Heather Kavanagh
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Posts posted by Heather Kavanagh
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35 minutes ago, john redman said:
There's never been a famous Austin Maxi that I know of,
Well, there’s Puff The Magic Wagon.
While I’d like to see the old 1/32nd car moulds revived, I can’t see a major market for them. There’s only us old fogies that remember the cars from the time, perhaps a few younger modellers for the sheer archaeology of the thing, but other than that who’d buy them?
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As most of you know I have a very specific theme - operational aircraft in the North West European theatre from 1 January to 31 December 1940.
Quite often, this apparently narrow theme means I can’t use whatever markings or schemes come in the box. I spend a fair amount of time digging around to find a specific aircraft in my references and online, and then build that, or something close. Sometimes, I get lucky and the kit is correct for the period, but I am really not averse to ploughing my own furrow if needs be.
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This beastie just landed. I’ve already got one I built ages ago and recently refurbished. I don’t really need another MkV for my 1940 obsession, but there’s a conversion kit by Flightpath to make a Tiger radial engined MkII or III. They were still lumbering about in the training role into 1940.
Decision, decisions…
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25 minutes ago, Dominic Thomas said:
very similar to a well known photo of 110 Sqn Blenheims.
I think I used that as my inspiration for the vignette.
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Bristol Blenheim MkIV, R3744 BL-K, No 40 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command, Wyton, Cambridgeshire, July 1940
Originally formed in February 1916, No 40 Squadron RFC was disbanded in 1919. In April 1931 it was reformed as a bomber squadron flying Fairey Gordons. At the outbreak of the Second Word War, the squadron was equipped with Fairey Battles and was sent to France as part of the BEF's Advanced Air Striking Force. In December 1939, the squadron was returned to the UK, at RAF Wyton, where it was converted to the Blenheim MkIV. The unit continued daylight operations over France, flying from its UK base, through the Phoney War, the Battle of France, and during the Battle of Britain to attack the invasion barges being assembled by the German forces.
The squadron converted to Vickers Wellingtons in November 1940, flying night bombing missions. In late 1941 a detachment was sent to Malta, the whole squadron following in early 1942.
No 40 Squadron was disbanded in February 1957. Interestingly, it was slated for reformation as the first operational BAC TSR2 squadron, or to fly the General Dynamics F-111. As both types were cancelled, the unit remained out of service.
The kit was built more or less out of the box, as has been seen many times before, to give me a Blenheim MkIV in day bomber form for my 1940 collection. Markings were cobbled together from the kit sheet and generic aftermarket sheets. The squadron codes are not quite correct in size, but I couldn’t find any suitable letters. I think it's good enough for my display cabinet. No 40 Squadron liked to outline each aircraft letter in white, which I did with a bow pen and white paint. The model was brush painted with Xtracrylix, Humbrol and Revell acrylics, with some enamels used for detailing. Perhaps it’s time I considered making my own decals! The vehicles used are from Airfix and Flightpath.
This is a modified and updated reposting after older posts lost all their images during a forum update some time ago.
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6 hours ago, dogsbody said:
6 short pipes for exhausts.
I’m hoping this is a detail Ffrom pick up on. Once they’ve finally released their new tool kit (this month, I hope) I will "retire" my Airfix Battle.
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Fairey Battle MkI T70, 5/III/3Aé, Belgische Luchtmacht/Force aérienne belge, stationed at Evere, Belgium. Shot down on 11 May 1940 at Vlijtingen while attacking Vroenhoven bridge.
Rather than give a history of the type's genesis and service record here, the Wikipedia entry on the Fairey Battle is pretty comprehensive, and has some good archive photos.
The Airfix kit for the Fairey Battle light bomber appeared in 1968, and it was soon noted by many to be horribly inaccurate on several counts. The story goes Airfix asked for drawings, and were sent copies of what were probably early proposals for the design and not those used for production machines. Nose, tail, wings, all were way off in many directions. Anyway, until MPM produced a kit, now sadly out of production and like the proverbial rocking horse muck, the Airfix kit was the only injection moulded show in town. I am still waiting patiently for Azur-Ffrom's new Battle kit...
