Landlubber Mike

Quick update - I've spent quite a bit of time this week working on the wings for the two 129s. The first one (opened up) was a bit tricky in trying to get the CMK undercarriage set to fit, along with the open panel for the first aid kit in the upper left wing and magazine in the lower left wing from the armament set. I found the undercarriage set not only needed a lot of shaving back along the sides to get the various aftermarket pieces to fit, but I also needed to thin them as they seemed to be a bit too tall and were bulging the wings a bit too much. Given that the undercarriage won't really be seen, if I had to do it again, I wouldn't bother buying/adding that set (which I didn't for the second 129). After a lot of grinding and test fitting, everything looks pretty good. Very minimal filler needed along the wing roots and nose pieces. This kit really fits together like a glove! A nice change of pace from my last few models that required a lot of work to get the fuselage, etc. to fit and close up big gaps. Next I worked on the wings for the second 129 (towed diorama). I removed half the wings as per the pictures. The trickiest part was creating the inserts at the ends of the wing stubs, but I think I managed to get a close representation of what those wing ends look like. Like the first 129, the fit of the wings and nose pieces to the fuselage was amazing and required minimal filler. I figured I'd putty some of the seam lines at this point as well as the hollowed out tails to which I'll attach the aftermarket rudders. While the putty cures (I used Tamiya's 2-part epoxy putty which I really like), I can start working on the engines and nacelles. Thanks for looking in!

That's a real beauty Chris, well done! Camo came out amazing, and love the sandy look. Amazing job!

Wow, that was quick! Really nice build! Love the color scheme you chose.

Really amazing job on that mech armor Rob. I remember you posting it a while back. Along the lines of the discussion above, I've also found dabbling in different modeling areas to really help broaden skills. I hadn't built any models since I was a kid, but maybe a decade or so ago I got into wooden ship models. Since Covid, I've gone into plastic modeling, and I think I've learned a bunch of skills that will definitely carry over on the wooden model side. It's interesting in how even on the plastic side, there are different techniques whether you are modeling ships, planes or cars. I also recently decided to try painting fantasy miniatures, which I did for a couple of years as a kid. I figured it would help me with figure painting for my plane dioramas. Going online to watch various artists, my eyes were really opened to various techniques - zenithal highlighting, glazing, etc. The one thing that really stood out was using very very thin layers of paint to build up to complicated hues like skin color. I've been trying to incorporate those concepts in things like tonal modulation for large sections of uniform colors on planes and ships. Anyway, great discussion and really nice job as always Rob. I always learn a lot from your techniques across disciplines, so thanks for taking the time to share with us.

Looks really good PW! Thanks for sharing that styrofoam block wing alignment method. Looks like a simple yet really effective technique.

Looks fantastic Chris! And yes, I'd think that in the desert, even after a scrub down, these planes would get really dusty right away. Looks spot on to my [untrained] eye.

Nicely done!

That's actually not bad at all. I have the 1/200 Trumpeter Bismarck in the stash - was worried at what that would cost me!

Wow, looks great! Are you doing glass or acrylic for the panes? Probably not inexpensive given the size!

Thanks man, looks like I missed it unfortunately. I'm sure I'll find someone on eBay looking to sell it with the AM at some point. I picked up my other ZM kits on eBay for much less than retail with all or almost all the AM. For some reason, ZM kits don't command much resale value.

Thanks Hubert and Peter for the kind words! I still feel like very much a novice compared to some of the stellar works on here, but thank you!

Maybe one day Peter if I can find it for a good deal. It does look like a nice kit. I have a few of ZM's other offerings that I'd love to tackle someday, just want to get my skill set up a bit.

Oh wow Peter, I'm a bit late to the party but the engines came out incredible! And those Quinta electronics decals are quite impressive as well. This is turning into quite the epic build!

It's coming together quickly Kevin - looking great! Glad to hear the airbrush problems are resolved.

I love their lacquer paints, haven't tried using their Aqueous line. Use Mr. Color Leveling Thinner - I usually go 1:1 or up to 1:2 paint to thinner. Personally, I found them to be very good paints that spray really well and leave a hard finish that you can sand if need be. I've never had their paint pull up from being taped. I'm trying to move more to Vallejo to stay with healthier acrylics, but find myself using Mr. Color more and more. They have a lot of colors, more so than Tamiya which makes finding the exact color call out very easy. I try not to brush paint with them, but only to do very minor touchups. Otherwise, I treat Mr. Color like Tamiya and use them in an airbrush.

