**** DONE: 1/48 Tempest MkV - Allied Advance and Defense of the Reich WWII.

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Thanks all.

Here's what the nav lights looked like before I attacked them:



Close inspection of the nav lights on colour photos shows that these were tinted lenses rather than clear so I set about looking around the house for what I could use and I decided to have these pens donate a small part of their pocket clips to the cause. I'm using blue for the starboard lenses having stored in my memory banks a discussion I had with the guys restoring our Hurricane wings in which they insisted that Hurricanes had blue lenses rather than the normally-expected green. So that's what I decided to go with.



After cutting out the solid plastic where the lenses are, I nipped off a pieces of the pens and CA glued them into the wing tips, filed them smooth and then polished them up with micro mesh pads. The results are below.



Next, the drop tanks got dolled up with the kit supplied PE, a vast improvement over the plain mold shown on the right below.



With the drop tanks and lights installed, I pre-shaded the underside and squirted on a coat of Medium Sea Grey. The MSG will also serve as a base for the yellow wing leading edges so I went right around to the upper wing surfaces at these locations.



This close-up shows the open radiator flap that I added to break up the clean lines a bit and to save me having to shave down the thick plastic here. In the wheel wells, I still need to install the retraction jacks



That's it for tonight folks. Thanks for looking in.
 
Great work here Andy! I really like the trick of using colored plastic from pens for the wingtip lights... never woulda thought of that!
 
Yellow is now squirted on the wing leading edges, using the MSG as a base. The yellow is Tamiya XF-4 with a drop of red.


Nice that Eduard supplied masks with the kit. Makes quick work of the process. Here is the windscreen with a shot of interior green to represent the inner frames and also to test the seam.


Another mod that I discovered that I need to make is to add two clear tail light lenses which were contoured into the rear of the stabilizer. For this I simply notched the area with a jeweller's file and the lens will be made up using a build-up of clear part cement. A pic further down shows the notch.



With the various demarcations masked, I sprayed on a thin coat of Ocean Grey and took a final look at the upper seams and rescribing. I think we're good to go.



Here you see the stabilizer fairing with the rescribed seam. The actual joint is inboard of the scribed seam so all looks good. Here you can also see the notch I cut at the back of the fairing for the tail lights.

 
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Nicely done Andy - like the lamp lenses. I've been hoarding old tooth brushes and similar coloured items for years, but only used them once or twice so far.
I missed those tail lamps on my model - good catch.
 
Very nice Andy.
In many cases green wingtip lenses look blue when the light is not on, that may be what those guys were talking about. I've thought about using blue instead of green because the green always looks too green.
 
Thanks everyone. Glenn, here's the actual lens our guys are building - right or wrong, it's definitely blue.



If anyone knows for sure what what the correct colour is, I would love to know as our restorer is adamant that blue was used on the Hurricane Mk XII, if not all.
 
From what I've seen of various aircraft from WW2 to present day, the blue lens, when used with a 'warm' bulb, gave a bluish green light, although 'modern day' lamps do appear blue, more so with high-intensity or strobe light sources.
Some WW2 types did indeed have a lens which, when not illuminated, appeared to be a bluish green, or greenish blue, rather than true green, and this might be something to do with the visibility of this colour, compared to straight green, as well as the supply source, aircraft type, factory etc etc.
Looking at some of my pics of restored WW 2 types, most seem to have a blue lens, quite dark in appearance when there's no light passing through the material, either from the lamp itself, or external sources.
I also noted, in a brief scan through my photos, that at least one restored Hurricane appeared to have clear lenses, using a coloured bulb, whereas wartime photos seem to show both clear and tinted lenses, in B&W photos. Again, this was presumably due to the production factory or supply source.
 
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