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Hello all,

I am going to build an Easter egg diorama. Since there are several different techniques involved with this, I decided to do a quick in-progress build. I will be using the Hasegawa P-51 and FW-190A egg plane kits:

Boxes.jpg

My idea is for a low level dogfight over some European hedgerows sometime in 1944. I know this isn’t realistic, but they are eggs so I can get away with it. For this I will have to mold/cast a part, build a base and display two aircraft in-flight. If anyone has any tips for a better/easier way of doing any of this than the way I am doing it, please let me know.

Since the FW does not come with a pilot, I am going to copy the pilot from the P-51:

CopyPilot01.jpg

I know the flight gear should be different, but when viewing through the canopy, the pilot will not be that visible. I will be using a product called Amazing Mold Putty. It is a 2-part putty that you mix equal amounts together. After mixing place the putty over the item that you want to make a mold of. After about 30 minutes the mold is done:

CopyPilot02.jpg

CopyPilot03.jpg

Since the pilot will not be that visible in the cockpit, I will cast the German pilot out of Durhams putty. It is a powder that you mix with water and when it dry’s it is hard as a rock:

CopyPilot04.jpg

After about an hour here is my copy, not perfect but with a little putty here and there it will be fine:

CopyPilot09.jpg

Tomorrow I will work on the base.

Thanks for looking, let me know what you think.

Els

Edited by Els
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Some work that I did today.

The base was started off by cutting a footprint shaped piece of 1 by 6 from my wood scraps pile. It was stained dark for looks but also to seal it against the wet Durhams putty that I will be using. Pieces of cardboard were glued where I want the hedgerows to be. More Durhams putty was used to make a dirt road and secure the cardboard:

Terrain01.jpg

After that was dry, some bird cage sand was mixed into more Durhams to make furrows in one field and landscape in the others:

Terrain02.jpg

This cord will be used to make some dried grass/weeds. Just chop off a section, unravel it and there you have it. Very easy and can be dyed with thinned paints if you want different shades:

Terrain03.jpg

Here is the basic base after washes and various scenic products:

Terrain07.jpg

Terrain09.jpg

It is a bit bright/clean right now but tomorrow after all the glue dries I will airbrush some thinned coats of paint to dirty it up a bit. The grass will also be chopped back so that it doesn’t look as wild. I think it might be a little out of scale but it is hard to tell with eggs.

Thanks for looking, let me know what you think.

Els

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Neo, thanks for your feedback.

Here is what got done today.

The base was darkened and trimmed up a little bit. Some of the cardboard was left showing to look like wood fences. I am not sure that I like it though. I might glue some more foliage over it:

Terrain10.jpg

TerrainDarkening.jpg

The control surfaces for the FW were modified. Hopefully this is correct for a climbing right turn:

Europe4401.jpg

The P-51 pilot is finished. Hasegawa provides two sets of eye decals and they look pretty good on the figures:

Europe4402.jpg

Tomorrow I will paint up the FW pilot and try to figure out what to do with the props. I like to use Propblur, but I don’t have any. I will try to figure out something else.

Thanks for looking, let me know what you think.

Els

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Looks even better. Ive been wanting to build some egg plane for the past year but never got around to it

Check on the ARC main page tools and tips section there is an article on how to make your own spinning prop

Cheers

Neo

Edited by Neo
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Neo,

Thanks for letting me know about the props in the tips section. I experimented with a couple of different ideas, but I am not really happy with the results. The worst part of this is that several months ago I bought some small electric motors to spin the props when I finally got around to building this diorama. By the time I remembered them, I already had the 2 kits glued together. Maybe next time...

Sometimes it pays to look closely at the instructions, even for a kit as simple as an egg plane.

This kit comes with 2 schemes, a blue and silver and a green and silver. I had other plans for the blue/silver so I went for the other version:

01.jpg

So the plane was painted and about 85% decaled when I noticed these little beauties:

02.jpg

Since this plane was from the wrong theater, it was either strip the decals or build another kit. Luckily I had another in the stash so it's another P-51 build for this dio.

Thanks for looking, let me know what you think.

Els

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Aggressor supporter,

Thanks for the comments. That putty works great for small pieces.

The FW is finished. The pilot is barely visible; I probably could have just put a round blob of brown putty in the cockpit, called it a pilot, and no one would have noticed:

FW-19077.jpg

FW-19079.jpg

FW-19083.jpg

FW-19082.jpg

The new P-51 is half painted and should be done tomorrow.

I think I can see the finish line now.

Thanks for looking, let me know what you think.

Els

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