**** DONE: GB-48 1/48 Avia B-534 Series III - Military A/C before 1939 (incl Spanish Civil War)

[Crimea_River]

The fuselage top has given me a bit of indigestion. Lots of clamping to get seams to line up. Despite this:

Note how it lines up nicely forward of the gun bulge but that there's a lip under the cockpit sill. I hate these kinds of things given all the detail that is to be lost in trying to even things out here. I might try to loosen the seam here with a scalpel and realign it. Grrrrrr.

The forward seams were reinforced by arthroscopic surgery - bits of plastic with gel CA shove down through a small hole in the fuselage before releasing the clamps:

 

[Wurger]

 

[Crimea_River]

Managed to crack the seam open, wedge the side out with a cut toothpick, just seen inside the cockpit below, reglue/clamp. Hope it will hold.

 

[Wayne Little]

You seem to be having a lot of fun there Andy......

 

[Wurger]

 

[Crimea_River]

Fun - yeah that's one way to describe it.

The fixed seam as it looked after the clamps were removed:

And now the long process (for me anyway) of blending begins. Several sequences of smoothing with files/fine paper followed by primer will now happen, all the time hoping to keep the raised fastener details.

This may take a few days and I'll be back with an update once I'm satisfied with the results.

Thanks for following along.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Gnomey]

Good work so far Andy!

 

[rochie]

Good luck with the details you want to keep Andy

 

[Crimea_River]

Yeah, that ain't happenin'. What I have now is a so-so seam with lost details. I may just sand it right down and add the rivets back with a pin.

That said, I forged ahead with the tail feathers and lower wings, despite the fact that I'll probably curse the fact that these will probably be in the way for further seam work. Eduard give you exact dimensions for the wing tip dihedral and so I made a simple jig to hold the model securely upright so that supports could be placed under the wings while the glue dried. With the model in this position, the wing tips should be 12.9 mm, a little more than the 1/2 inch spacers visible at the back of the wing tips below.

All these exacting precautions should almost guarantee that things WON'T fit when I try to glue the upper wing on!

 

[Wurger]

 

[Crimea_River]

Moving on to the bottom surface of the upper wing, I gave it a clean with IPA and then began applying the PE parts. All of the rigging points will get PE fittings and two can be seen here at left and right. There will be more needed between the cabane struts but I haven't decided whether to install them now or wait til the struts are glued in place. The two rectangles at center are entry points in the fabric for the aileron control cables. The instructions give a general idea of where they go and there are no marks on the model so you kinda need to judge. I based the location on scale plans. One had them, from the trailing edge, at 40% of the chord and another at 30% and so I went in between and measured 10mm from the back of the 30mm wide wing and put them there.

The tail feathers were also finished. Before adding the struts, I replaced the moulded rudder cable with stretched sprue ones.

If also given all the joints a shot of primer to check if they are ready for a finish coat and will report back on that when ready.

 

[Wurger]

 

[rochie]

Interesting details Andy !

 

[Airframes]

I agree with Karl.
Do you think this will make rigging easier, or perhaps a little more prolonged ? Be interested to find out.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks guys. Not sure Terry. I'm using this reference as a guide and there are some good suggestions in there. Those strange forks are for double wires that run diagonally from the front cabane strut to rear N-strut only. The rest are conventional single wires.

Provided that they don't come loose, I should think that these PE attachment points will make rigging relatively easy using the knit-in elastic material that I used on my Gladiator. At least I hope so.

 

[Airframes]

Thanks Andy - looking forward to seeing the result.

 

[Wayne Little]

Looking good.

 

[Gnomey]

Lovely work so far Andy!

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks gents. Still doing seam smoothing with primer. In the meantime, I need to decide what to do about a camouflage paint. I know the following exercise is imperfect and fraught with potential error but I'll put it up for interest anyway, recognizing that a lot of variables are at play.

The montage below is my attempt to pull together a number of samples. The center of the document is a clip from the book "CMK Photo Hobby Manual #1001 Avia B-534 Czechoslovakian Fighter 1933-1945" showing a piece of actual fabric from a wartime B-534 crash. The Mr. Paint sample at top left has been suggested as the best match to the Czech Khaki Green colour and is specifically named for the aircraft. FS 33070, as pointed out by Wojtek in post #4, is the colour suggested by the KP kit instructions. H80 at bottom right is the Gunze colour called up by the Eduard instructions. XF58 at bottom center is reputed by a colour comparison chart to be the closest Tamya equivalent to Gunze H80. Finally XF67 at bottom left is the Tamiya paint on my rack that I felt most closely resembled the fabric colour in the picture.

Interestingly, there are many colour pics of a museum B-534 on the net and, as I've experienced myself with olive greens under different lighting conditions, pictures of this aircraft appear to have wide variations in colour and some do come out looking like the very brown FS 33070 but pictures from other angles appear more green. Documentary evidence indicates that the colour is "more green than brown" so I'm going to throw out the FS 33070. As Wojtek pointed out, the H80 is very green but the suggested alternative, H81, appears more brown and closer to the FS 33070. I can't easily get Gunze paints anyway and so am left with my old reliable Tamiya supplies. Of the two shown, the XF67 looks to be the closest match to the fabric sample and so I'm leaning toward that.