Old Man

damn, Sir. A shame about that part. If it were me, I would cut back, from the center-section up to the mid-wing panel line, assemble the halves, then glue down some styrene sheet, shape the trailing edge and tip to the good piece, then sand down to get the right airfoil shape.

Here is the model with the upper wing attached.... There were some bad moments with this. I knocked one of my home-made struts off (the left rear cabane). When re-attaching this, I managed to snap all the new joints. After a solid curse, this proved a blessing in disguise: I took the opportunity to clean the attachment areas, slightly trim two cabane struts, including the re-atteched defaulter, and then the wing went on quite briskly, with no trouble at all, in less than two minutes.... I am putting the thing aside for a few days, and then, after touching up the damaged bits of the fin

The build proceeds, gentlemen, though so doe the resistance.... This is the basic paint-work complete; the upper wing is merely resting in place. The more I looked at the flap, the less I liked the job I had made of filling the trenches and rescribing. So I went ahead and did something I had thought I might do in the planning stages of this: I cut flap out of five thousandths sheet, and cut in hollows to receive them. The result is much cleaner lines, and a better sense of separate pieces there. Here are a couple of pictures with full gloss and matte coats, decals applied, cowling a

I appreciate your commiseration, Sir. I have done more damage than this to projects, but have usually managed it at the tail end of long efforts....

Thank you, Sir. I like that one myself, but have not yet made my selection. There are other pictures of these, though this is certainly the most striking of them.

Thank you, Sir. The ring is from scratch; the kit material at the cockpit interface has to be completely destroyed. My method for the ring is the usual 'make a hole in some sheet, then file down the sheet till you almost meet the hole'. It is put on top of the new decking, which has a hole matching the interior diameter of the ring cut into it. looking forward to seeing youe Pfalz. I have a Roden Pfalz going myself, over at 'The Aerodrome'.

Glad you picked this subject, Sir. I have the same kit, and was thinking of getting that conversion set, to do an earlier example.

Great to see you here, Sir! I did a Kora I.J.N. Seversky two-seater (foiled) not too long ago; my first resin kit. The interior stuff on that fit pretty well, though there was definitely a 'hand made' quality to the whole thing. Looking forward to seeing how this one comes together.

Checked in my copy of the Monogram Navy and Marine book, Sir. The black band is wrong; it should be red. the regulation is when fuselage bands are used to indicate a section leader, they should be in the section color. The chevron on the upper wing should be in the section color. The various section colors, just for your interest, are: 1st, Insignia Red 2nd, Insignia White 3rd, Insignia Blue (or Light Blue) 4th, Black 5th, Willow Green 6th, Lemon Yellow The yellow of the upper wing is sufficient orange in shade that lemon yellow does stand out as a different color. Pin-stripe outlines

Glad you like it, Sir! It is an odd little bit of history, this.

Great to see this, Sir! That is a favorite kit of mine. I have some decent reference material on the type; if you need it, let me know. I will check up on the scheme illustrated, but it is almost certainly correct. In this period the U.S. Navy used cowling markings to indicate individual identity within a squadron. There were six sections of three planes each in a squadron; each section had a color (red for the first section, white for the second, blue for the third, and on into 'I forget till I look it up territory); the section leader's cowling was painted entirely in the section color, th

Indeed, Sir, this is the earliest field use of camouflage by the R.A.F. in the inter-war period. It was peculiar to Malta; Demons and Bulldogs sent to Egypt and Sudan in this period remained in 'silver wings' finish. Malta being so close to Sicily, major aerial attack had to be expected if hostilities broke out, and so concealment, particularly on the ground, would have been an important consideration. The RAF had begun considering camouflage schemes during 1934, with patterns circulated in illustration form in January, 1935.

Thank you very much, Sir! I have a special fondness for the Hawker Hart and its derivatives. While there are some usable limited ruin kits of these out now in 1/72, no kit that does not really need quite a bit of work to do up right is available yet. It is a damned shame what they did to the wings on this, though. Airfix first released a Hawker Hart kit, back in the late fifties; they discontinued it, then revived it in the seventies altered into a Demon, and in doing so, did horrible things to the mould for the wings (as well as making a sloppy job at the cockpit). Airfix Hart kits are coll

I was tempted to go the whole 'shadow shading' route on this one, Sir, but decided it would not be right for this plane at the time I want to represent it. The machine I have in mind, with LW-E coding, serial K6147, was a very early production Gladiator, delivered in 'silver wings' finish. It received its camouflage paint during the Munich Crisis, while on strength of 25 Sqdn., and this would certainly have been only two colors, not four. 607 Sdn., which received it in December 1938, was an Auxiliary Air Force squadron, a sort of part-time reserve body. LW-E was photographed very clearly duri

This is much quicker than usual for me, Sir. I want to focus in this build on the final finish; the Future thinning is still fairly new for me as a technique, and I want to get to know it, so to speak....

