Jumping into Modeling

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Forgot to post this and then got busy celebrating Christmas with the family.

Here's the link to a great resource on the B-17E remote control turret, with lots of photos. It's made by Sperry and was interchangeable with their manned ball turret.

Speaking of Christmas, I got a Revell 1:72 Heinkel He-70F-2 from my aunt this year for Secret Santa (I asked for any small 1:72 Airfix or Revell kit as that was the price range for the event).

Certainly an odd-looking aircraft but I'm excited to build it. The landing gear looks very complex and seems to have decals that go over the doors, so that should be interesting. I don't really plan on buying many German aircraft (nor do I have many future purchases planned in general) nor am I particularly passionate about this aircraft so I'd rather not buy the specific colors and just use the ones I already have. I'll see what liveries I can find and if all else fails I'll just replicate the scheme in the box using Bronze Green, Olive Green and Neutral Gray (Blasphemy, I know). Will keep y'all posted, and hope y'all have enjoyed the holidays and have a happy new year!

P.S. In case anyone's curious, I got my dad for Secret Santa and bought him A Night At The Opera on vinyl as he's a huge Queen fan.
 
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Heinkel He70 Blitz for inspiration. Have fun.
 
Update on the He-70
After much thought I decided to go with the livery from the box, or as best I can replicate it, because the whole point of this build is to use only stuff I have around the house and I'd need extra decals for any of the more interesting liveries. I also did not want to put myself under stress given that this is not a plane I care much about (sorry He 70 fans). If a part was giving me trouble, it was going in the spares box instead. For the paints I originally made the following substitutions:

Colors called for - Colors planned
Blackish Green Matt - Olive Brown (Vallejo)
Dark Green Matt - US Dark Green (Vallejo)
Light Blue Matt - Beige Green (Humbrol, leftover from Hurricane starter set)
Black Matt - Black (Vallejo)
Light Olive Matt - Neutral Grey (Vallejo)
Dusty Grey Matt - Neutral Grey (Vallejo)
Aluminium Metallic - Silver (Vallejo)
Rust Matt - Copper (Vallejo)
Anthracite Matt - Neutral Grey (Vallejo)

I also decided to let my mum paint some of the parts. However, as we got started she had trouble using neutral grey as it looked very similar to the kit's normal color and would only be applied to small internal parts, so we decided to leave any components that would be painted neutral grey unpainted and instead she would paint the undersides of the wings and tailplane as those are a big area. That ended up being a bad idea, as the Humbrol paint was very runny and did not want to stick to the plastic, pooling in low areas and refusing to dry after several minutes. She eventually used so much of it that we ran out (the tin was almost empty in the first place since I used a lot of it in the Hurricane, in which I has similarly poor results), and we had to pick another color to both repaint those sections and paint the rest of the undersides. As it happens, I had accidentally spilled a large amount of silver paint (bottle had some blockage that I did not clear properly), so we went with that. She did enjoy painting now that she had proper paint.


As for me, I started assembling the kit as best I could and took an immediate dislike to the way the parts were split. I feel like a lot of these could have been combined into single pieces (such as the wheel well sidewalls and the bottom wing), and I'm not a fan of having to cut parts into the right shape as that is not a skill I possess. The kit asks that you cut part of the wheel wells out of the bottom wing panel, that you cut off a big chunk of the top of the fuselage for the aft gunner, and that you cut the wheelcovers in half. I think I did a good job with the former and the latter, but the gunner's hole looks very bad and the instructions weren't very clear on the size of the hole either (the plastic has marks of different lengths). I found that I had cut the hole too short only after gluing the fuselage halves together a day later. I also did not have polycement around, and instead used Tekbond (some form of superglue). This was not a good replacement, as parts kept falling off and my fingertips were covered in the stuff. While it would not be accurate to say I've put my blood, sweat and tars into this model, I did unintentionally put a few small bits of my skin on it as the plastic parts seemed much happier sticking to me than to other plastic.

I found the fit of the parts as a whole quite fiddly. While I like how the wings are split (no butt-joining into the fuselage like the B-17!), I found the spars very cumbersome, and in fact I couldn't get the rear bulkhead+spar piece to fit into the fuselage at all! This meant that the gunner's floor and seat also had to go as that's what they attached to. While I managed to put in the pilot's instrument panel, yoke, pedals and some of the gunner's controls onto the fuselage wall, the instrument panel for the gunner could not be attached. The instructions tell you to place the single panel abeam the start of the canopy, but also forward of the forward side window at the same time, which is physically impossible because the gunner's canopy is aft of said window. I tried simply gluing it to the small headrest/bulkhead that was supposed to attach just ahead of the gunner canopy, but again it would not fit, even after a lot of sanding. I ditched the part instead. I also didn't bother with interior decals, though I did paint all interior controls black.

