My Eclectic 1/72 Collection

[chbessexboy]

Nov 2, 2021 10:28:08 GMT 12 planecrazy said:

Great job in the mottled camp, hard to get a good look with a brush, or did you use an air brush?

Thank you. This is my attempt with a brush when in my early "teens". I hope to do better with an airbrush when I summon up the courage...

[chbessexboy]

Another of my Luftwaffe kits was never blighted with the Swastika – the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.

In West German service it soon gained the name “Widowmaker” – a moniker applied to a number of aircraft over the years, but none more deserving. A look at the wing area, and a guess at the resultant wing loading, would suggest this is little more than an unguided missile – one that the unfortunate pilot had to somehow wrestle into submission. It was a greater threat to those who flew it than those who flew against it.

This is my FROG example, which is in fact a re-boxed Hasegawa kit.



It represents an aircraft operated by “1./JG 71 Richthofen”. It is hard to comprehend that it was on the drawing board a mere thirty-four years after the “Red Baron’s” death.

[chbessexboy]

Not all my models survived their cardboard box incarceration intact. This is what was left of my Avro 504K.



A shame because it was one of my favourites. Fortunately it was only missing the skid and a few inter-plane struts, so I decided to replace these with sprue. While researching I discovered there was a 504N conversion kit available from a manufacturer called Kora.



The “N” had a radial engine, different undercarriage and no skid. I formulated a plan.

As the Airfix 504K was still readily available second hand, I decided to buy another kit and a Kora conversion. This would provide a new undercarriage and skid for my original one.

This second kit was acquired.



It had three decal options: the light grey one on the box art (Egypt 1920s), another grey one for Sweden in 1924, and an olive drab First World War one preserved at the RAF Museum in Hendon. As I had seen the one at Hendon I decided to buy a third kit and model that too.






Then, the more I looked at the box art the more I liked it, so a fourth was bought to build the No.4 Flying Training School, Abu Sueir option.



I began to repair my first one (E4342) and build the second “Hendon” one (E449) together. In retrospect this may have been a mistake.

The “new” kit was identical to the original other than the colour of the plastic. The fuselage halves fit on these kits had never been corrected since it was introduced in 1967 and remained terrible. Add to that the numerous ejector pin and sink marks meant there was a lot of filling to be done – times two. While waiting for the Tamiya Putty to harden I made my next mistake and started on an Airfix P-51D. The idea was just to do some prep and paint the cockpit sides etc. While I had the paint out, why not do the same to the Italeri P-51D in the stash? I now had one rebuild and three new builds on the go. What started out to be a more efficient “production line” method soon had me bogged down. However, I stuck to it.

After a while I had both 504 fuselages filled, sanded and ready for paint. I had deliberately left E4342’s sides untouched as I wanted to preserve as much of the original kit as possible. Imagine my disgust when I masked along one side and removed some of the serial number in the process. A hunt through the decal box turned up a sheet of serial numbers, but the font wasn’t quite right! Oh well, I’d worry about it later....

When I decided to get back into modelling, I spent a lot of time being inspired by Googling how the experts did it – including our own Zac Yates. One thing I decided was that rigging 1/72 bi-planes was a bridge too far for me. However, despite my urge to “crack on” I soon found myself buying a reel of 6lb fishing line, a 0.5mm drill and some super glue. What followed would try the patience of a Saint, but is worth it.

It isn’t a complete rigging job – more of a token gesture - but enough perhaps to convince the eye without cluttering the look too much. I also cut and “posed” all the control surfaces on E449, and just the elevators on E4342. This was a first for me, but I’ll do it sparingly.

While buying some other second hand kits I was offered another 504K sight unseen and thought, “Why not?” I was delighted to find it was an original issue!



This solved my decal serial number problem, and provided another example to add to the squadron. Maybe I’ll build F9753 too.

So, after a lot of interruptions and wandering concentration, both E4342 and E449 were finished. I’m pleased with the result, but they consumed more time than I care to admit. Perhaps the first build after my fifty-year sabbatical should have been something less challenging. I’ll get a few monoplanes under my belt before returning to bi-planes - and then maybe a single-bay.

But I still love Avro 504s.....

[chbessexboy]

This Republic F-84 Thunderjet was introduced by FROG in 1956, so is possibly my earliest kit – although this example would have been produced locally in the late 1960s.



Being very early means it’s also very basic. The pilot was moulded on each fuselage half (but removed in accordance with my “no pilot” policy), and wheel wells were not opened up, just painted on. It seems unlikely that Republic followed boiler making techniques when constructing their “state of the art” fighter-bomber, but it appears FROG were not aware of this.

Decals of this era were not exactly transparent when new so it’s unsurprising that they have yellowed over the last fifty years. Fortunately replacements are available.

Although I always associated the Thunderjet with the ‘50s, it never occurred to me it was designed as a replacement for the P-47 Thunderbolt and was in fact conceived in 1944. It evoked memories of the 1950s TV version of “Flash Gordon” I suppose.

