Revell is in a re-issue phase and one of the latest is their 1/48th scale Northrop F-5E Tiger II. It got a pretty amazing review on the Cybermodeler website.
Here’s a photo of Tamiya’s new 1/35 scale Sherman. I’m sure Brad or Mike will give us the low down on this new kit.
Here’s box art from Great Wall Hobby’s New TBD-1 Devsastaor.
There is a new internet radio station out there in cyberspace devoted to military aviation. I learned about it a couple of days ago from the IPMS website. Here’s their blurb from the “about us” link on their web page.
“Welcome to the worlds first radio station devoted to military aviation. It’s our goal to preserve the stories and history of the brave men and women who flew these airplanes… and still do. Across the globe warbird enthusiasts are tirelessly working to save examples of these historic airplanes; however, the survival of the stories from those who flew them are not guaranteed. That’s where Warbird Radio steps in.
From the dawn of military aviation to our modern warriors, Warbird Radio will keep you briefed on the latest happenings. We’ll be following restoration projects world wide and the latest in cutting-edge military aviation technology. We’re also excited to bring you the latest from the scale modeling world! Let’s face it… no matter the size, a warbird is a warbird. The stories these airplanes tell are like no other and we can’t wait to bring them to you.”
Their web address is
http://www.warbirdradio.com
The contest themes for the 2012 IPMS National Convention scale model contest are:
Here’s a link to the Convention web page
Fine Molds produces kits of the Millennium Falcon in two scales, 1/72 and 1/144. I chose the smaller scale, as both kits are pretty pricey; mine was about $60 and the larger is over $250. Besides, I don’t have the display space for the 72 scale kit.
The kit itself is quite nice. It is crisply molded in the ubiquitous light grey plastic with clear parts for the canopy and gun ports. It also has a decal sheet of panels in three different colors and a sheet of masks for the clear parts. Panel lines are engraved. and surface detail is quite good.
The instruction sheet is clear, and construction is straight forward. With only a few exceptions, parts clicked together like a snap tight kit in a virtually seamless fit. The notable exception is the cockpit pod which has horizontal seams that required filling. Regardless, I filled the tight seams anyway.
Painting instructions were rather bland for both the cockpit and gunner’s positions, i.e. flat black. I added some terminal screens and instrument panels from an old fotoetch set to jazz things up a bit. I painted the interior parts three different shades of black to show some surface differences, and other colors just to brighten things up a bit. I subsequently ran into a web site that showed how to make detail the seats in 72 scale. While it could be done to some degree in the smaller kit, it would have been a hard row to hoe as the seats are molded as part of the pod.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to display the model. I wavered between static on the ground or just lifting off. Therefore, I had to have pilot figures. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make a 1/144 scale Wookie? Both Chewbacca and Han are made from copper wire and fleshed out with white glue. In the Wookie’s case, I covered it with acrylic gel to try for a hairier look. It was too small to make a noticeable difference, however. Nonetheless, I posed them in a seated position and painted them.
Now, I was ready to paint. I broke out the mask sheets. While Fine Molds was kind enough to provide two copies of each panel requiring masking, they were not kind enough to have them die-cut. I spend easily four or five hours cutting the masks out. However, they worked well enough, so the effort was worth it.
I painted the hull with scale black as a primer. The call-outs for exterior paint was for light grey, which matched IJN light grey. Boring. And I thought, too light. However, it was close to what is seen in the movies so I went with it. I painted the engine turkey feathers and the topside cooling discs (or whatever they are) with a mix of gunmetal and aluminum. I painted the panels for which decals were provided, dark ghost grey, red and yellow. As the black undercoat made the light grey darker than the paint is in the bottle, I painted some panel light grey, again for some visual variety and to represent repainted panels. I hand painted some the details with various greys and several mixes of the gunmetal and aluminum mix. I clear coated the model with Future and weathered it using white water color, which renders a nice streaky appearance. Another clear coat was applied, over which I applied washes of dark ghost grey, gunmetal, etc. My final coat was flat gloss mixed with about one third Future, for a slight semi-gloss finish.
All-in-all, it was a fun build of my favorite starship in a reasonable scale. Now if someone would produce the Serenity, I would be a happy curmudgeon.
(To view all of the photos that John took of this project, follow the link below)
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Here’s a link to an article I spotted on Hyperscale on rigging bi-planes. I know there are a few of us who have purchased some of the Wingnut Wings models.
I’m sure most of you have heard of the duplex drive Sherman tanks that did not meet with much success on D-Day. Steve Zaloga has an article on the Missing Lynx website that describes his kit-bashed and scratch-build version of a more successful system. This variant, know as ‘T6′ was meant for deployment at the invasion of Okinawa and later at the anticipated amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands. It’s an interesting read for all the tread-heads out there.
Here’s a video I saw on the Vallejo website. Frank O’neill told me he has been using Vallejo paints lately on his ships.
