Luft46's Blog

For a change I have dry weather after 2 weeks of rain and shortly another week of rain is due.

So I’ve taken advantage of the break to spray the MaschineKannone kit with Tamiya TS99 rattle can grey followed by a generic gloss varnish rattle can. This was quite smelly so I’m still waiting for this to outgas before I work on it tomorrow on my day off.

I’ve also done some work on the base with a base of DAS covered with dark brown weathering powder mixed with PVA and water. In some parts I mixed in some light brown powder with this to get a drier look in some sections of the base. I’ll make further adjustments on how this looks as I go.

The lighter coloured circles are where the gun base will rest.

I’ve also been slowly working on the Lippisch canopy vac form former – still Milliput and PSR but it’s slowly getting there.

Having a little extra time whilst I waited on the outgassing I dragged out the MicroMir Kaiten 10 sub kit. It’s basic in parts breakup and moulding with quite a few thick sprue gates but not too bad for what is a more limited run kit. I spent the arvo doing parts clean up for the major parts with nothing assembled yet.

Doing the MicroMir kit is particularly appropriate as they are a Ukrainian manufacturer.

I got back on the weekend after going to see a friend near Newcastle. I collected a lot of kits and accessories from him. Before that I had been to Frontline and unusually found lots of kits I wanted including the Russian shipping container fitted out with 4 missiles, including one you can pose in a firing position.

Pictured below is the stash that I got excluding various accessories including guns, some metal pieces for various scratch building jobs and some RATO units

I also took up the below two kits that I was stuck on. The B17 tail wheel well is now fixed and the 8 barrels on the Flak gun are now reasonably well aligned. Either of these kits could be restarted now.

So apart from the Li P13 which still needs a new canopy to be vacformed the big question is which kit I work on next and I am still undecided on that one !

I’ve finished decorating the cockpit with various control panels I have lying around in the spares box or rather set of drawers. It’s not designed for an open cockpit but will look ok when the canopy goes on.

The exhaust area looks to be on its last PSR cycle but a busy week has precluded it getting done.

Speaking of the canopy I’m hoping to get some suitable clear plastic soon and have a go at doing a vac form one. I’ve made the form based on the current canopy but it will need some modification to get it ok.

I’m seeing a friend today and picking up about 9 months backlog of purchases including the already infamous block of flats kit- the Takom Berlin flak tower.

Apart from the relatively crude moulding the LiP13 kit from PM suffers from a pretty shitty canopy.

Firstly it does not fit very well which I have been slowly addressing and secondly the mould attachment points are overlarge and impinge into the canopy area.

I had tried to fix this with a fun afternoon of sanding the canopy with toothpaste but due to the cheap brittle plastic they used this resulted in some stress lines in the glass and very little visible difference in the obvious attachment points.

So somewhat inevitably the only solution left is to vacform a new canopy. I have done this before but not for many years and of course in the post Xmas clean up I have of course thrown out the couple of sheets I was keeping just in case.

The white blob at the front left is the canopy filled with Milliput !

Did a bit more yesterday. I’ve got the two body halves joined and Milliputed now.

I’ve also started some work on the cockpit by thinning the sidewalls and adding in a backplate for the seat. I’ve also added in a rocket engine at the back of the tail in metal tube. I had to break out the faux Dremel for the first time in years to carve out this hole as the Dremel drills were too large. Surprisingly it still works.

More work over the last two days. I was going to do the rear exhaust area in Milliput but have now switched to plastic card.

Putting the plastic card at the cockpit rear has incidentally improved the canopy fit in at least one dimension of the three.

I’ve also quickly assembled a German etch brass seat that fits in now. I’m going to thin the cockpit walls a little so I can fit in some instrument panels along the side. Not joining the fin in yet is allowing me work in the cockpit area at least.

Some changes after a fair bit of modelling. I’ve put the kit trolley back in the spares box and dug out the trolley for the Ar E377 from the Dragon.

As I’ve already done most of the filling and sanding already this seems the better option. Again this was from the spares box.

see below

Last year was disappointing for the known reasons and I didn’t get any models finished but I now have a pile of 9 ready to paint kits.

I’m going to do some more airbrush practice on Wednesday so maybe I will be able do some real painting this month.

In the meantime I  have dug out the PM Lippisch P13a kit. It’s a reasonably well known kit but not necessarily in a good way. It’s a simple kit in terms of parts count but otherwise has lots of fit issues and parts that are just too simple in their detail level.

There is a good review on Modelling Madness which summarises the issues well – canopy does not fit and the cockpit needs better details, intake needs  replacement with a metal tube as does the rocket at the rear, a blanking plate in the middle, the trolley wheels are too simple and shitty decals.

As I go along you’ll see what I have done.

Intake in after some Dremeling (RHS) and lots of Milliput .I’m going to keep the fin portion apart for a while until I fix up the cockpit and canopy area and then fit it.

I did find two diagrams of roughly what the cockpit area should look like at least.

The pilot sits up surprisingly high according to these diagrams.

This is a quick update on this kit from Takom in 1.72

Its certainly well detailed and the Hanomag doesn’t seem to have some of the issues Special Hobbies one did. The Meillerwagen is lots of pieces stuck together with a bit of a tendency when trying to add some parts for other bits to be knocked off. Adding the jacks to raise and lower the cradle has been a bit of a struggle at times.

I’m taking a weeks break so no real modelling will be done but maybe some magazines might get read.