Non-railway modelling

[JZ]

Well detailed engines.

And all coveredup once the cowls are fitted.

Made a start on the cockpit, but now waiting for the etched parts to arrive. I have have a set of turned brass Browning 0.50 cal guns for it.

 

[JZ]

Etched fret for the interior details. I wonder how much will actually be seen.

[JZ]

Still to fit the throttle levers.

[Steamport Southport]

There are some builders who build them like a sectioned exhibit so you can see all the internal detail.

 

 

 

Bought a few. Mainly the new starter kits when they are on offer* and a few of the Vintage Classics.

 

Not actually got around to building them yet, but have partially built some of the tanks and other vehicles as I wanted to test the size for placing on Warwells and Warflats.

 

 

*Check out Lidl, Aldi and The Works as they do appear occasionally

 

 

 

Jason

[JZ]

Browning .50 cal Machine guns.

Due to the fineness, I will chemically blacken them. The set includes flash suppressors for the nose guns.

Although marked for B-17, I have bought another set for the Liberator.

[Barry Ten]

I'm not sure if you're aware of this pre-existing thread, but huge amounts of 1/72nd aviation stuff already in it if you're interested. Perhaps you could post your work there as well as it would be nice to see it featured? Of course there are also a lot of cars, tanks, ships, spaceships etc to wade through in addition to the planes.

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/42805-non-railway-modelling/page/58/#comment-5272963

[JZ]

24 minutes ago, Barry Ten said:

I'm not sure if you're aware of this pre-existing thread, but huge amounts of 1/72nd aviation stuff already in it if you're interested. Perhaps you could post your work there as well as it would be nice to see it featured? Of course there are also a lot of cars, tanks, ships, spaceships etc to wade through in addition to the planes.

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/42805-non-railway-modelling/page/58/#comment-5272963

Thanks for that Al. Did a search, but it doesn't always find what you are looking for.

[JZ]

Doing a build  of Airfix's newish B-17 in 1:72.

Coming back to 1:72 WW2 aircraft after a gap of 40+ years. Astounded by the level of detail there is nowadays. My first recent build was the Airfix P-51D,

All my previous builds from this era were modelled with the undercarriage up and suspended from my teenage bedroom ceiling. I toyed with starting again about 5 years back, with the purchase of an Academy P-47 and that was as far as it got. But more recently I felt the urge to have a change from railway modelling, so dug the P-47 out and after looking at the parts, thought it hadn't come on a huge deal from my last builds. So I bought the Mustang. Duly impressed. I had another look at the Thunderbolt and while not the standard of the mustang, it wasn't as bad as first thought, only to be let down by the decals. Not wishing to give up, a google search found me Kits-World decals. So I bought a set, but they come as sets for two aircraft, so I went and bought a second P-47.

Now I have the bug back, it was time to search out kits I don't remember building in my teens, hence the B-17. Extra detail parts have arrived.

More kits have been added to the stash and I now have a Bf109E-4, AGM2b Zero, Tempest MkV, Typhoon Mk1B, and Mosquito B.XVI, all Airfix latest tooling. A P-39Q from Arma Hobby, Tamiya Focke Wulf Fw190 A 3. And this beast arrived this morning.

Hasegawa B-24J, reckoned by many to be the best Liberator kit in any scale (someone else's words, not mine), but on opening the box, the level of detail is excellent. A bit pricey at £65, but I have paid much, much more than that for a single tank car on the HOn3. Eduard cockpit etches on the way and considering getting the bomb bay etches, but how much can actually be seen?

 

Edited September 11, 2023 by JZ

[JZ]

On 07/07/2023 at 13:27, railroadbill said:

 

 

 

Recently I had another run with this long running project, HMCS Snowberry,  Revell kit, ex Matchbox. Nice calm day. It has an MFA 385 motor with a standard 7.2 v battery pack, enough power to get out of trouble, but quite happy trickling along at a scale speed, with a very long run time.  

It's in a sort of "trials mode before having armament fitted" at the moment.   I have got quite a lot of fittings to go on, all assembled and painted, liferafts, boats,  depth-charge rails and so on, but the problem is that it's all too easy to knock fittings off while at the lakeside operating it. Railings being a case in point, the kit plastic ones are rather flimsy, etched brass (if available in 1:72) would look good but get damaged easily, overscale brass stanchions would be more rugged... so it goes on!  There have been some very good models on this thread with etched brass fittings. The trick is probably to wait until the ship is retired from lake excursions  and then complete fitting it out as a static exhibit.

