The modeling underdog

Eagles under a royal flag: the Arado Ar-65 in bulgarian service. Part.III

2011-10-14T19:30:00.000-03:00

After a long, long time I set around April this year to finish this great kit from RS. It only had to have its final clear coating, using Revell's 1 gloss varnish, rigging and final bits. I used Aeroclub rigging material, which for some reason failed to glue to the kit with my usual cyano. After some intensive use of coarse language and chain smoking, the rigging was done. And here's where things get funny: I set it some 4 feet away from the kitchen fire to tighten the rigging several times. Since it didn't work, I went down to 3 feet. The rigging snapped, a pushing rod for the starboard aileron deformed badly, and the same did the tail strut from the same side. A cabane strut wrinkled crazily. Not to mention the mess I made of the undercarriage legs. Laid the kit in a box and put it away, not wanting to "warp six" the critter when doing stupid things came down to me...

Flash forward to early October. Taking advantage of a few days off the hook, took the Arado to the working bench, decided to finish it. After removing the wrinkled rigging and offending struts and actuator, I measured some Aeroclub profiles of the same size, cut them and glued them to the kit. Cracked open Modelmaster's RLM 02 and brush painted the replacements. Turned out ok.Then came the underdarriage. Took a long look at it and decided to let it be. Too many things could go wrong when remaking the undercarriage, so I'll have to live with it. Not that it tortures me in the night, though.

With that out of the way, and using stretched sprue, I replaced all of the rigging. To tighten it up I followed the advise of a friend and used a hair dryer. Sadly, it was not powerful enough for the task. So, after a while of blowing hot air on the rigging with no results (and reckoning the strength of the biplane airframe glued with Revell's Contacta) I resorted to lighting up a bit of a pyrethrum spiral. Utter fail: didn't tighten some of the rigging and snapped the remaining strands. I reached out for some old guitar strings and picked a metal e' string which would do the job. After removing the rigging for a second time and not happy about it, lengths of string were measured, cut and glued into their holes. It was also used on the aileron pushrods going from the fuselage to the upper wing, next to the cabane struts. They were all painted in RLM 02, since they look light colored in the few pictures available.

Final bits were glued to the airframe: the finished propeller, wheels and windshield. The tailskid was made with a piece of wire bent to a V shape and glued against a small lenght of guitar string. A bit of plastic sanded to shape was used for the skid itself. Some drybrushing with Humbrol H-33 was used to replicate the very particular BMW exhaust stubs discharge pattern.

Frontal shot, showing to good avail the propeller and radiator. And the pugnacious nose lines of almost every BMW VI equipped aircraft.

Classical 1930s shape and oultlook for a very nice modeling project.

Undoubtedly the fuselage is the centerpoint of the model, with the red cheatline, Tsar Boris cypher and bulgarian V.V. badge.

View from the rear.

Now, the starboard side.

Looks like a carnival with all that color, and would be instrumental in the development of the Ar-68, the last biplane fighter of the Luftwaffe.

To close this submission, two overhead shots showing the proportionate and graceful lines of the machine, accurately rendered by RS.

The kit comes with a subtle canvas effect on its wings and fuselage that is very pleasing.

So, now that it's done, after a three-year stint on and off the kit, some other "Immortals" like Fujimi's F1M and Commando5's Waco CSO might be finished. The kit is great, with lots of space in the cockpit for super detailing, easy to build and RS has three boxings of it. All with very different and distinctive color schemes. Worth the money you spend on it of course, but (and there's always a but) not to be rushed by being impulsive, like I did. Food for thought.

Until our next installment, take care and good luck,

The Modeling Underdog.

Any given warrior: the Waco CSO/-240 in brazilian skies. Part I.

2011-10-05T14:46:00.000-03:00

Talking about Waco planes is talking about an stunning series of biplane designs that were common place in the inter-war years. Perhaps better known for their CG-4 assault glider of WWII fame, the Waco factory produced some of the most aesthetically pleasing airplanes during the 30s, with many still flying today in the vintage aviation circuit. A Waco UPF-7 in service with the Guatemalan Air Force was reputedly, till a few years ago, the oldest biplane serving the military. Today it rests in a semi-derelict state at the La Aurora airport.

The first big success for the Waco company was their series 10 biplanes, which in 1928 would change its designation to the O series. Of particular note was the company's naming conventions: last letter of the designation was for the general design, the middle one for the specific model within that series and the first one for the engined used. So, the CSO model described here is an "O" series airframe fitted with open cockpits for the pilot at the rear cockpit and two passengers on the front seat, "S" stands for Straight edge wing (there was a T version with tapered wings) and "C" that it was driven by a seven cylinder, 225 h.p. radial Wright Whirlwind J6-7 engine. In Argentina it has become a sort of "forgotten airplane", despite its involvement in one of the greatest air raids here. In December, 1931, civilian pilot Rufino Luro Cambaceres and his copilot Francisco Ragadale took their CSO from Comodoro Rivadavia to Río Grande and then Ushuaia, making them the first argentine aircrew to actually fly from the mainland to that National Territory. Before them, Günther Plüschow with his Heinkel HD-42 "Tsingtau" had made some flights over the island, departing from Chile.

Ubiquitous as it was, with a good maneuverability, rugged hidraulic landing gear and solid airframe, the O series was developed into a military aircraft by Waco, named the -240. Fitted with a slightly more powerful Continental W-670 radial engine giving 240 h.p., hence its designation, it had two Colt-Browning MG40, 30 cal. machine guns fitted over what once was the front cockpit and two A-3 bomb carriers under the fuselage. Though it didn't raise too much interest, the chinese and brazilian air forces bought them as stop gap fighters while modernizing their material. The chinese machines fought in the several internal uprisings of the civil war, until they were whiped out of the sky during the japanese invasion in 1937.

Despite beint tagged in the picture as a brazilian machine, this particular -240 has been painted in a scheme of light blue fuselage and silver flying surfaces with black struts, typical of chinese machines. This shot shows to good advantage the position of the bomb carriers under the fuselage and the machine guns over the coaming, a la W.W.I style.

Brazilian machines were to have an equally moved life as it would be seen. When in July of 1932 the unrest caused in Sao Paulo by the murder of four students the previous May during civil protests due to the inconstitutional ruling of Getulio Vargas (who came to power through a coup d'etat in 1930), galvanized in a state of civil and military uprising to depose him, and allow the democraticaly elected President of Brazil, Sao Paulo's Governor Julio Prestes, to inaugurate his administration, the Wacos were in the first line of combat from day one. In the Constitutionalist Revolution the CSO and -240 served in both fields depending on what airfield they were. Defections were commonplace. While the CSO used by the Aeronautica Militar for mail transport turned into a liaison aircraft, the -240s were used for bombing runs and aerial combat.

Flying alongside the three Nieuport 72 fighters available and a handful of Curtiss Falcon light bombers, their pilots soon found the MG40 machine guns to have synchronization problems, so they were taken off the biplanes and only light bombing / spotting duties were assumed. The war lasted beetween July 9th and October 2nd, 1932, when the revolt was crushed by governement forces. While the official death toll raised to 934 killed, non official numbers raise as much as 3.250 killed, with many cities having sustained serious damages. Vargas was to retain the power, but several of the democratic requests made by the revolutionary forces were finaly granted.

That was not to be the end of the career for the tiny biplanes, they would go on to provide sterling service for the Aeronautica Militar and later the Força Aerea Brasileira until 1946, joined by their naval brothers, the float equipped CSOs of the Marinha de Guerra and later, more capable Waco models, like the CJC cabin biplane and the CPF-5 trainer/mail carrier.

A Waco CSO with the "Letter-Digit" identification system used late in their lives.

The oldest serving brazilian Waco last flew in 1962-63 as a target tug for the CTA, the Technical Aeronautical center. It was given a tailwheel and an enlarged rudder to counter the drag from the target chute.

Today, a CSO takes its place in the amazing TAM collection of aviation, while a -240 model rests in the Museu Aerospacial in Rio de Janeiro, with full armament and resplendent in its deep red paint, which gave way to their nickname, "Vermelhinhos" (portuguese for Little Red Ones).

The TAM machine, which was subject to a careful restoration process before entering the museum's collection.

And the "Vermelhinho" in the Museu Aerospacial, looking ready for a sortie like so many years ago.

In our next installment, we'll see how the brazilian cottage industry fared against my ham-fisted modeling skills when I built the Commando 5 issue of this more than classical and unfairly forgotten biplane.

Till then, take and good luck.

The Modeling Underdog

British wings over the Pampas: RAF Se.5a in Argentine Navy service.

2011-06-25T16:47:00.000-03:00

So much has been written about the R.A.F. Se.5a, first mocking and then praising it, that to my relief I finally found a nice source of information about the plane in this most respectable website:

http://thevintageaviator.co.nz/projects/se-5a-reproduction/se-5a-history

After the Great War, with so many surplus aircrafts on the market, aeroclubs throughout the world started buying machines to replace their old, battered collections of pre-war and early military airplanes. In Argentina, alongside with the planes brought by the british, french and italian military missions interested in placing their surplus aicrafts in the local market, some aeroclubs and civilians brought their own machines. Such were the cases of several Curtiss Jenny trainers and a handful of Royal Aircraft Factory Se.5as flown from airstrips in the outskirts of the city in the early 20s.

One of the Se.5as was bought as surplus in England by the president of the Argentine Aeroclub, Jorge Luro. Ferried by ship to Argentina and intended as an aerobatic ride for Mr. Luro, it was donated after a brief spell to the Argentine Navy in 1927. For roughly 2 years it was used as an advanced trainer due to its rugged construction, remarcable flying qualities and engine reliability. Despite the mounting problems to get the much needed spare parts for the airplane and care of the airframe, the engine was always well tended, since the Wolseley Viper W.4 was also mounted on the Avro 552 two-seat trainers in use at the time. The little fighter-trainer would come to grief in January 24th, 1929, when a pilot shed the landing gear after a rough approach, and the wings and fuselage structure got twisted in the crash. After inspection of the extensive damage, it was decided to declare it a write off. Sadly, nothing remains of this important aircraft today, to remind us about its contribution to Navy flying in the early years.

After the sad crash, in its final livery:

From 1927, when acquired, and according to the Navy regulations, it was painted in silver dope (matt aluminum is called upon local painting directives), with black straight anchors and call sign. This scheme stemmed from a directive issued on October 1927, trying to standardize markings and painting. This directive, O.G. 180, also called for rudder and elevators to be painted in the national colours of light blue - white - light blue, longitudinally for the vertical surfaces and transversally for the horizontal ones. The Sol de Mayo sun was to be painted yellow gold, centered within the white stripe of the rudder, only. The code applied to the Se.5a was E-11, E standing for "Entrenador" (Trainer-11). This call sign was to be applied to both fuselage sides and the upper wing, where it would match the size of the black anchors.

