Luft46's Blog

I got this yesterday in my favourite bookshop and given the predicted heatwave for this weekend I may get a bit of it read at least.

In this year of Covid I have not done much productive modelling, lots of started kits but nothing finished.

In part this is due to reading more as a break after work for the long commute from the study to the rest of the house. The first photo is my collection still left of books I bought 2 to 5 years ago and the second is books from the last 2 years. As you can see there are still quite a few left even after 8 months of solid reading.

And the pile from the last 2 years.

As shown by the shots below I decided to clean up my working area by moving everything to my other workbench. Nothing else has happened apart from the sprue containing my missing part arriving from Das Werk arriving so that maybe I can at least get this up to where it needs painting at least.

Currently I’m busy on 1:1 scale gardening and after carting dirt, making up new garden beds from IKEA like kits etc the job of tidying the model bench is just a Bridge Too Far.

Despite having more time due to mostly not commuting progress has been slow at best.

This has not been a good modelling year in terms of productivity but lots of kits have had some work done on them. Below is progress on the Das Werk Borgward Wanze in 1.35

This is a relatively simple kit as long as you don’t lose a major part like I did. Still doing work in spite of this and it is not a bottleneck for the reasons above.

And a visitor recently at night

Nothing happening for the last two weeks. Just not motivated and its way too cold in my garage atm.

This is very much a step by step process. and assembly can be slow as you wait on parts drying or setting up. You can skip ahead and do some subsections as this will help in preparation for the current section. This was particularly applicable to the fitting on the magazine holders. I would assemble all the magazines very early on and use this to check the fit for the placement of the receiver units that go inside the main housing.

Been away last weekend picking up some kits mainly being the Special Hobby He 162. I’ve forged on with more work on the DAS Werk MaschineKannon including lots of moulding pins

Not been much in the mood for modelling for a while. The BV141 has come and gone off the bench. It needs seat belts and guns so it is resting whilst these come by mail. The cockpit is half finished and the fuselage halves are glued together and that’s it for now.

Have done a final coat on the mine clearer pads which will be given a light dusting after it’s put together.

The attached photo shows the desk configuration for the last few days.

I have on the other hand been reading the revised William Green Luftwaffe book entries on the BV 141 and FW 189. Interestingly the cockpit area on the 141 was a copy of the 189 before some changes and major problem with the 141 was issues with the undercarriage hydraulics, engine vibrations and the wing shape changes. All these delayed it considerably

This is a nice kit from what I can see so far. The only niggle I can see is the shell cases are split in two so will require some fettling I suspect. Based on what I can see I will be buying their earlier small tank killer which I have some photos of it in that Berlin Tank wrecks book I bought earlier.

Well we all know what IKEA is like. I’ve now finished the first two and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has given the ok for a third one. Whilst it will be good when finished they are a pain to put together. They also produce a shit tonne of paper and cardboard.