DocRob

I'm buckled in and am eager to learn a little about the t-28 and Kittyhawk kits. Are you aware of these pilot figures for your plane? http://www.aires.cz/en/product/u-s-a-f-pilot-instructor-with-seats-for-t-28b-trojan-vietnam-war/0-3849/ I will use them for my future Portugese FAP Trojan project. Cheers Rob

On my tiny island, the idea of wearing a mask to protect others arose in a very early stage of this plague. The discipline in wearing these masks is highly developed and the few, who refuse to wear masks are looked at suspiciously. Having a shortage of masks in the early days of Covid, propelled the creativity and many people made their own ones and sold them or made them as a present, some of them quite fashionable. Here in Spain the rules to handle the Situation are very strict, and you are not allowed to enter shops without a mask, sometimes added with plastic gloves, even if you wear some. The strange thing about the situation here is that we had only three Covid infections and all are healed by long. Since 37 days we have no new infections and living on an island with very reduced and controlled access via ferry or tiny airplanes makes you sometimes feel very stupid, when you communicate with somebody you know since years, in full galore with mask and gloves on the street, knowing nobody around is infected. As a foreigner here, I will wear my mask until it's save to not wear it anymore AND until the people from my island don't wear them, you have to accept different cultural approaches. Face to face conversation though got tougher for me as a not completely fluent Spanish speaker, it's so much harder to understand people, speaking behind their masks, with their often garish accents. I don't want to be misunderstood, I think masks are an important physical aid to hinder spreading Covid by protecting others and can be of psychological help too, but sometimes I have to laugh at the absurdity of situation here. Cheers Rob

Hi Gaz, I tried to figure out what kind of archive you have in mind. Could you detail your idea a little bit more. What is the main idea, should it be an archive for historic pictures or one of builds or finished models, all of these can be inspirational? How should the structure be made, because we can create topics, but no structures? What would be the benefit in terms of redundancy of pics and information in e.g. WIP's and your archive? Like you, I have no idea about what is doable, but like to get a clearer concept of your idea. Cheers Rob

Nice kit, even though, I have no idea about historical correctness or even the scale. No sprue cutting and no flash on the pro side . After you guys, trending into well organized benches, I'm tempted. Everlasting creative chaos vs. clean and lean, dunno, both has it's Charme. Cheers Rob

After you praised the leveling thinner I bought a bottle and had many very unpleasant hours of cleaning the airbrush thoroughly from tar like lumps of Colour. On the few occasions it was not lumping it sprays very well, but the Colour brands I use are mostly not compatible, So X20 is still my go to stuff. Cheers Rob

Wonderful, your Macchi has the elegant and powerful lines of these classic wooden sport boats on Lago Maggiore and the guy in front adds to that with his coolness. You asked for it, when you started the kit,being resin, lots of different materials to reproduce, fragile airframe, challenging, but you made it look easy with that fantastic result. Cheers Rob

Thanks Harv, it will be slow work, and I guess it will be prolonged by in between builds, but it is one of the 'it has to be finished kits for me. I like that arrangement for the 234 too, on a really busy single IP it would be a pain to get all the instruments aligned, but here it is the perfect solution and you don't have to worry about matching RLM 66. Because of the delicate nature of gluing tiny bezel frames onto the shiny dials, I want to try Future instead of CA here. Has anyone tried this, I don't want to have loose bezels in my cockpit. I checked the Yahu instruments against the Kagero renderings and found obvious differences only for two types of instruments, Yahu 'R' (U/min) has a red and white bezel, which makes perfect sense, while the Kagero renderings show them black. Yahu's 'T' has a black bezel, where Kagero has them yellow (Whatever-pressure gauges). Cheers Rob

Luckily they did, at least Yahu did . It's YML3201 specially made for the 234. Cheers Rob

Today the first of my four panic buys arrived. WNW Albatros D.V/D.Va 'Wooden Wonders' and Aviattic Lozenge and HGW wood decals and seat belts. This offering is a little different to what I've seen from other WNW offerings. You get a generic D.V/D.Va manual which ends with the rigging diagram. The paint and decal suggestions are on separate four page manual. You have to pay a little bit more attention to the manual, while doing your specific Albie, because of it's generic make up, you have to keep in mind, if yours is a D.V or D.Va and who build it, … The top of the box is matte carton with an added sheet on the side, showing the marking options. In other words, hey I'm happy to get my first Albatros and the first of my four WNW stash extensions. Cheers Rob

Sloooww progress with the Nachtigall, It seems like there is always some destruction needed with every step in this build. As the cockpit is very visible under the glass canopy, I decided to use the Yahu instruments for this build. Yes, it's not an IP, it's single dials and bezels, because of the different panels where the gauges have to be built in. The manual suggests, that you should drill a 1mm hole in the middle of each instrument, get rid of the plastic instruments and then place the sandwiched dial and bezel in place. Before that, as suggested, I sprayed al the bezel frames with a matte coat. The dials are produced in high shine glossy finish, to reproduce the glass. Cheers Rob

Nice little bird Dale, monochrome grey and not a bit boring. I like the addition of the crew, which gives live to the kit, a thing I plan to do more often in future projects. Cheers Rob

Personally I don't like dead flat finishes on planes, I think it doesn't look right, considering the scale effect. I use completely flat Colours for figure painting only especially for faces and cloth. Your Khaki is surely hard to judge from the pics, given the different light conditions and use of flash, but I actually like the tone of the Colour. It would be more or less what I expected to get for my Karas, with maybe trying to give a little bit more saturation through a hint of red brown filter. Cheers Rob

