Merad

Was sick most of last week and didn't touch the workbench at all, but good progress last Sunday and this afternoon. I have a nice backlog of parts ready for paint. I'm still debating what paint to use for the interior metallic areas. Normally I just use Tamiya XF-16 Flat Aluminum for things like landing gear legs, but I think I may try Vallejo Metal Color for this. The exterior bare metal parts of Salem Rep will be Alclad, but it seems like way too much work for landing gear bays. Didn't feel like painting today but I do have a good bit of the parts off the sprue and cleaned up. Drilled out some carb air intakes for Shangri La (Salem has the solid panels). And drilled out the exhausts. The resin exhausts are disappointing IMO. I really can't tell a noticeable difference between them and the kit exhausts, even the depth of the holes is basically the same. I know it's a tiny part and probably hard to mold hollow tubes, but this is an $8-10 aftermarket item... (kit part on L, OOB resin middle, drilled on R) The Brassin wheels are lovely OTOH. I thought the hub caps (R12) would be a nightmare to clean up, but the flash on them is actually raised on the inner side. It can be easily cut off with a sharp #11 blade then gently scrape the edges clean with the tip of the blade. Biggest fit annoyance so far is the horizontal stabs. They use sprue gates molded to the inner surface instead of the edge of the part. Tried to be careful cutting them off but all 4 horizontal stabs have these noticeable holes in the leading edge. The design of the parts is a head scratcher, they're made so that you get this seam line where the halves join (2nd pic, the line along the right edge of the stab) where cleanup is guaranteed to destroy rivet detail. If the stab couldn't be molded as a single piece I think it would've been much better off with a more typical upper and lower half split. Lastly I found some missing parts in the kit. You're supposed to use parts F20 and F21 for the wing racks and you can see in the instructions that they're wing racks with sway braces. Neither one of my sprue F's include these parts, but there are racks without braces (F18 and F19), but they're clearly called out in the instructions as unused parts. Anyway - something to check if you have this kit. I emailed Eduard about it yesterday.

Great work! Looking forward to seeing how the locomotive goes together. I have it in my stash, I got a craving for a steam engine a while back and it was the only kit I could find.

Cool project! Following.

Starting out with Shangri La, have the all the interior parts together and ready for paint. She will get the 3d printed seat and Eduard 3d cockpit while Salme Rep gets the Quinta set. There are some very tiny detail parts and the carpet monster ate two that I replaced with bits of stretched sprue. I'm going to go ahead and build out Salem Rep to the same point before painting as I want to keep the builds in sync. Fit has been great, detail is wonderful. Only criticism of the kit so far is the instructions. I've had to download and look at the instructions for the normal P-51B kit and for the Eduard Space 3d decals because they put together custom instructions for the Royal Class boxing that are incomplete in some areas. Detail on the 3d printed seat is incredible, we will see if I'm up to painting it. 🙂 Unfortunately the second 3d seat they provide is kind of wasted because it's only used with 2 of the 15+ marking options.

A slightly older Tamiya kit (1998) but a fun little build. Out of the box except for Red Fox cockpit decals, some engine wiring, and drilled out exhausts. Also basically a clean build except for some washes and minor dry brushing. Yes, the folded wings are tilted forward at the wrong angle and I'm not quite sure how it happened. By the time I realized it was off the glue was already set up. Oops.

This is the Royal Class boxing that came out last year, so we have resin wheels and exhausts for both birds, and a 3d printed seat with belts + 3d cockpit decals for one. I've added a Quinta cockpit set for the second aircraft, but otherwise this is an out of the box build. Interesting to compare the Eduard and Quinta 3d cockpits. I've used Quinta before, but this is the first time using Eduard's version. Subjects for the build will be Kidd Hofer's "Salem Representative" and Dom Gentile's "Shangri La".

Progress on the beast - it's been getting some work off and on in the background. Upper and lower hull are joined together and almost complete. Will be starting in on the turret soon.

Very nice, did you use the Eagle Editions decals? I just got them in today and was eyeing Frenesi as a possible future build.

Here's the RFI:

This was part of a reddit group build for the 85th anniversary of the start of WW2 in Western Europe. This was my first build using a 3d cockpit (Quinta Studio), first time using MRP paints, and first time painting markings with 1ManArmy masks. Very happy with how all of the above turned out, and with the Kotare kit. Only one fit issue in the whole build, which I'm pretty sure was my fault. I do feel like the chipping and weathering are the weakest parts of this build, that is where I need the most practice. But overall a fun build and I'm pleased with the result. Brief WIP thread Google Photos album of the whole build

All done! One quick teaser pic for now, I'm going to let everything dry overnight and hopefully get it in the photo booth tomorrow.

There are two reasons I haven't tried hairspray chipping yet. I'm pretty committed to using MRP paints - colors already ordered for my next 6-8 builds - plus they're excellent. From what I've read chipping only works with acrylics? Also, I really like the effect that black basing gives and not sure how well it would mix with chipping. Although now that I do some research I see that Doog has an article on the subject. I have been eyeing a 1/48 A6M5 Zero to build in the near future, so it would be a good candidate to try some heavy chipping.

I agree, I wanted the wing root under the cockpit to be almost bare metal so that was intended to be heavy, but I don't think the pattern looks very natural and the chipping on other areas is really too heavy. I need a lot more practice with sponge chipping and I still haven't found a type of sponge that I really like and feel like gives good control of the effect.

That is amazing, looking at the first few pics it it took me a minute to realize it was the finished model instead of a reference photo.

Yep! I have to give all the credit to Doog's Models, I learned the technique from his excellent videos.