The fighter would fly in this guise untill a new markings and painting directive was issued in 1928, this time O.G. 141, ordered the change of call signs from single letter plus number to a double letter plus number. Under its new identity as AC-21, Avion de Caza-21 (Fighter plane-21), it retained all the previous markings and the silver dope finish. A picture taken at this time shows the aircraft with its new markings and discloses a very interesting feature: it has the Foster mount for the Lewis gun and Aldis sight. The aircraft was delivered to Mr. Luro unarmed, and always thought to be flown that way, so the addition was surely a local matter.

In the picture taken after the crash, we can see it in its final livery, with all customary markings plus a nose paintjob in black. It seems all metal claded surfaces in the fuselage were painted black, as well as the headrest.

Roden R.A.F Se.5a (Wolseley Viper) 1/72

This release by the ukranian company came to my hands as a gift from a friend's friend, who had it in his stash and wasn't sure about building it any time soon. All in all it's a worthy replacement for the old Esci and Revell kits. As usual with Roden, some bits are really fiddly while others need a thorough clean up. But that doesn't put us down, hardened modelers we are, does it? The surface detail is great and there are optional parts for the coaming, armament, etc. Decals are good but were left behind in pursuit of this project, except for the instrument dial faces.

The best reference one can get for this project is the Windsock Datafile on the plane, which also is a very fun and in depth reading. And of course, the afore mentioned Vintage Aviator site. Beginning with the interior of the kit, all pieces belonging to it were cut and cleaned. The coaming sans its ammo drum was completed and some bits of stretched sprue and plastic profiles were used for the different levers found in the cockpit. All wood surfaces were painted with a base of Humbrol H-63, then treated with Faber Castell pencils to give them some woodgrain effect. Linen covered parts were painted H-41 Ivory and the the inner rigging for the fuselage was drawn via a sharp black pencil. It looks good, even looking close.

The firewall sheeting below the fuel tank was painted H-56, Aluminum. Since there's a large opening at the bottom of the center wing, providing access to the engine ancilliaries and cooling, the back of a Viper engine was fashioned with plastic bits and stretched sprue and painted H-53, Gunmetal. The fuel lines were painted brass. Two small lengths of stretched sprue were glued afterwards in an X pattern accross the hole, since that rigging was present in the machines. Lap belts were added to the seat, painted in Monitor's Dark Ochre the former and woodgrain and dirtied-up H-41 Ivory the latter. Wires were added to the pedal bar. So far so good, since there was really little tweaking to be done when mating the fuselage halves and then gluing the lower wing.

The woodgrained parts were varnished with Cristalba varnish and the instruments decal applied. It fitted snuggly without problems. It was coated with Cristalba as well after drying.

The lower part of the nose and the wedges were the cylinder banks have to be glued were also painted in H-56 Aluminum.

These are shots from different angles to show how the paintwork looks like once finished. Trust me, my dirty fingernails are nothing when compared with the likes of some fellow argentine modelers... Not to talk about stinky breath and body odors. They're mostly a dirty bunch. Anyway, back to modeling...

I cut the cylinder banks off their sprue gates, and the engine upper cover as well. After cleaning up, the were painted in H-33 and H-56 respectively. The cylinders got their pipes at the inner rear end of the banks and painted brass. It was at this point that the upper coaming and the very nice radiator face were glued. A small pass with the Xacto knife was given to the fuel tank retaining straps, so they would stand up a little bit from the general detail.

With that done, the cylinders and the cover were glued to the fuselage. Previously, the rudder was cut off for easier painting and detailing the unfaired tailskid. It was achieved via an angled strip of plastic, stretched sprue and a small plastic tab for the skid itself.

A look at the kitchen table, where I build my kits some times. The up side is that I have coffee, tea and snacks at hand, the downside is that staring at the garden while thinking about painting options and building steps usually consumes more time than the build itself...

It was at this point that the stabilizers were glued. You have to choose the larger, later ones from the sprues. As I was goofing around the already painted propeller and the wheels were placed in their pins. And voila! A racing monoplane was born! Actually I gave a couple of thoughts to the idea but since there were no decals that I could match it up to, it was dropped.

The fit is really good, specially using Revell's Contacta. The propeller is the wide bladed one. The other one was painted at the same time and given to the friend that got me the Roden kit, since he was building a Fokker Dr.1 with a Gnome engine and british propeller. I guess it was Josef Jacob's mount. They were painted in H-186, Leather Brown, and given the Faber Castell treatment with the darker brown tones. British propellers of the time look rather dark and uniform in appearance. Cristalba varnish was not used, Revell's nro.1 being brushed over them, since it renders a gloss yet lusterlesss look to them.

All holes for the rigging were drilled at this point. The cabane struts were cleaned up and attached to the fuselage. So was the upper wing. The plans enclosed in the Windsock Datafile proved very useful at this point.

The wing struts were cleaned up and glued at this point. It makes it harder to rig the model but gives you a sturdier base to work with when paintingg and applying decals.

You can also see the new tailskid, now finished. This little critter goes taking shape at last.

It was this stage that exterior painting got started. H-22, Gloss White, was airbrushed on the elevators rudder. H-33 Flat Black was hand painted over the front end of the kit and some little details that show up in the picture.

Also, some stretched sprue was used for the cable pulleys in the wings and elevators.

After giving quite a thought as to what colour use for the silver gray finish, I settled on Humbrol's H-191, Chrome Silver. H-11 is too bright for my taste and was left to paint some engine details after finishing. The front end and cockpit and were masked with Tamiya tape and the whole airframe sprayed with H-191.

Don't worry about it being too shiny, the two coats of varnish will tone it down enough to look in scale. It was only after painting it that I realised about all the great detail job Roden did on the flying surfaces and fuselage. Really subtle and neat.

After the masking was taken off the kit, decaling started. The wing's anchors and the rudder's Sol de Mayo were taken from an AT-6/SNJ Aerocalcas decal sheet. They were the perfect size for the project. Different sets of Letrasets were used for the codes. The font for the upper wing ones was taken from a picture of a wrecked Avro 552 and seemed quite logical to use it in the Se.5a. Here, the fuselage codes are applied, and a first look at how the paint scheme is coming out.

Letraset is not the best media to work on an angular, textured biplane, but it was all I had at hand at the tiem. All the touch ups were done later on with a very fine brush.

After the codes were complete on both sides of the fuselage, it was time to place the anchor decals on the wings. They were placed acording to the General Orders dispositions of the time.

So far so good. The Letraset codes were left for later, once the decals had dried up.

Now, the underside of the little beast. I managed to curl and crack one tip of the left hand cross, it was later fixed with a fine brush.

The lower surfaces are complete. To be noted is that while the upper surfaces have a very subtle ribbing effect, the sagging of tense, and yet heavy fabric on the lower ones is just excellent.

And this is the Underdog Feat of the Day. I started rubbing all the letters down on the upper wing and the only ones which gave me a hard time were the "A" and "C", which cracked and dirtied the paint job and then the Letraset film peeled the paint out. Way to go!

Another shot of the bloody mess I got myself into. And all of it just because I didn't prime the airframe first, afraid of losing some of that wonderful detail.

So, in the meantime, I set my sights painting the markings for the rudder and elevators. It was done with Gloss White H-22 and Sea Blue H-47. Tamiya masking tape was also used. The Sol de Mayo sun was applied at this stage. Also, some detail paint was carried on the propeller boss with Gunmetal H-53, Aluminum H-56 and Chrome Silver H-191. Wheels were sprayed with the latter and then the tires brush painted in Sea Grey, H-27.

Fixing the paint job on the upper wing was the central matter of some debate among friends. Some said I should polish the whole section, paint it once again and decal it. Others said that gently wet sanding the area and re-spraying was another solution. The problem was, I had no more decals. And very little Letraset at all, after all the fixing. So, I wet sanded the area, painted it with a careful layer of H-191 and then another one when dry, and touched up the letters with the remaining parts and some H-33 black paint.

It could have been worst, you know? I've never been the kind of modeler to "Warp-six" a kit against the wall (most of times), So I thank the guy up there for the whole lot of work saved instead of bitching about the little part that got spoiled. Some paint work was carried out on the front end. Radiator unist were painted Gunmetal H-53 and dry brushed Aluminum H-56. So was the tail skid. Later on, the tail skid and rudder were glued in place. The frames and radiator cooling gills rod got a coat of Silver H-11. The boots at the tip of the wing struts were painted black H-33 as well. A wooden stick was placed in the intake so the model could be varnished easily. Wheels were placed just for fun.

Another view of the almost finished model.

It still lacks the final coat of varnish, to protect the decals and fragile Letraset markings. And the rigging, which is always a nightmare for me.

Another shot, showing the nice shapes and proportions of the Roden kit. I really love that ukranian company. Some of their kits have rather heavy flash, but their detail and finishing quality is simply great.

Now, the rigging. I hate it. It just doesn't do the trick for me. So much so, that the bulgarian Arado Ar-65 has suffered some minor deformations due to heat exposure while trying to tighten the Aeroclub monofilament. The same friend that got me the kit offered himself to wire the little critter, so I kind of toss the bipe into his caring hands and waited for the miracle. After a couple of months, I asked him about the Se. and he had not only finished it, he also saw his smoking habits worsen. It turned out he had last rigged a biplane (or any plane, at that) something like millenia ago and had to redo the rigging a couple of times.

With that out of the way, I brought the critter back home and started with the finishing touches. Rigging was painted with a wash of H-53, Gunmetal, and turpentine, using a very fine brush. The leather cockpit padding and head rest cushion were painted in ModelMaster's Italian Red Brown. the tiny, semi-circular windscreen was cut from the film provided by Roden (four different and very useful shapes, thank you, guys!) and glued with Revell's Contacta to the front end of the coaming. The coaming window was covered with Humbrol's Clear Fix. The exhaust pipes were taken of their base and glued to the cylinder banks and fuselage below the cockpit. Finally, the propeller was secured into position And that was it. It's finished. The third one for 2011. It looks good in its final livery, so Art-Deco and "twenty-ish".

And with these pictures, another project came to an end. There are several in the drawing board, as usual. Some of them will say nothing to many a modeler, and others are there simply to prove you can build whatever you want, regardless its origin, its intended use and whatever the modeling popes tell you is tabu.