One annoying issue with this kit is that the order of the steps makes no sense. You're instructed to add the fuselage windows very early on in the process, despite the fact that they attach from outside and can be added at any point. Fortunately they are a very tight fit even after sanding, so they don't need glue. I simply poked them back out and will add them in again after painting. Another baffling order of operations is the fact that the kit instructs you to glue the fuselage halves together and then add the exhaust stacks, which have to be attached from inside, fiddling around with tweezers through the open top of the cowling. There isn't much room but I managed to do that without issues (other than accidentally putting them in backwards the first time). These are also a very tight fit so I did not use glue. They were painted and left to dry before inserting but lost at least half of their paint to the edges of their mounting holes, needing to be repainted afterwards.

I pressed on and had a lot more fun once I gave up on detailing and moved onto the bigger assemblies. Those are my favorite step of the process. Tailplane went in, so did the rudder. Tailcone was hard to attach and there's still a small gap but I don't mind. I should buy some putty once I'm back in the US so that I can fix those in future models. Wings went on and were held in place by tape. Ended up with small gaps on the leading edge. Ailerons gave me no issues. I was originally gonna leave the flaps up as I hadn't even considered that they might be posable, but the clearance for them was quite small and I found it both easier and more interesting to have them down. Canopies were then attached. I was originally going to use PVA glue for these, but fogged up windows will hide my mistakes better so I just used the superglue again, and the pilot's canopy required a lot of it due to how it attaches.


While I have several problems with this kit, the assembly itself is still enjoyable despite the poor fit of some parts and the unclear and often incorrect manual. The best example of how vague the manual is is the fact that it just points to the side of the fuselage when telling you to install some of the gunner's equipment, and then never shows the area again, so there's no way to know where specifically the piece should go unless you have reference photos. I will probably finish the kit tomorrow, as all I have left to do is add the propeller and landing gear and then paint. Landing Gear is complicated but can't be worse than the main wing/cockpit section.

Best,
-Matt
 
Day 2 of the build, or maybe it's day 3? Can't remember.

Anyway, the plane is basically finished, only missing paint and half the decals. Propeller is meant to spin, but I couldn't get the assembly quite right and it ended up with two much slack, causing the prop to droop forward. I used a bit of glue to attach it into the backplate, figuring a non-spinning prop was better than a droopy one. The biggest challenge with the build was, as expected, the main landing gear. Each unit consists of 3 legs, the middle one having attachment points for the other two. The instructions show it as having slots that allow the gear to be attached by its sides but the kit instead has tubes less than 1mm thick that are supposed to be butt-joined into the other legs. I installed and uninstalled the parts several times as they were quite fiddly and only the 2 auxiliary legs had pins, which were too big to fit into their holes without force. I ended up breaking the pin for the forward left leg, but replaced it with a small bit of a cocktail stick. I really, really wish the kit's gear had been designed in a sturdier and simpler way, perhaps a V-assembly with a separate auxiliary leg, anything would've been better than 3 thin individual legs. I got them on as best I could and am happy with the results, even though the wheel covers are slightly misaligned and so is the left wheel. Despite my mistakes, I have to admit the gear looks very nice once assembled and I'm quite proud of how they turned out.


Since that's the bottom of the wings completely done, I then moved onto the decals. I am once again not following the markings guide, as I decided to ditch the middle section of the registration number, which goes over the bottom surface of the wing as well as all 3 landing gear doors (per unit). I originally tried to fit the doors closed so that I could cut up the decal accordingly, but that would've been far too much work for a quick build. Given how much I had to fiddle with the gear, I think I made the right call. The gear doors were painted before assembly and had to be painted again afterwards. While I like Vallejo's paints, their metallic ones (in this case silver) seem prone to forming a thick film that works almost like glue, which is not great. Still nowhere near my worst experience with paint, the humbrol tins from the Hurricane and the never-drying Mission Models Olive Drab were much, much worse.


Should be able to finish the model tomorrow, looking forward to that.
-Matt
 
Wurger said:


What brand/kind of the glue have you used?
Click to expand...
On this model some kind of superglue called Tekbond. On my other models, a small tube of humbrol polycement that came in the Hurricane starter set. On the B-17 I've used that but also elmer's PVA for the windows. I plan on buying some tamiya cement with a brush applicator once I get back to the US as that seems much better than my current approach of dipping cocktail sticks in glue/cement.
 
Crimea_River said:
The Tamiya thin cements come with a brush inside the cap. No need to buy a separate one.
Click to expand...
My bad, my sentence was ambiguous. I specifically meant that I'm buying the Tamiya because it comes with the brush. Finished the kit btw! Very happy with how it turned out, might be my best work. I've got a flight to catch tonight so pics will have to wait (already took a lot of those). Leaving the kit here since this is hopefully my last semester of uni and anything I take with me I'll have to bring back.
 
