Pretty Mediocre Modeller

My Pucara is now completed. decals came from a Xtradecal sheet, ordinance was from a Hasegawa weapons set (rocket pods), and leftovers from a HobbyBoss A-7 Corsair II build (bombs and triple ejector rack). The kit took a bit more work than the average Airfix kit, being short run, but built up okay in the end. The biggest issue was the that did not fit well at all. A lot of filler was used to blend it in, but it still isn't a perfect fit. Having said all that I did enjoy the build, and it is my tribute to the conflict that happened 40 years ago!

Basic painting is now completed, as stated before, top camouflage is Humbrol 26 (Khaki) and Humbrol 252 (RLM82). These were hand painted on, after the underside received a sprayed coat of Vallejo Aluminium (77.701). Next will be detail painting, clear coat, decals, another clear coat, matt coat and weathering. Still need to source weapons and 3 triple ejector racks.

The undercarriage was cleaned up and assembled, which wasn't the easiest as there are no location points for anything, so used guestimation. The undercarriage doors went on okay, but there is a vaguely referenced retraction part at the front end of the main doors that I think I put on incorrectly. All five wheels are in halves, so these were assembled, sanded and painted, then the attachment points drilled out, before attaching to the legs, which had been sprayed aluminium with the rest of the underside of the kit. Since studying photos of this aircraft on the 'net, I think that they should have been painted a light Sky Type S colour and will repaint them by hand later. I've started putting the main camouflage colours on, starting with the brown. Again after studying photos of this aircraft after capture, I've gone for Humbrol 26 as the closest match. I wasn't to careful with the application, as this aircraft was camouflaged quickly in the islands. For the green I'm using Humbrol 252 (RLM 82). The aircraft I'm modelling (A-529) was put out of action early in the war in one of the SAS raids, and captured damaged at the end. It then suffered some vandalism and souvenir hunting before being rescued and restored cosmetically and put in a museum on the Islands. Sadly it was finally scrapped a few years ago I believe. The thing is there are lots of photos of it after restoration (and repaint), but only a few before, so you have to be careful what you reference. The pictures show the completed props and semi done canopy only test fitted.

All main airframe parts are now together. Fit was not great, involving test fit, fettle, test fit, glue, fill and sand. The wing outer panels went together fairly well, but when put up against the wing stubs and fuselage sides left a gap at the top. Rather than glue and fill this large valley of a gap, I sanded down the ends of the stub wings by about a mill, and the fit then was okay. The other area where care was needed was the lower fuselage insert along the sides of the lower nose area and under the cockpit area. Needless to say a lot of sanding and some filler here. There was some sink marks on the engine exhaust parts and also the engine fronts that need a bit of filling. On the view of the underside you can see the new pylon fitted. Also note the filler on the engine sides and wing roots.

The kit is missing the centreline weapons pylon, though the two wing pylons are included. This pylon was almost always carried in the Falklands War, so I did some research on what it looked like, and then searched the spares box for a replacement. I found something with nice detail that could be modified, and here are some before and after shots with the props also in construction in the picture. I'm not saying it's shot on, It's just an estimate of what the pylon looks like. The props aren't the easiest to assemble, with very small joining areas for the blades, it's a good idea to sand both joining surfaces down to get a dead flat area, with a roughed up texture to aim bonding. Alternately you could always drill and pin them on for extra strength. I found the best method was to glue the boss in the middle of the backplate, then glue the spinner on, lining up the holes with the protrusions on the boss, then glue on the blades into the holes. I tried gluing the blades on first, then putting the spinner on, but it's such a tight fit it collapsed all the blades. First shot unmodified pylon, second shot after modification.

Onto the build, construction started with the cockpit. There is no sidewall detail here, but the three piece seats are a good basic representation of the Martin Baker 6a, I spruced them up with some Tamiya Tape belts. There are two instrument panels to choose from in each cockpit, one with moulded on detail and the other plain, as I had no decals I used the ones with moulded detail and did some dry brushing. Likewise the side consoles can be left plain or strips of injection moulded detail added. There are some nicely detailed rudder peddles, but these are missed from the instructions for some reason? Most parts join flat surface to flat surface (I'm not allowed to put b*tt join, it's a forbidden word!), and location points are not well marked. When all was together I painted it all a mid grey and dry brushed, picking some detail out in black. For the seats I painted them black with brown cushions, don't know if it's 100% accurate, but looks okay. The completed cockpit then is inserted into the lower fuselage/wing stub part, sitting on a couple of plastic squares. It is advisable to cram as much weight around and under the cockpit to avoid tail sitting later on. The sides of the cockpit were sanded down a bit to make sure the fuselage sides would close around it. This being a short run kit there are no location pins, and some of the parts are on the think side. Care had to be taken when cementing the two main fuselage halves together to make sure they lined up as well as possible, I started at the tail and slowly moved forward, before leaving it overnight to set.

