I was in our local WH Smiths the other day and saw that they had a load of Star Wars kits in, including Revell's kit of the Snowspeeder from The Empire Strikes Back. It was only £6, and I wanted to have a simple kit to practice some painting and weathering techniques on. Well, I had a free weekend for the first time in ages, and during a recent sort-out I'd gathered together all the left-over decals from other kits I'd done. An idea started to form itself...

Snowspeeder GR.1 of 9 Squadron, RAF







It's a very easy kit to put together, and ends up about 10cm long. It says on the box it's 1:52 scale; that's hardly a common scale for model kits, and I suspect someone's just divided the size of the full-size filming prop by the size of the model. That being said, from the size of the two crew this is more like 1:72, and I suspect that the filming prop probably wasn't 'full size' or in proportion.

Pedantic nit-pickers will note that the serial is from the early 1960s (it's from a Gnat kit) and the RAF markings are of a style not used on front-line aircraft since the early 1980s. I suggest that given the subject matter we can all suspend our disbelief a little...

Finally, here she is zipping her way through the Welsh valleys on a low-level sortie:

A bit more than a year ago I went on an introductory course on airbrush painting for model-makers. I ended up buying an airbrush and I've been using it for various of my modelling projects since. However, I wanted to try some more advanced techniques and the same company runs a two-day course on camouflage and weathering techniques. The first part was mainly about practising painting camouflage patterns (fiddly, but I learned some ideas to practice with) and the second was about how to make a kit look less like a small clean model and more like a real plane or tank or whatever, complete with dust, dirt, mud, rust, stains and so on.

We had to bring a kit to work on so I went to the local model shop and picked up a BTR-70 Soviet-era armoured personnel carrier in 1/35 scale. This wasn't too small, given that I'm very much learning in this area, and was rather simpler than many tank kits. I built it up in advance, and took the assembled but unpainted kit along with me.

( painting up and dirtying down )

In many ways I'm surprised at how well this turned out, although we had a very good tutor and with only four students we got a lot of guidance and supervision. It's certainly encouraged me to try new ideas although I'm going to have to resist the temptation (rather too common if you read model-making magazines) to build every kit looking as if it's of something that's been jumped up and down on with hobnail boots and then left in a wet field for six months....

My most recent bit of scale modelling:



I've written this up on Britmodeller.com and also commented on a thread there reviewing this kit.

A bit more background: this is quite a famous Phantom, being the one in which Randall Cunningham and William Driscoll became the US Navy's only flying aces of the Vietnam War. Their 3rd, 4th and 5th MiG shootdowns occurred in the course of one flight, which wasn't even a combat air patrol; sent on a bombing mission, they engaged North Vietnamese aircraft seeking to intercept other attacking US aircraft, and shot down two before ending up in what has become a legendary dogfight with a MiG-17. (For a long time it was believed the MiG was flown by 'Colonel Tomb', a supposed NV ace, but it's now thought he was a propaganda construct, although the pilot Cunningham engaged was no doubt very skilled.)

You might expect 'Showtime 100' to have been preserved in a museum, but in fact it survived Cunningham and Driscoll's final victory by a matter of minutes, being shot down by a surface-to-air missile as they exited the combat area. Cunningham and Driscoll ejected and were rescued, although unfortunately Cunningham has since become rather more infamous for being caught as one of the most corrupt US congressmen ever.

I was at a model show the other week where one of the dealers had a whole boxful of mini-kits based on the Minions from Despicable Me. I thought it might be nice to show attimes_bracing that I'm not stuck making models of planes, so I had a root around for one she might find amusing.

Well, she enjoyed Dredd, so...



( Read more... )

He's about 6cm tall, and I went as close as I could to the comic colour scheme.

Yes, the badge does say BANANA.

Now and again I post about my occasional hobby of model-making. It lets me enjoy the challenge of making stuff without having to have a workshop (although I have a growing collection of modelling tools and gubbins) and I think it's good for me to have an interest that teaches and rewards patience, care and precision. My aim is to be able one day to complete models to the sort of standard I saw at the IPMS Scale Modelworld exhibition I went to last year or as seen in the posts in the 'Ready for Inspection' thread on the Britmodeller.com site.

