N4521U
Colonel
Everything looks as nice as could possibly be done....
A cracker.
A cracker.
**** DONE: 1/48 TBM-1C Grumman Avenger VC-13 - Carrier Aircraft GB
- Thread starter Crimea_River
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looks fine to me Andy! 
Airframes
Benevolens Magister
Looks good Andy, and from experience, I know you're right - they will look fine to the naked eye. I've just checked the difference in print quality , ink-jet v laser printer, and it shows. Going to get my mate to print some decals on his colour laser printer, as a trial, when I order some laser decal paper (can't use ink jet decal paper in a laser, and vice versa), and might get a second-hand laser printer from him, at a good price, if it works well.
meatloaf109
1st Lieutenant
Holy flippin' kitty's, Batman,... Err, Andy! I just think those are the cat's meow! The "2"'s look better with the marker, but the cats look fine.
- Thread starter
- #245
Crimea_River
Marshal
Thanks guys.
very nice Andy
- Thread starter
- #247
Crimea_River
Marshal
Cheers Karl.
Decaling is finally done. I went and put on most of the stencils though the photo has little evidence of them being there. I did this to help break up the large expanses of gray surfaces.
I put on an initial light oil wash in the nose area to get the oil staining started. I'll do some more after the matt coat goes on tomorrow.
Here are the exhaust stubs all painted up.
Thanks again for looking in guys and, by the way, if there's a mod around who could change the subject of the thread to reflect my edit on post 1 I'd appreciate it.
Decaling is finally done. I went and put on most of the stencils though the photo has little evidence of them being there. I did this to help break up the large expanses of gray surfaces.
I put on an initial light oil wash in the nose area to get the oil staining started. I'll do some more after the matt coat goes on tomorrow.
Here are the exhaust stubs all painted up.
Thanks again for looking in guys and, by the way, if there's a mod around who could change the subject of the thread to reflect my edit on post 1 I'd appreciate it.
N4521U
Colonel
That's damned fine!
Done good there Andy!
meatloaf109
1st Lieutenant
What they said!
yep that is looking fantastic Andy, got to get one myself
- Thread starter
- #256
Crimea_River
Marshal
Thanks everyone. Vaughan, the exhaust are the plastic kit parts, hollowed out and painted with a mix brown, black, red, and silver.
- Thread starter
- #257
Crimea_River
Marshal
Here's some progress since Saturday. The entire upper surface of the model has been given a matte coat of Future dulled down with Tamiya Flat Base. I intentionally left a slight sheen on this as the reference pic does show some reflection on the upper wing.
Those exhaust stubs we talked about above are now glued in place:
Masks have been peeled off the canopy and the sliding frames installed. The fit of these clear parts is second to none.
I took a chance and glued on a stretched sprue antenna post - too early as I promptly broke it off again. Will wait til the last step now.
With the matte coat applied, I went and masked the areas for the wing walks and sprayed these Tamiya flat black lightened with a few drops of gray. I wanted these areas to be dead flat so did not use the kit-supplied decals for this and waited til after the the matte coat was applied so I could paint these on. The gas caps have been picked out in red darkened with a touch of black, still wet in the second pic below.
Meantime, the turret masking has started. I can only do so much of this before I need to put it down so am tackling this in stages.
I'm also thinking of weapons load out and have done a bit of reading to determine the likely configuration for this plane. It appears that the most common load out for anti-sub missions were rockets and Mark 54 depth bombs. Unfortunately, although the instructions show the depth bombs and rockets, I didn't get any in the box that Cory sent me so if I decide to add these, I'll need to scratch build the bombs and scrounge up some rockets from the spares box or from an unbuilt kit. The rockets are a bit of a question though. The first Avengers to use rockets had British Mk-4 70" rails installed. The picture below shows a Black 2 of VC-13 apparently launching off USS Guadalcanal on a mission against U-544 in January of 1944 (not sure if this is the same aircraft as in the flying pic of Black 2 which I'm depicting). The flying photo of my Black 2 was taken, according to a post I found elsewhere, on April 17, 1944, two days before a lone Avenger, flying from USS Tripoli and armed with depth bombs and rockets, attacked a U-Boat with rockets and depth bombs so I'd like to think that my Black 2 in the photo would have been rocket-equipped. Problem is that no Mk-4 rails are evident in the April 17 picture but it's also true that at some point, the British rockets were replaced with American designed Mk-5 "zero length" units which consisted of simple stubs that held the rockets without the drag-inducing rails. However, I don't know when this conversion took place so can not be sure if the flying picture of Black 2 is hiding Mk-5 rocket mounts under the wing.
If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd really appreciate it.
Those exhaust stubs we talked about above are now glued in place:
Masks have been peeled off the canopy and the sliding frames installed. The fit of these clear parts is second to none.
I took a chance and glued on a stretched sprue antenna post - too early as I promptly broke it off again. Will wait til the last step now.
With the matte coat applied, I went and masked the areas for the wing walks and sprayed these Tamiya flat black lightened with a few drops of gray. I wanted these areas to be dead flat so did not use the kit-supplied decals for this and waited til after the the matte coat was applied so I could paint these on. The gas caps have been picked out in red darkened with a touch of black, still wet in the second pic below.
Meantime, the turret masking has started. I can only do so much of this before I need to put it down so am tackling this in stages.
I'm also thinking of weapons load out and have done a bit of reading to determine the likely configuration for this plane. It appears that the most common load out for anti-sub missions were rockets and Mark 54 depth bombs. Unfortunately, although the instructions show the depth bombs and rockets, I didn't get any in the box that Cory sent me so if I decide to add these, I'll need to scratch build the bombs and scrounge up some rockets from the spares box or from an unbuilt kit. The rockets are a bit of a question though. The first Avengers to use rockets had British Mk-4 70" rails installed. The picture below shows a Black 2 of VC-13 apparently launching off USS Guadalcanal on a mission against U-544 in January of 1944 (not sure if this is the same aircraft as in the flying pic of Black 2 which I'm depicting). The flying photo of my Black 2 was taken, according to a post I found elsewhere, on April 17, 1944, two days before a lone Avenger, flying from USS Tripoli and armed with depth bombs and rockets, attacked a U-Boat with rockets and depth bombs so I'd like to think that my Black 2 in the photo would have been rocket-equipped. Problem is that no Mk-4 rails are evident in the April 17 picture but it's also true that at some point, the British rockets were replaced with American designed Mk-5 "zero length" units which consisted of simple stubs that held the rockets without the drag-inducing rails. However, I don't know when this conversion took place so can not be sure if the flying picture of Black 2 is hiding Mk-5 rocket mounts under the wing.
If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd really appreciate it.
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Airframes
Benevolens Magister
Nice work Andy.
Andy those exhaust stubs are looking really realistic shame about the antenna post, I do a great job in breaking off tail wheels. The canopies perfect(I have to keep remembering that this is 1/48 scale I don't know how you do it, I struggle with 1/32 scale). I don't envy you with that turret masking there's a lot of tight curved areas to do but it looks like you've cracked it.
Vaughan
Vaughan
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