Kirk

Just awesome. And flowers too!

Far, far more believable than many professionally made film miniatures.

Just been reading up on ILS on Wikipedia and have absorbed enough to learn that you must be modelling the glideslope antenna found at the end of the runway facing approaching aircraft. Your mast looks very much like those illustrated. I must declare a personal interest: the guy that taught me project management many years ago was responsible for delivering the ILS systems in the major UK airports (which always seemed SO much more impressive than the poxy IT systems projects the class were battling with). I'm sure he would have been chuffed that anyone might want to model an element of such a ubiquitous system. It seems important to me that there are people in life who seem to love and excel at making things. Please don't ever stop, Oliver; your models are truly epic.

Your ground certainly seems a darker colour than your reference photos but doesn't look unnatural to my eye. I suppose it depends to some extent on how hot/dry you envisage your setting. Perhaps the issue is that the ground looks so dry that any grass would be very parched/yellowed. I suspect you'll go lighter and the scene will look magnificent. Incidentally, do you still progress the main helicopter alongside this ground work or do you tend to keep it one thing at once?

Looks like it might be one of the little buildings east of the runway. My guess would be a backup generator for the ILS and lights? And you're right: being German, there would be NO careless painting of the pattern.🤣 I hope you'll have a few flowers on your base too!

Just as a matter of interest, what's in the (real world) little building that needs such a big vent? Generator?

Something tells me that if in real life that 'someone' was working for you, they'd be told to go back and do it again until it was right! 😁

Irritating as it must be, I can't imagine that real checkerboard markings are perfect. Leaving a little bleed in evidence might actually increase realism?

(x3^3)! Superlative model making in every respect.

Will you need a bigger base? 😉

Is there an Academy Awards category for "Best Diorama Involving an H.34"?

I see that the quality of this has literally blown the figures' minds...

Not sure whether to be inspired or burn all my styrene. This is all just amazingly good. At 1:16 it would be impressive. 1:32?? Will go with the inspiration for now, and save sending the neighbourhood up in smoke for another day. Edit: I suppose I could argue that the hammer handle is a bit too light at the end, but it really is a bit of a gratuitous dig. Better than any hammer I've ever made...

Wow.

Are these scan- or CAD-based? I'm rapidly coming to the view that the battle between 3D scanned figures and all other techniques is a non-contest.

I thought the last toolbox was great. What do I know. The thing that stands out to me most in this last update is how unrealistic the figure looks in comparison with all the scratch-built jewellery. Let's hope Reedoak come up trumps in time for this diorama's completion.

It wouldn't look wrong on 50 x 20 but it might be a challenge to store!

Base is beautiful... but yes, it needs to be bigger to do justice to the scene. To my (armchair expert) eyes, anyway. What's your concern with the toolbox?

Thanks for the heads up Oliver. Sorry about the decals. I won't tell if you don't.

I know precisely nothing about US military asset identification/registration markings (so please take the following comment with this in mind), but noticed that the crane truck has both "M559" and "M-560" showing. Was this deliberate and coincidental or may multiple references from different vehicles be causing something unintended? Whilst I'm here, is there anywhere that illustrates your approach to paint in a step by step way? Your style is very distinctive and seems to have a lot more 'white' (or at least paler shade) highlighting than I've seen elsewhere and I'm curious as to how it is achieved. No problem if not - I'm more than happy to simply marvel at how this is all coming together!

What you call "Dio pieces" I'd be happy to have produced as the main event. Your distinctive airbrush work really is fab. You must get through a lake of solvent cleaning at every colour change.

It looks splendid without. I only mentioned it because there looked to be one on your reference photo and it was the expected working height of that one that made me think your larger tool chest was more to scale. It's all coming together now. I can't wait to see all these accessories in paint. Don't rush though! 😊

Wot, no vice?

If I've ever been in this position, my instinct is to look for the online catalogues of real world equipment suppliers, who (helpfully) tend to dimension their products. However, in this case (pun unavoidable) it was less useful: Beta Tools' cabinets seem to mostly be around 800mm x 400mm footprint, which seem a fair bit smaller than yours. For what it's worth, by my eye I think the larger one looks more to scale - even before you've added the 4" vice. That said, I think it's clear that you and Peter have better eyes and fingers than the rest of us mortals. 😉

Looks a touch over scale to me.