Thursday 12 January 2017

S-3 Viking, E-50 with Heimdall turret and Jagdtiger

The S-3 has got some paint on it at last! YAY!;
The base coat is Mr Hobby FS26375 (2 at the front because it's semi-gloss). I was aiming for a patchy effect as this aircraft will be weathered, the fin is masked off as this will stay in the black primer along with the cockpit canopy and wingtips.
Regarding the wing tips, the decal placement instructions show these as grey but I've found picture reference that shows them black, the only thing is the time frame as the decals are for an S-3 onboard the USS Kittyhawk on its Westpac cruise from April to June 1999 and the pictures I found are dated from September onward. Anyway they are staying black!
These two are up to the same stage in the weathering process;
The  Jagdtiger at the top is Dragon (kit number 6827) and was a proposed variant fitted with the longer 128mm PaK 80 L/66 gun however it never went into production. To enclose the breech of the bigger gun the rear of the superstructure would have been extended so really this kit is complete bollocks, luckily the original 128mm barrel is included so you build it as a regular Jagdtiger.
The E-50 has had the MG mount on the engine deck painted in Dunkelgelb to add some contrast to the scheme. The Jagdtiger has had a pin-wash of dark brown applied and I will be doing the same on the E-50 later tonight.
As an experiment I tried the new acrylic Vallejo wash of dark brown on the engine deck of the Jagdtiger. I apply a coat of gloss varnish to tanks as without it pin washes just leave tide marks in my experience and it's something I would like to get away from if possible so after watching a Youtube vid about these washes I got some to play with.
The Jagdtiger was left unvarnished so I applied the wash, wetting the area with water and working in small areas as shown in the vid. This was the result;
As you can see the wash is everywhere and looks pretty crap so the engine deck was resprayed then the model was given a coat of gloss varnish. Once dry I went back to the trusted Mig brown wash and the results are far superior as I could easily clean up any excess;
I just could'nt control the Vallejo stuff at all and as it is acrylic it was drying far too quickly. I will try again on a test subject as it is the way to go in future and next time I will mix it with acrylic retardent to see if it makes a difference to controlling the wash, however for now I'll be adding gloss varnish to base coats and sticking to Mig washes.






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