DocRob

Thanks Ryan, I hear a group build looming, where I have a head start . Cheers Rob

I found the AK real Colour not very smelly, I use a spray booth and didn't notice any stand out smell. When I clean the airbrush, I did smell the cleaner with an agressive odor. Cheers Rob

Some minor works were done today like the air intakes, which, no wonder, fitted great and some priming of the metal wheel strut parts and then it was test fitting time, which seems almost senseless with that kit. I don't know if you ever had a test fit session nearly without adhesive tape. All major components are snap fit and only the nose cone needed tape. I had bigger gaps after trying to fit and glue parts, like with my dreaded Meng Komet. I raise my hat to the AMK engineers. Cheers Rob

Nice and thorough detail work Danny, good to see this one progress. Cheers Rob

The full palette of horror. I felt a little dizziness while spraying and it was not the odor of the AK-paint . There is one example of psychological warfare against the own pilots. Cheers Rob

Thanks Gus, you recently finished your great Corsair Gus, but the Mig-31 in large scale is a different breed size wise. It's huge even in 1/48 and I would had chosen this scale, even if there would have been a decent 31 in 1/32 scale. I'm not dogmatic about scale, to me the subject has to attract me, but yes, I prefer large scale too, generally. Never heard the expression barf green before but it fits. I have the Citadel emerald in my paint rack as well, but found it to - yeah emerald. The AK tone is a little taken back on the colourful side and sprays exceptionally well. Cheers Rob

Don't be so cruel on yourself, only because there is no resin to grind . But some truth is there, because failing on a near perfect kit will us make feel worse than to destroy a super unrefined resin kit. Cheers Rob

Don't open the box Ernie, you're done instantly. Cheers Rob

Me to, thanx for raising the bar, so epic fail is the only possible option . Cheers Rob

Hi Ernie, this kit makes you a believer, it is purely awesome, yesterday I had to tie my mouse hand on my back to not hit the buy button on their Tomcat. The only kit I remember being equally made was the Birdcage Tamiya and if I look at it design wise, I tend to give the edge to AMK here. They do everything to hide the seams. That paired with the snap fit accuracy of the parts makes it outstanding. The finished cockpit slides into the one piece front fuselage, which is such a great solution, no seams and again perfect fit. The supplied wheels are not the best and after sawing the Brassin wheels off their cast blocks, I'm lucky that I bought them. Today I finished building the wings, where two sets of flaps are included, neutral and lowered, Then I sprayed the wheel hubs and some engine parts Radome green and finally prepared the cockpit in that weird turquois shade, where I used my firs AK Real Color and it worked great. After a coat of Future I'm ready for decaling the pit. Cheers Rob

It is indeed, and I actually had no plans in building it now, I only opened the box and there was a voice in my head saying; 'build me'. Sounds weird, maybe, but may you have the same sensation . Cheers Rob

Nice job on those two birds, can't wait to see them finished. Cheers Rob

Depends on what your tank should look like. There are lots of 'fresh' spills on the Aluminum part (sharp contours), but no deposit grime on the whole engine. Looks to me like a relatively new engine with not so careful maintenance. Cheers Rob

Hola Compañeros, today I was not sure what to do in my cave, till I remembered the sheer amazement, when I opened the box of my Mig-31 BM-BSM (Limited Edition) kit from AMK or Avantgarde Model Kits. besides the sprues in separated bags, there where some boxes included for special protection of the front fuselage tub, the weapon sprues and the upper fuselage. Than there was a plastic box containing superbly cast white metal parts for the wheel struts, which not only look better than the plastic, but sometimes make living easier, because multi part plastic affairs are cast as single parts. The metal is sturdy and not like this soft SAC stuff. Clear parts are doubled, one in -yeah, clear- one one version in a golden tint and there is a fret of PE The offering is so overwhelming, that there is only minimal need for AM. I bought Brassin wheels, which are definitely nicer than the supplied ones, Canopy masks from HGW and a big sheet of stencils as wet transfers made by HGW. My last more or less modern jet was and Eduard/Academy F15, with lots of fit issues and a stenciling nightmare, because I couldn't get the decals blended into the paintjob. I hope these wet transfers will behave better. When I started building the feeling of near perfectness continued. engineering is great, detail very crisp, the fit is very good and there is minimal cleanup to do. Most parts would just snap fit, you rarely have this with kits. The engines build up fast and are ready for painting. The wheel wells are a piece of art and are prepared for painting too. When you insert the sub assemblies into the fuselage components (snap fit again) and close up the fuselage everything is aligning well, with most of the seamlines hidden, vey clever. Up to this point the kit is a clear 10 on my wow scale and I'm not that easy to excite. Cheers Rob

Looking superb, these Dragon Panthers are great kits, once you decided on the correct optional parts and after painting the wheels, the fun begins, except -tracks- . I guess yours is magic tracked. I built one years ago with steel wheels and have another late G in stash accompanied by a G2 Jagdpanther, but as good as Magic tracks are, I use metal ones on a panther, giving the visibility.. Will you enter it for the D-Day GB, the pace you have? Cheers Rob