My original idea was to have it as a "museum ship" at a dock in the corner of the layout, but as the Flower class model is nearly 3' long that's been more tricky to plan.  One day...

 

Picked up one of these about ten years back, mainly because it was £25 in the former model shop near Swindon station, then had to carry it around in the cab of my train for the rest of the day. I looked at getting etched parts for it and back then it would have been easy to spend £300 to £400. Maybe one day.

[JZ]

I have asked Andy Y if he would move this to non railway modelling.

[johnofwessex]

I would have thought that there was market for a 'stand off scale' ready to run Radio Control boats other than speedboats, the Flower class Corvette or perhaps a Clyde Puffer being the obvious choices

[JZ]

Decided that it would be easier to mask the tail if it was left in the sprue. I can touch up the edges later. Initially used white primer, the brush painted Humbrol 24 Trainer Yellow, but wasn't happy with the result. Local shops out of stock of said colour and rattle can is unavailable, so a visit to Halfords with the pre painted rudder to find a yellow that was close. Turns out that Rover Inca Yellow is spot on.

[PhilJ W]

The worlds largest r/c flying model, 1/6 scale Concorde.

https://wordlesstech.com/flying-the-concorde-worlds-largest-rc-model/#:~:text=Watch in this video%2C the,with 4 jet turbines%2C flying.&text=WORLDS LARGEST RC MODEL!!,CONCORDE WITH 4x JET TURBINES!

[PhilH]

Here's a question for the plastic kit modellers amongst us. There seems to be a huge amount of interior detail featured on most modern kits especially in the larger scales. Sadly a large percentage of it will not  be seen again as the kit progresses. My question is a)do you include it and b) if you do include it do you bother painting it with all the detail it deserves?

[pete_mcfarlane]

32 minutes ago, PhilH said:

Here's a question for the plastic kit modellers amongst us. There seems to be a huge amount of interior detail featured on most modern kits especially in the larger scales. Sadly a large percentage of it will not  be seen again as the kit progresses. My question is a)do you include it and b) if you do include it do you bother painting it with all the detail it deserves?

It depends how much effort is involved. The Mikro-Mir DH.88 I'm currently building in 1:48 had incredibly complicated (dozens of parts each) and not very well moulded engines, which you would pretty much never see. So I skipped those. A lot of the tinier bits of etch detail get skipped. Because I'm only planning to live to be 102. 

 

I'm also not 100% sure on some of the detail - the AIrfix 1:72 Vampire had a wonderfully moulded set of intake ducting and a compressor face. You have to wonder how much research they did, given that Vampires had centrifugal engines without a big compressor at the front. 

[33C]

9 hours ago, JZ said:

Turns out that Rover Inca Yellow is spot on.

Rover Damask red is spot on for LMS/BR maroon too.

[JZ]

6 hours ago, 33C said:

Rover Damask red is spot on for LMS/BR maroon too.

Yes, I  used it for years, it is also the colour for RGS & D&RGW red before they went to Pullman green (Land Rover Coniston Green). Unfortunately Halford have discontinued Damask Red.

[JZ]

8 hours ago, PhilH said:

Here's a question for the plastic kit modellers amongst us. There seems to be a huge amount of interior detail featured on most modern kits especially in the larger scales. Sadly a large percentage of it will not  be seen again as the kit progresses. My question is a)do you include it and b) if you do include it do you bother painting it with all the detail it deserves?

How much detail do we add to our railway models, much of which cannot be seen when trundling around the layout? At one time I had all the Cambrian pre-lettered kits for the Somerset Coalfield. Each loaded with real coal that I had gleaned from the remaining batches (tips). Timsbury was the earliest closure, in 1916, but I found enough for three wagons. Who knew? Just me.

[railroadbill]

3 hours ago, JZ said:

Yes, I  used it for years, it is also the colour for RGS & D&RGW red before they went to Pullman green (Land Rover Coniston Green). Unfortunately Halford have discontinued Damask Red.

Halfords Vauxhall Burgundy Red is also a good match for BR maroon, did get a new can several years ago so it might still be available. (Halfords will mix up a particular paint colour at a price).

 

Recently on another thread here I was advised to use Halfords Volkswagen Mars red (I actually wanted a DSB red for a Danish loco, which is a  mid red).  Mars red is very close to Tamiya XF-7 red imho which is a paint colour  I use a lot so useful for all sorts of things (civil Tiger Moth wings etc. perhaps, also buffer beams...).