Oh, a little addenda: after taking the pictures, I realized that no rigging was done on the rudder and stern post. Well, blimey, I'll do it one of these days...

Till our next installment, take care and goodluck.

The Modeling Underdog

Training Hawk: MAVAG Heja II in service with the Royal Hungarian Air Force. Part.II

2011-05-04T00:17:00.002-03:00

The Special Hobby Reggiane Re.2000 and Heja I/II kits fulfilled a very much needed reprisal of this classic design by Ing. Roberto Longhi that time and technology had left behind in the form of the very respectable and old Supermodel kit. It's been reboxed now by Italeri with several upgrades.

Regarding the SH HejaII, it's basically the same sound kit as the Re.2000, with a different vacuformed canopy, resin cowling, breeches, oil cooler and prop spinner. The remainder of the kit is unchanged, which is good for the resin cockpit is simply incredible. And very hard to see once the fuselage is closed, but hey, you know it's there, right? The decals are first rate. The only thing I wonder is why did they print 2 consecutive machines in them, V.5+39 and V.5+40. There were Hejas in the 400 and 600 series as well, but I suppose it'll always be a mistery.

As usual it all started with the cockpit. It was painted in Humbrol H-120 for the cockpit, H-33 and 56 for the radio set and switch boxes, which are barely visible, just like the oxigen bottle. For the gun breeches, H-53 and H-56 were used.

For the weathering, a combination of black washes and drybrushing with H-191 was used.

Extra care has to be taken when gluing the tiny little PE levers and wheel placed inside the cockpit walls. I was going to add all the pushrods to the WMK-14b but it turned out that I was out of copper wire and steel strings, so I left it be.

You have to be careful to glue the walls properly filed and leveled. I didn´t and had to teake one off, sand it to the proper height and re-attach it.

The resin seat is painted in H-191, the PE chains and leather straps in H-56, H-186 and MM Italian Red Brown. Once finished, the cockpit looks busy and greatly detailed.

The cockpit is glued to the fuselage, which you have to close first. It almost falls into position and with a little TLC you can superglue it out of harm's way.

Gluing the wings and tail planes was very straight forward. The only area of concern is below the chin and the lower rear fuselage joint, where you have to putty and sand a little bit to get them right, but it's not a major work to perform.

Extra care has to be taken when taking the resin cowling and breech covers from their pouring gates. With sand paper you have to soften any remaining edge or bevel they may leave. With that done, they glue in position pretty straight forward. A small dab of putty on the fuselage joint beetween the breeches and that's it.

With al that done, we move on to the vacuformed canopy. I botched up the first one, so some very sincere thanks go to SH for providing the heavy handed modeler with a spare. After afixing the canopy with Contacta, I faired it with a tiny amount of putty and painted it H-121. Landing gear and propeller were cleaned up and painted in various shades of H-33, 56 and 191. It was at this time that I was left with no camera to take pictures (I dropped my cellphone against the floor and got an instant kill), so the painting process was never recorded.

The basic scheme is somewhat involved, since you have so many colours in a small airframe. Hungarians followed the italian scheme of the early Hejas very closely. However, they seem to have left the Red Brown out of the equation. Upper camouflage wraps around the fuselage, stabilizers, engine and leading edge of the wing in a typical italian way. Where it departs is the way they painted it, being less "cloudy" and more general overspraying, like an overcoat, when seen in pictures. Ferenc Kass's V.5+39 was chosen from the decals. It's always nice to put a name to go with an airplane. Specially a little known one like the Heja II.

The first thing to do was to paint the entire aircraft in gloss white, Humbrol's H-22, check for blemishes and then spray the underwing yellow panels and fuselage band. Later, when it was dry, I masked the tail bands and hand painted them in H-19 and H-101. Despite the coarse finish, I truly like it, since it looks very much like the real thing shown in pictures.

Once everything was masked, along came the underside colour, MM's Italian Blue gray and once it dried, Humbrol H-63 for the upper side base coat was sprayed, followed by a light, yet dense, mottling woth MM's Italian Olive Green.

With the painting done and dry, it was time to give it a glossy coat. The masking for the wings, fuselage and stabilizers came off and Revell 01 was used for it and applied to the whole of the aircraft, landing gear covers and propeller. Next came the decals and they were top quality, being laid on the model with water and a little Decalfix.

I sprayed the whole model with Revell's 01 again and disaster struck: paint started running off the lower fuselage. I was startled for a second or two, as if a giant "Ooopsy Daisy!" luminous sign passed through in front my eyes, before tossing away the airbrush and drying the dripping, soaked model with small, quick touches of a paper towel.

What caused that? I don't know. May be the diluting rate was wrong, may be I screwed up the airbrush settings when I cleaned it before use. (Yeah, I'm that kind of freak, so what?) I still believe it was my fault and not Revell's varnish. The cowling ring had some varnish "runs", so it was lighlty polished and then brush painted with MM's Black, far more easier to paint without leaving strakes than Humbrol's H-33. The underside of the fuselage got badly beaten up by this, so I retouched some places with the original blue gray and then gave the whole plane some light washes with highly dilutted H-33. The area around the wing's center section was given some extra attention and so the whole putrid varnish affair was overcome.

Once it was all dry and with the bad taste of almost total disaster still in the back of my mouth, varnish dry and small pieces prepared for final assembly, I glued the propeller to the engine, the landing gear to its proper location under the wings and tailplane, the small resin wingtip lights were attached once more to their holes, after coming loose for the 28th time and finally, the pitot tube and landing gear wheel covers. The exhaust tubes were painted with a mixture of H-53 and Revell 94. Off came the canopy masking and that was it. I finally have a small Heja II in my collection.

It's stubby. It's colourful. It's czech short run. It's an italian aircraft, based on an american design, with a french engine, built, armed and flown by hungarians. But, above all, it's a beauty.

Till our next installment, take care and good luck,

TMU

Training Hawk: MAVAG Heja II in service with the Royal Hungarian Air Force. Part.I

2011-04-26T20:18:00.000-03:00

Hungarian and Italian aircraft have always hit the soft side of my aviation and modeling interests. Former enemies during WWI, Hungary and Italy came to terms during the late 20s and 30s, when the former began its militarization. Banned from having an armed air corp by the Treaty of the Trianon, military training was disguised as a union of civilian aeroclubs and later blown to a fully military organization in 1938. Despite the use of german Udet Flamingos and similar light aircraft for training purposes, the first fighters impressed were Fiat Cr.20s used for "meteorological research". Their use would spawn a long military relationship, to the extent that the Magyar Királyi Honvéd Légierő (MKHL) or Royal Hungarian Air Force would be mostly composed of italian aircraft at the outbreak of WWII. German airplanes would be a minority until later in the war.

Despite the use of foreign equipment, the MKHL did rely on local manufacturers. Notably, the Weiss Manfred company produced a series of reconnaissance biplanes, based on the ubiquitous Fokker C.V that would give sterling service throughout the conflict, in spite of their obsolesence. Weiss Manfred also manufactured the engine used by the majority of the aircraft of the MKHL, the WMK14b. Basically a Gnome & Rhone G&R K.14 under licensed production, this twin row, air cooled radial engine was to power such different airplanes as the Ju-86K bomber, He-46Hu, WM.16 and 21 Solyom, He-170K reconnaissance two-seaters and the MAVAG Heja II fighter.

The latter was a development of the Heja I, an italian Re.2000 Falco I, Series I of which 70 were purchased by the MKHL in December of 1939 in order to boost the fighting capabilities of the force. In hungarian service the Heja I was the subject of mixed criticism, specially when intensive military operations followed the involvement of Hungary in Operation Barbarossa. Its detractors complained about the complex, 5-spar structure of the wing and its integral fuel cell, very prone to be set ablaze by enemy fire, the slow firing 12.7mm Breda machine guns and the absolutely unreliable Piaggio P.XI RC40 radial engine. Also, the pilots were concerned about its inadequate spin and stall characteristics. On the other hand, the long range, sturdy construction and relatively high speed were praised over biplane fighters like the Cr.32 and 42, which the MKHL pilots were flying at the time. Also, they fared quite well against the assorted collection of new and old fighters flown by the VVS once Operation Barbarossa began.

The original Heja:

Being granted the licensing rights for the type, MAVAG (Magyar Királyi Állami Vas-, Acél- és Gépgyárak or Royal Hungarian State Iron, Steel and Machine Works) set out to solve the main issue with the airplane, that of the engine. So unreliable was the engine, that the Regia Aeronautica's pilots and ground crews hated the aircraft, always waiting for a piston, or several, to go through a cilynder, the swedes of the Flygvapnet considered it a good plane, rugged enough for their harsh enviroment, but maintenance intensive and the hungarians set themselves to the task of locally producing a trusty replacement before things went bad. They lengthened the fuselage by 1 foot, 3 inches in order to install the indigenous WMK-14b and associated ancilliares. Gone were the nightmarish P.XI and its unpredictable behavior.

Also gone were the Piaggio-D'Ascanio P.1001 three-bladed constant speed propelle, replaced by a similar Hamilton unit, and the 12,7mm Breda SAFAT machine guns, which made way to a coupled 12.7mm Danuvia Gebauer GKM .40M machine gun set. Basically an oversized GKM 7.92mm 26/31, the 40M was chambered for the 12.7x81 Vickers-Fiat cartridge, carried into a 300 round drum. Like its smaller counterpart, it was a dual gun driven by the engine's crankshaft and not by recoil or gas like the usual weapons at the time. In this way the MG ran very smoothly, at a very high rate of fire (some 1500 r.p.m.) and without jamming if a cartridge misfired, since it was driven by the engine, thus force feeding the breech and passing to the next round. Also, it counted with a differential brake, which, in case of malfunction or eventual jamming of one of the two barrels, allowed it to disengage, leaving the other gun fully operational.

After the conversion was done, the front end of the now christened Heja II was signicantly different. The upper intake was gone, and the small one on the underside was replaced with a larger, deeper one. The cowling was smaller in diameter now, and two bulges were added in front of the redesigned cockpit to make room for the gun breeches and feeding mechanisms. Finally, the spinner was removed from the series machines as was the radio mast when the radio changed to a more reliable Telefunken set. A modification invisible to the eye was the substitution of the original italian fuel tanks by 22 small tanks design locally, to prevent the continuous leaking that had also hindered the Heja's reliability.

