Luft46's Blog

Below are shots of 2 shops in Melbourne. The first has by the look of  it been long gone with its shuttered  up look now serving as a

Poster billboard  and the second was downstairs and is now  a tattoo parlour.

I did  see  a third  one yesterday but I  didn’t  realise this was a theme.

Lastly is a few friends i spotted crossing  the  street  and  asked  to  get a photo of.  Evidently  I  was their first request:)

A couple  of  photos  of  my latest work.

The Ar 234 is up to  PSR cycle  3 and there is  really not too much  to  do before  another  round of assembly. As expected from previous  experience the join  between the body and  the  cockpit  section is problematic.

The Natter is proceeding smoothly with the decals going well and tonight a second  coat  of  Kleer going on. Not sure  whether  it will get done before  I  go to  Melbourne  next Friday for the Aussie Model  Expo and assorted other purchases.
I  must admit I use Microscale’s Micro Set and  Micro Sol.
I have  solved the problem  of remembering which  to use first with  the following  expedient 🙂

Well there has been some progress recently. The Ar 234 has been through another PSR cycle and it looks like another small bit of work will at least show the main sub components are fixed. I will be throwing some more silver paint on shortly to check progress. I have also managed to resurrect my Natter kit and will be painting the etched brass exhaust components tonight in Model Master Exhaust. Tomorrow I hope to finish the windscreen area.
Also in the mail was an order from the UK. I got some slide fit metal tube from Albion Alloys as recommended by Nigel at Britmodeller on his Arado E555 build. These are quite amazing being tubes as small as 0.3mm that can fit inside a 0.5mm tube and going up to a 0.7 tube. This should make great gun cannons and pitot tubes. They are very fine and I look forward to trying them out soon. Also in this was 2 Dapol kits. The first is some people in OO/HO that may make it onto my Munchen48 diorama. Second is a OO/HO rail petrol tanker. This was bought as a just for fun model to practice a little weathering on, maybe some grafitti from that German firm whose name escapes me now, Utti Roschen or similar.

As a break from serious kits I have started this old clunker rescued from the crap pile at the Wollongong show last year. I passed on attending this year as it was somewhat lacklustre. Hopefully I will get there next year and it will be back to its usual variety.
I built this kit way back in my youth around 12 to 16 years old so in honour of that I am going mostly old school. I am not going to do much cleanup and finessing as it would be more like lipstick on a pig. I will probably airbrush and I’m using Milliput but tarting up will be kept to a minimum. I remember using the old technique of glue plus sprue as a filler then , back then this was a new technique, though I do recall it smelled and sometimes worked too well.
Attached below are some quick progress shots ending with where I am up to now, sanding off the first layer of Milliput. As it is all raised panel lines many of these will disappear but I am not going to try and fix this. The wheels are painted matt black tyres and gloss black inners as I did back in the day. I will be mostly following the instructions even down to colour choice. It is a pity I can’t use some of the horrendous Duck Egg blue shades from Airfix from those days but i switched from enamels years ago. I expect that my splinter camo won’t be quite authentic as in those days of brush painting the demarcation lines would be quite raised as the paint came up against the lovely thick masking tape I would have used.

For the moment this kit has defeated me. I have spent the last 2 weeks trying to fix my own mistake. Somehow I stuffed up the assembly of the wheels and had to completely redo this necessitating much fiddling to fix this up. I have now got it together and it needs two more colours painted on it. It’s at this point knowing I want to do a suitably complicated camo that I have lost enthusiasm. Below is a last shot before it returns to the pile of doom. Stay tuned to see what kit is opened and probably not finished in the next instalment. Maybe the BV 40 which at least has one colour on.

Who knows anything is possible !

Latest snaps from my benchtop below.

The air compressor on the left is the new replacement one and the one on the right is the one that didn’t work, These are two very different beasts and I do love the new one. I have to buckle down and actually start using it. My good intentions of completing something have again been waylaid by a new shiny kit plucked from the cupboard. Thanks to BNA Models for excellent service including sending the replacement free and with no

hassle

.
oops , nearly out of Milliput but as always a new pack awaits in the wings. Given there is still a bit of work on the next kit it will be needed.

This is an earlier shot of the Planet FW Entwurf B 3 X 1000 – a lovely looking plane from Planet. The other engine is for a A-10 warthog due for an Arado E555 what if plane ( hang the aerodynamics ) and some USB’s to be done in German fuel drums. More on that another day.

And that;s it folks

It’s summer here in Sydney and supposedly it should be hot beach weather, at least that was my plan for this week. It looks like that is not very likely. Over the last few days of holidays I have been doing a lot of modelling and other leisure activities like losing to my son at Monopoly, he’s almost as gracious a winner as I am ( not) and seeing the new Star Wars like half the western world and JOY with Jennifer Lawrence who looks like a young Zellwiger in this.
Anyway belong is a quick summary of where I am up to. Nothing is finished and despite the bad compressor I have been pushing on with my painting.

First up is the P1000 from Takom after it’s second coat of Tamiya TS3 Dark Yellow spray can paint. It needs a third coat and a little sanding for a paint run and a large hair before I add any other colours. I chose the spray can as I know these are good as I always use their undercoat. I don’t know how they compare to the legendary Halfords from the UK but they do the job.

Next up is the Natter which I did in IJA Grey, not sure whether it should be IJA or IJN but as it is J46 who cares. This is again in Tamiya spray can but I have had lots of issues with the canopy masking and will be decanting some spray for touchups.

The Toad BV P202 is still progressing with RLM 75 added to the main body and the wing via airbrush. The masking again let me down a little here – something I need to work on though this may be more of an airbrushing issue. I need to do RLM 82 then touchups with RLM 76 for the above mistakes.

Lastly is the BV 40, this kit is coming along nicely and just needs a single spray of 82 via airbrush. Again the humidity is killing me on this one.

So given the weather I am going to hve to do more construction work , first stop may be some part finished kits – watch this space.And finally something less serious

Due to a bad confluence of busyness, airbrushing issues including a compressor that I think is on the way out and issues with my large stockpile of aeromaster paints I have not posted a thing. Now the festive season is past I have holidays and free time. Just a quick shot of the Takom Landkreuzer I am working on. If I am lucky I may get to airbrushing the BV 40 later today.

OK 68 brushes
16 knife handles and 11 pairs of tweezers 
I think a few can go away for  another  day