My original intention was to build the kit warts and all from the box, but you know how it goes. A tweak here, a change there, and before you know it you're doing a full-blown conversion! A summary of the work I did would be as follows:
- Extend the nose by 2.5mm
- Reshape the nose to better suit the real aircraft
- Adjust the propellor to a smaller radius and add some details
- Add an extended radiator donated from a Fairey Fulmar kit
- Add some cockpit details, with donations from the Fulmar here and there
- Rework the tail completely
- Scribe and sand the wings, but otherwise accept they're the wrong shape
So much for out of the box! The finished model looks more like a Battle now than when I started, so that's something. The model was brush painted using Humbrol and Revell acrylics. The original 1970s boxing transfers for T70 worked without a hitch.
This is a modified and updated reposting after older posts lost all their images during a forum update some time ago.
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These two are coming along nicely. Civilian types aren’t really my thing, but I do like the way airliners look. They have a definite presence to them.
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12 hours ago, Grumps123 said:
such as Flickr??? (no idea what this is)
With the sum of human knowledge right at your fingertips, it’s a matter of seconds to find out. 😉
I mean, the World Wide Web isn’t yet 40 years old, but Flickr is celebrating its 20th birthday this year. That’s a lot longer than other social media sites.
Flickr is a photo sharing site. It’s used by thousands of professional and hobby photographers to share their work. Quite why the original creators chose the name isn’t clear, but it is memorable.
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I’m not sure why some find it so hard to share from Flickr. It’s literally copy and paste, in one of at least two ways. *shrug*
That one is the "share" version, which has the advantage that I can see it before I press the reply button.-
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1 hour ago, Dominic Thomas said:
I don’t use Flickr and am unsure of any other options.
I believe there’s at least a couple of free photo hosts. Perhaps others may be able to suggest suitable places. Linking to your images, rather than uploading through the forum software, doesn’t add anything to your existing server load, as it were. I think it’s the best way forward.
There’s a lengthy thread on Britmodeller (yes, I know, sorry) about photo uploading and linking. The forum owner there made it policy that linking images is the only way to save costs of hosting thousands of images on their server. If you’re not a member over there, perhaps you could DM me and I’ll compile some information you might find helpful.
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I’m okay with the editing limit. Other forums have unlimited time for edits, which I occasionally use to correct a typo I missed on first proof reading, but I can see some might abuse the ability. I shall just accept I will make silly mistakes. 😉
If the general feeling is it’s okay to create new threads to replace broken ones, then I will spend a bit of time updating things. I won’t rush at it, probably aiming for one or two a week as my time permits. Unless I think it’s important, or someone suggests I should, I don’t think I’ll bother with work-in-progress threads. Finished model threads will be my first order of business.
@Ratch - just out of interest, do the mods have the ability to delete threads? Of course, that would lose comments and discussions, so it’s probably not an avenue to head down.
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Many of us older members may recall a few years back there was a bit of technical hiccup hereabouts. The result was a load of uploaded photos were lost, never to be seen again. The affected threads are still there, missing their images.
Luckily, I don't delete my images. Unfortunately, despite the new snazzy forum, I can’t (currently) go back and edit those posts to replace the lost pictures.
So, would there be any objection to members, should they wish to, recreating older broken posts under this new forum?
Thoughts?
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1 hour ago, Tour de Airfix said:
don’t understand why the RAF set gets them but not this.
Neither of my RAF sets came with figures. The old sets from the 1970s had crew figures, but the recent bomber resupply set didn’t. 😞
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1 hour ago, SD45elect2000 said:
I assume the fix is to start deleting stuff.
