Boys in Blue

NEXT!  They always told us not to say that to the next customer waiting at the airport as it made it seem like a fast food place.

But anyhow, Huey is finished its time to move on to the next project while the fire is in the belly.  I’ve been waiting to tryout a set of Vallejo US Navy colors my son bought me for Christmas and am opening up the Tamiya Birdcage Corsair and a bagged Monogram TBD-1.

The plan at this point is to build the TBD-1 out of the box.  I still need to purchase a set of decals for it but I see the Starfighter decals are available in places including eBay

The Corsair will be off of the Owl Decals Marine night fighters.  I have fallen in love with Owl Decals and have used them in a number of previous night fighter projects.  You can find those looking through my earlier blogs.

I’ll build it using the True Details cockpit detail set.

This Corsair kit has a bit of history.  Many years ago my wonderful daughter was 3 years old when she figured out how to get into daddy’s model display.  I know she knew how much I liked the models I built and wanted to play with them too.   It took me a few minutes to realize that what I heard was the sound of breaking styrene.  When I break a model I always say “They started out in pieces, we are just helping them return to their natural state”  I just had help this time

She got the Tamiya Fw-190A3, the Hasegawa F-14, and the Tamiya Corsair.  I have now built another Fw-190, this is the Corsair replacement (after 16 years), and the Tomcat is on the to do pile.  Then there will be harmony again in the styrene world.

I spent most of the weekend working around the house and the time I did get to work on the kits was sawing detail pieces out of resin blocks.  I was reminded that when I  was young I could have put the whole kit together in the time it takes me to prep a set of resin and etch for a kit.

Huey is done

I don’t make very many helicopter models.  Built this Huey to try out the Antarctic decals I had for many 1/72 scale copters and started with the Huey.

A couple of uh-ohs during decaling;

• drop the copter and had to fix the fuselage split at the nose and polish it up and spray it again.
• grabbed the back end while one of the number decals was still soft from the decal set
• the only decals I didn’t use Solvaset on silvered really bad (NAVY on doors).  I guess the use of a gloss acrylic paint didn’t stay that glossy

The copter was painted, decalled, and overcoated with Testor’s dullcoat.  The orange actually looks pretty good all said and done.  It was a real pain putting in all of those windows and one fell out while I was trying to remove the masking which made for some fun.

Other than a quick burnt umber wash there was no weathering done on this.

I was going to start the H-19 next in same antarctic colors but I had some much fun I’m going back to 1/48 scale for a couple of kits (Tamiya Corsair and Monogram Devastator).  I’ve been dying to try out my Vallejo US Navy colors.

Huey, Dewy, And Louie (Well Huey…)

Finished the two main colors of the Huey over the Mother’s Day weekend (in and amongst Mom slave day – another post maybe!)

I am building a set of 1/72 Antarctic helicopters, the Huey is first.  Markings will be based on the set of Max Decals.  The sheet covers quite a number of 1/72 Antarctic helo markings.

After sanding out all of the gaps I sprayed black, taped her up, and got ready to spray Model Master Acrylic International Orange.  That is when I realized the tail rotor warning decals did not come with the yellow band and I had to apply that too!

Despite thining, the Model Master paint wound up going on a little thick to cover up the Mr. Surfacer I used to level the gaps.  I debated whether to prime or not and got in a hurry and didn’t prime.  The result was a thicker coat than I wanted and a few spots the tape pulled the paint up (which has not happened to me in a long time).

The overall orange looks pretty good however and I’ll be onto decaling and weathering right after a bit of touch up.