Phew, had to go back to page three, to find what was nagging me. The PZL looks great, but as I saw your new close ups of the cockpit area, it hit me. Too few shadows in the fuselage planking. Even with the different lighting on the above pics, the single sheets are clearly distinguishable. Nothing that can't be done with a little bit of wash, but it adds to the roughly hewn appearance of the real thing . Cheers Rob

In the moment it's actually cold and raining . Sure there is no snow and ice, but as you live more outside and the houses and heating possibilities are quite different from lets say Germany, the felt temperature can be really low. I'm living on the northern side and 600m up, that means it's at least five degrees colder, than where the tourists are. Berlin is warmer in the moment and was often in the last year, but I wouldn't go back. As for painting the world looks good here, clean dust free air, except in Kalima times. Not much static, because humidity tends to be a little higher. I'm not that much affected by temperatures in my mancave than by distraction. If the waves are good, I'm in on my board or biking or whatever. Living here is more like doing the right thing at the right time. The worst time of the year is spring, cold and wet, winter might be cool sometimes, but there is more sun, very clear air and bright Colours. Cheers Rob

Beautiful finish John, I love these Birdcage models in two tone camo without any red in the insignia. The weathering is als great, like Gaz said. Cheers Rob

Muchas Gracias Senhores, your positive feedback honors me. @Martin, it definitely is a trip way back, when books where not digital and a film was made in technicolor and best watched at a huge screen in a cinema, popcorn in hand. I actually read a Jules Verne book last year on my Kindle . @Vandy, I had a more or less fixed vision of the Nautilus with bronze and copper tones a s primary Colours, well aged with patina, because I have another huge steam punk dio in mind as a future project which includes a small submarine, but in 1/32 scale. The Colours of the squid and the bottom where not set at the beginning. Two factors were the main driver here, first, tonal balance, the red and purple of the squid is binding the bronze greenish Nautilus to the dull black-blue-base. The second factor is my palette of Scale 75 Colours, with this kind of project, I love to sit in front of my Colour chart and let my eyes be hooked, by what I think should look right. @Gaz, I guess captain Nemo had the same thoughts about the beak and was not anymore sure if commanding a sub is such a good idea . I finished this build without getting nightmares, creature wise and kit wise. Cheers Rob

Thanks Gus, I wish, PE-rigging would be so easy with other kits. There are tiny slots moulded into the plastic and you only have to insert the etched part with a drop of CA. Definitely a good idea for prefab British flat wire rigging on WW1 planes. Cheers Rob

Very cool Sir, love the laid back sound and the old school jazz funk. When I saw your gig I was reminded of better times, no, not pre Covid times, but the time, before I went for my tiny Spanish Island. Here you get lots of boring Latin stuff and sometimes a Rock or Reggae concert and traditional music of the Canaries. There are not many things I miss here, but good concerts are one of it, being it a small jam session or a big concert, Punk, Alternative, Classic, or whatever. Thanks for reminding me of this in Berlin time. Here I have only my somethousand Vinyls. Keep on rocking (or jamming) my companero and have fun with the drums. Cheers Rob

The Nautilus is done. Today I added all the PE parts which where burnished before, instead of painting. The etched parts fitted very well and the attachment of the cables are well thought through. The whole kit is excellent designed and relatively robust, even with the etch. I had tons of fun with this project, only a vague idea of the finished thing in my mind, when I started. It all developed while building, something you don't have too often with scale modelling. I can recommend the Nautilus kit highly for quality and for giving you the possibility for creativity. Cheers Rob

Muchas Gracias Gus, Scale75 is a Spanish company, which I knew long before I went to Spain, because I liked their core business, white metal figures in, you wouldn't have guessed, 75mm scale. I have some of them and busts in other scales too. They expanded into more scales and paints over the years and I use their normal range of acrylics for figure painting mainly, because the paints dry dead flat and they cover exceptionally well. The downside is, they are really hard to shake through and to thin properly. The here used more fantasy orientated range is not completely flat (how would a dead flat surface on underwater squid skin look ), sprays better through the airbrush and has really unusual and appealing Colours, with a special mention of the metallics, which are extremly fine pigmented for brushable paints. Cheers Rob

Put the scale under the tail end and you have an approximate value and than add a little for security

Very nice finish. I can understand what triggers your happyness. Cheers Rob

Thanks Harv, I'm pleased by the outcome until now, like the tonal balance of the whole thing. It's always difficult to envision this on freestyle projects. But that's where the fun and possible fail lay in. Cheers Rob

Nearly there now. Today I airbrushed the base with dark bluish and greenish Colours and screwed it for security reasons to the squid. The painting of squid and sea ground was completely made with Colours from Scale75 which have an excellent range of strange Colours ideal for such a case. I used their acrylics from the Fantasy Games series and the fabulous Inktensity Colours. When I bought these, I had no idea, for what they are good, but they creep into my builds and figure painting more and more. They are translucent and shiny and are perfect to pick out details, like the eye of the squid. Shiny leather is another possibility. First a base coat and then some Inktensity yellow or brown, magic. The plate is sprayed in Copper , then pigmented and afterwards I used True Metal waxes, first bronze for the letters and then brass for the borders. I will rearrange the look of the pigments slightly after evrything is dried. Cheers Rob

There are some ideas about CDL and transparency on the WNW hints&Tips side http://www.wingnutwings.com/ww/hintsandtips Cheers Rob