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.

S-3 Viking and E-50 Heimdall

Happy new year people!
First post for 2017 and although I'm still plugging away at the S-3 Viking and E-50 I needed a new chair which will be kinder to my fat arse when spending time at the model bench as I am hoping to get more done this year;

First up is the E-50 as I've been attempting to make the four intake covers look rusty. For this I first sprayed them black then used a mixture of pastel chalks, Mig weathering powder and AK Interactive Rust Streaks to try and create a rust effect;

I'm happy with how they have turned out so I can progress the model to the weathering stage.
The S-3 Viking has given me some grief with that damned wing coming adrift and after two attempts at fixing it and thinking "that will do" it was still bugging me as I could see and feel the join.
Attempt number 3 has finally worked, the joint looks (and feels) much better and definitely 'will do' so I need to mask off the canopy, tail and wingtips as these are painted black on the actual aircraft and get on with painting it;

While reworking the joint I took the opportunity to rescribe some panel lines as I had put that much primer on some of them had flooded with paint.
I have lots of plans, ideas and techniques I want to try this year so hopefully this blog may be a bit more interesting to you lot out there, although of course real-life will probably get in the way at some point.

Trumpeter E-50 with Heimdall turret

I've started painting the E-50 after giving it a coat of primer;

 The base coat is a mix of Tamiya olive green, cockpit green, yellow and white but please don't ask what the ratios were as it was just all mixed in until I achieved the shade of green I wanted. The darker green was actually hand painted using Vallejo olive green as I could'nt face masking off the splinter camouflage, plus I used this method before on my M728 CEV and it worked out OK (for once);

I did'nt paint the darker green on the uppersurfaces (just because so there) and I'm toying with the idea of adding a sandy colour in places to add some light to a dark scheme but we'll see.
Light green was actually used as a basecoat on some late-war panzers and I wanted to carry this over to my paper panzer with the outline broken up by a splinter camouflage scheme. The MG mount on the rear deck will be painted in another colour yet to be decided as though it was taken from another vehicle.

Trumpeter E-50 with Heimdall turret

Since the last update I tweaked the model a bit by removing the front mudguards altogether, adding spare track links to the turret side and scratch building an anti-aircraft gun mount and adding it to the engine deck.
I managed to get a coat of black primer on the model so with a bit of luck the painting and weathering can start soon;

Just to add a personal touch to the model I left off the thinner cable on the right hull but added the cable mounts (cut from the cable ends), the gun cleaning rods were left off (cos there is no point of them being there) and the jack and wooden block were left of and the holes for them filled in. This added some realism to the model as these were actually deleted on later builds of King Tigers.

Trumpeter E-50

After fitting the Heimdall turret it soon became apparent that with the mods done to the engine deck the turret would'nt turn completely...BUGGER!
SO the two plates over the front grills needed altering for a start and this was done using a compass cutter, making a mark where the turret collided with the plates beforehand. The grab handle I added had to be moved to the other side of the engine access panel and the holes filled in and finally the armoured cover for the air cleaner had to be cut back. NOW the bleedin' turret turns!

I'm in the process of scratch building a mount for an anti-aircraft gun to be fitted on the rear deck, just because I can so some pics will follow soon.

Edit; I've added the AA gun mount now (with apologies for the quality of the pic)

Trumpeter E-50 with Heimdall turret

The construction is now finished apart from adding the tow cables and this will be done after painting, a lesson learned after the E-25 as I managed to get metallic powder all over the sides of the model and it was a bugger to remove. Anyway the E-50 will get a clean down in preparation for painting;

The four air intakes did'nt look that good on the kit so I hid them with styrene sheets mounted on rods 2mm above the grills. This was actually done on panzers late on in the war to protect the engine from air attack as those big intakes were vulnerable to shell and splinter damage.
The pictures show the front mudguards in place which I actually spent an hour or two cutting down and enhancing the hinge detail, however looking at it this morning I decided the model did'nt look right with them so off they came. The exhausts are temporarily in place for photographic purposes and will be painted separately.