DocRob

Wow, what a stunner. I don't know about the base kit and it's shortcomings, but yours shows nothing of it. I love these skeletal airframes of the period. The printed cowling looks great and without, it wouldn't have looked Camel enough. Cheers Rob

One step forward, two steps back, Peter Cheers Rob

Thank you Mike, after my experiences with the Arizona, I don't think I could do something similar in 1/700. Like you said, lining up different parts is extremely difficult and has to be done numerous times for adjusting everything. For my brass tubes, I used a razor saw and a tiny mitre block with a V-shaped profile. Both are made by JLC, a Polish one man (I guess) company. For smaller diameters, like for reproducing turnbuckles from 0,5 mm brass tube, I sometimes use a scalpel blade, rolling on the tube until it cuts, It's faste, but with the larger diameters, like with USS Arizona's 2 mm, the mitre is the perfect choice. Cheers Rob

Indeed Gary, physics can be a nightmare, being it gravity with the flying bridge and now capillary with finally assembling them. I had a yeah moment, when I added the mostly finished flying bridge onto the posts, after I added railings, ships clocks and other details and two hours later, that changed into a meehh moment, when I found out, that the capilar effect of the tubes led the CA to flow to the bottom, gravity was involved too, and adhered to my brass rods on the deck. Very bad, because I need to remove the flying bridge alone or with the superstructure for painting, which is not possible anymore. I may have to cut the brass rods carefully and insert new ones . Some angles look a bit strange on the pics, but aren't in reality Cheers Rob

Nice PE work, Carl, we are sitting in the same boat, literally . Cheers Rob

Bummer Peter, I think as well, drilling a hole would be a good idea. I normally use my vise for drilling and drill by hand for more control, but in this case, would use a Dremel and VERY low pressure to not add stress to the brittle material. Take care, not drilling too deep and cause havoc in the interior. Cheers Rob

Muchas gracias hombres, building up the PE in itself is not so difficult, but making it fit to the previously cut and grinded plastic is another level of annoyance, even more with the flying bridges, where you have to produce and assemble the brass rods along, a quirky construction. The bad news, there is another craws nest, but I hope it will be a bit easier, because there are location points, where the brass tubes meet the decks. Peter, I more than once looked at my SOD and contemplated about buying a 1/200 IJN Mikasa 1902 kit with some extras. I think it's not only simpler to build, because of the scale, but many structural elements remain in plastic and you have a more solid base for PE adventures. Cheers Rob

What started a bit crazy, suddenly turns into madness. The flying bridge construction causes a lot of headache, because it is built up with lots of components to align correctly, but even more because it needs to be removable for painting and applying the wooden deck. I cut the brass tubes according to the measurements in the manual, drilled holes into the plastic and wooden deck and glued in short pieces of brass rod for alignment. A third rod was glued into place on the superstructures top deck for the front post. The three tubes are not glued, I only checked, if the mating distances on top were ok, to accept the flying bridge. To enhance the rigidity and add the possibility of wiggle the flying bridge in place, I glued some bent and cut Albion Connecto brass parts into place onto the underside of the flying bridge, that will later accept the brass tubes. Than, I glued the lower brass deck to the front post, added the upper brass deck and when the CA half dried added the back posts and glued them into place. While the CA settled, I bent the whole construction into it's correct shape and after drying, added some more CA from the undersides for rigidity. Needless to say, that during preparation, the construction disintegrated a lot of times, while adjusting . Now I have to finish the flying bridge assembly and then glue it on top of the posts. Cheers Rob

Very nice John. Like Phil wrote in the construction log, I just missed it. You build faster, than I'm able to read . The yellow rectangle is like a magnet to the eye, somehow. Cheers Rob

Hehe, when it comes close, my situation betters. If the goods arrive on my island, it's a now brainer. The mail woman knows me personally and the transportista knows my name and tax number (always needed here) by heart and leaves packages, where the fire wood is stored or in the second unlocked car. Sometimes, when I'm driving around, either of them honks and I get my parcel wherever that might be. But the steps before, ... It's a good idea to go with the flow with the panel lines and use the fuselage as a template for the tail section, I think. Cheers Rob

'Falling' together nicely, Gus . Earnestly, great work on the wheel wells and closing the fuselage is always a special moment, a moment without unpleasant surprises in this case, I think. I have a -D version in stash, but I'm not that much of a jet guy, but the Tomcat is one of my favorites, so there is a chance in a not too far future... Meanwhile, I'm following your build and can't wait for more progress. Cheers Rob

Thanks Peter, in the moment it's a bit slow processing, due to some delicate alignment sections. the flying bridges resting on brass tubes, which I cut roughly to size and figure, where I have to position brass rods in the decks and superstructure, to have the flying bridge removable for painting. This build is completely about the how and even more important, when. The sequence of building and painting is the determining factor. Cheers Rob