Taking to the air on October 30, 1942, the first Heja II would be followed by another 203 siblings until August 1, 1944 when the last one left the factory. Overall performance was reduced from figures for the earlier model, specially the top speed of 485 km/h was some 45 km slower than that of the Heja I, but the overall gain in reliability and armament made the loss of speed worth the trouble. All of them were alloted the Vadasz (fighter) numbers in the V4+71 - V4+95 and V4+96 - V5+70 series, for the first 2 batches. Some others would use serials in the 600 series, at the end of the production run.

By March 1944 various spares and tools from foreign contractors began to be in short supply. A raid on the night of April 3rd to 4th 1944 destroyed the plants for the production of aircraft and engines. It burned most of the warehouses and by the end of April production stopped. Weiss Manfred got bombed on July 27, destroying the motor plant, assembly plant, and warehouses. Some 25-30 unfinished aircraft of the third series were consumed by fire as the result of this action.

Last Hejja II (V6+87) took off on Oct. 11, 1944. Four or five planes had been left at the factory airfield in anticipation of test flights in late December 1944, when Soviet troops were in close proximity. There was no other bitter choice for the hungarian engineers than blow them up with hand grenades.

In service with the MKHL the MAVAG Heja II was used as a training aircraft for most of its operational life, never going to the Eastern front with its forerunner, although quite a lot of them took part in protecting the hungarian airspace against Allied aerial raids. In late 1942, it was planned to equip the Night-Fighter Squadron 5/1, which was flying Fiat Cr.42s, with eight Heja II. These aircraft were to have a German radio, but conversion to the night-fighter role never took place.

On March 19, 1944, and following a time of uneasy diplomatic relations German forces entered Hungary to prevent the collapse of the Axis. The Germans banned all test flights and this ban was to remain in effect until April 1, when the 15th Air Army U.S. began regular bombing of Hungarian targets. 13 April 1944 saw a raid over Budapest, which was attacked by American bombers, followed by P-38 from the 1st Fighter Group, led by Lieutenant Alford. Pilots of the P-38s reported shooting down of two Re.2001, west of Lake Balaton, which were actually Heja II with only one of them, V.5+39 being actually damaged because of enemy fire and a colliding with a Lightning, flown by Ferenc Kass.

Eight Heja II from 1/2. Squadron, based at Szolnok, took off in order to cover the south of Budapest. Four Heja II attacked the 454th Group, but broke off the attack, stumbling on a dense barrage fire from the bombers. Two of them were damaged, and one made an emergency landing on its belly. The remaining four Hungarian fighters were unable to catch the bombers, faced with the P-47s of the 325th Fighter Group. American pilots reported once again downing Re.2001s, one destroyed and one damaged. Lt. Eugene Emmons shot down the first, and Lt. George Novotny claimed the damaged fighter. This loss was confirmed by the Hungarian side.

In September, many Heja II still waited at MAVAG for their compasses, variometer and machine-guns. Twenty of them had no propellers and ten more were without engines. During the last months of 1944, training squadron 101/6 "Puma" still has six flyable MAVAG Heja II. The last official report mentioning the Heja II was dated February 22, 1945. It pointed out that Heja II (V6+09) crashed during a training flight.

Sadly, there are no extant examples left of this plane, more reknown in its training role than for its fighting career. In the next installment of TMU I'll take a look at building the 1/72 Special Hobby Heja II.

Till then, take care and good luck.

A frenchie in the land of the Ottomans

2011-02-17T01:50:00.004-03:00

French aircraft have that "I can't tell for sure why the Hell I like that darn kite" factor that makes them so unique. A retracting radiator, canted wheels, a somewhat outdated structure layout and challenging colour schemes are just a few of the many "downsides" to model that monument to french aviation technology that is the Morane 406. Steel tube, plywood, aluminium sheets and fabric all combined to render what has been called "the french Hurricane", thus provoking no few smiles and heated commentaries from too many a defender of Hawker's ultimate underdog. It was slow and lightly armed, but it flew well and was a good, steady gun platform for shooting its 20mm cannon and 2 7.5mm MAC 34 mgs.

Even so, the 406 was to distinguish itself both as a forgiving and manouverable fighter, with the ability to take a hard beating at the hands of the enemy and yet bring the pilot home, and as a maintenance intensive machine. The radiator might have problems lowering or retracting, the Plymax fuselage sheets used to fly off the sides due to the screws getting deformed by aeroelastic tensions and vibration, the pneumatic system operating the flaps and landing gear was troublesome in cold weather and the MAC 34s had the tendency to freeze in high altitude flights. Plus, their 300 round magazine drums were a pain to change and reload.

This could make you think about the aircraft as being virtually useless. But the 406 was to soldier on wherever the Armeé de l'Air was stationed for much of the war, even after the Vichy regime came to power. Its moderate export success was due to the current conditions in Europe, but can be equalled to the one for the Hurricane before 1940. Turkey, Finland and Switzerland were the destination of many a 406, with the Swiss and Finns updating their planes with local modifications, like engine and armament upgrades. Besides them, the croatian A.F. used some during the last half of the war, purchased to the Luftwaffe.

The turks ordered 45 Moranes, which were delivered beetween 1939 and 1940 and comprised 40 airworthy fighters and 5 instructional airframes as a source for spares. Having received the four digit serials ranging from 3001 to 3040, they were assigned to operational duties with the 43rd & 48th Companies of the 11th Battalion of the 4th Regiment based in Kütahya and later in 1942 the regiment moved to Merzifon. The planes gave way to more modern frontline fighters in 1943 and transitioned to the training role till 1945, when they were taken out of active service.

Morane Saulnier M.S.406 C1 - Hasegawa 1/72

This particular kit got started some 2 and a half, may be 3, years ago when I got hold of a Smer Morane 406, that is, the old Heller kit with new decals. Alas, the kit was old but the decal sheet was worth the thought of using one of 3 Hasegawa Moranes I had at the time and do the turkish option, with those beautiful white and red squares and the crescent and star on the rudder.

So, back to the kit. Using an old but very useful SAMI with some detail drawings for the Morane and Bloch 152 (another pugnacious little critter that remains close to my heart), I detailed the cockpit with stretched sprue for the steel tube airframe, lead foil for the harness and various bits of plasticard to replicate the rudder pedals, switch panels, throttle cuadrant, and so forth. At the time, I had no idea that Quickboost would eventually release a beautifuly casted wheel well for Hasegawa's Morane, so it took some modeling skills long forgotten to box it in and prevent the see thru all the way uo to the cockpit. Plasticard, putty, some swearing and absolutely no modeling ingenuity got me a nicely boxed-off wheel well in the end. Other than that and a small gap at the rear of the lower wing/fuselage joint that had to be taken care of, the kit builds in a few moments and is very nicely panelled and detailed. After seeing the Hobbyboss Morane, my feelings stick to the old Hasegawa kit, it still look better in an all round basis.

After having all parts prepared, this lumbering little frenchman was ready for some painting time.

I cleaned up the kit of all the dust and set to paint it. Humbrol 27, 33, 11, 191 and 41 were used for the interior, while 19 was used for some knobs and the rudder. It's a pretty straight forward 4 colour french pattern, so no big deal. The colours used were Humbrol 127 for the under surfaces and Humbrol 27, with ModelMaster Italian Red Brown and RLM 80 for the upper scheme. You may ask yourself why use this colours, if there are devoted french paints at hobby shops. The answer is fairly simple. French factories and repairmen were allowed to mix their paints as they saw fit, thus lending the modeler a hand on colour accuracy issues. That also allowed me to play with the idea of a nearly fresh airplane, just arrived to its destination and waiting fot its first flight check. Grime and wear were limited to some light washes of H-33 Black around the enging cowling and radiators, some light dry brushing in metallic hues for the latter and dusted the wheels, wheel covers and the lower rear of the aircraft with Humbrol 118 light earth, for the sake of having the Morane just towed to the field, the engine warmed up and awaiting its pilot.

One thing that hasn´t got any better, along with my modeling skills, are my picture taking abilities. And I'm greatly sorry about that. I promess to improve on the matter.

The decals by Propagteam went on the kit like a dream, with no silvering at all and reacting very well to Humbrol's Decal Fix.

So, that's pretty much it. I got on the modeling road again, and still have that penchant for what are most of the times, underdogs in aviation history.

It is all for now, but pay me a visit every once in a while. I'll be posting my hungarian experience with Special Hobby's Heja II and a self inflicted painting disaster that turned out to be as discouraging as taking Sza Sza Gabor on a blind date.

Take care and good luck.

The Modeling Underdog.

Eagles under a royal flag: the Arado Ar-65 in bulgarian service. Part. II

2009-11-19T16:10:00.006-03:00

As I said in the previous Ar-65 installment, there are no pictures for the remainder of the building process since it was so on and off for a length of time. But let me tell you that it was a most enjoyable one. Almost no putty was used, save for the nose, which I'm not really convinced on how it ended up looking, and a small seam at the belly of the fuselage. Also, RS plastic is, so far, one of the nicest I found to work with. Glues well and sands even better.

Moving on to the painting scheme, both the Luftwaffe and VV machines are in RLM 02 Grau. But the badges, cheatline and markings of the bulgarian bird make the german option almost superfluous. Besides, why build a boring war time machine when you can build a colourful pre war one? So I cracked open ModelMaster's RLM 02 and sprayed the whole of the aircraft with it. One good thing about MM paints is that with a very little additional dilution and sprayed, they render a nice satin and uniform finish. Once it was dry, the cheatline was masked off with Tamiya Tape and hand painted using Humbrol 19.

Also, you can see the wheels and propeller already having their red parts painted. I gave the wheels and cheatline two coats of Red for the sake of colour density and left to dry thoroughly beetween coats.

Off came the Masking Tape and that's some nice cheatline and red nose:

The tail banner was painted at this instance. And this is the end result for the painting process:

Once this was done, it was time to put some decals on it. A czech kit, an obscure subject, and 1/72nd scale... Decals had to be Propagteam, of course! Over the course of the years I've had a love - hate relationship with Propagteam's decal line. They're thin, with a nice decal range and density and are a hell of a nightmare to apply. They either curl, fold or tear at the least effort done to position them. And do not react well to setting solutions too. Also, they tend to leave a silver carrier surround if the kit was not coated with gloss varnish or the carrier film is not trimmed to the minimum surrounding the markings.

With that said, I started applying the markings from the tail forward, so I could have always some free surface to grab the kit without taking a decal off with the fingers. I tried something new here. I'didn't clear coat the kit with varnish, and relied only on the satin finish of the paint.

Seems to be going well...

