Azur PZL.24 B/E - Part I

PZL.24B/E from Azur is a bit unusual in several ways. First of all, the subject itself is a rather unknown airplane - a Polish gullwing monoplane fighter airplane built shortly before start of World War II and intended as the replacement for obsolete PZL P-7:s and 11:s. For some unexplainable reason however, all machines of this type that were build, were sold by Poland to other countries, more precisely to Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and Rumania.

Azur's kit makes it possible to make two variants of early B version in Rumanian service and one of later E version in Bulgarian livery. Unfortunately, I managed to delete pictures of the content of the box, but it is a short run kit with both photo-etch and resin parts as well as a vacform cockpit covers. Ergo, it's definitely for beginner modellers and quite a challenge for yours truly.

The construction starts, as usually with the cockpit interior. A lot of tiny parts and a first encounter with photo-etch. Never being a tidy model builder, I tend to struggle with those bits and make a bit of a mess more often than not. The fact that one of resin seat braces turned out to be missing and had to be replaced with tiny styrene strips, while another tiny resin bit supposed to be placed behind instrument panel was swallowed by carpet monsters immediately after being cut from the moulding block didn't improve the results.

Hasegawa Morane Saolnier M.S.406

Here's a short report about the other kit in Hasegawa's 'Battle of France' combo-box - the Morane-Saolnier M.S.406. As can be seen in photos of the sprues, it's another very simple kit. And indeed, the first impression based on contents of the box, is correct - it is a very basic kit, but at the same time, the finished model is quite pleasant to the eye.

There isn't much to tell about the building process - everything fits together rather nicely. Extra attention needs however to be paid when gluing together the wing component - despite the presence of guiding plugs, it is possible to misalign upper and lower wing surfaces, so give them en extra check once they're put together. Another thing I rather liked in this kit was the way cockpit component is fastened in the fuselage. Usually one needs to glue the sides of cockpit to the sides of the fuselage. Here, Hasegawa chose to anchor the cockpit assembly from beneath, with help of four square anchor points. I was a bit worried about the 'flimsiness' of that arrangement, but it worked like a charm. Advantage of this approach is that fuselage halfs can be glued together without having to worry about the cockpit assembly also being fitted and aligned at the same time.

The model was painted Lifecolor paints, in almost in the same way as its sibling -  UA026 Light Compas Ghost Grey (FS36375), UA094 Medium Sea Grey (FS36270) and UA143 French Brown (FS30045). The green disruptive patches were painted with UA146 French Green (FS34128).

Hasegawa Dewoitine D.520 - Part II

After a long period of silence, it's time to post the progress report for Dewoitine D.520. In simple terms, it's done. Finished kit can be seen below.

Couple of words about paints used in this project. All paints are Lifecolor acrylics. Lower surfaces were painted with UA026 Light Compas Ghost Grey (FS36375). Base color for upper surfaces is UA094 Medium Sea Grey (FS36270), while camouflage was done with UA143 French Brown (FS30045) and UA142 French Khaki (FS34096). The blue for the cockpit is a personal mix and should be regarded as 'artistic freedom', since I was unable to find good reference pictures or a paint specifically for french cockpit blue. One thing is for sure though - the grey color specified by Hasegawa as interior color used by the French in 1940 is almost certainly incorrect.

But what about the kit itself? Well, it was one of the most basic kits I've put together since getting back to the hobby. The fit is very good, number of parts is very reasonable, panel engravings are subtle, decals are basic (no stencils), but very nice to work with, cockpit parts are clear and detailed. Overall, a straightforward build without any real challenges, In fact, I'd say that it's a perfect beginner's kit.
 

Hasegawa Dewoitine D.520 - Part I

Switching back to 1/72 and actually to my intended focus for my slowly growing model collection - airplanes of early World War II. This time around I've decided to give some attention to what I believe is a quite neglected topic - French Airforce of early war years.

I happen to have what I feel is a perfect starting point for this particular subsection of airforce history - a double pack of Dewoitine D.520 and Morane Saolnier M.S.406 from Hasegawa. For no particular reason I picked the Dewoitine first.

Couple of words about Hasegawa - never worked with their kits before, but I'm somewhat familiar with company's reputation and its prices. To be honest, nothing I've seen in this particular box did initially strike me as overly 'exclusive'. The Dewoitine is surely nicely sculpted, there is no flash and panel lines are very subtle, but overall the kit is neither better or worse than latest offerings from Airfix. At the same time it has to be admitted that while this particular kit is very simple, the precision of moulding is excellent. The assembly was absolutely problem-free and I hardly needed to use any filler during the construction phase.

