**** DONE: GB-48 1:48 TBM-3 Avenger - Carrier & Maritime Patrol A/C of WWII

[fubar57]

Thanks guys. Still finding stuff to stick on before painting. Removed the stubs from the rockets. Seam work to be done. The lone hole to the left is for the strike camera

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Thinning the exhausts, a work in progress

 

[The silver dragon]

Thanks all for the thoughts. I was going to save this for later but I'm here now. I have cancer. I had surgery to remove the prostate on the 13th and the results of the biopsy came to me today. The doctor says its been with me for a while and good news is is that its not very aggressive and is very treatable though not curable. He also said that the meds they are treating me with weren't available 5 years ago. I'm on a pill for 4 weeks and start a shot for the rest of my hopefully long life. This is to stop testosterone. On the 31st I go to the radiologist in PG and plot a course from there. Here's a quick run down of how this came into being. In early summer I noticed I was urinating more than normal. The doc figured it my be diabetes so I was checked and the numbers showed I was pre-diabetic. I went in a month or so later to another doc and said that it felt like I was trying to hold my urine back but that it was involuntarily. He suspected that it might be an enlarged prostate, gave me some pills and put in a call to a specialist. In the fall, I was coming up the stairs from a modelling episode and as I was walking by the TV, as news article ended by saying something like, " these are the symptoms of Prostate Cancer". I hit the brakes, these are what I have. Back to doc #1, told him this and he ordered a PSA test which came back highish and put in another call to the specialist. Late last month I had back problems and after my visit to doc #3 she must have checked my charts and told me to take a second PSA which came back a bit higher and she put a rush note in with the specialist. Fast forward to Dec. 4, this was the day I had MRI and imaging scans. I had to drink a litre of water for one of them and I started noticing that I was starting to have trouble urinating, I really had to go but nothing much was coming out. On the 2hr drive home it was now starting to hurt. Next day I was in emergency getting a catheter installed; they figured my prostate had totally blocked everything off. The specialist was told about this and he put in an emergency surgery rush for the following Saturday. So now here I sit and I'll be off for another 5 weeks. As for sitting, the hospital gave me a brochure about dos and don'ts for post op surgery. One of the things it said was to try and avoid sitting for longer than one hour so for 8 days I've been clock watching, getting up and walking around for 5-10 minutes after 50 minutes of sitting. I asked the specialist about this and he said, "Are they still handing that out......rip it up" Rant over.....modellin' stuff. Innards are now just about complete. An article I read said navy aircraft weren't weathered much, not a lot of mud and dirt on the flight deck. I dry brushed dark grey over the black boxes and Tamiya XF-71 Cockpit Green over the interior green. I had to line up bulkheads and seat to make sure they wouldn't interfere with the fuselage halves fit. The instructions and lack of good locating points made this a right pain in the keester. I'd glue the part in and before it set I would put the fuselage halves together for a few hours. A few more parts and I can button everything up. I just noticed Andy's post in Dons build about the fit of the turret so that has been saved. My instructions were absolutely useless about the turret innards and it wasn't until I had finished gluing it together that I found a set of Accurate Miniatures instructions and I had more or less figured it out correctly.

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Rear bulkhead and my paint work will be invisible. The tail wheel assembly mounts to the back of the bulkhead now but I'll check out other builds to see if I can add it at the end

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Very happy to be back modelling again

Hope you get better ! take care

 

[Wurger]

 

[Snautzer01]

Hope you get better ! take care

I have not said this but reading it again, thank you for this openness and how you coped with your doctors.
A true lesson. Never under estimate your brain.

 

[Crimea_River]

Good progress Geo.

 

[fubar57]

Thanks Andy. Sprayed Interior Green to the clear parts

 

[Donivanp]

Coming along nicely good sir!

 

[fubar57]

Thanks Don. Working on the small fuselage windows at the rear....none fit

 

[Crimea_River]

Hmm, I don't remember having an issue there but better too big than too small.

 

[rochie]

Nice work Geo

 

[N4521U]

Great work as usual mate!

 

[fubar57]

Thanks guys. A few small parts and I can start spraying. I decided to put the landing gear on as it'll all be white. I thought the three part affair might be finicky and flimsy but once the glue had set it was pretty solid. The torque links are solid but a quick search shows that these have holes top and bottom so they were drilled out

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I'll add some brake lines after the paint

 

[Wayne Little]

Nice work Geo.

 

[Crimea_River]

Good plan. A simple and effective mod.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Gnomey]

Lovely work so far George!

 

[Night Fighter Nut]

Nice work George, very nice.

 

[Donivanp]

Moving it dude

 

[Bustedwing]

Nice work !

 

[fubar57]

Apologies for the delay. As you know for some reason I lock up when it comes time to spray so I finally started to paint the underside white.....its white. This is mostly for Andy. For the white I used Vallejo Surface Primer. Its a water-based acrylic-polyurethane coating. I used a .4 needle in my H&S airbrush and sprayed at about 15psi. I had to take the cap off as it was spitting but after it was removed I had no problems. What I do is spray for about 3-5 seconds, stop, blow a blast of air through the brush and continue spraying. Vallejo recommends building up in thin coats so being a large model and doing my stop and go, took about an hour. On to cleaning. I purchased some Vantage Model Solutions (VMS) Airbrush Cleaners Pro for cleaning up after using Vallejo

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I transferred some into another bottle and added distilled water in a 1:4 ratio following instructions on the back.

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As mentioned above, I started cleaning about an hour after starting. I noticed that the top half of the paint cup had dried and my usual method of cleaning it using a large soft brush had no effect so I resorted to Q-tips dipped in the solution and the paint started coming off, in a layer. I guess this is part of the "polyurethane" part of the equation. No problem removing all the paint from the cup. I added water to the cup and used a brush to make sure and bits of dried paint were suspended in the brush itself floated a bit and then poured that out as well. I then added a bit of the solution to the cup and then blew it through the brush. I stripped the brush and proceeded to clean using Q-tips and dental brushes dipped in the solution. I looked at the cap I had removed at the beginning of the session and it had primer dried to it and all it took was a bit of Q-tip and dental brush cleaning and looked good as new. It looks like H&S make a crown cap so I might get one for each needle size as I didn't feel comfortable waving the airbrush around with an exposed needle tip

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There you have it Andy; I can highly recommend this solution for cleaning Vallejo from the airbrush. Its supposed to be good for all acrylic paint as well. I'll let the model dry for my usual 24 hours and then paint the top camo on