Modulation is a good idea and simple to do. Just imagine an imaginary light source at a fixed position and work from there with a base Colour and then one or two shades in both directions, light and dark. A brown wash on OD, possibly combined with a brownish filter will enhance detail and Colour richness. Cheers Rob

If you wouldn't have denied it, I'd say some moonshine was involved , or maybe a wrong late movie, probably by Jack Arnold. Spider stories; Since Sunday our dog was a little nervous in his bed, sniffing and crawling more than usual. I inspected the bed and found nothing, but the nervousness continued. Yesterday I lifted his bed/basket and found a relatively big spider living there. I removed the rogue and everything is fine now. Luckily we have no poisons long leggers here. Cheers Rob

Muchas Gracias Senhores. @Gaz; I wanted do achieve a mostly factory fresh look of the plane with minimal weathering, because weathering would have had a great effect on the Silbergrau finish, which I tried to depict. The initially shading was hard to see in bright light. After browsing through my washes and pigments I found a jar of Neptune blue pigments and tried it on a dummy. The blue postshading imitates the effect of shadows on the spars which normally would be highlighted. But in this case it gives a 'cheap' illusion of a little translucency which can be detect on historic pics. Cheers Rob

My good intentions for 2020 are still in order, today I finished the second some time ago started kit of the year. There was not that much to do, but lots of detail work and some surgery on broken parts summed up for a whole day of work. For the first time I used reflective foil from AFC Club for the vision blocks and like the result which looks not so good on photos, but great in real live. Next step will be snow, ice and mud and a little dio. Cheers Rob

Oh, I forgot one, I might buy. A Ki-51 Sonia in 1/48 from Wingsy Kits. I like the plane and would like to represent exactly this paintjob, how, I'm not sure, maybe first airbrushing red brown, then masking the dots with liquid mask, then spraying light grey, again using liquid mask and finally spray dark green. I will try on a dummy an decide then. I will take my time testing, so there is a slim chance for the companies to release a 1/32 version , but then again in LS it would be a freehand paintjob . Picture for discussion purpose only Cheers Rob

Thanks Hubert, I missed the Gotha G.IV initally and hope that there will be a re-release. Since I was a young I dreamt of a decent Spad XIII kit, but without being able to tell a reason that has changed recently. I 'am more fascinated by German WW1 planes lately, colourful paintjobs everywhere and even the Lozenge camo is fancy. I would like to do a Felixstowe in a Razzle Dazzle scheme, but it's to big for me. Cheers Rob

Very sad news indeed, another urn the rest of the Pythons have to carry to Aspen. Cheers Rob

I built only one so far and had a lot of fun. You have to like these Hasegawa kits. Detail is ok and they build in a breeze, which leaves more capacity for weathering, wear and tear. I have only one more Japanese plane in stash, a 1/48 F1M2 'Pete' which will be weathered heavily to as an abandoned sea plane. In the moment I don't plan to purchase more, but get myself honey trapped by you or myself sometimes and considered a resin Lukgraph Nakajima Ko-4 for some time. Cheers Rob

Hola Senhores, Some years ago, while I was still living in Berlin, I started this kit and left it partly build in the box until recently, where I felt the urge to build something from that period and wanted to finish some of the started kits. The big time lag is the main reason, why I didn't wrote a WIP, the other is, it is my first WNW kit, first rigging experience and first kit of it's time with all these different materials to reproduce, like metal, wood, cloth... The kit itself is a gem, fit is almost perfect, details are sharp and the fragile bird is somewhat sturdy in the end. Most things went well, with the exception of decaling, my process of applying and sealing needs to be improved. After some evaluations I chose the factory fresh Colour scheme for my Pfalz, mainly because the Pfalz Silbergrau (silver grey) is the perfect appearance for this very elegant (maybe the most elegant of it's time) plane and because it's Pilot Hans Joachim Buddecke was born in Berlin like me. For the build I used some aftermarket like Master barrels, HGW exterior PE, Bob's buckles and eyelets from Gaspatch. My first rigging job was daunting, but everything went right, after testing different methods. The finish was achieved using RLM 2 on the fuselage for ports and hatches, then masking these and applying my own mix of Pfalz Silbergrau, which consisted of Tamiya White and Dark metal. Afterwards I misted some AK Aluminum onto it. I used some tonal variations for giving some depth to the base Colour and used some Neptune Blue Mig-Pigments for post shading mainly the wings. If you never build a WNW kit, you should try, I am hooked now and have some more in my stash. A Fokker D.VII in Lozenge, a Hansa Brandenburg W.12, a Snipe and a Fokker Eindecker and a FE.2b which still gives me the creeps, when I look at the rigging. Bur I think my next WW1 plane will be a Micro Mir Fokker Ev/DVIII. This will be a not so easy project with some scratching involved including brass soldering for the flimsy struts. Cheers Rob

All the beautiful detail work aside, the most stunning aspect on your Berg is the perfectly blended overall look. Cheers Rob