Ok, almost there...

No silvering so far and that's good...

Now the lower wings...

And for the grand finale, the upper wings:

Decals were left to dry... some months ago... And I still have to give it the final clear coat. A friend of mine suggested that leaving Propagteam decals for so long without any protection is not wise, since they're so thin and they might end up peeling off. So I'll set to spray the kit as soon as I have some spare time.

As you can see, the overall quality of the kit is noteworthy, specially having began as a resin kit transitioned to plastic by the fellows at RS. The resin radiator is quite nice. My kit came without the tailskid but that may be down to the guy that sold it to me. I still have to scratchbuild it, but it's a fairly simple three legged affair.

In our next installment, the final bits will be added, a base built for it and the issue I mentioned in the first part of this article, finally disclosed.

Till that moment comes, enjoy life, build model kits, take care and good luck.

The Modeling Underdog

Eagles under a royal flag: the Arado Ar-65 in bulgarian service. Part. I

2009-08-12T15:58:00.028-03:00

The Plane and its times:

Back in the 30s, many of the former W.W. I Axis Powers were banned from having an air arm. Some of them, like Bulgaria and Hungary, had taken steps to bypass the limitations from the Versailles and Neuilly Treaties by signing up the Warsaw Treaty wich regulated civil aviaton. While the hungarians started early on to solve their military dilemma by purchasing Cr.20 italian fighters, dutch Fokker reconnaiteurs or indigenous products and registering them under the civilian HA-### call sign, the bulgarians chose to focus on civilian aviation and the means it offered to train pilots, aiming to have a skilled cadre of airmen and ground personnel for the time a new air arm was created.

In June 27, 1937, Tsar Boris of Bulgaria donated 12 Arado Ar-65 to the newly created Vozduzhnyi Voyskyi or Air Arm, usually abbreviated to VV. These were the first fighters in service with Bulgaria since W.W. I and were to provide the foundation for the VV's fighter unit. At the same time, a dozen each of Heinkel He-45 army cooperation two seaters and He-51 fighter biplanes were also donated by the Tsar. As it was customary at the time with the VV, each aircraft received a military type code number and christened after a particular bird found in Bulgaria. The Ar-65 was therefore to bear the type number 7026 and the name Orel or Eagle.

While looking very much like everyother BMW VI powered aircraft, usually the Arado is distinguished by its deep fuselage and generous flying surfaces. Altogether, it doesn't show the purity of lines of the He-51 or the cocky agressivity of a Kawasaki Ki-10 but is a very balanced and clean design. All of them, powered by any of the derivatives from the BMW engine and sharing the biplane of unequal span configuration, were very useful if somewhat limited designs wich proved worthy enough for mass production at the time.

The Ar-65 seems to have been appreciated both by its german and bulgarian pilots for its nice handling and forgiving characteristics, wich amount to nothing when you have a careless pilot at the controls. Anyway, it was an excellent first time fighter for the VV and later it would become a reknowned trainer both with the Luftwaffe and the VV. None of them survived the war. As usual with interwar fighters, with only a couple of 7.92mm MG17 machine guns the armament was light and the speed was not great at 300 km/h, but as an all-round design it picked up all of the Arado creed and its forerunner, the Albatros company of W.W. I fame.

The Kit: Arado Ar-65, RS Models 1/72

I'm in love with the odd looking aircrafts from the early decades in aviation history. I think that is no mistery to no one. So when this model kit came out in its first boxing as a resin one, I was eager to get it, but very worried about the quality of the resin and price. In the end the kit was eventually passed onto a plastic encarnation. And what a nice encarnation indeed!

Here you can take a look at what comes in the box and a very nice model:

http://www.rsmodels.cz/?link=view&id=92018

What can I say, when I saw such a nice airplane in plastic kit form and with bulgarian markings, I just had to add it to the collection.

As usual, construction started with the cockpit and at that, just because people likes to follow instructions. Sometimes. Most of the cockpit is made out of PE and a blob of plastic which I presume was the oxygen regulator. The PE was kinda hard to bend, but with some care, it can be conformed without any major issues. Customary of the time, ModelMaster RLM 02 was brush painted on all surfaces and a few washes and highlights done, picking up the details in selected colors. While the cockpit looks a little bare, I left it as it is for a lack of reference pictures. Once the fuselage was closed, I stumbled upon a cockpit snapshot of a 65, with lots of pipes, wires, stuff and ... Oh, well, you get the idea.

Looks dark, I know. It's because of the lighting, the cam and my miserable photography skills...

Next, the fuselage halves were mated, with the plastic reacting very well to Revell's Contacta. Even in 1/72nd scale, the fuselage depth is quite apparent. Makes you wonder what it might look like with an A.S. Panther or Jaguar and Fleet Air Arm markings. The detail is soft and crisp and the fabric and stringer construction is very well represented. The exhaust holes were drilled to give them some depth.

Then the lower wings were glued to their stubs, followed by the fin/rudder. It's a clear butt joint, but thanks to the plastic used by RS and the melting properties of Contacta, they ended up glued more than fine and with the correct dyhedral. Also at this time, the elevators were attached and the remaining pieces cleaned up from some small flash. Once it was all dry, the landing gear minus its wheels was attached, as well as the cabane and wing struts. When everything was set, the upper wing came to rest nicely against the strut stubs. It doesn't take much time to have it leveled up and true, just some care.

Here's another two shots showing the little beast in all its unpainted, bare glory.

The Waco CSO from Commando 5 joins for the fun as well. The midget and the beast.

It is a short update, painfuly short for all I want to say and share thru TMU. But rest asured, my dear reader, that as I pick up speed and Spring comes to the fore with its mild and sometimes stormy weather, updates will improve both in regularity and contents.

On the next installment, we'll see how this rather large fighter got its military livery, some woodgrain painting attempts and a small and self inflicted building error that spoils the whole kit if not dealt with.

In the meantime, take care and good luck.

The Modeling Underdog

Back to the board...

2009-03-30T02:46:00.005-03:00

A bit over 3 months ago, I wrote the last installment for TMU's 2008 season. Having improved both in health and time and since I'm enjoying a week-long holiday, it came to my mind that something had to be done about TMU: may be pass it on to somebody else's more capable hands or even shut it down. But, in the light of not having done any modeling at all in the last 3 months, it became painfuly obvious that modeling was no longer one of my havens in dairy life.

What to do about it? Well, many times you read that one article about changing your modeling subjects of liking in order to relief all the stress of "serious modeling". And yes, it goes over cynicism and into caustic irony that a hobby intended to relax people, may end up stressing them out. So I went for an old and never really quite fulfilled modeling passion, that of submarines.

I know it's a huge difference beetween subjects, but the TMU approach of "The less the better" came in handy this time. And when talking about subs, I´m not refering to modern ones, Revell's monstrous creations in 72 or even the wonderful I-400 in 1/350 scale. No. I´m referring to the creme de la creme in WWII vintage subs, the Russian Navy subs.

At that, Maquette of Russia comes to help the worried modeler with five different submarine classes: Dekabrist, Leninets, Malyutka, Stalinets and Shchuka. All of the kits are somewhat crude and it may have come to a small Modeling Association in Rostov that they came to see the light. Did I mention they're crude? And they amount to 9-10 pieces each? But they're the only game in town and they´re in 1/400 scale, so they won´t take much space and were shamefuly affordable.

Besides that and just like with airplanes, I love odd machines in odd colors. So, here is the Malyutka sub in its "advanced" modeling stage:

Only things left to glue are the deck gun, periscopes, elevators and rudder. Maybe, just maybe, I might add some PE railing and stretched sprue but that's still to be considered.

If any interest arises in you about the Soviet Navy and its sub force in WWII, just do me the favor and search in Wikipedia. Uboat.net is a great site for that too. Or Google the net. Many period pictures, no issues with colouring and the largest of these boats has more charm to this poor, stranded soul than Prien's Type VII.

Hopefuly it won't take so much time to present you, my dear friends, with another rendition, superbly filled with good intentions and poorly rendered to "paper", of this comedy called "The Modeling Underdog".

Take care and good luck!

Christmas and a harbinger of things to come...

2008-12-25T02:01:00.004-02:00

As odd as it may seem, and being in front of the computer at 2.04 AM, I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and hope that you´re spending a lovely night with the ones you love.

To the ones that provide me support, love and friendship, I can only say a big THANK YOU for all you do for me and because of me:

My dad and sister, Ducky (my own, personal, immortal beloved), Zeta (who's stylish Modelmod Blogspot is a haven of good taste), Gabriel and his never diminishing ability to make me rant about everything, Adrian "Oh, thy great master of masters", Gustavo "Ben Ali al Majadu" and his astonishing Arabic Air Forces, the Hrubisko dynamic duo (both Raul and Santiago are plain great guys and modelers), Martin Lucero (I owe you so many e-mails that starting to write to you would be an excercise of style itself!) and all of the modelers and everyday people who have to endure my most verbose and contradictory nature. Blame it on the genes!!!

And since we´re talking about genes, modeling is very related to them and that's why I'm starting a new series depicting spanish and argentine aircrafts from the 10's, 20's and 30's. The time has come to sharpen again my modeling skills in view of the next modeling season and since this year I only attended one contest and at that only on a very easy going basis, I assume next year should prove fruitful both in models and entries to the TMU. Displaying civilian aircraft in odd occupations and military aircraft not firing a single shot in anger for the most part is one of the axles of this blog, showing that both aviation and modeling are more than score tallies, medals and production tables is another one.

Soaring to a little more southern skies than its designers ever thought it would be taken to, one fine example of such "pompous and little serious modeling" is this Roden RAF SE.5a in argentine Navy markings. As usual, 1/72nd is the scale of choice.

It is not finished, lacking the rigging, minor painting to complete and is standing minus its wheels and propeller. Hopefuly, it'll be done before the year is over. Also, no more secrecy about what I'm building. One way or the other, modelers always find the way to ruin someone's "secret projects"... So what the heck.

Hopefuly, this soon to end 2008 and its yet to begin counterpart will bring more and better modeling experiences as I carry on (with your gruesome patience and craving for punishment) with this modeling intermezzo called The Modeling Underdog.

Take care and good luck!

Pushing tin

2008-12-18T00:31:00.002-02:00

As some of you may be aware, my health has not been at its best these last weeks. May be as a result of multiple reasons that lurk in my head from time to time and the natural stress they put into this thick skull of mine, pushing my body around to fulfill the daily tasks is sometimes a bit of an annoyance.

