MikeC

Agreed: been there, done that. This checked nose looks fine to me.

View File ThunderboltMkII-79Sqn.studio3 KJ233/NV:G of 79 Sqn RAF in Burma, seen at 2:55 in this short film: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060025281 Date? The latter part of 1944-1945, I can't be more precise than that at the moment. Sized for Hasegawa 1:32 kit. Includes spares of all markings. Submitter MikeC Submitted 05/16/2022 Category Specific Aircraft

Hello there

Hi Franz, good to have you here

Hi Jim, welome aboard.

Agreed. I'm very pleased with my Portrait 3. Me too, and I'm not a dinosaur, but an ex-IT person. 😀

Hello Gassman and . Like you & Max, I'm in the UK, in St Neots, Cambs. Yes, the machines are an expensive initial outlay. However, against that set the cost of all the aftermarket decal sheets you won't have to buy. It will pay for itself over time, and you can have the exact subject you want to do. I have a Portrait 3 which does everything I need. The only accessory I've added is a low-tack cutting mat as the masking material I use - Artool Ultra Mask - did not easily detach from the normal-tack mat supplied with the machine. [Edit] I bought it from Graphtec, and highly recommend them - excellent service. https://www.graphtecgb.shop/shop/

Hello there, and . I was a Brit in Texas once, in fact twice - a grand total of 5 hours or so in total passing through DFW en route LGW to ABQ and return. 🙂

FINISHED!! This one seems to have fought me most of the way: perhaps that's my fault, perhaps the kit, perhaps a bit of both. But here it is, warts'n'all, and I'm now rather pleased with it: it's been a useful learning experience from the masking point of view, not least the checks. I'll do some proper RFI shots in due course, but meanwhile, here's some "taster" pics: A small touch of artistic licence: I'm not one of those who insist that all invasion stripes painted in the days before D-Day were scruffy ("hobby-horse" alert!!), but the black straying up the aerial was deliberate on my part. The other stray black on the stripe behind wasn't, but I decided to leave it anyway. Did you wonder "Will it ever be finished"? I know I did. Thanks for staying with me, and for all the encouraging remarks along the way.

Thanks Kev; wilco when she's on her legs.

Suddenly it's coming together and starting to look as it should. Today I matted down the nose checks and redid the anti-glare panel which had suffered some overspray at some point. Then I added Capt Johnson's scoreboard using a Kits World set of generic kill markings; mended the tailwheel which broke earlier in the build (but nothing superglue and a pin couldn't fix); removed the windscreen masks plus the kit canopy which was being used to mask the cockpit (so it wasn't completely useless after all ); and added the Quickboost exhausts. Sometimes you just get one of those kits that fight you all the way, but (touch wood) it's very nearly the last lap!

I'm back. Funny thing, I failed to get this over the line in the GB on LSP, so a lot of pressure was off and I felt I wanted to get back to it. I've been doing the nose masking and painting. In the end I applied all the checks individually, one by one, then removed the pieces where the red was going to go. It was a slow process, but in the end I felt it was the best way to align them correctly. I was quite gratified by the way they fitted: all those endless test cuts/fittings with paper paid off. Btw, that purple stuff is liquid mask. And although I picked up a pot of Tamiya gloss red by mistake (the gloss and matt are X7 and XF7 respectively), I was reasonably happy with the result - nothing a coat of matt varnish won't fix. There were several areas where the small masks were not quite tacked down properly, so a bit of delicate brush-work was needed on some squares. Still by no means perfect, but as always the camera magnifies any errors: it looks a lot better in real life than it does here (honest!). So in the interests of finishing this bird (and the interests of my sanity) I'm going to accept it as is.

Never thought of that, perhaps I'll give it a go.

This may seem an odd topic for a forum dedicated to paint masks, but bear with me please. I take it that most, if not all, of us here are interested in masking and painting markings because we believe (rightly imo) that it give a better representation of a real aircraft's markings, and we enjoy the process (or we wouldn't do it). But thinking about a Spitfire I'm just embarking on, it occurred to me that the red-doped fabric patches over the gun ports are better represented by decals. The real thing was a doped fabric patch, so the decal is actually better at representing that; and a decal will shrink slightly as it dries (particularly if setting solutions are used) and thus settle into the gun port - again, like the real thing. This made me think about other occasions when decals may be preferable to masks, and I can think of three: As above, Spitfire gun ports: and many other types, of course; Where you have to, such as: Very small markings like data stencils - often these are decals irl anyway, I've even seen them with 1:1 silvering; Complex markings like unit badges which are beyond the capability of the cutting machine or the modeller (without intending to be derogatory to anyone); Dayglo strips on RAF trainers in the 1960s-70s scheme: these were adhesive strips (like Fablon) irl, and thus a decal will represent their slight thickness better. Can anyone think of any more?

Thanks Max, I'm hoping so. It's so very nearly at the end, but to achieve a finish (taking into account the probability of at least one more setback) would have meant rushing it. I had enough of deadlines when I was at work, I try to avoid them these days. I've been following your Lanc painting on FB, looks really great.

Indeed, that seems to be the only way Max. But it's slow. However, I'm afraid there comes a time when a model can turn into a bit of a chore rather than a pleasure, and that time has been reached with this: I never thought I'd get there with a Mustang, but here I am. So I'm shelving this for a little while, and switching to something else for the moment. But the Comet will be back eventually.

Thanks Max. The first job was to unmask the white I painted earlier, and mask behind it, then do a topcoat of white. Don't worry, there is a band of Artool Ultramask in front of the Tamiya tape. The next job will be masking out the checks to be left white. I'm not sure how I'm going to tackle that other than one check at a time, but perhaps I'll think of something: any suggestions welcome. I have two masks for the checks, each one for half the nose. I'm dubious about trying to pick up a whole set in one go, I tried it earlier and it didn't go well as the transfer tape didn't pick up a complete set. Incidentally, for once I'm a little disappointed I did a good job on the upper nose seam: I'll need to identify the centreline of the fuselage, and even a trace of a seam would have been helpful.

Hello back from old England, and

Anyway, no problems with the wording on the nose art. Though I say it myself, that doesn't look far out. http://www.littlefriends.co.uk/wp-content/groupimages/gallery/339g/6n-j1.jpg The last major painting job is the chequered nose band, and I'm going to rest it a day of three before tackling that. Thanks for all the kind words and encouragement so far.

Thanks Max. You're so right, there are so many masterpieces on the fora and at shows, and very few people seem to admit they've had a problem or two. I suspect that's not mere vanity, but a natural feeling that one's probably the only person who has had such problems (that way lies discouragement), and a hope that no-one notices; or perhaps not wanting to bore people with "rookie" mistakes.

Some more progress: slow but steady, and occasionally some negative progress. The learning point from this is that when masking with lots of tape, make sure the boundaries between pieces of tape are complete, the tape is overlapped and fully stuck down. Next learning point: the bomb/tank racks remained natural metal so I should've left them off until after painting. And I thought that after 50+ years I was starting to get the hang of this modelling lark! A few scratches on the "6" to sort out! So I sorted that lot out, and painted the bits of the flap that hide under the wing skin when they're up, and after letting it all cure, masked up for the insignia blue. Then painted that, and did the first part of the nose art.

I've not changed anything Gene, all the pics are in the same sub-folder on Postimages. Have you tried using an alternative browser?

Very nicely done. 👍

Three or four days to apply, 15 minutes or thereabouts to remove: One of the most satisfying aspects of modelling is when the model starts to look something like the one in my head. However, there's a lot to do yet.