Edited September 13, 2023 by railroadbill

[railroadbill]

11 hours ago, PhilH said:

Here's a question for the plastic kit modellers amongst us. There seems to be a huge amount of interior detail featured on most modern kits especially in the larger scales. Sadly a large percentage of it will not  be seen again as the kit progresses. My question is a)do you include it and b) if you do include it do you bother painting it with all the detail it deserves?

A while back I was building a 1:48th Bristol Fighter which had a very  detailed instrument panel. When on a visit to Duxford, one of the guides there very kindly let me go right up to the one they've got there to take pictures.  You can't see into the cockpit from the ground (which is perhaps a clue) so I held my compact camera above me at arm's length to take pics of the cockpit(s).  

After a long modelling time painting wood effect on the instrument panel, detailing instruments, "glazing" them, adding various details like throttle, rudder bar, etc. etc. I found having fitted them in the fuselage and joined it up  that I couldn't see  any of this. The panel is set low and forward ahead of the pilot in the Bristol,  holding my camera almost in the cockpit of the full size was fine but it wasn't possible to get that angle with  the model.

So now unless you can see it I wouldn't put it in (also some of my builds are old kits that didn't have much interior detail anyway, such as Airfix DH88), so it's more a question of what to make and add rather than leave out.

 

I saw at an exhibition a very nice airliner model that was clear on one side   to reveal the fully fitted interior, rather like the large aircraft models that travel agents used to have in their windows years ago.

 

As an aside, anyone who makes biplanes, do you always rig them, and what scale becomes too small to do this?

Edited September 13, 2023 by railroadbill

[JZ]

8 minutes ago, railroadbill said:

As an aside, anyone who makes biplanes, do you always rig them, and what scale becomes too small to do this?

Years ago, I built a 1:72 Heller Gloster Gladiator in Finnish winter camo, I fully rigged that using cotton, but it didn't half attract dust. I have, in the to do pile, A Heller DH 89 Dragon Rapid. I made a start by painting it in a fictional airline livery, with the notion of filling a corner of a layout with a corner of an airfield. Just looked at it now, with a view to finally getting it finished. For rigging on this, I will use fine nylon line.

[railroadbill]

36 minutes ago, JZ said:

Years ago, I built a 1:72 Heller Gloster Gladiator in Finnish winter camo, I fully rigged that using cotton, but it didn't half attract dust. I have, in the to do pile, A Heller DH 89 Dragon Rapid. I made a start by painting it in a fictional airline livery, with the notion of filling a corner of a layout with a corner of an airfield. Just looked at it now, with a view to finally getting it finished. For rigging on this, I will use fine nylon line.

Ah, dust!  The idea of just a corner of an airfield (which could also be an aircraft museum ) is great, only needs a bit of grass and a fence and no other detail! Then easy to change  aircraft around.  I've been using EZ-line (this all started during lockdown) which is fine with longer lengths like Shacketon aerials  but a real fiddle with 1:72nd Tiger Moth rigging.

[Barry Ten]

14 hours ago, PhilH said:

Here's a question for the plastic kit modellers amongst us. There seems to be a huge amount of interior detail featured on most modern kits especially in the larger scales. Sadly a large percentage of it will not  be seen again as the kit progresses. My question is a)do you include it and b) if you do include it do you bother painting it with all the detail it deserves?

 

Less and less as I go on. I include all the bits and might put a splosh of basic colour on them, but there's no point going to town on stuff that will be either barely visible or not seen at all.

 

I learned this the hard way with the Trumpeter 1/24 Hurricane where the fuel tanks are totally invisible once the kit's finished.

[JZ]

While I won't be building them myself, I bought these for my Granddaughter. 8 years old next birthday and mad about about dinosaurs. Who wasn't at that age?

She has already built a couple of kits, with help from @JZjr.

Edited September 13, 2023 by JZ

[Chas Levin]

23 hours ago, PhilH said:

Here's a question for the plastic kit modellers amongst us. There seems to be a huge amount of interior detail featured on most modern kits especially in the larger scales. Sadly a large percentage of it will not  be seen again as the kit progresses. My question is a)do you include it and b) if you do include it do you bother painting it with all the detail it deserves?

 

Hello and yes, I always include any and all detail - sometimes making extra pieces of detail myself, if they weren't included in the kit - and I also always paint it.

Partly, as others have said, though it may never be seen, I know it's there; partly because often, a surprising amount of the detail can in fact be glimpsed through windows or doorways and the effect of a brief and incomplete glimpse of full detail can be terrifically realistic looking; and partly, because I immensely enjoy making and painting it!