Another area where the old kits badly needs improvement is the interface between the crew positions, and the gun ring. There is a crisp, thin partition, pierced by some cut-outs, behind the pilot's seat, and the gun ring is set too far back on the kit piece; it must be moved forward a bit.

During the Abyssinian Crisis in 1935, a force of Hawker Demon two-seat fighters (later designated 74 Squadron) was sent to defend Malta. These machines were painted in a camouflage finish, as shown below: There are a lot of misconceptions about this finish in circulation, but there are documents relating to it that describe it accurately and adequately. I am very grateful to Mr. Edgar Brooks for sharing his researches on this matter with me. Not much of the kit is likely to survive into the finished model. The wings of the kit manage to be both one of the worst instances of 'starved cow'

Another area where the old kits badly needs improvement is the interface between the crew positions, and the gun ring. There is a crisp, thin partition, pierced by some cut-outs, behind the pilot's seat, and the gun ring is set too far back on the kit piece; it must be moved forward a bit.

This was begun in early June, but is still well under wire for entry here.... During the Abyssinian Crisis in 1935, a force of Hawker Demon two-seat fighters (later designated 74 Squadron) was sent to defend Malta. These machines were painted in a camouflage finish, as shown below: There are a lot of misconceptions about this finish in circulation, but there are documents relating to it that describe it accurately and adequately. I am very grateful to Mr. Edgar Brooks for sharing his researches on this matter with me. Not much of the kit is likely to survive into the finished model. The

Painting began last night, and here is the state of play as of this afternoon. Paints used are PollyScale, cut heavily with Future, and brushed on. The black is cut with a royal blue (RAF 'Night' was a very very dark ultra-marine), and the white is cut with deck tan. Several coats of both have been applied. Here is the first coat only of the upper-surface colors (dark green and dark earth). The heavily Future thinned paints are very thin, and always take at least three coats to cover. The dark green is out of the bottle, the dark earth is a mix of several browns and olive drabs, with a

At this point, repair and salvage kicked in again, with yet another re-iteration of the old lesson --- never assume the manufacturere got it right; check always! I had attached the canopy, and was feeling pretty good about it (I do not often do canopies, mostly building open cockpit types). When painting the starkly moulded framework, I suddenly noticed that the framework in front was drastically wrong: the mould gives a horizontal frame across the front of the canopy that does not exist, and gives much too great a slant back to the joint between the front piece and the sliding hood. I trimm

Here is the bulk of the beast under a coat of Tamiya primer, after a little more surface work (the oil cooler is simply resting in place; it has been sanded down and a finer corrugate scribed in. Some final detailing has been done in the cockpit; a structure behind the seat, and a sort of pylon in front which, so far as I can tell, is put there to ensure the pilot will need reconstructive facial surgery after any sort of a nose-over.... Fit on the landing gear was quite nice....

Fit of the tail-planes was very good, and only a very little fiddling was needed for the rudder. I cut out openings for the 'works' of the elevators and tail-plane incidence adjustment, and added control horns for the rudder. Here is the cowling in finished state: Here is the upper wing, with interplane struts attached on the their carrier (I thought I would give the kit method a try...)...

At this point, the build became something of a repair and salvage operation. I had attached the cabane struts in their 'shelf' arrangement trapped under the forward decking (the 'positive attachment' feature of the old Matchbox series), and shimmed in the holes and done the seam, as well as filling in the 'trenches' and re-scribing them. Attaching the wings did not go so well, however. I should have done more preparation work on the fit of the pieces. In cleaning the joints I cracked one, theen after re-attaching it, managed to drop the thing. It might not have been so bad, except that I manag

Here are some pictures showing the cockpit in the closed fuselage. Fuselage fit is pretty good. the instrument panel is notional, and pieced together from instrument panel decals in the spares box. The panel was re-positioned after these pictures. The forward decking is simply resting in place.