What's on my desk? Part 92.
Hello and welcome!
This weekend (both Saturday and Sunday) IPMS Belgium organizes their yearly convention Plastic and Steel. Change of location: the festivities take place in Klein Boom, Putte. I won't be there with the shop, but you might see me walking around...
On to the models!
Not a lot of progress on the McLaren, I'm afraid. It's a bit similar to the Bergepanther: lots of detail painting to do in between assembling the parts. I did the ground plate and started on the engine. While the black was in my airbrush, I did some smaller parts as well:
Meanwhile, I've found a company that makes decals with the missing 'Marlboro' titles for this kit. It should arrive this week.
Bergepanther time!
I completed the engine. The Maybach HL230 consists of 67 parts, and is mostly hidden when installed, but here it is in all its glory:
I only lightly weathered it.
It is sandwiched in between the radiator coolers and as mentioned, all that detail becomes practically invisible:
There's some tubing in the back:
This too will all disappear behind the rear plate, but it just goes to show how much detail Takom has put into this kit. There are some access hatches that you can leave off if you wish to depict a tank being serviced/maintained, but I've chosen not to do this.
I'd already primed the upper hull, but forgot to add some external details, like tool racks and pintles for the crane:
This one will receive the typical dark yellow colour (I like Mr. Color 79 for this) before installation over the lower hull. The big front hatch will then need to be masked off for application of the camouflage.
The opening over the winch will be covered with the steel/wood platform, which was planned to hold a 20mm anti-air cannon, although this wasn't usually fitted to the vehicles.
I painted the wood parts beforehand, as I'm planning to chip the paint over these, letting some of the wood show through.
More work that will be hidden later. :-)
And the underside of this platform, as I've shown the past couple of blogs, now in place:
Looks a lot better than a plain flat plate would have done, I think.
Finally, I've started on a next project. For a few years now I've been a member of the 'Around the World Group Build' on Facebook. In these group builds modellers all over the world build in a specific theme, during a specific time frame. I already participated several times in this group, and now (October 1 -December 26) we're building training aircraft.
This is the one I'm building:
The T-2 Buckeye was a US Navy trainer, also used by Greece and Venezuela. It's also one of the ugliest planes ever made. :-)
Small air forces are encouraged in the group build, so I'm making the Hellenic Air Force version.
The kit comes with pre-coloured PE instrument panels and resin parts. Resin tends to be provided still attached to big pouring blocks that need to be cut/sawn off. The easiest way is to use a Dremel tool and a small circular grinder:
Word of warning: use a dust mask when sanding/sawing resin!!! Resin dust is very unhealthy, so avoid inhaling any of it.
I fixed the rudder pedals, primed and painted (with A.Mig 209 Light Gray) the cockpit parts, and picked out the instruments with black oil paint. This is how far I got:
If all goes well, the Buckeye should be finished before the Christmas deadline.
That's it for now.
See you next week!