Its actual development was not without trouble. Structural failures and the usual weight increases stressed the already underpowered jet engines of the era. Despite this it featured heavily in the Korean War despite being a generation older than the Mig-15s it encountered, and sometimes shot down - but usually at a cost. The high B-29 escort role was soon given to the F-86 Sabres, and the Thunderjets concentrated on ground attack duties.

With the usual rapid development of military aircraft, the F-84s were replaced and found their way to air forces of less affluent countries. Wikipedia tells us over a dozen such had them on strength and that the “Royal Thai Air Force operated 31 Republic F-84G from November 1956 until 1963”. However I swear I saw about half a dozen lined up at Bangkok airport in 1975. Maybe if they were still serving in the training role that doesn’t count.

My Thunderjet will get a rub down to remove some of the excessive “detail” when it gets a repaint and a new set of decals. Until then it waits its turn on “restoration row”.

[chbessexboy]

My Dornier Do 17Z-2 “5K+DH” is a FROG kit from 1971. It represents an aircraft operated over Britain in September 1940.









This much publicised photo (below) shows two Dorniers on the first day of London’s Blitz – September 7th 1940. The shadows tell us it is late afternoon on what was a sunny Saturday in that “Indian Summer”.



With computer tools available now, the image has been cleverly superimposed on to Google Earth to give an accurate location. Directly below the leading aircraft is Canning Town.



On that fateful day, a little girl who would become my mother was living with her family in Canning Town. Her father was employed on the nearby docks.

When the air raid sirens sounded, my Mum’s favourite Aunt was caught between two shelters. She was killed in the attack. Within a few weeks my mother and her family had been bombed out. This is the expression she used to relate that, upon emerging from their Anderson shelter, they discovered their house had been largely destroyed. The targets were of course the nearby docks, but pin-point accuracy was not possible. It would be naive to think that the dockers who lived nearby were not secondary targets.

The first bombs dropped on Central London are recorded as being by accident on 24th August as aircraft drifted off course from their intended military targets on the outskirts. A reprisal raid on Berlin by Blenheims followed on the 25th. Hitler is said to have been outraged and ordered the “Blitz” that started on September 7th and continued for 56 of the following 57 days and nights.

These events took place only eighty or so years ago, and in the context of man’s evolution, that is nothing. Despite our belief that we are perhaps more sophisticated and evolved, recent political and social events tend to support the argument that we are the same people.

With that iconic photo, we can put ourselves in a Dornier looking down on two other members of the 300 strong attacking force.

That the Luftwaffe dropped high explosives on Greater London can seem incomprehensible when one visits the city now. Some of the crews would most likely have been familiar with the districts they were flying over – such was the close ties the two countries had formed since the Great War. Did they not suspect Britain would be a very different prospect from the European countries their Blitzkrieg tactics had been so successful over, and that the RAF would be capable of returning the favour? I suspect some did. I have great sympathy for those who realised at that early stage that Hitler had gambled and already lost.

They “sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind”. The devastation of Germany that followed is still the subject of hot debate. There are only losers in war.

Some aeroplanes, even though their sole purpose may be what we euphemistically call “strategic”, can still be objects of interest and even things of beauty. But we must never forget their true purpose. That is why preserved examples in museums are important and the same case could also be made for models.

A museum in miniature perhaps?

[thebrads]

Excellent post. Well done

[chbessexboy]

The humble Tiger Moth is the subject of this instalment, made even more humble by Airfix’s 1957 toy-like effort. My 1960s’ example is displayed here “as built”.





Even the bag-header artwork made no secret of the fact that the kit’s serial numbers were grossly over scale, and the out-of-register roundels did nothing to improve the situation.



The re-tooled Airfix 2014 release is so superior that the original is hardly worth bothering with. It would take a large dose of nostalgia, and an equal one of masochism, to build an early one now. But in already having one, I felt compelled to at least try to bring it up to an acceptable standard.

So the lumps and bumps were smoothed out, and the decals (I called them transfers back then) sanded down and painted over. My 0.5mm drill got an airing, along with the fishing line and a fresh tube of super-glue.

A new Airfix Tiger Moth gave up its RAF roundels (I’ll build the RAAF version) and a Ventura sheet provided the serials – each minute letter and digit painstakingly applied individually.

“K2567” was the first production de Havilland DH.82 Tiger Moth of nearly 9000 built, and I consider myself privileged to have flown a couple of them. Not an easy aircraft to master, which is why it became a good trainer. However, my experience was compromised by having learnt on later monoplanes. Biplanes, with their combination of generous wing area and high parasitic drag, would have been the norm to ab initio trainees of the era. They were also young, with sharper reflexes.....

My “K2567” may not be the most accurate 1/72 Tiger Moth, but it’s the best I can make it and I’ve enjoyed the process – which after all must be the object of the exercise.