Airfix 1/48 Curtiss Tomahawk

[alextheblue]

Well, after my recent foray into aircraft, I thought I'd give another one a go - what's the worst that could happen! Despite every fibre of my being screaming at me not to, I opted for an Airfix kit. I'm sure for regular aircraft builders, they already know that recent Airfix kits aren't the aberrations that they used to be, but for a die-hard armour builder, it goes against everything that I hold true about a decent kit.

You can't deny, the box-art is pretty stunning and first impressions of the sprues is quite favourable. Not impressed that everything is in one bag, but there's not many sprues, so it shouldn't be a big deal. I'd like to see Dragon get a Tiger kit all into a single bag! Talking of Dragon, Airfix's plastic is very similar, although it is quite a bit softer. Note to self, careful with the old cement, this stuff looks like it will melt instantly.



I'm going to opt for this scheme


And then I noticed the decal sheet!! They had been placed inside the instructions and some bright spark had folded them. It's no big deal, I'll just have to be super careful removing them from the sheet.


The fit is very good and everything goes together very nicely. The cockpit comes together quickly and is soon painted and weathered.






Opted for the decal instruments and they don't look too bad, plus the decals bed down quite nicely. Guess you'll have to trust me on this one, suffered a bit of camera shake for this pic!!



Everything went together nicely




Fuselage halves together and wings on.






Now, this is where I lose track of Airfix's logic. So far everything has fitted together like a dream, but the next step has me scratching my head.


You're supposed to remove two plastic tabs that hold these two panels in place and then glue in the engines covers.




Not too sure of the logic behind this. Why didn't Airfix just mould the kit with these in place as there is no option to display an engine. Now, there will be four panel lines that will need to be lined up and you can bet your bottom dollar that at least one of them will be out. Oh, well, out with the filler and sanders. I shouldn't complain really as everything has gone together really nicely so far and there's little or no need for filler up to now.

Well, that's me for now, wish me luck with those engine panels, maybe they won't be as bad as I think they will be.

Thanks for taking a look!

[sheppsea]

Very nice so far

And yeah, that nose is the only park of the build I have found so far that results in a bad fit and frustration

[alextheblue]

Very nice so far

And yeah, that nose is the only park of the build I have found so far that results in a bad fit and frustration

Thanks sheppsea.

I've just seen that you have been having the same trouble with your kit. I think you're right though, it's probably to take into account the different variants. Still extremely annoying though!

[alextheblue]

Small update. The whole model has been primed with Ultimate grey and the underside sprayed with Tamiya XF21 Sky. The black part of the wing was sprayed with Vallejo Model Air black (I like the slight satin finish). I then added some white to the Sky and added some fading to the panels.



Hoping to get the camo down tomorrow. Just taken delivery of some Ammo for Mig paints and am quite keen to give them a go"

Thanks for taking a look!

[alextheblue]

Now onto the camo. After a fair bit of research, I opted to buy the RAF set from Ammo for Mig as it seemed to get some favourable reviews and the colours seemed quite accurate. Not that I would have a scooby-do!



The paints themselves went down really nicely neat from the bottle. First the brown.


The nose section didn't end up too bad - I can live with that. Bit of a step at the back, but these panels wouldn't have been a perfect fit.


I decided to have a go at scanning the colour call-outs in the instructions, scaling them up and then using them as a template. All went well, but I decided to print them off in black and white and then kept getting confused as to which was the brown and which was the green!!



The green also sprayed really nicely, but I'm not impressed with the colour. I'm no expert, but it seems to light and too bright a green.



Once the application was dry, I went back in with a heavily thinned coat of black with a couple of drops of the green added for good measure.





It seems to have darkened the green a tad, but it still seems the wrong colour to me. I'll let it dry and hopefully with some post-shading and weathering, it will all tone down a bit better.

As I say, I don't know a WW2 plane from a hole in the wall, so what colours/paints do you fellas use for the green/brown camo scheme on early RAF aircraft?? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for taking a look!

