Eduard 1:48 P-39D Airacobra

[Radzy]

Hello,

About 5 days ago I opened the box that was lying under the bed for almost month.
I'm p*ssed a little bit, because I did not shoot any photos of "not spoiled" kit and now I can't build this as part of our first group project... Maybe if I finish this one in reasonable time, I'll start another and participate...
nevertheless
This is the Eduard 1:48 dual combo P-39D Airacobra over New Guinea:


Kit itself looks amazing with very detailed molds, lots of well crafted photoetched parts like cockpits and exteriors and with all those maps and overwhelming amounts of decals !

I had to also switch from building AFVs I've done so far where painting was done mainly on whole kit (no interiors in my previous builds). With this one fellow I had to think very carefully where to break glueing parts together, paint something, chip and all these stuff you normally do when everything is finished.
So far I struggled with cockpit and as I haven't built any complex photoetched elements before it was a real struggle.It was constant fight with these tiny little b*stards and myself getting nervous, impatient, nervous and furious again. But all of this starts to pay off - I really like the look of the cockpit seat part I finished so far with these tiny chips done with fine brush. It's little twisted (due to some errrors - curse you CA drying times!!! These are really not the Slow Poke Rodriquezes ), but still as for the "first pancake" it isn't that spoiled.
So here's what was already finished.





(I need to finally fix my camera as this S3 Galaxy thingy likes making everything yellow in my lighting environment).
Just to keep as many detail for the future purposes, I'm working with Vallejo acrylics and for cockpit I used so far:
1) 73601 grey primer ;
2) VMA 71010 Interior green;
3) VMA 71057 Black;
4) VMA 71062 Aluminium.

Cockpit will receive more subtle chippings and some dark brown wash to make it look more toned and realistic. I'm thinking also of adding a little of dirt effects on the cockpit floor. What do you think?

Hopefully tomorrow I'll finish the cockpit and start putting the stuff together

Radek

[T3hGuppy]

The cockpit is shaping up nicely. Always been abit gun shy when It comes to aircraft myself but these build always inspire me to give it ago.

[Paul]

Nice work shame you have missed,out adding it to our group build

[Radzy]

Nice work shame you have missed,out adding it to our group build

Ahh... happens I found ISM too late...

But I have secret weapons under bed, which are ISU-152 and Me-110, so if I finish this P39 and M4A3 in reasonable time I will join with those ones

[Paul]

Sweet love to see that ISU

[Radzy]

The cockpit is shaping up nicely. Always been abit gun shy when It comes to aircraft myself but these build always inspire me to give it ago.

Don't be shy and give it a go
I first stated myself... nay tanks first, do some easy tanks, get familiar with all these techniques. Airplanes are for top masters .
But then I came to the shop for some missing paints and I left it with... P-39 dual combo and Me-110 ... just like that
And you know, these Eduard kits look really brilliant and so far appear to be not so unforgiving for beginner as I am.

[Radzy]

Update #2

Today I continued to struggle with cockpit and I can consider 99% done with it. Everything I could and didn't break in meantime is placed inside. Cockpit is glued to the side, more chippings added and I made a wash of the interior.

Wash was made with mixture of following oil paints:

1) 502 Abteilung 015 Shadow Brown;
2) Classico 278 Burnt Sienna

All dilluted in Abteilung's odourless turpentine in about 90% ratio thinner to paints. It flowed smoothly and it appears it'll give a nice subtle highlights.
So now it'll be probably 2 days break as this turpentine stuff dries damn slow... So probably I'll start working on wings and other stuff.

Two pics from work in progress. Shots taken before wash. The quality (especially focus) isn't good but with the size of this thing it wasn't easy to make a good exposure to show something in dim light:

[Lee]

Nice looking pit Radzy

[Radzy]

Update #3

The weekend was very unpleasant for both of my builds. Both seem to be spoiled. Maybe not beyond repairs, but even with lots of patience put to the build simple and easily avoidable mistakes happened to me... Dammit !!

So spoiled build No1
I have put the hull & wings of Airacobra together and held them with help of rubber band... It was fitting quite nice and good, but when all glue melted plastic and dried completely it turned out that wings are completely uneven (4mm difference in height above "ground").
As all stuff is now fully integraged I can't find a way to fix the problem...
Maybe you, guys, have some ideas what to do? Or maybe just leave it as it is and just finish it with an "exception" ?

This is how it looks:




Radek