DocRob

Fantastic work Mike, as always. Cheers Rob

Your lozenge decaling and cat and devil face markings look absolutely fantastic, Mike. You made me thinking, I have the same Aviattic sets for the wings like you, but always wanted the early scheme A, a Prussian bird with a yellow and blue striped fuselage. This paintjob will not be easy to achieve, as I planned to make it semi transparent, to show the underlying black and white striped livery, phew, I'm shivering, even thinking about it. This maybe is a bit to much for me and I will buy a stippled camo decal set (32208 in my case) as an option and replicate scheme E. I would have to swallow the bitter pill, this being a Bavarian plane and I'm born in Prussia, where there is some 'friction', between the two. Cheers Rob

Do you get brass blindness like me sometimes Carl? When I work for hours on PE with the magnifier under good lighting, I got caught by the permanent glare and have difficulties to focus . Time for a beer then and some music on the turntable. Cheers Rob

The Mine looks great, and I understand your fear about entering the LHS . Cheers Rob

I like the figures in this stage of painting. I'm always astonished, how small these 1/48 buggers are to the un-macroed eye. They will look great with their believable poses. Cheers Rob

Thanks for the offer Mike, I can't wait to see, how you are proceeding with the interior and all the added detail like the vector engine. The 48 scale Walrus was my firs thought for the GB, as I really like the bird / fish? and I am eager to reproduce some acrylic water and bought some figures to man the Walrus and add a resin dinghy with three downed pilots in it. I haven't looked too deep into the SH box, but I guess the kit is decent, but not easy to build, but maybe easier than the HPH offering. There is a lot of resin included and I will see what fits into the Airfix's frame. Cheers Rob

Exactly Mike, that's the stuff. I use about the same mixing ratios like you, but never tried to raise the air pressure that high, because I work comfortably at about 20 PSI normally with all kinds of colors. I will give the GX100 another trying session, because when it doesn't gum up or spider webs, it looks great, better than the easier to work with Tamiya LP-clear or Future / Pledge. Cheers Rob

Nice Paul, I love these quirky almost steam punk designs. I have a Takom MK. IV kit and helped me to an extra set of tracks, which are one piece links and click together. Takom claims, they are for MK II - MK V and Whippet and Tadpole. I've no idea, if the MK I had different tracks, but I liked to make life a bit easier on these boring redundant jobs. Cheers Rob

Nice start Jeroen, the engines look great. You know, there is a 1/32 Kettenkrad out there from Zoukei Mura? 1/32 Sd.Kfz.2 Kettenkrad | Products | ZOUKEI-MURA (zoukeimura.co.jp) Cheers Rob

Wow Mike, great display and skillful work to get there. I too love the Atlantic scheme a lot and yours is perfectly rendered. Your persistence with the canopy and clear coat issues payed off, I may have binned the kit. I had similar problems with Mr. Color Clear, I think it was G100 with spider webbing and turning goo in my airbrush. Strangely, it worked before. I don't know, where the problem is with this stuff, but I seem unable to achieve steady results with this stuff. Cheers Rob

What beauty Mike, the Brewster looks absolutely gorgeous and a bit different with the unusual camo. But it's the detail work on the engine and landing gear, which pleases the eye. I always liked the stubby look of the Brewster, like a flying Robusto Cigar . Cheers Rob

I've seen these guys a while ago, maybe they are an option Chris. Doolittle Raid April 18, 1942 Part.A, Sabre Model 4802 (2020) (scalemates.com) Cheers Rob

Like Gary said, the figures add a lot with the their distinctive poses. Unfortunately the casting quality is so bad, it will be difficult to paint them up well. I guess, there are not so many options out there in 48 scale, with rolled up sleeves. Cheers Rob

Sorry, double post. Cheers Rob

I do use and have used lots of power tools of all types throughout my whole life. The important thing beside the normal safety measurements is, being calm and concentrated and most important, know what you are doing, before you do it. So far, I had only minor incidents with these tools, except one, when I was 17 getting my education as a light engineer and my little finger got caught into a thread on a brass piece turning rapidly on a lathe. I ripped it out, loosing only lots of blood, but not the finger. I still have the brass piece as a reminder and bottle opener. Nice work on the sub Scott, I can feel your pain with all this filling and sanding, but the huge, albeit somehow elegant thing will benefit from the undisturbed shape, I'm sure. Cheers Rob

