2016 - A Year in Review

Surprisingly productive year for me with 7 completions... I'll usually average around 5.

First of the rank is a 1/48 Hasegawa F-4EJ

More images Here

This was followed by Tamiya excellent 1/48 Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero

More images here

Wanting something quick and easy for the NSW show I chose the 1/144 GWH Victor B.2

More images here

My only armour piece, the 1/48 Bronco Staghound Mk 1

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More images here

Next was the 1/48 Airfix Hurricane Mk 1. Built for the NSW model show's Airfix Cup in 2017. An excellent kit which was built in a couple of weeks.

More Images here

Onto the big project for the year, the 1/48 Kittyhawk Jaguar Gr.1A. This took a bit of work but I'm happy with the final result.

More images here

Finally, was the 1/48 Eduard boxing of the Accurate Miniatures SBD-5 Dauntless.Probably my least enjoyable build of the year

More images here

Hopefully I can match this in 2017 and make a dent in the stash.

1/48 Eduard (Accurate Miniatures) - Douglas Dauntless No 25 Sqn RNZAF

I'd heard many good things about the Accurate Miniatures Dauntless, alas my experience wasn't that positive.

Some issues, but not all, were definitely of my own making but others weren't. Vague instructions , lots of flash, lots of pointless PE coupled with the odd Anders Error (AE) resulted in a build that I was glad to see the back off.

The RNZAF only operated the Dauntless in combat for a short time (less than 6 months IIRC). This aircraft was flown by the Commanding Officer of 25 (Dive Bomber) Squadron,  Squadron Leader T. J. McLean de Lange.

If you're interested in finding out more check out Peter Mossbergs excellent RNZAF in the Pacific Dauntless page here.

The Kit

• Eduard boxing of the Accurate Miniatures SBD-5 Dauntless including PE sets, resin gun sets and resin wheels

Aftermarket

• Model Master barrels

Decals 

• Aeromaster RNZAF in the Pacific
• Kit Stencils

Painted With

• Mr Color Lacquers
• Tamiya Acrylics 
• Testors Glosscoate
• Testors Dullcoate
• Vallejo Acrylics for details

Weathered with

• Oil paint wash
• AK Interactive enamel products
• Coloured Pencils

Build Threads

• Britmodeller
• Kiwi Modeller
• Aussie Modeller

The Pictures

1/48 Airfix Hawker Hurricane Mk 1 - AVM Sir Keith Park 1940

I've built this kit for the 2017 NSW Scale Model Shows "Airfix Cup". The NSW Scale model competition is run by the Illawarra Plastic Modeller Association of which I'm a member.

The competition doesn't allow aftermarket but you are allowed to use alternate markings. I wanted to do Sir Keith Parks personal Hurricane. The markings don't exist in decal form so I decided to try and make the markings using my silhouette portrait cutter. 

There is not much known about Parks Hurricane. The images below are the only ones I know of

The serial is not known but is  most commonly depicted as P3854 and this is what MOTAT in Auckland have used on their replica . but they've also got a sky fuselage  band, and code numbers that are white and massive  which IIRC weren't introduced until 1941 so I'm not taking that as gospel  . 

Having read a couple of threads online, in particular this post which concludes the aircraft could be a N or L serial. And this one which suggests N2520, I've decided to go with N2520 just to be different.

As an aside the Britmodeller post and picture also makes the Airfix Hurricane inaccurate for OK 1 as the kit has the access panel on the side which is clearly not in the photo, Oh well  ;) 

I've also chosen a different style of fin flash from what others have done in the past. . The reason for this was that if the aircraft is a early N series aircraft I figured it could have an early style fin flash. Photos of BoB Hurricanes I looked out seemed to have this style as well.

I sued coloured pencils a lot for the weathering on this build as I'd never tried them before. I found them pretty good for streaks etc.

Keith Park was a pretty amazing guy, he was a WWI ace, commanded 11 Group during WW2 , then was in charge of the defence of Malta and was seriously considered to take command of the RAAF late in the war. Sadly it's not just NZ where he was forgotten, it wasn't until 2010 that the UK got around to erecting a permanent memorial to him. When I was in the UK in 2012 I had to go and check his memorial out.

Anyway, enough of the preamble. Onto the details

The Kit

• 1/48 Airfix Hawker Hurricane MK 1. 
  
  

  

  
  

  

Fit on this kit is pretty good and I quite like the plastic Airfix have used. That said the 2 areas I had fit issues were the area on the trailing edge of the wing at the wing root.

 
And the worst area was the panel under the nose. If I'd glued this to mate with the fuselage halves there would be a large step between the wings and the under nose panel. S I glued it flush with the wings and filled the large gap then re-scribed. This was actually the easier than expected.

Aftermarket

• Eduard PE Seatbelts

Markings

• Masks cut by me
• AVM Pennant and Cerberus Decals made by me
• Stencils from the kit. 

Painted with

• Mr Color Lacquers
• Tamiya Acrylics 
• Testors Glosscoate
• Winsor and Newton Galeria Flat Coat
• Vallejo Acrylics for details

Weathered with

• Oil paint wash
• Coloured Pencils
• Pigments and pastels 

Build Threads

• Britmodeller
• Kiwi Modeller
• Aussie Modeller

The Pictures

The Final Say

Living up to my Hamfistedness, I've since found out that the wing roundels are to far outboard. When I looked a the instructions again I saw what I did wrong.. I I used the red inner circle as a reference. along with a panel line as the reference to align the mask. Unfortunately I should have aligned the panel line on the inboard of the red of the roundel, I did on the outboard ..... DOH !! And apparently the font and location of of the serials is wrong as well. I call these sort of things AE's (Anders Errors) :D 

I briefly considered fixing it but because the marking are painted, and there's a bit of paint on them Id's near to sand it all back otherwise the impression of the roundel will remain. It will mean far to much work for this kit so I'm just going to leave it as is.

All that said, this is a cracker of a kit. It's clearly the best MK 1 in 1/48 scale. I only encountered one area that required a little work.  I really hope they do the Mk IIc and Mk IId.