DocRob

Nice work on the back spine, which looks much better now. On some of the pictures, it´s clearly visible, that the origins of the HE-111 where in civil aviation. Cheers Rob

I started to clean up the engine parts and parts of the nacelles, because I wanted to get a grip for the fit and for the painting process. By the way, I decided to wire the engines and pre drilled the magnetos with 0,3 mm holes for the wiring and the cylinder heads with 0,5 mm holes for my brass tube spark plugs. Meanwhile the fuselage was airbrushed with Tamiya XF-17 sea blue. In case you wonder, why the AEG looks like a porcupine, I put in wood plugs into the holes for the struts, adhered with a drop of thinned PVA. If you know about WNW tolerances, you got the idea, I don´t want to clean out every hole, before assembly. For the same reason, the engine support struts were loosely mounted. As much as I like the matte look, I need a glossy surface for the lozenge decals and sprayed on Mr Hobby GX-100 clear gloss, with two thirds of leveling thinner in the mix and ruined the perfect mattedness. Cheers Rob

Impressive work all around Mark. I really like the low altitude passing over tarmac with pilots in and lights on. Cheers Rob

Now that is something different, bring it on FA, what a beast. Cheers Rob

Today, I received a heavy workload in form of two sets from Unobtainium for my recently purchased Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Roadster in 1/12. The first set has printed rims, hubs and spoke nipples, pre drilled and wire for the spokes. There are six different spoke pattern and the rims have a jig printed on, to help with the alignment of every type of spoke. There is no manual included, but you can find one on unobtainium - super-detailed components for the discerning model maker. The second set addresses the wire lock bolts, which are not depicted in the kit. There are rows of printed bolts, which need to be drilled through the head, to accept the wire. This can be done with the help of jigs, included in the set, for easier drilling. And this is the kit, the sets will be used on. Cheers Rob

I haven´t done as much as I wanted lately, but checked the gaps in the fuselage and sanded a bit. A tiny bit more filling and sanding is needed, before I can continue with airbrushing the base layer for the lozenge decals. What I did, was pondering about the painting and decaling sequence, identifying where the fuselage decals go. Nose, decks and parts of the wing stubs are only painted, the rest will receive decals. The next decision was about the base layer, therefore I decaled a gloss white plastic strip, which I painted with areas of gloss black and added a spare decal, to see, how much transparency the decals have. It´s almost non visible, which means, I will airbrush Tamiya XF-17 sea blue as a base, followed by a gloss coat for the decals. If I would have base coated with gloss white, I would have had the possibility of pre shading, like with Aviatic decals, but this makes no sense here. It has to be post shading then. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, but the kind of fit quality of WNW and Tamiya are not the same. Where Tamiya snaps into perfect fit with not too fragile parts, the larger sub assemblies of a WNW kit bend and flex oh so slightly, to finally wiggle into the right places somehow. The result is more or less the same, but WNW parts tend to be very thin. I´ve never seen such a huge part, like the fuselage halves being molded so thin, which of course renders them close to the real thing. Cheers Rob

Preliminary to closing the fuselage permanently, I made a last test fit of the decks and had a last peek at the interior, where the final details were added, like the folding seat for the commander. I displayed it folded and stored, which leaves a narrow tunnel for the crew to slide through to the back of the cockpit, not too easy I guess with the thick leather outfit and maybe a life jacket. Then I closed the fuselage, did a first bit of sanding on the seams. Fit was good, but not perfect, due to the very thin plastic and multiple parts intersecting. On the lower side, you can see the dark patch of the tiltable window for the fuselage gun. WNW chose to produce the stitching on the lower side as separate parts, which seal the lower fuselage side seamless, genial. There is one rectangular part fitting between the two bomb slots in front of said window, where the WNW manual calls falsely for part A45, where A44 is the correct one. I shimmed the lower nose section with a strip of evergreen, because this area is very flexible, due to the thinness of the plastic Cheers Rob

Thank you Martin and Peter, I guess flying these huge planes had it´s toll, specially during landing. The weight is up front, with engines, weapons, fuel tanks and crew, so nose diving must be hard to avoid. Cheers Rob

Better a clean build, than a clean bench. Primer looks super smooth, about ready to put some color on. Cheers Rob

That fit looks really bad, Peter. Like the others mentioned, I would fit some styrene under the canopy, but it looks, as it is too wide also. If so you might consider cutting it in the middle with a razor saw. Luckily the top part will be painted and leaves you some liberty for filling gaps. Cheers Rob

Nice little discus thingy, Carl. Liked the movies as a kid, even though, they were not top notch, they possessed a likely unintentional humor. Cheers Rob

