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mickey

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About mickey

  • Rank
    Canopy Polisher
  • Birthday 09/14/1959

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Profile Information

  • Location
    Hawera, New Zealand
  • Interests
    Modelling wise - slowly building a collection of 1/48 de Havilland aircraft. Also do 1/32 jets as set pieces. Almost all on bases or dioramas. All involve scratchbuilt detail.<br /><br />Other interests are family and cycle touring
  1. mickey

    ICM Spitfires

    Hi, Easy to do and definitely the best option is to leave the engine out. You can either use the front of the engine to mount the prop or make a small housing out of plastic card to capture the prop mount. I used a small electric motor on the last one. Make sure you blank off the hole where the exhausts fit through to allow these to be fixed in place from the outside. And take care with gluing all the cowlings together - they all do fit very well without the engine in place. Cheers, Mickey
  2. Absolutely beautiful work there. Congratulations on what has obviously been a lot of work! Cheers, Mickey
  3. I got mine in the post this week. It has none of the molding faults noted. I'll be doing an FAW1 so should be less work without having to fair in the above wing tanks. I do not doubt that some work is required - but don't anticipate it being any worse than the CA Vampire T22 I am working on at the moment. Such challenges are the joy of modelling aren't they? Cheers, Mickey
  4. I really do need to find the time to return to my Flanker! Great work, especially those details on the landing gear supports. Have you carved that last piece from resin? Most impressive. I took a break from the Flanker to do a selection of 1/48 aircraft - Spitfire, de Havilland Hornet and another Vampire. Then had my "free" time seriously interrupted by the arrival of my recumbent trike, so I am seriously fit but languishing on the modelling front! Re the nose cone.... it's kind of difficult to tell from the photo, but it looks as though not enough material was taken off the join between the
  5. Beautiful work - I especially like the typical Spitfire landing gear retraction. Cheers, Mickey
  6. Amazing detailing there. I couldn't even face the rescribing in 1/32nd scale on the Flanker, and I find your work in the smaller scale beggars belief. Very inspiring! Cheers, Mickey
  7. Sorry - I've been distracted in the last couple of months. Thespian pursuits, cycling etc. I decided to live with the canopy like it is as it's not so bad in reality as opposed to the close up photos. The particular airframe I am doing had the yellow tint. Amongst the other distractions I've almost completed a 1/48 Spitfire (with beer barrels) to get some more airbrushing practice. One outcome of that is that I will no longer apply "Future" (or whatever the acrylic floor polish is called over in Europe - it's called Klear over here) with an airbrush. I found it much easier to get the smooth g
  8. Beautiful work on those engines. A really neat effect with the layering on top of the earlier work. And a very peaceful looking modelling spot too - mine competes with four children battling to use the computers! Cheers, Mickey
  9. If you left the canopy open, you probably wouldn't notice the difference along the fuselage spine. The plastic strip insert just goes along the length where the aerial is - leaves an even taper back to the tail fin which needs a wipe of filler. The only slight hassle it leads to is the adjustment of the bulkhead piece at the extreme rear of the cockpit, but it's easy enough. And judicious sanding of the firewalls is needed so that they put absolutely no outward pressure on the wings. All adds to the excitement! Cheers, Mickey
  10. There was an article on HS just recently which suggested a slightly shallow rear fuselage depth on the ICM kit, but you'd have to look very carefully to notice. I'm currently doing an inflight ICM IX and apart from those sink lines along the ailerons and the wing plus a bit of flash, it's been great. It is the white plastic version. Does take a bit of work, but builds really quickly - especially compared to the Flanker that I'm having a break from at the moment! The fuselage is a bit pinched and, as suggested by Flalcon Models (who do the vacform tranparencies), it is easily sorted by insert
  11. Amazing work, especially for 1/72. At least it will take up way less real estate than the 1/32! Some more close ups of the paint work as it progresses would be great - very inspirational. Cheers, Mickey
  12. Yay - my favourite little jet! Looking good so far - the paintwork should allow those resin details in that dark cockpit to be seen. I built the Aeroclub vampire and found a jig to be essential. I just made up a cardboard one using thick card. The booms were difficult but probably amongst the best fun I've had putting a kit together. Cheers, Mickey
  13. Very nice and quick work on the instrument panel. Great start. Cheers, Mickey
  14. These next photos are of the tinted windscreen. I've yet to add the compass and associated cable, and the screen is not fixed in place. I did not enjoy the tinting process. I experimented on the kit piece before moving onto the final version. Firstly it was numerous attempts at Klear ("Future") with food colouring, but it would not work for me at all. Then I tried Klear with the clear yellow, but that was no better. I finally loaded the airbrush with a 50/50 mix of Tamiya acrylic clear yellow and isopropyl alcohol, sprayed the inside of the windscreen and it worked much better. I did suffer
  15. I've finished the HUD assembly, although precious little time for modelling now that summer has briefly arrived. I ended up painting the screen a mix of clear blue and smoke in an uneven botchy style, and covered this with semi-gloss clear. The HUD lens is from gold foil which throws the light out onto the clear parts quite dramatically - hard to get a photo of it though. I used macro again to get in close, but.... Cheers, Mickey
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