Nice build Matthias, I see you had the usual issue with this kit, the poor fitting canopy. Not much we can do about that one.

Thanks for the compliment RodC, the project is still ongoing, hope to post an update later today maybe, but probably won't be up till tomorrow due to invigilation process. Basically, being short run, there has been a lot test fitting, fettling, filling and sanding, but the airframe has now come together and the colour scheme has been started. And yes, I am enjoying it, if I didn't it would be time to find something else to do instead.

Hi All, As we are in the fortieth Anniversary period of the Falkland Islands War of 1982, I thought I'd get an old kit out of the stash to commemorate. The 1/72 Pucara was in the Airfix range for a few years starting in 2008ish, but is actually the Special Hobbies moulding from a few years prior, with the resin and etched brass replaced with another plastic sprue. I picked mine up a few years ago at a Hornby Visitor centre factory sale in Margate. It came as a bagged kit only, with no decals or instructions, but this wasn't a problem as I had some Xtradecals for the Pucara, and was able to download the instructions.

Great build there Null! For brush painted silver you'd think it was airbrushed from your photos. I have this kit sitting in my stash waiting to be built (as well as a Hawker Demon, 2 Matchbox Furies and a Gladiator), but it is the rigging that is putting me off.

Finally completed my Hawks. The finish wasn't as good as I would have wished for them, but lessons have been learnt! I'm not big into prototype and test aircraft, so the schemes have been modified slightly to service machines, namely the red and white one is from 4 Flying Training School (FTS) in the early 1980s, and the black one is from No 736 NAS of the Royal Navy (I'm on a bit of a 'Fly Navy' fix this year). As for the kit it's self, it's obviously been retooled from the 1970s original tooling, as several of the parts are the same, but panelling has been engraved. The missing wing fences and strakes from the airbrake have also now been included. Unfortunately several areas have been simplified, such as the air conditioning intakes behind the cockpit, which used to be separate parts, but are now moulded with the turtle deck, and the nose undercarriage doors, which are now completely wrong, being only two pieces instead of three, and recessed into the opening so they look to narrow. However it is still simple to construct, and what you get at the end does look like a Hawk.

sorry it's been a while since I posted on this thread, but been pretty busy with other, non model related stuff. Basic painting is almost completed now, firstly the Hawks were given a base coat of Vallejo Model Air black and white, then the older scheme received the grey and red hand painted using Humbrol acrylics. A few things to finish off, like the antiglare black panel on the nose of the red and white model, then a coat of gloss and decals. Basic black and white

It's going to be a basic re-release of the old kit, the plastic will be the same, the decals will be upgraded to Cartograf.

Hi all, I build mainly 1/72 aircraft as well, with the occasional 1/48 thrown in as well. I do also sometimes model the occasional AFV in 1/72 for a change. When I was a teen in the 80's I was into table top wargaming and built lots of Matchbox and Airfix 1/76 vehicles. For aircraft I like modelling WWII, any subjects, and also build around themes for more modern types, such as Vietnam, Falklands War, Korea etc.

Seams have now all been filled and sanded down, the worst being under the fuselage at the for and after wing joins, and on the intake sides. These joins all correspond with actual panel lines, but the gaps are far bigger than any panel. also a thin plastic card blank was used to hide the hard to correct join in the air brake well. See the before and after shots below to see what I mean. Don't forget to fill the two holes for the Red Arrows smoke generator pod, that is not now needed. The remaining airframe parts were then attached, such as airbrake strakes and flap actuator fairings. a word of warning with the flap fairs, they are incorrectly numbered on the construction diagram, A4 and A6 should be swapped around (the inner and outer of the 3 on each wing). as a guide the engraved line on each actuator should be inline with the flap hinge line. The two models are now ready for the start of paint application.

hi Inkpen, I've done this conversion myself, many years ago, removing the large tank on the Matchbox T55, and replacing with the small tank from an Airfix F1. It was fairly easy to do actually, just so long as you get the cuts in the right places. You will need to do a dogleg cut around the area of the rear stabilisers (tail planes). However, be aware that the T4 and T5 used by the RAF had straight wing leading edges, not the cambered ones in the T55 kit, use the Airfix F1/3 wings as well. I didn't and wished I had ever since! The only other thing is the length of the cable ducts on the sides, you will need to research these as they are probably different lengths. BTW Sword Models do a T4/5 boxing in 1/72, but it is a short run kit.

