1:24 Airfix Hawker Typhoon Car Door Build

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Good stuff. When I did invasion stripes on a Spitfire, I assumed they were standard size but after measuring and laying out the lines for painting I found out that they were actually thinner than standard
 
Interesting! We the invasion stripes all applied in the field? That would account for all the variation. And I think I made an error and made the fuze stripes 19" like the wings. Too late to fix that.
 
If we did the models like that they'd throw us out of the show. No one would believe we were being prototypical unless we had a lot of picture references to prove our point. My stripes look like they were put on in a custom car shop. I'm sure some crews were very particular and using masking tape. And some were probably even measured with a ruler.
 
Odds and ends today. Gloss coated the bird in anticipation for decals. Finished painting the rockets and worked on the gun bay folded access covers.

I made a template to paint the three diameters of color for the rocket tips. It didn't work out quite as well as I wanted and ended up doing a lot of finicky touch up painting. It worked mostly. The last technique I tried for the small yellow center was just dipping the rocket nose in a little puddle of Vallejo yellow. That would have been the best way to do all gthree colors if I were to do it again...which I ain't.

The outer ring is red, middle white and inside yellow. I also painted the flat aluminum brackets that hold the rocket to the slides. The rocket warhead needs a decal added and for that I will apply a litle bit of gloss by brush to ensure good decal adhesion.



The folding gun bay doors are a combination of flat aluminum and leather. The leather, I've read, was to reduce vibration when the 20mm cannons fired. I had air brushed the leather to some of the pieces, but hand painted the leather panels on the others. I have to go back and do flat aluminum on the pieces that are all leather colored. I had chose this method since masking the all leather pieces is easier since it's only leather colored in the indented space, whereas the others are leather with thin aluminum ribs separating them.

After the leather color is all applied, I'll go back and back paint aluminum to make it spiffy. I also have a yellow stripe that needs to be painted on the leading upper edge of the outboard wing panels. This yellow extends from the outboard gun shield to the navigation light pocket at the wing tip. I started masking it and the realized that I needed to do the gun bay doors. That was becasue part of the Rondel decal is attached to the bay door... Just a corner, but enough to make me get the doors done. All of this will be done tomorrow.
 
Thanks all!
I do most of my "mental modeling" in those moments before falling asleep or the time when I'm waking up that extends to the time when I'm staring at my face shaving. I often build a model in my head a couple of times before I cut the first sprue which is done in conjunction of reading the instructions several times.

Even then, it's usually the things I think about AFTER I've built it that would work the best. Example: I sold that 43 old plank-on-bulkhead on eBay this week. I was going to toss it and then thought that maybe someone would want it. There are sevearl reasons why I didn't ever start it including its size (1 meter long). But the real reason was how lo-tech it was. The wooden detail parts were just printed on some plywood and you had to cut them all out. I didn't relish that and therefore never started the kit.

After selling it I thought of an answer. I could have scanned those ply sheets and re-drawn all the parts in CorelDraw and had them all laser cut. It would have made a much better kit. It was still too big, but it wold have worked. 20/20 hindsight!

Spent the day working on more of the details. I glued the prop together and retouched the RAF Sky color. Big spinner!



I finish painted the gun bay doors and glue them together. They still need some weathering because they would be well stained from propellent debris. I just laid them on the wing to set if the angles were correct. The inner and outer doors are glued at different opening angles. I masked the leather area on the inside door and air brushed the aluminum.



I removed the 'fake' gun cover and tossed it. I had used "sticky wax" to hold those in position during painting. I would not recommend this in the future. The wax was hard to remove. The clay worked better on the gear doors, and possibly using blue-tack. I had some of that too, but it was old and very hard and crunchy. The open doors get glued on after all the decaling and transparent work is done.

After gluing the rockets into position on the rails, I painted the decal areas of the rockets with Tamiya clear gloss.



I noted this before, but it bears repetition. These decals are awful! It's take literally minutes for them to soak enough to slide off the backing. Then they're so stiff and thick it's like trying to decal with peices of acetate. One of the rocket decals had to wrap fully around. This is what it looked like when I applied it with tweezers.



I used every decal softener I had and eventually bent the decals around the shaft. Several fractured. It would be okay if it was just stiff, but it was also brittle. Not happy.

With persistance I did get all the rockets decaled. I will put some flat coat on them next work session (Monday). There were actually different stencils for HE and SAP rockets. I chose High Explosive.



Last thing I did was mask off the outer leading edges for that yellow paint job. I have no idea why they have that yellow leading edge, but this version does. A lot of masking for a 20 second air brush job. Before setting the plane aside for the weekend I sealed the edges for the future, leak-free paint job.



Monday will see this yellow applied and the big decals on the plane proper. I'm not looking forward to these decals. They're a pain in the butt.
 
Thanks for the info!

I first air brushed white (best under yellow) and then the yellow. Tamiya paint dries fast enough so by the time I got the gun all cleaned from the white, I was able to shoot the yellow. Sealing worked as it should. I also took some time to touch up some of the paint in the gun bays themselves.



