Hello all,
It comes with a bit of a heavy heart that this will probably be the last update. It seems to be the digital tumbleweed that I mentioned in the first post earlier this year, and I'll be honest it's pretty disheartening to see the view counter tick over without any comments, feedback, or anything really.
So let's finish this off.
I took some time applying the basecoat to the Stormsurge, looked a bit ramshackle being only half painted. The arms are yet to be attached but I've added a couple of 3x1 magnets to the elbow joints to help with transporting the finished thing. Rather nice of Deadly Print to include the magnet recesses for such a situation.
The front plate is yet to be attached as I want to get the console monitors done first, but it already looks far more imposing than the original model, and can almost draw eyelevel to a Knight. Maybe a KX139 might appear in the future, we'll see.
Was also able to get some more Fire Warriors done. These are still in early stages so fair bit of tidying up and detailing to do, but it's good that I'm getting through the mass of Drones.
Onto the Airfix, and I decided to bite the bullet and get the Mustang done. The experience with the Alclads (again!) put me off for a while but I've gone back and was able to:
- Neaten up the yellow/green banding at the front. I wasn't too keen on how it tapered at first. It's come up a little thick so I may go back over with some wet/dry.
- The cockpit has been masked and sprayed. The Eduard mask wasn't too bad but the pieces could be more prominent on the sheet.
- Started applying the decals.
The decals were a bit of a letdown. The chequerboard pattern just didn't want to fit and the instructions provided were pretty poor, needing to be swamped with softener a few times before it fell into place, and even then I suspect it was more luck than skill.
Some neatening up with a brush is needed but, in my eyes at least, that's the worst of it done.
Also started the prop and spinner. The blue banding was hard to achieve due to the curvature of the spinner, but I used a ring of blu-tack and tried by eye to get it level, and overall it's not a bad attempt at all.
I've also painted the interior of the TSR-2. This was pretty difficult due to having to recreate that shade of blue by eye. It's slightly different but once it's all put together I doubt it'd ever be noticeable. The ejector pin marks will also be hidden by the cockpit and consoles.
In the meantime I've started on the bomb bay superstructure and got some nice goodies to go in it:
Here we have 2x 300kt
WE.177 bombs, each one 15x the power of the Hiroshima bomb. I'll be honest I'm a little disappointed with them; they're a generic bomb part lacking any detail of the real thing. In addition there are some big resin gates and flaws, and no way of mounting them to the model. Might return them and go for the more expensive but more detailed Shapeways set.
Here's where the project is going to get difficult. Next step is to attach the engine intakes which require painting beforehand. Still unsure on the anti-flash white recipe I was thinking of, some recommendations would be helpful.
So I suppose that's it. If there's some sufficient interest I may update this semi-regularly, but I get the impression my work isn't really piquing anyone's interest. Still I'd like to thank everyone who did contribute. Thanks for all your suggestions and comments.