Landlubber Mike

Wow Rob, the details on this kit are incredible. Am really loving the finish. This is turning out to be quite the stunner, incredible job!

Looking really good Chris! The paints you used ended up complementing each other very nicely.

Looking really good Kevin! Not sure what to tell you on the Future as I usually use Mr. Super clear.

Nice work Chris! The panel liner really did its job!

I'm just catching up with your log after a long weekend away. My heart sank when I saw your earlier post, but am glad you figured out a solution! Looks great! So where was that gunk from? The Zero clear? After using Zero paints on a couple of inexpensive Gunze Triumph builds where it crazed the plastic, I'm not sure I want to go down the road of using their products. I had a little better luck with their paints the second time around on my Morgan 3-wheeler, but the clear was a little tricky. Likely user error on my part, but I noticed that it tends to almost get what looks like oil residue spots - at least it seemed that way before putting it in a display case. It might just be it's very prone to show finger oils, but it was a bit of a weird thing for me. Hope it all works out on your model!

Looking great Chris! Maybe I'm color blind, but I tend to be surprised at how colors look when it comes to brown/olive/greens - sometimes a "brown" looks green (or even gray), and a green will look brown.

I have a couple of the UMM ones, but this one is my favorite as well.

That color looks sharp! Really nice!

Hey Chris, looking good. I'm eagerly looking forward to following your efforts here. I've seen folks do the chipping as Rob did, and have always been curious on how difficult it was to do that. Seems much easier, at least to achieve realistic looking results, with the chipping method as opposed to trying to manually paint those scratches in.

Looking great! The details achieved with resin in this kit is pretty amazing.

I love this subject Kevin, lots of cool schemes. Looking forward to watching this come along!

Thanks! Yeah, it's very high quality. I also have their 0.5mm airbrush for large models which I've used a couple of times and it works very nicely as well.

Sure you can. Resistance is futile...

Looks good. I have Eduards Mk. IX in the stash. I think people have said they are very nice kits.

Wow, a 1/18 Buffalo? That would be a nice healthy size.

Can't wait to see your Buffalo build. I love those chunky planes, and love yellow wings. Martin and Ernie have a Buffalo buddy build thread on here that I joined with my 1/48 model a year or so ago.

The Eastern Front version has some really cool schemes. Omask has a lot of goodies for this kit (for example, the cannon pod assembly), but if you prefer to paint on your own insignia, they sell a masking set for the Eastern Front kit. I have their mask for my kit, so can report back on how they were. https://www.omask.eu/34036-1-48-Hs-129-B-2-Eastern-Front-for-Hobby-2000-48011-d250.htm The kit engine is definitely a touch smaller in diameter. For my first diorama, I'm going to have one of the engines fully exposed so I only had to worry about one nacelle thankfully. I used my micromotor to slowly thin out the interior of the nacelle, which was tricky. Thankfully I had a spare to practice on, as one I went too far and had a small hole open up. The second one got thin and warped a bit, so I ended up using Tamiya two-part epoxy and sanded everything smooth. I was able to repair both. That's why I was watching your Cobra log with a bit of nervousness when you mentioned trying to thin down the hood. I also had to take off probably less than 0.5mm off the cylinders as well to make everything fit. With the way the nacelle curves in at the front, the slight modification to the engine won't be noticeable.

Really impressive work there Rob. Love the magnet approach!

I'm not sure if they were more or less defined on the real thing. A bit hard to tell on the photo: This profile interpretation seems to suggest softer edges: I'm certainly no expert, so always open to suggestions

Cool looking car, looking forward to seeing it come alive. I'm a big fan of these small two-seater roadsters.

Thanks Kevin! I didn't have much to go on for the splotches on the first one except for the picture at the top of this page and the very angled pic of the real thing (and only on the right side of the plane). I tried to make the right side match up with those pictures, and just took a stab at the left side. That being said, the pictures I've seen for this particular plane isn't the coolest looking camo schemes that I've found, compared to other planes with splotches. I might take another look at them though and see if there is anything I can do to get back in your graces on that one

Hey Chris, thanks for the kind words! Looks like I need to bend a couple of the wires i attached, but otherwise I'm happy with how the engines came out. Those took a lot of work to get the rods and the wires in, but I think worth it. For the airbrush, I bought this one (or maybe an older model) from Spraygunner. From what I understand, these are made at the same factories in Japan as I think Iwata. I can tell you that it is every bit as good as my Iwata Eclipse CS. I like how it has a control knob at the end of it to limit how far you can pull back on the trigger to give you even more control. For the splotches, I turned the compressor down to 12-15 PSI, and I believe I used Vallejo paints. https://spraygunner.com/products/ps771-gsi-creos-mr-airbrush-custom-0-18mm?_pos=3&_sid=c5a9fec8e&_ss=r For the masking solution, this is what I ended up using: It was very easy to apply, and I would have no hesitation using it on a 1/72 aircraft. Funny you mentioned your Hien as I have a 1/32 Hien in the stash and was thinking that I now have the solution for those similar paint schemes. Definitely get a set of silicone brushes - they are fairly inexpensive, as they are used in things for painting fingernails. If you use a regular paint brush, it will start leaving clumps in the bristles and ruin your brushes (some people though suggested you can dip your brushes in Dawn soap and that won't happen). It takes a bit of practice, but you'll find the brush that works best and figure out how to apply. For example, sometimes I'd get a dab on the brush, put a heavy dot on the model, and then pull the solution into shapes using the brush or a toothpick (especially for the very thin lines). Trust me, it's very easy though certainly does take time. Probably took me a good 1.5-2 hours to apply, and then a good hour to pull off by scraping gently with a toothpick and using tweezers to grab and pull the mask off. It did not pull off any paint at all, worked a treat!

I'm slowly getting closer to the finish Iine. I spent some time detailing out the Vector engines for the first model according to some pictures of the Gnome-Rhone 14M engines. The Vector engine is on the left, and the kit engine (which is pretty nice) is on the right. I'm at the painting stage now. I first started with the second Hs 129, and used a 0.18mm airbrush to brush on the green splotches: I then tackled the first Hs 129. I had used Mr. Hobby paints for the undercoat European scheme (I figured Mr. Color would have a strong adhesion than Vallejo). Then I sprayed a light coat of Mr. Surfacer semi-gloss for a little added protection. I struggled with how to do the camo scheme, and eventually settled on using liquid masks. I did a bunch of tests first using Mr. Hobby - Mr. Masking SOL R and Vallejo Liquid Mask. I tried them both out with sprays of Mr. Color and Vallejo paints on top as I wasn't sure if the Mr. Color would dissolve the Vallejo. Turned out both were completely fine and compatible with each other, with Mr. Color on Vallejo's mask and Vallejo on Mr. Hobby's mask. I ended up going with Vallejo as it was slightly easier to apply as it's a little less viscous compared to Mr. Masking. One tip I found online was to paint masking solutions using silicone brushes. They made it much easier to apply - just apply to a section, wipe the brush (because the masking solution starts drying pretty quickly), and repeat. Still took hours to do, but well worth it with no aggravation. I was really surprised how easy it was. One thing to note is that I read that it's better to not leave masking solutions on for too long. Some said a week or two and it was hard to get the mask off. Others said they've left masks on for months and had no problems. I ended up going with Mr. Color for the Mr. Color RLM 79. I have the Vallejo equivalent to do touchups as I find Mr. Color doesn't brush as easily. Anywhere here are the pictures. Thanks for looking in!

Thanks Martin! How is yours coming along? I paused my 1/32 Buffalo build (in a separate log) to work on the last two GBs, but hope to turn to it later this year.