Worst of all, my dubious modeling skills have started to dwindle down the road to perdition. One of my last "secret" projects is at s standstill just because the thought of rigging a biplane sends shivers down my spine. Also, the paint job and decaling are some of the worst i've ever done in my not so humble point of view.

The only upsides in my life this time around have been a series of fortunate events, first of all to buy a lovely little mandolin wich, as the model kits, is more the victim than the igniter of my keen interest in things. I tossed an old friend out of my life because there was too much crap going on beetween us and hipocracy or mistrust are things I can not afford these days. And finally, life has begun to show a kinder face to me, even with these ups and downs that undermine not only my modeling eagerness but also my everyday life.

So, even with the dark clouds of uncertainty glooming in the horizon, there's always something to smile for, someone to think about and crave for, a certain model kit that's calling our modeling soul to go out and build it. In short, there's always the hope on things to come.

Have a merry Christmas everyone and hopefuly, the new year that is just around the corner might have a few surprises for us all.

Take care and until our next installment,

The Modeling Underdog

As time goes by...

2008-11-14T13:22:00.003-02:00

My dear friends,

Taking into account that I've been working non stop for the last wo months, I came to realize that TMU had not been updated. For this, I apologize sincerely, since my train of thoughts is aiming somewhere else and very far from modeling. Also, my health has come to the fore with some unattended issues that, from now on, I'll have to take care of.

This upcoming weekend there's a contest at the Quilmes IPMS Chapter. The last one of this 2008 that's leaving thru the back door, both in modeling and living. Hopefuly, and given my dubious health honors its owner (or is it the other way around?), I'll be attending it and taking some snapshots about its models, modelers and atmosphere.

So, till our next installment, take care and good luck.

The Modeling Underdog.

High hopes: the amazing Polikarpov IL-400b

2008-09-09T17:00:00.004-03:00

New fighters for a new era:

When the Civil War in Russia ended in victory for the revolutionary forces, there were 2 things that were pretty much clear in russian aviation: most of the flying material was either reaching obsolesence or woefuly war weary. Among many other designers, Polikarpov was to start producing the ubiquitous reconnaisance biplane D.H.9A as the R-1, but he was also laying the foundation of what would earn him the nickname "King of fighters" during the 20s and 30s.

Open to new technologies and production techniques, Polikarpov set to design a single seat fighter of mixed construction, designated IL-400 (this meaning fighter, Liberty, 400h.p.). The heavy, low compressed and powerful Liberty engine was chosen and mated to a fuselage of all wooden construction and very clean lines. Wings, stabilizators and rudder were built out wooden formers and fabric covered. The front end seemed to have been hastily attached there by means of cutting an R-1 nose and glued to the fuselage. The prototype was tested in August 1923 and proved to be very difficult to fly, since the Center of Gravity was put too far back and the flying surfaces were everything but effective. To make a long story short, the fighter ended up crashing.

A second prototype with some major changes was built, all flying surfaces were now of aluminium profiles and covered with corrugated aluminum sheets. Not only construction was revolutionary for what russian designers were used to, but it was also a monoplane without outer rigging of any kind except for the fixed undercarriage. The frontal radiator of the 1st prototype gave way to a 2 piece system under the nose and a more streamlined cover and propeller hub were adopted for the front end. Also and perhaps the key feature, the CoG was changed with new wing profile. A small but important detail on what a trend setter the plane was is that from that moment on, every fighter prototype produced in Russia was to be armed from the beginning, even for its maiden flight.

On July of 1924, almost a year after the maiden flight of the ill-fated 1st prototype, pilot K. K. Artseulov climbed into the cockpit of the 2nd fighter prototype. This time it was christened IL-400b. The flight was uneventful, and in October of the same year it was passed on to the factory for tesing. While it had an unmatched performance and was extremely fast, pilots had to work its way around the controls, being extremely heavy.

Finally, it was intended for mass production as the I-1, thus becoming the first fighter plane of the Soviet Union. But, and there's always one, it was too expensive and complex to produce with all that aluminium. So, what to do? Polikarpov was instructed to redesign further more the plane, leaving behind the metal parts and a new set of wooden wings and flying surfaces were made available for testing. These not only needed reinforcing from the beginning, but they also proved to have the wrong design for the aircraft. Again the CoG was too far back and the aircraft handled now not only heavily, but also in a sluggish way and very prone to enter spins.

Even so, the aircraft was hastily put into production, all changes accepted. Some sources state that 33 machines were produced, while others state that only 18 of the original figure were actually produced. If that's what happened, it was surely the dangerous flying characteristics that prevented the aircraft from reaching operational service. So much so, that pilot M. M. Gromov of record breaking fame, ended up using his parachute (another first in russian aviation) when he couldn't get his plane out of a spin.

Saddly, every aircraft produced was scrapped and we have no survivors left today of this most unusual plane.

The model kit, or how to fear the unexpected:

Ever since i saw the drawing of 2 (yes, 2) IL-400b flying around on ICM's box, I wanted to build this kit. It looked so odd and racer looking that it kept lurking at the back of my head until I had the chance to buy it. Besides that, I have some sort of fixation with slogans... And this plane had a remarkably beautiful one.

This model was built some 2 years ago, in early 2006, so bear with me if some details are a little bit fuzzy. First things first, so the whole of the kit was washed to get rid of the release mould. After chopping the parts out of the sprues I started to think about the painting sequence. After checking references here and there and against what the instructions said, I decided to imitate the looks of natural wood, metal and leather used in the original... Without having any information on the cockpit's lay out.

Who cares? Just put your brain to work and start looking at that small picture that's on a magazine. It's the model you're building and its a cut out drawing. Sweeeeet!!! Off we go with the stretched sprue, a random seat filed to shape and lots of glue and ingenuity. After a while I had my cockpit fully detailed: Rudder bar and cables, throttle and mixture cuadrant, seat and straps, and even some small dials for the instrument panel.

All that was metal, got a coat of Humbrol's 56 or 11, the straps being painted with H-118 Light Earth. Then, the fuselage got its "wood looking" paint job. Now, I have a very shameful confesion to make:

I CAN NOT PAINT ANY NATURAL WOODGRAIN EFFECT!

At least in the usual way with oil paints, watercolors and stuff. I don't have the artist's touch for that. So, I had to develop my own way on doing things. As with most things in life, so it's not a big deal.

What you do in these cases is simple. You have a WWI propeller? You pick some middle to dark hue to paint the base coat. A 20s propeller might have a dark, middle or light hue and a 30s, middle to light hues probably. It all depends on what wood was used to carve the real thing. In that way you base might range from a dark paint like H-186 or ModelMaster's Italian Red Brown to H-63 Sand, just to name a few.

In this case, I picked H-63 and painted both the innards of the fuselage, cockpit and propeller. Once dry, I started rubbing down all the pieces with my trusty Faber Castell Dark Brown pencil. When you do it gently, the pencil will leave small dots and lines, press a little bit harder and you have the kind of lines that conform wood grain. The up side to it is that it is fast and you can clean up any messes with an eraser or tone it down with the White pencil. A nice coat of gloss varnish and that's it. It's done and it looks good.

Following the assembly, the fuselage was mated after adding the wing spar, another of those wonderful and thoughtful gadgets that ICM uses to include in their kits. After building some of their dreaded Yak fighters both in 48th and 72nd, I got to tell you that this model went on like a breeze, I only used some filler on the fuselage spine.

Now, I turned my attention to the wings. They are split into no less than 5 parts EACH. Why? I don't know but it surely had to do with the absolutely amazing corrugated details on them. Soon, I had 6 parts per wing as I cut off the ailerons. Only one aspect of building the wing won over my eagerness to build the kit: the rear of the wing is a separate piece and a small gap shows on the corrugated surface. I've seen people fill and file it to good avail even when losing some detail but not me, it looks like a panel line anyway.

With all the sub assemblies ready, I mated them to the fuselage and checked alignment. Perfect. Let it drya for a day and move on to the painting stage. Now, It says in the instructions that the wooden fuselage is aluminium and the metal fittings are some kind of polished metal. I painted the whole model in Humbrol's H-191 Chrome Silver and of course, corrugated worked its magic on the colour: you could almost never tell it's all the same colour from all the indents, corrugations, rivets and bolts on the plastic surface. Two shades of metal at the expense of one. As they say, it's priceless!

Gloss varnish in the form of Revell 1 and on to the decals. I know that most ICM decals are a dog to apply, but this ones worked quite well. Gloss varnish left to dry, decals placed with Humbrol's Decalfix and a coat of Humbrol H-135 Satin Varnish did the trick et voila! No decal film visible... As I said, these ones worked quite well.

All that was left to do was gluing the wheels after painting in H-191, H27 for the tires (NO black for early rubber tires, anything but black) and H-118 and 119 plus washes for a slightly muddy and used look.

And, that's it, there you have this beautiful fighter, all shiny in its prototypical splendor.

Some more pictures of it:

The only thing I'll complain about this build has nothing to do with the kit itself, but the lack of suitable figures to put alongside in a typical group picture, to portray the sense and feeling of acomplishment they must have had while creating Russia's first modern fighter.

Take care and till our next installment,

The Modeling Underdog

In the meantime...

2008-08-04T12:12:00.001-03:00

I've been busy with a few job offers that popped out unexpectedly and need me to pay a lot of attention, thus the low update rate we're having here at TMU. If I had a modeling oriented career, I'd be building model kits for a living. Having to live, I 've to work... No pun intended, really.

On the ther hand, modeling came to a nice pace these days and at least 3 models are ready for paint. So, hopefuly tomorrow morning I'll start spraying colors like crazy. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt saying "Always wear a protective mask, you moron".

So stay tuned, there's more F1M and some news from Eastern Europe to come...

Take care and good luck,

The Modeling Underdog

Mitsubishi's Hot Rod: the Spotter way (Part I)

2008-07-19T20:33:00.005-03:00

Fujimi's 1/72 F1M2 Observation Floatplane

Tells the story that many moons ago in Japan, there was a very serious accident at the Fujimi production plant. While building one of the Ki-36 test shots, a modeler pressed so hard on the fuselage/wing joint that the latter went off flying accross the room and hit one of the mould makers in the head. It's said that while laying half-consciuos on the floor, the mould maker cast a curse on Fujimi for hiring such a reckless individual to carry on the test shots building.

From that moment on, any modeler around the globe who cares enough to build a Fujimi kit, has to face a most enigmatic series of mishaps during the build. And so it seems that what was a sharp looking kit in the box, with finely recessed panel lines and a basic interior with lots of potential for detailing, turns into a Sphynx-faced piece of plastic that unveils a riddle one after the other as you proceed with it.