I finished the cockpit tub today. You have to be faithful, that a zillion of contact points fit, where they should into the fuselage and to the three deck parts. I test fitted a lot, checked again with the manual, but praise to WNW, the fit is excellent. The seat belts were added, after I mistreated them with pigments, washes and matte coat and the last bits and pieces went in. The inboard LMG can be added later, which I also tested. I prepared the fuselage halves with some fake rigging, made from 0,2 mm nickel rod with 0,5 mm aluminum tube glued to the ends and then Ca-ed into the fuselage. The fuselage got closed and left to dry overnight and I even didn´t forgot to snap in the trap door window for the fuselage LMG. Cheers Rob

The HGW belts were a must in my case, because I lost the supplied PE fret. Luckily there were not many parts on it. The interior decals will remain visible through the huge trap door in the bottom of the AEG. There is a tilting window, openable for shooting downwards with the LMG from the rear gunner position. When you look through the manual of the AEG, there are many pictures of nose dived planes. I´ve no idea, if this is because it happened so frequently or because of curios photographers. I can imagine, it could be difficult to land such a monster on an improvised field airport in nighttime. Cheers Rob

I pre painted the inside of the fuselage, where the decals went with Tamiya XF-17 dark blue (the color between the decals, a bit hard to pick up) and then gloss coated for the decals. Dark blue should be the base for the outer night lozenge decals as well, along with the only painted parts of the plane like turtle decks. The outer night lozenge camo decals are darker, than these on the inside and I will test, how they look on the named dark blue or gloss white, like I usually use, when I plaster WNW kits with Aviattic decals, but I guess the kit decals are very opaque. Cheers Rob

I applied the first batch of lozenge decals today. They went on beautifully on the inside of the fuselage and need to be flat coated then. Initially I wanted to assemble the HGW seat belts, but couldn´t find the heart in me to start. There are four pairs to be made for the captain/observer in the front cockpit, the pilot, the foldable co-pilot seat and the rear gunner. Interestingly these four stations were only manned by a crew of three on night missions often only two crew members. The captain/ observer crept through a tunnel out of the front cockpit for takeoff and landing, because in case of a nose dive, he would be crushed in the front office. Speaking of nose dives, to distract me from the seat belts, I even had a peek on the waves for surfing, but on this cold, grey, stormy day, there was no surf to speak of, so back to the belts. Well in the end, I assembled all four pairs and now my eyes are hurting . They are a bit simpler to build u, than the WWII ones, but fiddly as well. Again, it was helpful to fiddle the belt parts through the buckles, when these are still on the PE fret. On the picture, they havent received their brown oil color wash, which will be followed by a matte coat tomorrow. Cheers Rob

Thanks Martin, that´s where the fun starts for me, thinking about a fitting look for details like the seats, render a picture in my head and try to make the plastic look like it. Cheers Rob

Muchas gracias Peter and yes, even WNW was not perfect . I guess, they decided, these switches are too small to be produced with injection technology. Strangely, they supplied a decal, showing the places for the switches and casted holes into the plastic for them. Another thing, I missed is the typical complete picture of the cockpit in color, which was provided with all WNW kits, I knew before. Not a biggie, but a good reminder, where everything has to be placed. Cheers Rob

Nacelles will look good in the end, Scott. There are some complex shapes around, no wonder Revell failed like the original designers . Cheers Rob

I sometimes used CA on futurized clear parts and got no fogging. I always have a bad feeling about it, but it worked. Cheers Rob

More detailing and adding of pre painted parts took place, before closing the cockpit tub. WNW has a great photo in the manual, which shows the bomb release switches in the observer station, but added none in the kit. I used Albion Connecto brass parts for this. I cut the crosses to size and glued them into the switchboard. Later, I added cables for each of the switches. That´s how it looks now: Now it´s time for the seat belts, where as usual the HGW instructions for the paper and PE belts has some errors. It´s always the same with HGW, they have some great products, others are a complete fail, but the manuals are always wrong. I closed the cockpit tub, but not before checking, it fits into the fuselage, which it seems to do, phew. I haven´t added the steering wheel, because I can´t find my PE-fret, where some tiny parts have to be added to the steering column and I hope, I can find it in time. I toned down the backside of the seat with smoke pigment, because my oil color woodgrain looked too new for my bird. Then I simulated the decks for fit and what remains visible. Cheers Rob

Very nice paintjob Phil, glad you´re satisfied finally. There were times, where I feared, you might bin the Mustang. Cheers Rob

Wow Carl, I have no idea about anime, but your freestyling conversion looks great. Nice scratch work and like PW said, everything fits design wise, hard to achieve, I guess. Cheers Rob

Cockpit and nose cone look really good, Gus. I hear you on the templates, masks are the way to go, life is to short for self inflicted pain like this . Cheers Rob

Nice seating, hard to believe, it´s 1/72, Mike. I had some issues with missing or broken parts from Eduard over the years, but their customer service always sent replacements. Takes some time, but they never let me down. Cheers Rob