Something I picked up on very quickly when getting more interested in modelling is that many serious model-making enthusiasts don't use conventional painting techniques for models, preferring instead an airbrush. Certainly, there are a lot of painting techniques that are almost impossible without an airbrush, but even for more straightforward paint jobs it seemed that the quality of finish could be a lot higher. I was tempted to get an airbrush to try for myself, but put off by the worry that if I didn't know what I was doing it would be a waste of money. So, when I saw an advert at Modelworld for an airbrushing course, it seemed the ideal opportunity to try and see if this was for me.

It was a bit of a trip down to the course venue in Lancing, on the Sussex coast, but when I got there I found a busy little industrial unit crammed with airbrush and painting supplies and a small studio set up for the eight of us on the course. The morning was mainly an introduction to airbrushes and ancillary equipment, including a lot of explanation of care and maintenance. Our first efforts were confined to doodling on paper to get the hang of airbrush use - too close, or too much ink, and you get a squashed-spider splatter, but with a bit of practice all of us were able to achieve both reasonably fine lines and broad, even coverage.

After lunch, we tried actual model-painting, via a boxful of parts that had been helpfully primed beforehand. A few swipes back and forth... OMG! Flat, even, smooth paint that shows the finest surface detail underneath! After brush-painting, this was a revelation. We were using water-based acrylic paints, so a quick blast with a hairdryer was enough to dry the first layer ready for another; the trick to airbrushing is to apply several thin layers rather than one thick one. I was sold, and the offer of a discount on any purchases made at the course was enough to tempt most of us. I picked up an Iwata Revolution CR, very similar to the model we'd been using, together with a small compressor, a cleaning kit and some acrylic paints in shades suitable for some of the model work I wanted to try.

The pre-Xmas social whirl and the need to get hold of a small spray extractor meant that I didn't get around to trying anything serious with this until a few weeks ago. My first efforts were on sawn-off lengths of PVC drain pipe I'd picked up from a hardware store, and a bit of practice convinced me that I could at least get even paint cover on a non-flat surface. So, what to start on for an actual model?

At this point I recalled that swisstone had, some while back, given me as a present a box set of five 1:72 models of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight's British fighters (four Spitfires and a Hurricane). These were all reasonably straightforward models, and with five of them I had the chance to work out any mistakes and try again with something similar. So I set to work assembling a Spitfire and the Hurricane and then having a go at painting them.

First was the Spitfire. For this one I was trying for a generic paint job rather than to replicate a particular aircraft. After priming with primer from a spray can (Halford's plastic primer works fine!) I went for a base layer of brown before masking it with plastic film as a prelude to spraying over in green. To my pleasant surprise the result wasn't too bad for a first attempt:

( pictures of small planes )

That's enough WW2 stuff for now. I think my next project will be the 1:48 BAe Hawk in Red Arrows colour scheme that I got a while back, after which I may feel up to finishing off and painting the 1:48 TSR2 I've been working at on-and-off for the last year or so.

My current project is the 1:48 Airfix TSR2 I've had lying around for a while. In a fit of enthusiasm I bought a detailing kit for it; here's one of the ejection seats after painting and customisation, with a pen for scale.



This will not be a quick project.

On the way back from New Street Station I walked past the Ian Allen Book & Model Shop, and as I often door had a peer at what was in the window; IA stock a good range of aviation/militaria specialist books, and the odd interesting model kit.

And there was a Saturn V kit, but not one I'd seen before. It wasn't the good old Airfix 1:144 kit, recently re-released, nor was it the Revell 1:96 giant. I peered more closely, and noticed that the kit was by an outfit called Dragon, and that the box was big. Really big. Then I saw.

1:72

So, twice the size in every dimension of the Airfix Saturn V I used to have. The complete kit would be over 5' tall.

It was also £137.

I don't have time. I don't really have space (we have a big flat, but even so). And that's a lot of money.

Fortunately, my bout of it-must-be-mine! syndrome was dampened by this review, which notes that for a large-scale kit, where the point is surely additional detail and accuracy, the Dragon kit is actually not just poorly-detailed but flat-out wrong in several places. Oh well, I'll just have to get around to building the 1:48 TSR-2 kit I've had for about three years...