A few years ago, I received from a friend a partially built F1M2. It was the "1945-1995" series boxing of that most beautiful aircraft designed by Mitsubishi. This friend of mine had detailed the interior in an exquisite way with PE and bits of plastic and metal foil. With most of the building done and almost ready for painting, the kit all of a sudden started to linger in his "Shelf of doom" (Catchphrase taken from Scott van Aken, Modeling Madness' editor). Bored of never finishing the darn thingy, he handed it over to me.

As usual with yours faithful, I've always been attracted to the meanest of aerial jobs: Artillery Spotting and General Reconnaisance / Light Bombing / Observation duties. Why? Well, flying around in hostile terrain in a slow, dragging spotter whiles taking pictures, screaming on the radio and everyone takes a shot at you has to be one of the most unglamorous and courageous thing to do in a war. I find so much beauty in those forgotten, multi-purpose aircraft, so as to be certain that at least 50% of my overall collection are spotters, light bombers and reconnaisance machines.

Back to the F1M, I opened the box to find a nearly finished kit: fuselage, wings, stabilizers and main float already glued together, filled and sanded. So was the engine and its cowling. All I had to do was going over the joints to check any cracking due to taking the box home, masking the cockpit and building the wingtip floats and upper wing struts. With all that set on the workbench, I turned to painting.

Just a short time before receiving the kit, I had seen the "Yamato" movie. It's a 2hrs and a bit more monster overflowing with bloodbaths, long speeches and praises of honor. All in all, a most enjoyable movie!!! While rumagging the decals options in the kit, watching that movie made me choose the airplane based on the Yamato, instead of the ones on the Musashi and Nagato. So taking into consideration date, the late stage of WWII when it served and the bizarre yet elegant look of the F1M, I set to work.

All of the fuselage, wings and stabilizers were handpainted with a Humbrol H-70 Brick Red coat to copycat the japanese Red Brown primer used on the floatplane. The same treatment was given to the cowling and floats. After thourough drying, the camouflage was painted using Tamiya's IJN Dark Green, a most suited colour for the late war DG on the uppersides and Model Master's Sky Type S for the undersides. You might want to argue about it being the correct shade but... A touched up, sea and salt worn out, grease smeared and sun faded gives you enough room to claim you're right about it... And in the end, none of us was there pulling the real thing out of the water.

Once dry, I took a fine sandpaper and started wetsanding most of the surface, taking into account that most of the times, the metal beneath the primer was almost impossible to disclose, at least from photographs. Also, the sanding was done paying attention to the most used or affected areas of the airframe. The whole of the kit was varnished with Revell's Gloos Coat. Some metal chipping, very slightly brushed on, is to be done once it is finished varnishing. Then the decals were put on, since hinomarus, beaching markings and ID numbers were seldom worn out to the instance of actually seeing the primer and paint beneath them: bad quality paint and hue stability are two very different things. Anyhow, there will be a very small amount of weathering as well, just the necessary.

So far, this is how it was going:

I had problems for the IJN Dark Green to dry but in the end it took a nice semigloss finish. I had no problems with most of the decals wich, though a tad thick as usual with japanese manufacturers and fine by me, settled down nicely with the help of Humbrol's DecalFix.

Problem:

The yellow ID bands were a different story, those little bastards did not want to snuggle down and conform to the wing's leading edge. Even worst... they didn`t fit!

Solution:

I used some yellow ID bands from a Tamiya Raiden to cover up the mismatches.

Outcome:

Looks like Heaven's Crap! They're two different sahdes of Yellow and texture does not look right. I should 've painted them... I'll give 'em a touch-up of diluted Yellow with a small brush and make them look all weary and stuff, for God's sake... An yes, that's rice wine once again!

After a few weeks of almost giving up, I took the floatplane out again for a ride and glued the upper wing and cowling to the fuselage. The upper wing needed the struts shortened for they left the wing too high on the fuselage. You actually had to press hard in order to get the center section of the wing to seat straight and even on the fuselage. Remember the bouncing wing tale of the beginning? Yeah...

With that issue out of the way I and while taking the masking off the cockpit, the bulkhead beetween pilot and observer came loose much to my surprise. Oh man, I can't believe it... Putting it back in place risked my friend's finely executed interior but in the end and after a copious dose of superglue and a murderous look so it wouldn't craze and fog, that tiny little piece was firmly put in place.

So this is how it looks right now, seating on its main float and the box's lid in a sunny Saturday morning. Soon it will get its wingtip floats, propeller, beaching trolley, canopies and finishing odds and ends:

Looks as ravenous as hell, isn't it? When one remembers that some IJN pilots came to be aces in this gorgeously fast, nimble and contrapted biplane, you get a degree of respect for those who flew it and Mitsubishi for providing the modeler one of the best looking naval planes in history.

Till our next installment, take care and good luck.

The modeling underdog.

All bugs fixed...

2008-07-19T15:43:00.002-03:00

Well, it was just a matter of taking sometime off my daily occupations and fix all the faulty links. To cut it short, all images are working now and the next installment should either deal with the F1M Jap Floatplane or give a look to the workbench and what's on it...

I'll keep you posted, till then, take care and good luck.

The modeling underdog.

In Hell we trust...

2008-07-07T11:37:00.002-03:00

Due to an unexpected problem with my computer, most of the images were lost for good. It'll take a little time to fix and I hope to have TMU running again in a few more mouse scrolls and keyboard beatings.

Take care,

The Modeling Underdog

Still on the run...

2008-07-05T00:27:00.005-03:00

Don't worry, the Modeling Underdog has not left its blog unattended. Nor has he dropped dead on his workbench after confronting the curse that some mean japanese moulder working for Fujimi cast on its kits. He's not laying there bloated and decaying (alright,he does, but he's not dead). Though it would make things easier if you think about it, for him at least.

There's a lot going on in my "full scale" life, so from time to time I might take sometime off this blog to set things straight and bury any evidence concerning the proceedings in some far-away abandoned factory. Just kidding, for God's sake. And by that I mean rice wine.

Also and since it's two hobbies at the same time, writing and modeling, updates may take a little time to show up. Depends both on my building speed and inspiration. Wich both have miserably lacked in this last 7 months...

Just to present you with a little update, let me tell you that the next kits to be finished are:

Bulgarian Arado Ar-65E (RS)
Hungarian MAVAG HejaII (Special Hobby)
Mitsubishi F1M2 "1945-1995 Edition" (Fujimi)
Höffner Sportstaube (Scratchbuilt)
Showa L2D3 Tabby (Esci, already built, more on this later)

All of them in the one and only, the most beautiful scale in the world: 1/72nd. I must strongly state here that as with any other modeler, they might not come out of the production chain as listed and even there is the posibility for some "newcomer" to show up in beetween.

You've been warned.

Until our next installment, take care and have a nice weekend.

The Modeling Underdog

DC-3 with a twist. (Part 3 and the grand finale)

2008-06-27T00:45:00.007-03:00

The Nakajima Showa L2D2 Navy Transport Model 11.

After overcoming my own stupidity and/or lack of technical skills, I managed to realise you can actually upload lots of pictures by just realising that a tiny little window has opened in your desktop. No comments, please...

So, here are the close-up views as promissed. Please excuse some of them are out of focus, I'm sure you'll find of interest what's being focused instead of the subject of interest...

Well, this is it for the moment. The Tabby saga is not over yet, for I have 2 more in the building process. Both of them in equally anarchic schemes that I hope will suit your gaudy and relentless spirits. In the meantime, I'll post some pictures of other models for you to consider building.

Untill our next installment, take care and good luck,

The modeling underdog

DC-3 with a twist. (Part 2)

2008-06-24T16:23:00.012-03:00

The Nakajima Showa L2D2 Navy Transport Model 11.
As mentioned before, there are differences beetween a regular DC-3 and our subject of interest, the L2D. When doing the Model 11, those differences are not very difficult to reproduce. The Italeri kit is very simple in its fitting and most of the seams actually mimic part of the clad covering design so it was easy to fill and sand. With the conversin done and the model assembled I set for the painting process.
Usually all of my cockpit and detail painting is done by brush, leaving the airbrush for the camo schemes and partial weathering. Painting the innards was done in several steps. The most important was to mix my own shade of interior blue/green since I was out of Tamiya's clear blue. I mixed Tamiya Blue (X-4 if I recall correctly) with H-191 Chrome Silver and gave the interior several layers until I was satisfied with it. Other colours used were black and silver for picking up dials, levers and general wear. Insignia yellow and red for knobs and the cover paper found on old decal sheets was used for the seatbelts. Once glued onto the seats, they were painted H-41 and H11.

Next were the wheel wells, engine firewalls and landing gear. A base coat of H-191 was used inside the wheel wells, followed by Tamiya'2 Clear Green liberately applied. For the landing gear itself I used H-33 and H-191 for the retraction struts and ModellMaster's RLM 63 Hellgrau for the rear one.

Since I was doing a Model 11 serving in the Southwest Pacific Fleet around 1942, changes in camo were taken into account. An overall coat of MM's RLM 63 was applied, followed by a dense amount of mottling and squiggles of MM's RLM 83 Dunkelgrün. Both colours are a good match for a faded, chalky IJN Gray and a pre-1943 IJN dar olive like green. Gloss varnish from Revell's enamel range was used in beetween the two colours for the decals were applied before the dark green. An easy and realistic way of doing the usual "aura" we see in this particular kind of camouflage

After looking for suitable decals and failing to find anyone, I sprayed some Heller's French A.F. roundels (best refered to as "cocardes" ;o) ) with H-60 in a random way to give them a chalky look too. After drying properly, they were applied using Humbrol's Decalfix. Once the mottling was over I put the tail numbers on, also a decal dungeon discovery.

The pictures were taken for a project I share with a friend, www.legionmodelismo.com.ar so take a look around and then press the "Back" button. Unless you already have this blogspot in your favourite links, wich would make ME doubt of yor sanity both as modeler and net surfer. Please, also enjoy the watermark specially made for Legion. Any resamblance to a Whermacht arm-band was not a coincidence...

So, without further a-do, the model itself:

On the next installment and since I don't seem to be able to add more pictures, you'll find a few detail photos regarding changes made to the kit, painting techniques and close-up snapshots that a 3-footer model should never have to endure :o)

Good luck and good night,

The modeling underdog

DC-3 with a twist. (Part 1)

2008-06-23T21:59:00.008-03:00

The Nakajima Showa L2D2 Navy Transport Model 11.