Luckily there is the hull Chris, other ways, there wouldn't be too much left of the astonishingly low plastic parts count. Above the deck line it is 1/3 plastic, 1/3 PE and 1/3 CA . I will have to restock my CA reserves after this build. I considered soldering, but decided against it, as there is always plastic near or parts which need to be CA-ed. Cheers Rob

Wow Peter, your Kingfisher reminds me a bit of our Canary birds here, where the belly is yellow instead of the wings . Your tedious masking payed off, the colorful rendition of these early navy planes is somewhat eye catching and a nice distraction from camoed subjects. With the decals on she will be splendid. Cheers Peter

Thank you Mike, for showing your great abilities with these birds. Even more so, as you proceed through your subjects, almost following, what I have in stash . Once more, I have to raise my hat for your building and documentation qualities. Cheers Rob

An interesting plane and the kit looks decent, typical SH, but surely buildable for the more experienced builder, I guess. Thanks for the review Fran, you rolled it out in full detail. The canopy design is interesting, as it allows the instructor (sitting in the back, I presume) to escape the plane without the hassle to open a canopy, in case one of the pupil messes up. Cheers Rob

Great start Ernie and the first motel build, I follow. You should look outside if one of the vending machines has some un-chilled Tamiya Extra Thin to sell. Cheers Rob

Great progress Kevin, the base looks super cool with the rich varnish color. Would have been great, if the base color had matched the deck color, but anyhow the S-100 on its base has noble looks. Cheers Rob

The only 'reference' I have is the Revell 1/72 boxing of a PBY-5A, a kit designed by Academy. It looks like this, hmmh. Cheers Rob

Sometimes I have to smile, when you all comment about delivery times. I know, having to sign can be a pita, but delays of one day or so, that's so first world . That is no critique of you Chris, it's more being desperate about my situation, where the last delivery from England took about a month to get here. This is no exception, it can take up to three weeks to get a packet from the Spanish mainland and sometimes, if the sending company chose the wrong transportation company the stuff goes to Madrid and will be returned to sender. Once in a while, little miracles happen, like a parce from Japan, which got here in six days. There are goods though, which are not possible to deliver to my island, which means, they will be sent to our sons in Germany and picked up on one of the rare occasions, one of us is visiting Berlin. That's why we normally travel first class, with 40-60kg of luggage, at least the way back. Island life, I'm not complaining and of course, I see myself some years ago living in Berlin and waiting eagerly for a package overdue one day . I have nothing to share about filling panel lines due to the lack of experience, but what about the layout of the given ones. I'm no PBY expert, but to me they look totally off. I see no sense for applying panel on the real thing, looking like that and they match in no way what is fabricated onto the rest of the fuselage. Cheers Rob

Doesn't look like much, but I worked a lot on these subassemblies, put in the brass columns for the rangefinders, rectified the angle of the top deck (sweat) and am about to determine the location points of the brass columns for the flying bridge, which I pre-assembled and left it on the turret base. There are no location marks on the plastic deck, nor the wooden deck, but some measurements in the manual. I re-cut the places of the wooden deck, where the superstructure and the funnel will be placed, because I will not remove the un cut carrier film before the final assembly stage. The upper and the underside of this deck and the deck below, where cleaned of all casted structures, to accept their PE substitutes later. I used every tool able to cut plastic to do this, Dremel tool with different saws and grinders, cutter, chisel, scalpels, micro saws, you name it. My bench is powdered now with plastic scrap and needs to be cleaned before I continue. Cheers Rob

Thank you Chris and Mike, the PE-work is tedious, but mostly has been satisfactory. It's the little and unexpected things, which make me cursing. There are peaceful hours of building and then there is a tiny part to add, nothing complicated, but it jumps off the tweezers, after finding it, glues everywhere, except where it should, you know the game. The other issue is rigidness, with all these tiny parts, it's difficult to touch the sub assemblies without damaging them. Cheers Rob

I have to admit, I don't like the pipe cleaner spray results too much. The effect doesn't look right to my eye. That along with the difficulties, spraying around curved or hard angled contours, makes it a no use technique for me. With my last Corsair build, I was at the same point thinking about how to tackle this kind of camo, which in my case was tri tone. After some consideration, I tried to freehand the borders and this worked astonishingly well. Of course, I needed some correction spray passes, but was satisfied with the relatively sharp corner achievable with heavily thinned AK lacquers and a spraying angle, slightly away from the color border. It needs a bit of concentration to get it right and it's very easy to ruin the paintjob with one pull on the trigger. Thank you for documenting this technique Bill and showing us the bare results to judge. BTW.: Nice fix with the cowling, seemingly a neuralgic point with radial driven planes. It looks good now and I guess, the brass pins make it very durable. Cheers Rob

AK is announcing three different new Landrover 88 kits in 35 scale. Cheers Rob

Exactly Peter, you put my workflow in one sentence . Sometimes I think, fuzzy logic was developed with my brain as a template . Poco a poco is the motto here. Cheers Rob