Dragon Fokker E.V/ D.VIII

Yet another one pulled from the Shelf-Of-Doom is this Fokker that I started last year and promptly messed up when it came to the wing. Since then I've had a think and made a slightly different approach to the finish.
After stripping the wing back to bare plastic I resprayed it with a white gloss from a Tamiya rattle can and left it to cure for a couple of days before spraying the other side, again leaving it to set completely.
As the particular aircraft I want to model had a white strip around the wing edges top and bottom I masked off the wing using Tamiya tape cut to 1mm width;

Luckily after the last failed attempt of doing the wing I had plenty of wood grain decal from Uschi Van Der Rosten left so this was applied both sides span-wise and done in three sections; outer wings, centre section and ailerons (which had the grain chord-wise). A brand new scalpel blade was used to cut the decal around the masking tape;

The decals are VERY thin and extreme care is needed during application as they are very easy to rip, something I did in a couple of areas as you can see in the picture above and the reason I had kitchen towel underneath.
For painting I decided to use Winsor and Newton acrylic paint rather than oils with Vallejo acrylic retardent to slow down the drying time;

The underside colours were painted first, keeping the paint fairly thin to achieve the streaking effect that was a characteristic of this particular aircraft;

Due to the quick drying time I was able to paint the top surface then remove the tape, taking a LOT of care not to rip the woodgrain decal;

And that's that! Finally!! The wing will be gloss varnished next along with the fuselage and the decals for the markings will be applied and hopefully I can get this finished as it's been a very long time since I had a WW1 aircraft on the shelf.
I still would have preferred the wing in an overall green finish though....

Airfix C-47

As I'm going to paint it (or try to) in a civvy scheme I needed to remove the long air intakes on top of the engine cowlings. Luckily I still had the smaller intakes supplied in the kit in the spares box so after cleaning up the chunks I've taken out of the wing (where the knife slipped) I will fit these.
I'm also hoping that when I spray the model with primer it does'nt lift the paint underneath otherwise this model will definitely be heading for landfill;

By the way this is the scheme I'm planning on doing;

The aircraft is registered as G-AMPY and ended up flying with Air Antlantique, ironically it was built for the USAAF originally before going into civilian service but apparently it is now back in military colours with the number KK116.

Trumpeter E-50 with Heimdall turret finished

YAY! The first model of the year finished (yeah I know it was started in July 2016).

For this model I used Paper Panzer Productions E-50/75 exhausts, wheels and of course their Heimdall turret. The idea behind this particular vehicle is that it would be a radar and rangefinder for a battery of E-50 Flakpanzers in case you were wondering.
I've tried adding some visual interest with the rusty panels over the engine intakes and the MG post on the engine deck painted in the lighter shade of dunkelgelb as though it was taken from another vehicle. I decided on a splinter scheme early on but the two greens just did'nt look 'right' to me so I went for a white winter finish scheme in a splinter pattern to match.
I'm not THAT keen on the amount of dirt on it but I keep getting told off for not weathering my tanks enough :o)

Different is'nt it? I know some people out there HATE the whole 'what-if/ paper panzer/ 1946' thing and at one point that included me but these days I just like the freedom that the subject brings as I don't get bogged down in researching a particular vehicle built on a Friday afternoon that was missing a bolt on the third roadwheel.

Airfix C-47

I built this a while back but the finish came out very poor as the paint went grainy during the spraying sessions. I persevered with it but it just went from bad to worse especially when the Kleer floor polish was still visible around the decals so I put it to one side and tried to forget about it.
Trouble is I spent a lot of time getting the wing roots to look good as the fit was pretty poor both sides and this fact alone has been niggling me so last night I sanded the whole model back and smoothed out the rough bits (of which there were many).
It is a shame as with the invasion stripes it did look well (apart from the gritty paint) however I'm planning on doing it in a completely different scheme so stay tuned!