Shaping up nicely Gary. Accuracy might be an issue with the kit, but hey, it's vintage, either you accept it as it is or roll up the sleeves. I would go with option #1, I think . Cheers Rob

Lots of extra work Mike, with all these ejector pin buggers. I have the same kit in stash and was shaking my head, while examining the fuselage parts. When I build mine, I will check, what will be in sight and only correct these. I also own a Special Hobby Walrus and I think, as I only will build one, I will take some of the resin parts, specially the engine and kit bash a little. Cheers Rob

There was almost no progress, as this build is wearing me out a bit and I had my other delicate and cost intensive hobby (passion) in focus. I decided a while ago, it's about time to upgrade my Transrotor Fat Bob-S turntable a bit, a hefty piece of German precision and sheer mass in polished aluminum. The tonearm is a modified Rega one, with better cables and connectors and a more refined counterweight, but it is still a Rega, not bad, but has it's limitations. I ordered a very fine Japanese Sorane tonearm, an engineering masterpiece, looking like it was finished by the same people finishing the good old Nikon F2 cameras or maybe Leicas. My moving magnet pickup is a good one, but I wanted a better fit to the new tonearm (you wouldn't believe the physical backgrounds) and added an also Japanese Phasemation moving coil cartridge to the order. Then I thought, all these precious goodies with my old modified Lehmann phono-pre-amp, no, let's get away from the bit cheeky and unrefined Teutonic sonics and change to another Japanese jewel to amplify the weak signals of the cartridges and ordered a Aurorasound Prima Vida amp, a bit of a quirky design, but should sound exceptional. Last but not least, I had to get rid of the DC residues in my house, which are artefacts, interspersed through our relatively new photovoltaic power system. What's the benefit of a good hifi-system, when nothing good comes in, first. You can imagine, that it took the better part of my freetime the last two weeks, to read, to discuss and to brainstorm about the upgrades. In a few weeks, everything will arrive on my island and then it's testing and installing and adjusting time, which is almost as delicate as assembling the USS Phoenix's PE. Today, finally, I got something done. I drilled two 6,5 mm holes into the hull, to accept screws later, if I decide to use a stand and don't display her in acrylic water. The nuts were glued into the inside with two component epoxy and after everything cured, I glued the top half of the hull onto the lower part and rubber banded and clamped all. Cheers Rob

Love the razzle dazzle paintjob, Carl suggests. A tiny bit of headache is the price for a truly psychedelic look. Cheers Rob

Your Kingfisher is a beauty with the decals adding even more contrast to the colorful livery. Glad that everything was good with the repair works in the end. Let's hope the same for your oral treatment, hopefully without that much drilling. All the best my friend. Cheers Rob

Muchas gracias hombres, thin CA can be a pain, but I like it a lot, despite it's challenges. The glue I use mainly is from Colle 21, a Spanish company and it bonds very good. The thinness helps sometimes for sealing parts through capillary action, but in the above mentioned case the same quality bit me. I never had imagined that the Ca could run that far. I use a thicker CA as well, but longer curing time makes it hard to use on the tiny bits and pieces. Sometimes I use small dots of thin to fix a part and then glue it properly with the thicker CA. I used the Colle 21 glue for second planking my wooden Duchess of Kingston kit and really liked it there. It is runny and you have to be very disciplined using it, but it bonds fast and secure, which really helped, where no nails should hold the second planking and clamping each section of every plank would have been a nightmare. Cheers rob

I'm sure you could do it Hubert and as far as there are some of the mentioned miracles available at a good price, I'm in for them . Cheers Rob

Your PT is shaping up well, Phil. The extra detailing in the bridge section looks great. Cheers Rob

Sorry to hear, that you and your wife got the big C. Hopefully you will recover soon and without the sometimes happening C-fallout. My wife and me, we both had Corona last year, but interestingly not in the same time frame. We still lived together about normal and did not infect the other, strange. It was like a bad flu, but luckily no back effects on us. Cheers Rob

Tedious job with the masking Chris, but having an Eduard set at hand helps a lot. You mentioned, that you Futurized the canopies. I had some fogging with liquid mask over Future or Pledge in my case, a while ago. The liquid mask was on for a while, but I can't remember which product it was, probably MR Masking Neo. Cheers Rob