resin headlights and a manual. The kit is designed by Balaton models, a company from Hungary, which is specialized in different kind of vehicles in various scales, but all in resin. These are the parts from the box, which are clean cast with only some cleanup to do. Nothing seems to be warped and I found no bubbles and only tiny imperfections in the cast. Note that there are two back doors supplied for two different versions of the Niva. A closer look at the etched parts reveals some nice detail like the front grill, Lada logos, wipers, mudskirts, license plates and mirrors, bueno. An area where I'm not so comfortable with are the pre printed glass parts on a sheet of acetate, let's see how this will work out. Finally there is the manual, which seems pretty clear on first inspection Cheers Rob

Hola Friends of Russian Heavy Metal, I have started a hurry up project, building a resin kit of a Lada Niva as a present for my wife for Christmas. It is planned to add a wooden base, showing the shape of the island were we life. I wrote down the story behind this project in the 'what did you just get thread' and copied it here, to get the whole picture together. After a little odyssey the postman brought me this little gem, directly from Hungary. It's a 1/35 kit of a Lada Niva, made by Balaton and will be my next project as a Christmas gift for my wife. There is some personal history behind the Niva, which started with a completely different car though. Since getting the drivers license, eighteen years old, my wife wanted to own a Citroen 2CV, but never really managed to get one for multiple reasons. We were very close to buy one in Portugal some years ago, which was in perfect condition, but we had to be back in Berlin four days later, with no possibility to change and found it too risky to do the 2700 km with such an old car. Later we settled on our steep little island in the Atlantic, where even my biased wife realized, that a 2CV would not be sufficient for the type of terrain here (I buried my plan of owning a Goddess, a Citroen DS23 as well for the same reason). To stay with classics, we tried to buy a new Lada Niva instead, which is well suited for our nice offroad tracks. Three years ago, it was possible to buy a Niva in the mainland of Spain, but it was seemingly impossible to import one onto our Canary Islands. A year ago we tried to buy a new Niva in Germany from a retailer, specialized on Lada Niva. By that time he refused, because it would be impossible to get it legalized in Spain, because the Spanish Lada dealers ceased business meanwhile and you couldn't get a Lada Niva homologized anymore. Out of pure frustration (and a lot of desire too) we bought our Jeep as one of the last dinosaurs, with the Landrover Defender - err - rejuvenated . After some wine, there sometimes are some sentimental remarks about the missed chance of having a Lada Niva from my wife. When I saw the resin kit of the Niva I knew, i had to build it for my wife and now I'm on a tight schedule before Christmas, as there should be a wooden base, with the shape of our island, also. Cheers Rob