Even when the DC-3/C-47 family is famous by itself and its countless feats, I've always been fascinated by 2 of its most unlikely offsprings: the Lisunov Li-2 family (otherwise known as the PS-84 pre-1940) and the L2D series of japanese personnel/cargo transport planes.

While the russian model is based on a rather heavy conversion involving changing engines, scoops, entry door/cargo hatch and several other items depending on what version you want to build, the japanese version is also a very involved conversion, but made easier based on the simplicity of changes.

L2Ds were built in several versions, from the prewar L2D2 to the L2D4. All of them gave sterling service to the IJNAF, and with only some 485 built, their career spanned vast expanses of ocean in an effort to supply from air the IJN stations around the Pacific. Versions and specs of the L2D, coded "Tabby" by the Allies and called simply "Douglas" by its crews, were as follows:

UNITS ALLOCATED

Southern Phillipines Kokutai. Squadrons (Butais) attached to the 3rd, 4th, 6th, 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th Air Fleets (Koku Kantais), to the Combined Fleet (Rengo Kantai) and to the China Area and Southwest Area Fleets.

TECHNICAL DATA

Description: Twin-engined personnel and cargo transport. All-metal construction with fabric-covered control surfaces (L2D1 to L2D4-1) or light alloy, steel and wood construction (L2D5).

Accommodation: Crew of three to five, and either 21 passengers (L2D1 to L2D5) or 4,500 kg of freight (L2D2-1 to L2D4-1).

Powerplant:

Two Pratt & Whitney SB3G fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radials, rated at 1,000 hp for take-off, driving three-blade metal propellers (L2D1).
Two Mitsubishi Kinsei 43 fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radials, rated at 1,000 hp for take-off and 1,080 hp at 2,000 m, driving three-blade metal propellers (L2D2 and L2D2-1).
Two Mitsubishi Kinsei 51 fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radials, rated at 1,300 hp for take-off and 1,200 hp at 3,000 m, driving three-blade metal propellers (L2D3, L2D3-1, L2D4 and L2D4-1).
Two Mitsubishi Kinsei 53 fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radials, rated at 1,300 hp for take-off and 1,200 hp at 3,000 m, driving three-blade metal propellers (L2D3a and L2D3-1a).
Two Mitsubishi Kinsei 62 fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radials, rated at 1,560 hp for take-off and 1,340 hp at 2,100 m, driving three-blade metal propellers (L2D5).

Armament:

One flexible 13 mm Type 2 machine-gun and two 7.7 mm Type 92 machine-guns (L2D4, L2D4-1 and L2D5).

	L2D2	L2D3-1a
Dimensions:
Span	28.96 m	28.96 m
Length	19.72 m	19.51 m
Height	7.46 m	7.46 m
Wing area	91.6 m²	91.6 m²
Weights:
Empty	7,125 kg	7,218 kg
Loaded	10,900 kg	12,500 kg
Wing loading	119.0 kg/m²	136.5 kg/m²
Power loading	5.5 kg/hp	4.8 kg/hp
Performance:
Maximum speed	191 kt at 2,400 m	212 kt at 2,800 m
Cruising speed	140 kt at 2,000 m	130 kt at 3,000 m
Climb to	5,000 m	5,000 m
in	20 min 36 sec	16 min 2 sec
Service ceiling	10,900 m	-
Normal range	1,740 naut miles	1,620 naut miles

Production: Including the two L2D1s assembled from Douglas-built parts, a total of 487 L2Ds were built by Showa Hikoki Kogyo K. K. and Nakajima Hikoki K.K. as follows:

	Showa	Nakajima
1939	1	-
1940	1	10
1941	22	49
1942	87	12
1943	61	-
1944	157	-
1945	87	-
Totals	416	71

For this conversion, we can use any of the kits availabe in the market today. May it be the Italeri or Esci proposals, they both have strengths and weaknesses: both kits have a nice interior and a better cockpit for the Esci kit. Heavy detailing of the cargo area is to be expected if you want to build any of them with the cargo hatch / passenger door open.

The Italeri kit seems to have an all-round better look, but its landing gear is somewhat simplyfied compared to the one on the Esci kit. Windshields: hands down for the Italeri kit, a better moulded and well thought 3 piece affair while the single piece part from Esci looks like it's gonna be a little bit difficult to make it fit in such a narrow space. Then again, Esci's kit has positionable landing flaps.

I bought the DC-3 versions of both kits and an old Esci AC-47 someone built ages ago (more on this in a different installment). Out of sheer heart I almost built the Italeri one in the lovely KLM livery. Had it not been for a sudden thought about building civilian aircraft and me not being "old enough" as a modeler to tackle a NMF, the L2D project would have been shelved for a few more years.

Since it was my first heavy conversion I chose the initial L2D2 version(not to be confused with R2D2, a different kind of flying tin can) for it has:

1- Very similar cowlings to the ones on the DC-3, both carburettor and oil coolers as per the original and props can be carved out from the paddled ones in the kit.

2- Only small windows in the "back office" and a circular hatch in the crew entry door.

3- Pitot tube as in the DC-3, also the passenger entry door.

4- The modeler must add: RDF base where the astrodome goes and the antennae mast behind it. A fuel dump drain under the fuselage with a small antennae on it, different exhausts and a slight reshaping of the tail light.

The Italeri kit was chosen for ease of built and safe design, the Esci ones (I bought 2) were going to have to wait for me to get a little more experience. This model was completed in early 2003 and I am still amazed how little have my modeling skills improved. Oh well, you live and learn, not me.

Besides the nice set of photographs we all can find on the Internet, I recommend to all of you to get a copy of an old Maru Mechanic magazine devoted to the L2D family. Whilst it is in Japanese, most of the drawings are more than self explanatory and the 1/120 set of plans are indeed "priceless".

On the next installment, we'll see what it takes to convert a DC-3 into an early Tabby.

Take care and good luck,

The Underdog Modeler

Junkers F.13, the first of the many.

2008-06-20T11:04:00.001-03:00

When you talk about Junkers, it always comes to mind the rugged shape of the Ju-52 or the strange look of the Ju-87, the Stuka. Furthermore, some modelers focused on the "only aces" modeling stream will even look down on this little gem of early aviation engineering.

The F.13 was the first practical, designed as such, passenger aircraft in the world. With its ruggedness, ease of flying, and closed passenger cabin, its career spanned all around the globe over 20 years and a bit more. Before and after the creation of Luft Hansa, it remained as the backbone of its fleet. While it outperformed most of the contemporary designs, it was also a bit small for the ever growing european routes both in passenger (4 seats) and mail or freight capacity, thus the G.23/24/F.24 and W.33/44 families were born. This family of planes, quite a common sight everywhere in Europe with its corrugated aluminum clad, culminated in the quite modern for the time G.31 and Ju-52.

One of the least known and most important job carried on by the F.13 was that of air ambulance. In this case, two machines used by the Spanish Red Cross in the 1925 campaign of the spanish army against the moroccan tribes in North Africa.

To begin with, I used the old and trusty F.13 packed by Revell AG. If data is correct, the original mold was made by the East-German company VEB-Plastikart, also responsible for a Junkers G.23, both molds being pressed in the 70s.As reference I used an old Avions REVUE, a spanish magazine devoted to aviation and highly recommended, for it had a nice article on the spanish Medevac Junkers.

The only real difference with the transport machine was that it had a stretcher and a seat for a medic. As a variation it could acommodate 4 lightly wounded soldiers and the medic. I started by adding a stretcher made of plasticard and a seat to the pax. cabin and lapbelts in all 3 seats. It was all painted RLM 02 from ModelMaster and the instrument panel decal placed on the dashboard provided. Otherwise, the interior is built as per the instructions.

After that, roof, wings and tailplanes were fitted, cutting off the rudder and elevators for a more realistic look. I decided to glue the elevators in a down position and both control columns in the forward position as in the pictures I had. I left the rudder apart for ease of paint and at a later stage it was set centered before the final varnish coat. I decided to build it with floats, since it made the most part of the photos in that article. Floats are a very simple afair and the unusual quality of the moldings shows when building them. The only awkward moment was glueing the somewhat complex strut arrangemente used by Junkers in its floatplanes, but ones I went through with it, I had a very sturdy and stable base for this large winged tin can.

The paint scheme was based on the pictures and data in the article: white fuselage and upper surfaces with a black nose and undersurfaces including the floats. Humbrol paints were used for it, namely H33 and H22. All paint was done with an airbrush. Codes were masked and then retouched with a brush, for they had been painted over and hand painted once operations began in Africa.

And the undersurfaces:

Fooling with the floats, just to check how they fit:

Next and to prevent me from knocking everything off, I started to decal the model. I'd put all appendages after decaling and before the final coat. I airbrushed the kit with Revell's Gloss Varnish and once dry, proceeded to decal it, all the necessary letters, numbers and insignias coming from the decal dungeon or the sheet provided by Revell. I used Decalfix from Humbrol, I don't have the time or patience to use Set & Sol, etc.

At this time I changed my mind and sprayed the Semigloss varnish, glueing everything after a thourouhg dry:

For the varnished wood on the propeller, I painted it with Humbrol H63 and later on with Humbrol H186, then scratched with a needle. I varnished the propeller, applied the manufacturer's logo and varnished again. Here's the result:

I'm not happy with it, though, and I'll return to the usual H-63 - Faber Castell pencils - Varnish. It gave excellent results in both a IL-400b and Ar65E propellers.

All that was left was to weather the model by drybrushing with H-56 and H-33, then washes with the same colors and glue the propeller to its boss. And that was it, I had a F.13 from the Spanish Red Cross. I took it to a couple of contests and it was well received amongst the swarms of more often built models.

Is it a bat gone white? Nop, it's an air ambulance...

A majestic livery for a graceful design:

I hope you've enjoyed it, please let me hear your comments about it. I have 2 more F.13s on the shelf, nice liveries for them too.

Take care and till the next installment, goodbye.

The modelist underdog.

The first step

2008-06-19T23:36:00.000-03:00

La primera entrada en un diario siempre es la mas dificil, pero en este caso sera simple: es la primera de este humilde diario orientado al modelismo estatico. Por una cuestion meramente idiosincratica, el mismo sera escrito en ingles para facilitarle la vida a los visitantes foraneos. Que lo disfruten!

The first entry in a diary is always the hardest, but in this case I'll make it simple: it's the first entry in this humble diary oriented to model kit building. For very simple reasons, it'll be written in english to make it easier on our foreign visitors. Enjoy!

Javier