Mark1
SMF Supporter
Taking shape nicely.
Tony's Airfix Tsetse 1/72
- Thread starter yak face
- Start date
Airborne01
SMF Supporter
I'm getting more worried as the posts accumulate - stop it right now!
Steve
Steve
Been sorting some bits today . The undercarriage had a little problem in that one of the axles had been broken off in the box. I tried gluing this back with superglue but it just wasn't strong enough. Solution was to drill the u/c leg and put a brass tube in , with another larger tube over the top to make the axle. Ive also painted the white stripe on the spinners , after several failed attempts at masking this I resorted to hand painting it.
The undercarriage is now all assembled , the instructions would have you install this before the nacelle halves are glued together but obviously this would be very prone to damage so I cut the bottom section out of the raised locating holes so I can just slot them in last off.
The undercarriage is now all assembled , the instructions would have you install this before the nacelle halves are glued together but obviously this would be very prone to damage so I cut the bottom section out of the raised locating holes so I can just slot them in last off.
Coming along nicely there Tony 
I'm at a similar stage on my build, it's tricky enough for me at 1/48 so can't imagine tackling it at 1/72
Good stuff mate,
Andy
I'm at a similar stage on my build, it's tricky enough for me at 1/48 so can't imagine tackling it at 1/72
Good stuff mate,
Andy
Last edited:
Jim R
SMF Supporter
Great stuff Tony. Good fix with the broken axle. Undercarriages are often awkward. Your white stripe looks very neat.
Grey under wings now touched up and the whole airframe has had a coat of Klear to seal everything ready for the decals . I also masked up and sprayed a darker grey patch under the rear fuselage as shown in the photos of this aircraft . General opinion is this dark area was a result of painting over the invasion stripes . The undercarriage has been slotted in and fixed and ive been making the pitot and molins gun barrel from brass tube as the kit one was just a featureless stick !
Attachments
Very, very nice. Interesting about the dark patch over the stripes. Looks like they just used the darker topside grey to overpaint. The notes for the version I’m planning says the Camo overpaint was lighter over the white stripes and darker over the black ones. Not sure if I’m going to try and replicate that yet….
The underside and topside grey was the same tim , medium sea grey ,my guess looking at the photos is that they used whatever was knocking around at the time , probably ocean grey or similar
Ocean grey was the one I meant, just couldn’t remember it’s name Tony 
Gotta agree with the guys on this one Tony....
..That is looking VERY NICE indeed
As an aside,I spied some bottles of "Hataka" paints in the above pics,as It happens I was looking at a couple of their aircraft sets for my future American planes..... What are your thoughts on them please,( I predominantly use VJ and Tamiya, with an increasing amount of Mig thrown in currently).
Cracking build mate.... Love it
..That is looking VERY NICE indeed
As an aside,I spied some bottles of "Hataka" paints in the above pics,as It happens I was looking at a couple of their aircraft sets for my future American planes..... What are your thoughts on them please,( I predominantly use VJ and Tamiya, with an increasing amount of Mig thrown in currently).
Cracking build mate.... Love it
Jim R
SMF Supporter
Excellent work Tony
Mark1
SMF Supporter
Nice progress.
Just caught up Tony, some cracking work going on, keep it up.
You are giving it some Tony. looking very nice.
Nice catch on the canopy and the internal frames.
Paint job looks top shelf too!
Nice catch on the canopy and the internal frames.
Paint job looks top shelf too!
The paint job is just magnificent, especially done on the scale of the plane!
Started the decals yesterday , first off the wing roundels . They have a seperate red dot to avoid the problem of misalignment so the main roundel has a large white area in the middle — which was very translucent ! I quickly whipped the decal back off and onto its still wet backing paper and off to the spare decals box for some white to put on first. I found some suitable decal and punched out four white discs ( 2 for the wings and 2 smaller for the fuselage) with the hollow punches .The white discs helped eliminate the see through white areas of the decal .
The decals arent brilliant ,with a bit of poor register and slight white outlining in places but im using them anyway. No stencils or other airframe markings are included which at this scale I can get away with , except for the prominent red outline ‘no step’ boxes on the wing tops. A suitable donor was found in the form of some old Academy P47 thunderbolt tail markings with red and white stripes. Several thin strips of the red were cut off and placed one at a time to make the box and diagonals.
here it is , next up a coat of klear to seal everything in then once dry a coat of matt .
The decals arent brilliant ,with a bit of poor register and slight white outlining in places but im using them anyway. No stencils or other airframe markings are included which at this scale I can get away with , except for the prominent red outline ‘no step’ boxes on the wing tops. A suitable donor was found in the form of some old Academy P47 thunderbolt tail markings with red and white stripes. Several thin strips of the red were cut off and placed one at a time to make the box and diagonals.here it is , next up a coat of klear to seal everything in then once dry a coat of matt .