[sheppsea]

I think it looks good , with the colours there always seems to be a lot of debate and no-one really agrees what exactly is right and even whether there is indeed a single answer in practice. I am fairly relaxed on mine - my attitude is that even if one finds the perfect colour, the tone etc on this will change after weathering anyway

I can't remember exactly what I used on my Hurricane but it definitely was Tamiya XF-52 and I'm 80% sure I used XF-80 for the green

[alextheblue]

I think it looks good , with the colours there always seems to be a lot of debate and no-one really agrees what exactly is right and even whether there is indeed a single answer in practice. I am fairly relaxed on mine - my attitude is that even if one finds the perfect colour, the tone etc on this will change after weathering anyway

I can't remember exactly what I used on my Hurricane but it definitely was Tamiya XF-52 and I'm 80% sure I used XF-80 for the green

Thanks sheppsea. You're absolutely right, colours are a subjective thing and what looks right to one person looks odd to another. I used Tamiya paints for my spitfire, XF52 and XF81 i think, and on baloance, I prefer those.

Thanks again!

[smokeriderdon]

I think it looks good , with the colours there always seems to be a lot of debate and no-one really agrees what exactly is right and even whether there is indeed a single answer in practice. I am fairly relaxed on mine - my attitude is that even if one finds the perfect colour, the tone etc on this will change after weathering anyway

I can't remember exactly what I used on my Hurricane but it definitely was Tamiya XF-52 and I'm 80% sure I used XF-80 for the green

And that right there is one of the reasons I am not overly interested in doing WWII models. If I spent a bunch of time painting a Pacific Theater Corsair, and some numbnut tried to tell me the blue was wrong, there would be an incident. Hell, I about smacked the snot out of a club member who questioned my paint job on my F-15C. So there is enough argument with modern stuff, let alone planes from 70 plus years ago.

BTW, I like the way it looks!

[alextheblue]

And that right there is one of the reasons I am not overly interested in doing WWII models. If I spent a bunch of time painting a Pacific Theater Corsair, and some numbnut tried to tell me the blue was wrong, there would be an incident. Hell, I about smacked the snot out of a club member who questioned my paint job on my F-15C. So there is enough argument with modern stuff, let alone planes from 70 plus years ago.

BTW, I like the way it looks!

Apologies for taking ages to reply, been away and where I've been staying there was no WiFi or internet access - absolute bliss!!

You're absolutely right smokeriderdon, what colour you paint a model is no other business than the person who owns it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anal about getting the exact right colour, I'm more interested that it looks right to me and it's always interesting to know what colours and paints other modellers use.

Thanks for the comment, always appreciated!

[alextheblue]

Got round to doing the decals and with trepidation, I tackled the roundels that had been folded and torn. They were actually worse than I first thought and one in particular was split in several places. It was a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, but they went down in the end. It was a struggle and I'm not saying that I won, but I gave it my best shot!!

[alextheblue]

The rest of the decals were a complete nightmare and these were by far the worst that I have encountered. Even worse than ICM decals and that's saying something. Funnily enough they were Cartograph decals and I know they have a great reputation; the ones from the Sea Hurricane went down a treat, so I can only guess these were a rogue set. Every decal was slashed or torn, so much so, I started to wonder whether Hornby have employed Freddy Krueger in their packing department! A lot of the decals just refused to lay down and even after many coats of Micro Set and Micro Sol, they kept peeling away at the edges. Even Mr Mark Softener and X-20A wouldn't work, so I went for my last resort - Tamiya Extra Thin!!!!
Risky I know, but they finally did the trick. They are not great and I couldn't get them to conform to all the panels lines, but it looks ok from a distance - about 2 miles!!

I'm going to all this one done now. Great little kit, thoroughly enjoyed building it, and now that this is my fourth aircraft build completed, I am totally hooked!











Who knows, might even look for something to enter into the Bomber SiG coming up!

Thanks for taking a look!

[ElCapitan]

That looks really good - I especially like the upper camo, you did a great job of that!

[alextheblue]

That looks really good - I especially like the upper camo, you did a great job of that!

Thanks Rob, appreciate the kind words. I was a bit worried that the bleaching was a bit over the top, but the Matt coat toned it down a bit. Thanks again.

[smokeriderdon]

If you can match the yellow, that can be hidden very nicely with some paint I would think.