Completed projects: Group builds and the Big Junk

I know a lot of this blog's traffic comes here via the somethingawful forums, so I don't think it'll confuse too many readers when I say that the scale model thread has been doing group builds the past six months or so. I've managed to participate in two of them.

The first one was of a very, very cheap and old airfix kit - their 1/76 kit of the IS-3 tank. This kit was picked both for cheapness and comedy reasons, as it is so old it's quite possible the molds were made from footage of IS-3s in the suppression of the Hungarian revolution. One of the posters in the thread described the kit as something like "a child's drawing of a tank", and that gave me an idea.

I built it, then painted the tank with white primer. I then colored it with pencil crayons.

I used a good ol' lead pencil for coloring the machine gun and doing a few highlights.

 People liked it.

The other group build I participated in was the building of a 1/72 De Havilland 100 Vampire. Revell's 1/72 Vampire is a kit older than I am, first made by Heller, but I couldn't find that in Canada (a really important consideration now that the Canadian Dollar is around 0.70 US.) Instead I got the Airfix kit of the same subject, and this kit is new, and typical of Airfix's new kits, quite nice. And so I decided to build it sensibly, to practice my bare metal finishing skills. (For the people who don't do scale models - aircraft done in unpainted metal are difficult subjects to do well - the tiniest flaw will show up in the finished product, and some finishes are very vulnerable to scratches.)

My secret for success here was twofold - first, paint entire model gloss black. Second, use fancy expensive lacquer paint for the metal.

The yellow is a Tamiya acrylic mix of yellow, a little red, and deck tan. I think I managed to match the specified color pretty well, which is very close to the yellow/orange you see on pencils.

In a nice touch, the bottom letters on the wing were given on the decal sheet as solid, and as broken up by the landing gear bay doors.

I wanted the canopy closed, but it didn't fit quite right, and in the process of trying to fix this, I made it quite a bit less right

So it is opeN

Then there is this; I finished it about three months ago. Junkers Ju 290 A-7:

When I first finished it, I actually had trouble taking photos it was so big. And, it has many, many little tiny bits that easily break, and after a few rounds of taking *bad* pictures and breaking stuff, I literally shelved it for awhile.

Two after-market kits were applied - metal landing gear, and a photoetch set for antennas. As a maritime surveillance aircraft, it has many antennas.

The ship crest is of FAGr 5 - if the FuG 200 naval search radar was staying, I figured that should be this aircraft's unit.

 The tail. In a lovely little touch you can't see, the tail gunner has a seat where he can sit on a little rotating post, so he doesn't have to kneel in the firing position all the time.

Menchen and vampire for scale.

The rear cargo bay door is free so someday I can display the door in its open position.

Cockpit turned out well. Pilot and co-pilot are in the glassed-in area, behind are the navigator and a station for the flight engineer or the radio operator. That little hatch open on the bottom of the picture...

Leads to the gun blister. Opposite it on the starboard side (I'm guessing) leads to the crawlspace which allows the nose gunner to access his little area.

I have an idea for a diorama involving this big bird, but that's awhile away. In the meantime, I'm just glad to have such a big project done.