Then it was time to begin the main decaling. I started with the biggest, the upper wing roundels. RAF has a different rondel for top/bottom/Fuze. Not just size, but different design. I decided to time how long these decals actually take to slide... four minutes! Way too long.

I had to soak the heck out of them with Microsol (before decals), Microset (after decals) and Solvaset (as an insurance policy) and the decals did finally settle down. They're really thick. The rondel gets notched at the gun bay with some part supposedly going onto the bay door. Since these doors are open and upside down, the bottoms are not seen and no decal was needed. I need to remove some of the wing walk where it goes over that paint chip. Unless the walk was recently upgraded and therefore I have to leave it alone.



In addition to these biggies, I put on the wing walks and the stencils called out for the wing tops (fuel 100 octane) and a little "W/T" at the outboard corners of the ailerons.

Tomorrow I'll do the same for the wing bottom. Last I'll do the fuselage. I going to have to paint the transparent parts too.
 
My treatment of the thick decals did work. Here's the big rondel showing good conformation to the surface texture below.



I applied all the underwing decals with no trouble. Again, lots of setting solution was needed to get the decals to show the underneath details.



I glued on the inner liner to the outer main gear door and touched up the exposed areas with flat aluminum. (no image)

I then started working on the fuselage decals and all hell broke loose. The decals' brittleness reared its ugly head especially on the large lettering that depicted this version.

The "Xs", "Rs" and "Ps" all cracked and broke in various ways. The Solvaset was probably too strong... at least that's one theory. I will repair with a matching touchup paint.



Then, to make matters worse, I accidentally picked it up and grabbed the X and removed part of it. Didn't realize until I took the picture.



Instead of replacing the entire letter (I did have extras from the other configurations), I just cut a piece of decal to replace the missing leg.



The starboard side had less problems. The R lost it's leg, but I was able to refit it. The arrow points out an interesting detail. This little chunk is part of a long string of text, but the instructions only show the J and a slice of the next letter... an N. It's too show that the invasion stripes were applied over top of existing id numbers. That's conforms to the idea that invasion stripes were put on in the field, long after the aircraft was built. And some were very sloppy, not at all like the perfectly masked version that I did. I'm sure some crews were fastidious and made theirs very neat. Notice too that the tail decals are on.



Last thing I did was use the Eduard fitted masks and masked all the glazing in prep for painting tomorrow.



The lower parts of the car doors gets flat black inside and its part of the camo pattern on the outside. I going to display the model with the door open. There's only a single pin supporting that open door. I'm worried about that. I may have to use a brass wire reinforcement. The canopy framing is very fine and would have been a bear to mask by hand. The mask instrutions call for using liquid mask to fill in the remaining open areas. I tried using it, it didn't wet the surface properly and I wiped it off. I then went back and filled the areas with Tamiya tape. I also taped the backsides of all clear parts. That V-shaped piece is a sort of a roll bar behind the pilot's seat that has litlle windows in it. The Eduare set had masks for this too. Nice!

If you were paying attention you remember when I broke off the top of the seat frame including the armor plate behind the pilot's head. I'm going to drill the frames and install wire to reinforce this so it won't break again. I've had the model upside down a lot lately and if the seat hadn't broken when it did, it would have surely broken now. That roll cage glues to this seat frame so I'll have to remember to get it done.

I will do that after the main gear is finally installed.

I noticed another very minor mistake. I opened the holes for the external fuel tanks, but then decided to not install them. In fact, I threw the remains of that sprue in the trash. I may fill the holes or just see if anyone ever notices them.
 
You will notice the holes for the external tank. It would be a shame, all this work and details and then ......
 
I can fill them without too much fuss...

First up: Painted all the glazine and then demasked. The backsides of the doors got flat black. I then turned them over and painted the entire grouping with flat black that would be the interior color of the framing. I then did a color shot with the RAF Deep Green except for 1/3 of the starboard door the Ocean Gray to match the camo at that point. The door will be in the open position so you won't be able to see if the registration is a bit off.

The Eduard masks worked perfectly and the framing is A-1. I am very pleased with it.



I finished up all the little stencils on the fuselage and painted those broken decals. The color was a bit dark and I may go back and fix them. Although, one could image some flight line touch ups that wouldn't be perfect either. I added Tamiya panel line accent Black to all the panels. I added soot (black weathering powder) the gun pay covers, the cartridge exits under the wings, and some exhaust staining. The staining is very hard to see against that dark green. I like a little weathering, but tend to not overdo it. For example, I don't do pre-shading. I dirtied up the wheel wells some more too.



Speaking of wheel wells, I assembled the main doors and their liners, and then dirtied them up a bit too. I added the structs themselves and the wheels. This will have to wait until tomorrow before installation. The struts do not fit tightly to the stubs. I'm going to epoxy them on.

Here's some more images of the weathering and panel work.



After the final decaling, I shot the whole deal with Tamiya clear flat through the airbrush. I find I can control it much better than using Dullcoat from the rattle can.



Before flat spray I had added the open foot steps that a landed plane would have. I painted their exteriors camo color and their interiors flat aluminum.



We're getting really close to the end here. The model could be done by Friday. If not it will be early next week.
 
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