They all sound great. what scale would you go for 1/72 or 1/144? Personally I'd go for 1/144, even though I'm usually 1/72, on size and space grounds. If Airfix were to produce a basic C-135 airframe there would be an almost limitless amount of kits that could be produced by swapping out engines and other sprues. Also with the B.737 based airframes like Poseidon, you could do civil airliners, Wedgetails etc. Good call PhantomBucca.

Both hawks are now basically assembled. On the first one the turtle deck behind the cockpit wouldn't sit properly and I have to shave about a millimetre off the top of the rear cockpit bulkhead to get a good fit. The instructor's instrument coaming would also not sit down right, and I had to attack the top of the panel and take some off this for the thing to fit. However on the second kit it all fitted perfectly? I must have installed the cockpit a fraction to high on the first one. The intakes had what looked like some mould damage on the inside, and this was sanded smooth before joining, which they did pretty nicely after the work. When attached to the side of the fuselage they sit a little proud, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 millimetre, and will need some sanding and filling, but not to much. If I'd have thought about this I probably could have taken some material off the inner face and got a better fit. The underside of the ailerons are missing a scribed line to denote their location, I used a hobby knife to mark them in, and sealed the engraving with some thin cement. Hopefully the picture explains what I'm trying to say. The fit of the assembled wings to the fuselage is okay, but the wing underside sits a little proud at the front joint with the lower nose. To solve this I carved a little material from the inside of the wing front edge. Next up will be some filling and sanding of seams.

Bit more progress on the Hawks. cockpits are assembled from the box, with the addition of Tamiya tape harnesses. For colours I went more from pictures on the web rather than the suggestions in the instructions. All went together simply and fitted well, then the fuselage went together around it. Again nice and easy with no fit issues, and hardly any gaps to deal with. The worst one is the inside of the airbrake housing, which I might line with card if I have the brake open. Weight to avoid tail sitting went below the instructors cockpit, encased in white tack.

All my canopies are painted freehand, using acrylic paint, and a good fine brush (size 0 or below). I do go over the edges, but after the paint is fully dry I scrape off any overspill with a sharp wooden cocktail stick, as this easily removes the paint, but does not scratch the clear part. This can be done with enamel paint as well, but is much harder to remove. Another tip with painting canopies id to first paint the inside cockpit colour, then the outside colour. This way when you look through the canopy it looks like the frames are painted on the inside as well. Below is a photo of a freehand painted canopy in 1/72.

Hi All, I'm just coming to the end of a F-15E build and wanted something a little quicker and easier, so have started on the twin Hawk kit Club special. The decals represent the prototype XX154, at the time of it's first flight on 21st August 1974, and at it's last flight on the same date in 2019. 45 years of operation, now that's some service life! I'm very pleased with the options, as I have models of Hawks in the tactical grey green wrap round camouflage, low viz grey, Red Arrows red, and red, white and blue RAE raspberry ripple schemes, but not and red, white and grey or all over black, so these two finish the collection off. The decals are the usual standard from Cartograf. Though the prototype first flight scheme in a little plain. Construction starts off with the cockpit as usual, and that's as far as I've got so far.

Korea hasn't been that missed by Airfix David, They've done Korean War F-86 Sabre, MiG 15, and F-51D Mustang in 1/72, and in 1/48 done the Sea Fury FB.11 and Meteor F8 of the RAAF in Korean markings. It looks like the new 1/72 Meteor F.8 will also get the Korean makeover in due course (The CAD shots showed the clear Perspex cover on the spine, and flashed over holes for rocket rails that were used by the Australians in Korea). That's 6 kits altogether.

recent presents/ purchases After finishing the Airfix Phantom in Royal Navy markings, I'm going through a bit of a fly Navy faze, so the Harrier will be a Navy T4N.