The new forum allows linking to photo sharing sites. I use Flickr (paid for, as I use it for other photo sharing as well as photos I post on Britmodeller), and others can no doubt suggest alternatives. 🙂
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46 minutes ago, Hangartime said:
railway grass rolls
An early attempt I did used this material. It was all a bit too uniform, more like a cricket pitch than a grassy field, and too bright a green. But, as you say, experiment until you find what works for you. I’m after a specific look to my photos, others have different ideas.
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There are shows I’d like to get to. Unfortunately, Best Beloved is quite poorly and isn’t able to travel at the moment. I am, therefore, not making any plans at all. 😪
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Some interesting experiments there. I like Ratch's real countryside idea, but I don’t have anything like that near me. It’s all built up around here, and I don’t fancy driving miles to some open country with a lot of models in the back of the car! So, I invented what I’ve come to call my "Universal Airfield".
It's a piece of A1 sized foamboard. I painted it a dark earthy brown and applied some scatter material to give the impression of rough close-cropped grass. To give a back drop, another A1 board has some photoshopped prints stuck to it, from photos I took of a nearby valley. Here it is, propped up on my workbench, with an LED light panel pretending to be the sun.
(My aim is always to try to fool the eye of an observer that they’re looking at a photo of a real aircraft. I don’t always succeed. However, paying attention to lighting helps. I have two LED panels, but when I use both I get double shadows under models - something of a giveaway that it’s not a real full-size scene.)
This setup has served me well for a couple of years. I’ve not been happy, though, with the way the backscene simply arrived sharply at the back edge of the board. I spent a good deal of time thinking about how to improve things, and spent an enjoyable amount of time studying photos of aircraft at dispersal around airfields in the early 1940s.
Here's what I’ve come up with. Some balsa wood strip was carved to give a low bank. Originally, this was to be a loose piece of scenery that I could swap out if I wanted. It was actually easier to glue it in place and fill any gaps between it and the main board! More flock scatter material blended the bank into the base. I bought a laser-cut wooden fence and gate kit, and found a rubberised horse hair material beloved of railway modellers that can be made into hedges. I spent a happy few hours playing about with these materials, making a right old mess, until I was pretty happy with the finished effort.
I haven’t had an opportunity to set it all up with the proper photo studio gear yet, so this is a quick mobile phone shot to show the bank/fence/hedge hides the scenic join just about right. With my Big Camera, of course, everything will hopefully be in focus and simulate the wartime photos nicely.
One day, I’d love to be able to set up a permanent photo base. Sadly, I don’t have room at the moment, so my pop-up Universal Airfield has to suffice.
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Very smart.
The Walrus camo is a subject in its own right, so I can understand not wishing to delve too deeply.
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It is odd. I remember Chris posting that image before, but I can’t find it now.
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8 hours ago, dogsbody said:
This kind of thing can make an old man like me quite grumpy!
Quite understandable. The new place is similar to the other forum we frequent. The hardest part is remaining in the Airfix corner, and not accidentally reading about slot cars and model trains!
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Just now, Ratch said:
Don't let different subjects put you off.
I'm not put off. I’m just aware I don’t want to be too distracted from my usual obsession. Getting involved with, say, a 1/350 scale KGV would stretch my resources quite a bit - not least the question of where it would live if I ever finished it! 🫣
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I’ve never really gone away. It’s just the old forum wasn’t conducive to regular posting in the way I was used to. Now the back office software is better, I will appear here much more often - though I am wary of duplicating stuff across forums.
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5 minutes ago, Dominic Thomas said:
The comment about attachment limits was very revealing. I’m at 92% which is worrying.
Happily, the new forum allows links to photo sharing sites. The image of the Miles Master I linked to, hosted in my Flickr account, doesn’t show up in my attachment quota.
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D-Day Air Assault Set 1:72
in Figures, Dioramas & Scenery
Posted
Yes. I’ve used a lot of their figures in my model railway work. I like to think I planted the seed with Alan Buttler to think about military figures in his range a few years ago. I’ve always been frustrated by the lack of accurate RAF ground crew, particularly in late 1930s and early war period uniforms. I’m really chuffed to see this new range start to appear.