I wish I could say the same about the painting phase or rather my new Iwata Neo I used for the very first time. My 'regular' airbrush - Badger 150 with 0.5mm needle - is a very forgiving beast. The Neo, not so much. It is a very fussy animal indeed - the paint must be diluted just so or it will act up on every opportunity, either clogging or spitting. This behavior is the reason for rather horrid effort at preshading, as can be witnessed in pictures below.

Revell Stug 40 Ausf. G - Part II

This one is gonna be short and sweet - the Stug is finished and here's how it turned out. This time around I've decided to really push things to the limit with the weathering and threw everything I had at this poor little kit.

First off, couple of enamel washes from AK Interactive and MiG. A slightly frustrating experience, I have to say - in instruction videos the washes always distribute themselves in nice layers, but not so for me. Instead, the pigments pooled together and insisted on creating those ugly watermark lines. Not sure really why, as the kit was properly varnished with gloss before I applied the washes. Guess further experiments are required.

Once the washes settled, it was time for chipping and streaks. The thing with realistic chipping seems to be one part delicate work with tiny brush and one part of correct location selection. Hard edges, hinges, surfaces exposed to wear and tear - chipping seems to work fine on all of them, as long as it's not overdove. As for the streaks, any flat area works just fine.

Last, but not least, it was the turn for the rust effects. In this particular kit I decided to give shürtzen holders extra attention and slobbered  rust paint and pigments all over their upper parts.

Pretty happy with the final result.

Revell Stug 40 Ausf. G - Part I

Been a long while since I've posted anything about my own projects and for a very good reason - there is only one and it moves with snail's pace. After the Spitfire I finished in August, I didn't have much time for modelling and then one thing came up and then another... Before the I knew it, it was start of October. Trying to revive some momentum, I pretty much picked up closest random model from the shelf and it happened to be another StugIII from Revell.

 Having a vague memory of previous build, I'm pretty sure that this Stug is basically the same kit as the one I've built couple of years ago. I also remembered the problems I was having with the tracks. So, this time around I decided to try something different than my usual 'routine' with tanks. Normally when working with armor, I assembly and paint chassis and superstructure separately, then join them together and tidy up the paint job before final steps of varnishing and weathering. As part of 'usual procedure', I also paint the wheels before gluing them in place.

Not this time though; remembering previous build and problems with correct track alignment as well as being curious about the fact that many modellers seem to complete the assembly of the the kit even before priming, I've decided to try doing it that way. Well, having tried that approach, I've got to admit that not having to handle partial paint jobs throughout the assembly process certainly does speed things up! Took me about six hours to have the kit syanding assembled on the table, with most of the time being spent on the track assembly.

The kit fits together superbly, there are no gaps or problems worth mentioning. However. be careful about the direction of the tracks as you glue them into place! Also, heads-up about a bit wierd issue - as it turns out the chassis and superstructure fit pretty good together in two 'positions' - one with front edge of superstructure overlapping the front edge of chassi and the other with superstucture's edge placed behind the front lip of chassis. The assembly instructions are pretty ambivalent about the correct alignment of those two major components and if you do it wrong, the entire backside of the model will simply not fit. OK, so what's the right alternative? The second one, with superstructure front end behind, leaving the front lip of chassis visible from above. Other than that, the assembly is so straight-forward that there really wasn't much point in posting any pictures from that stage of the build. Once the kit was assembled, it was primed in grey and preshaded with black. Not really a good idea actually, as the black undercoat is pretty harsh with German dunkelgelb as base color. Luckily, the disruptive pattern of diluted Olive Green mixed with a touch of white softened the harshness of the preshading. Next, the wood and metal details were painted and that's pretty much where I am right now. Next, gloss varnish and decals, followed by another shot at realistic weathering.

C4 Open 2014

Last week I had the great pleasure of visiting yet another installment of C4 Open, my local modelling exhibition. As always, there was a massive amount of wonderful kits, although I could also observe some rather worrying trends - number of dioramas was decreased noticeably when compared with last couple of years. Hopefully it's not an indication of things to come. Anyway, a bunch of pictures was taken by yours truly and is ready to be viewed in galleries below. Hope find them to your liking.