Here is the finished Heinkel He 70 "Blitz"!
Very happy with how the landing gear and camouflage turned out. Painted the entire upper surface US Dark Green and then used masking tape to paint the camouflage pattern with Olive Brown. The masking tape did have its leaks, which were then corrected either with a small paintbrush, a cocktail stick dipped in paint, or both. Not my best canopy but not my worst either. Do wish I had used PVA glue for the pilot's canopy so that the cockpit would be visible, but oh well. The gunner's canopy does a great job of hiding the entirely empty interior of that section. Landing gear seems to be taking the weight pretty well, which is great. I did make a few small changes to the camo because the area in front of the cockpit was very hard to do, but also because the two side views and the top view did not agree with each other! Decals went on with no issues, except for one of the Luftwaffe insignias as I tried applying Micro Set directly to it instead of soaking it in water, which took much longer and tore off parts of the decal.


Thoughts on the kit overall:

Pros
-Highly detailed,
-Portrays a relatively obscure aircraft pretty well, at least as far as I can tell,
-Posable flaps, ailerons, rudder and landing gear, though the gear will require some small modifications if installed in the retracted position. None of these are mentioned in the manual,
-Decals peeled off backing paper remarkably quick, I remember my other kits taking several minutes while this one didn't even take one.

Cons
-Landing gear + wheel well construction is unnecessarily difficult,
-Instructions often overly vague or provide the hardest possible path when assembling parts,
-Small amount of flash on control surfaces and propeller.

Neutral/Personal Preference
-Poor fit of parts, placed in this category because these might be due to my limited skills in the field. I had to ditch a large part of interior detailing just to get the fuselage and wing to fit together, and even without spars the wings still had gaps,
-6 different parts have to be cut into their "proper shape" and I don't know why they didn't just come in the shape needed in the first place. Cost-cutting?
-Details are very shallow and downright invisible once painted. From what I've seen most people seem to prefer shallower, more scale-accurate panel lines and rivets but this just does not work with my coloring approach. This made decal placement quite difficult as I usually use the panel lines as guides.

So yeah, while it has its issues and isn't an aircraft I have strong opinions on, I do quite like the end result and honestly it might be my best work.

Cheers,
-Matt
 
Crimea_River said:
Fine panel lines and rivets are more close to scale than the alternative. With thin, airbrushed colours they still should be visible.
Click to expand...
True. I suppose that will have to wait on my end until I move out of university and into better-ventilated accommodations.

Then again, modeling as a whole might have to take a bit of a back seat for the next few months. I'm taking more classes than usual this semester and a lot of my free time will be devoted to microfilm scanning and cataloguing for the Marauder and IRL museum work. Do plan on updating the thread if I build more stuff, though at the same time I do have to remember that anything I finish here is another fragile thing I'll have to take back home come May.

Whatever ends up happening, next up on the modeling list is finishing the Fortress, then building the Mitchell, which I might do as a Doolittle Raid plane or might not. The XB-28 is on the backburner as it seems the kit with most issues and the most fragile (plus it was the most expensive).
 
Hi all,

After an incredibly busy semester, I am now back home for good. Transporting my models was a hassle, but they all survived with only the B-26's left prop breaking off, which was then promptly glued in place… like five times because I kept getting it either off-center or unable to spin. It is now centered and capable of spinning. The Heinkel, which stayed with my parents while I was away, lost a gear door and its tailwheel, but after two days of searching both have been found and reattached.

So, what now?
Well, first I want to finish the B-17, but I'm conflicted as to how to go about it. Sometimes I look at the silver paint and think it looks terrible, other times I think it could pass for weathering of some sort. Changing the paintscheme to OD would also complicate things because I don't really have the decals to match. I decided to run a poll, because while ultimately it's my decision, I'd like y'all's advice on this. Here are the photos of the B-17 in its current state. Yes, the right side of the nose looks terrible, I'm asking about the paint on the wings and aft fuselage.

Other than the B-17, I'd also like advice on another matter. I purchased a TBF-1 because a friend made the mistake of taking me to a hobby store, and I intend to paint it as 01747, because I saw it every week while volunteering at DNASM. It's not a popular livery, so I'd like to know what I should do regarding decals, and what acrylic paints are recommended to portray the 1942 two-tone scheme. Britmodeller says the real colors are USN Blue Gray over Light Gray with Bronze Green for the interior, which certainly matches what I've seen in 01747, but I don't know what the best specific paint colors would be for the first two.

Edit: couldn't figure out how to make a poll in a reply, so I just made it over on Strawpoll:
 
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