Gotha on its wheels (briefly for the picture) and almost ready for paint. Still plenty of smaller detail parts to be fitted but given that a certain amount of masking will be necessary, I've left these off..
Hello and welcome to my blog!
An aircraft enthusiast and ex-airline dispatcher, my main interests are 72nd scale kits (not exclusively) WW II aviation, F-4 Phantoms, Fokker Triplanes and military history. As an 'East Kent Scale Modeller' I try and post regularly and build as many new-tool Airfix kits as possible, such as the 48th Sea Vixen seen here. Lets go!
Gotha on its wheels (briefly for the picture) and almost ready for paint. Still plenty of smaller detail parts to be fitted but given that a certain amount of masking will be necessary, I've left these off..
Here in the 'garden of England' we are in the middle of a week of 20 C/ 78 F sunshine, so the modelling stuff goes out into the garden. Just coming to the final stages of the new IBG Models Gotha Go 242. The build log is elsewhere but here's a view from the garden..
Fourth completion of the year!
Hasegawa Me 109 - is there an easier build out there? Not sure though that I'm 100 % convinced by the shape of the nose. Decals from Kagero. Pingel's Emil was photographed during November 1940 - the blue of the fuselage now heavily mottled, although the machine still has large areas of yellow. I used Xtracolor enamels.
I finished this Hs 123 last year - but was always unhappy with the aerials. I decided to replace them with EZ-line - and took a few new photos. Application technique has been 'refined' since my rigging efforts with the new-tool Airfix Swordfish and the Airfix Tiger Moth. Firstly, decant some accelerator into a lid. Next apply a drop with a cocktail stick to the anchor point. Then touch the EZ line aerial dipped in super-glue for instant results.
..time for a red Triplane. What collection of aeroplane models worthy of the name could possibly fail to feature Richthofen's Dr.1? This is the Revell re-box of the Eduard kit - and I'm still having trouble aligning the wings. For some reason the middle wing is slightly askew.
Richthofen's all-red Dr. 1 was 425/17 - and this was the machine in which the 'Rittmeister' met his end. However Revell supply the old style crosses which is not accurate for the Red Baron's last flight.
Spot the 'deliberate' mistake - I've put the 'Axial' stickers on a non-Axial prop. Will have to fix that. Finishing was not as straight-forward as it might have seemed. Firstly what 'red' to use? and, secondly, how to 'weather' it? In the end I elected to go with Humbrol 'crimson red' (132) brush-painted in very thin layers and to 'tone' it down a little I tried the oil dot filter method..
Photographed on Leon Bennett's "Three wings for the Red Baron" (Helion, 2019) - a treatise on early aeronautical science and the cul-de-sac that was the triplane. The book examines why exactly Richthofen was such an enthusiastic advocate for a machine in which both himself and other leading German aces lost their lives. Spoiler alert - it even appears that his 'admiration' for the Sopwith Triplane was based on no more than hearsay...and if Leon should happen to chance on this page can I just point out to him that 'la vache' has another meaning in French...
See my other Eduard Triplane build on this blog here