Dave Ward's B-P Defiant - Airfix 1/48 for Colin's Battle Of Britain GB finished!

[Dave Ward]

I'm calling this finished:



The Airfix 1/48 Defiant is a good model, the assembly, especially of the turret is pretty tricky & needs a little easing here & there to fit. The open turret doors are a very tight fit & need no glue!. Some of the detail will never see the light of day again. If you build this with cockpit & turret closed, then the PE is really superfluous.
I can't remember a model where I have dropped so many bits, lost bits ( still haven't located my missing masks ) I seemed to have spent ages creeping round, looking for absconded parts - what is fitted now is the third control column, the first two vapourised...................
Thanks to Colin for overseeing this GB & thanks all for dropping by
Dave

 

[Tim Marlow]

I know it was a failure, but I’ve always had a soft spot for this aircraft. This is a great rendition Dave, well done. Makes me want to buy one, even though I’m not building kits at the moment LOL....

 

[KarlW]

Got to be happy with that Dave.

 

[rtfoe]

Nicely built and painted Dave, I've only made one with the old Airfix 1/72 kit and have the later 1/48 like yours in the stash so with how its gone together so nicely I'm going to attempt that soon.

Cheers,
Richard

 

[spanner570]

Excellent build, Dave. and nicely presented too.

 

[outrunner]

Looks good Dave.

Andy.

 

[Gern]

I like it.

 

[Neil Merryweather]

very nice indeed ,Dave

 

[NickT]

Excellent Dave - Looks good !

 

[Richard48]

Ive always liked the rakish look of the Defiant.Done a nice job Dave.
Rich.

 

[yak face]

, Nice job dave , cheers tony

 

[Defiant911]

I'm calling this finished:
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The Airfix 1/48 Defiant is a good model, the assembly, especially of the turret is pretty tricky & needs a little easing here & there to fit. The open turret doors are a very tight fit & need no glue!. Some of the detail will never see the light of day again. If you build this with cockpit & turret closed, then the PE is really superfluous.
I can't remember a model where I have dropped so many bits, lost bits ( still haven't located my missing masks ) I seemed to have spent ages creeping round, looking for absconded parts - what is fitted now is the third control column, the first two vapourised...................
Thanks to Colin for overseeing this GB & thanks all for dropping by
Dave

Looks excellent Dave and the weathering is a great finish. I always get nervous about weathering as you spend all that time painting so carefully and then Splash all this weathering on which in the wrong hands can go very wrong( I know from bitter experience) but clearly you have pulled it off.
Nice work.

 

[Fernando N]

Very nice result Dave, top man for persevering despite all the troubles and bits disappearing

 

[Lee Drennen]

Dave. Very nice finish nice touch on the weathering

 

[Dave Ward]

About weathering:
It's one of those things that doesn't scale too well - to make it visible on a 1/48 model, you have to enlarge the effect. When you look at a blown up picture, it looks as if someone has been at it with a rasp & a bucket of Nitromors!
To take an improbable example. Someone climbs on a wing with hobnail boots & scuffs his feet. He leaves several scratches 200mm long X 5mm wide. Scale that down to 1/48, and you get 4.2mm X 0.1mm, so narrow as to be invisible & unpaintable, that you have to increase the size to make it visible - say 0.5mm - which gives an actual scratch size of 24mm!
The same goes for chipping - you must consider what the actual size of paint removal is. Some models with extensive chipping show areas that would be several metres long X 1/2 metre wide! You have to get a balance between what is visible on the model & what actually happens on a full size beast. Blown up photos will always look OTT ( of course the smaller the scale the worse it gets )!
Dave

 

[papa 695]

Cracking work Dave.

 

[colin m]

Nice job Dave. Weathering in scale is always tricky, but well worth attempting I reckon. You have a nice well used example here.