In fact, the cockpit is so small, a number of the instrument gauges had to be located outside of the cockpit and onto the engine gondolas:

You can always reapply the chalks after the clear coat if needed. I think I used some of the Tamiya products on my Buffalo build for the first time prior to the final clear coat and saw that the clear muted the effect of the weathering. So, a quick application after the clear dried and I was back in business. You already have the chalks, but just to let you know, I found the Tamiya products very easy to apply. You can get cheap makeup brushes to apply the different colors, but so far I've just used the same brush that comes with the packs. I'm a big fan as they apply easily with no cleanup needed, and really help get very subtle tonal modulation.

Those custom printed parts look amazing Hubert! And thanks for outlining how the process works!

Hey Chris, looks great! I tried some of these Tamiya weathering products on my JRS-1 which I think act like your chalk. I similarly noticed that they really help blend colors and add a bit more of a matte finish. I read though that you can't really add a clear coat on top as the effect of the weathering product disappears. I was thinking about getting some sand weathering pigments to add more of a dust effect on my sandbox builds as well. Always learning something new - I've said it before, but there are so many products and applications now that it's a whole different world than when I was a kit and painted with Testor's enamels in those little glass bottles and called it a day.

Thanks Peter! The kit is a repop of a 25+ year old Hasegawa kit, but wow, I'm not used to parts fitting together so well. The cockpit tub and fuselage halves just snap all together for a very tight fit. If building the kit out of the box, you don't need much filler at all, except maybe to deal with seam lines. The CMK sets offer a ton of detail. I forget where I found the detail sets, but someone was offering most of them as part of a package for a fairly low price. I ended up adding a bunch more from Aires, Verlinden, and Taurus engines, so probably spent as much on the two kits and AM as I would have if I had just bought the Z-M kit. The Z-M kit looks really nice, and offers you plenty of options for open hatches, engines, etc., which makes it a lot easier as you don't have to modify third-party AM to fit. If I had known this plane was this small, I probably would have just gone with the Z-M kit. That being said, it's been a lot of fun building the Hasegawa kit - definitely a different experience from the JRS-1!

Yeah, I was surprised how small it was when I opened the box. I was originally planning to get one of the Zoukei Mura offerings, but thought it would be a huge model in 1/32. I haven't worked on too many planes, but it's not much bigger than the FM-1 Wildcat I built a year or two ago - maybe just a wider wingspan. Given the size, maybe I'll go for the ZM offering in the future. They have a B-2 version similar to the ones I'm working on, and also a B-3 with the big BK 7.5 cannon. I'd love to build another in a winter camo scheme. This zebra pattern looks really cool to me:

Thanks Rob! yeah, it's a really cramped cockpit. Definitely not ideal if you were claustrophobic!

Some progress on the two Hs 129s. The first one with all the aftermarket has taken quite a bit of time to get the detail pieces installed. The CMK sets individually fit well, but there is quite a bit of work to make them all fit together. Here is the CMK cockpit set - I still need to add wires between the seat armor plate and the firewall for the fuel tank. I also have to finish up painting the seat belts: Here it is installed with the fuselage halves closed. Took quite a bit of time test fitting to get the fuselage halves to close properly, but eventually I got there: Left side of the fuselage showing the MG 151 (from Aires set) and FuG 7 radio (from CMK armament set): Right fuselage with open luggage compartment (from CMK armament set): I also closed up the fuselage on the second Hs 129. Because the cockpit was covered in a tarp in the picture I'm reproducing, I didn't do much in the cockpit aside from adding the cockpit tub. The fit on the kit is incredible - the two fuselage halves and the tub snapped together perfectly! The only other change I made was to (1) cut off the rudder, since I have a one-piece rudder in the Verlinden set, and (2) close up the insertion points for the horizontal stabilizers/elevators, since those were left off the Hs 129 as it was being towed. Can't really see it well in the picture, but I inserted a piece of plastic strip, with three holes drilled out as seen in some of the pictures of wrecked Hs 129s. Thanks for looking in!

Nicely done PW! I love your dioramas - always bring a model subject to life.

Way to think outside the [sand]box! Looking forward to this one!