SPA Modeler

that is one serious flying machine.

Thanks for the great comments guys.

Blacksheep, I could actually modify this to sit on an HO layout. It's not hard. The only reason I haven't is because I have no place for an HO layout. As it is, my tow other armored trains (one German and one Russian) are still in boxes because I have no place to display them.

Lyle, you ain't kidding. I set the Saturn V up once with the base on the floor and stood next to it to see how tall it was. This model came up to my eye level. I'm trying to figure out whether to display it at contests on the tables or the floor.

Duke, I'd lean towards a table display. Make it tower over the show. How stable is it when set up?

Oh it would definitely tower over the show! I'm just considering the floor display so the judges can see the detailed LEM inside the rocket, most of which would be right up near the top of the rocket.

It is actually quite stable for the most part. The upper part is a bit unstable right now but might improve once I get everything glued.

I'll have to consider what to do when I get there. I still need to finish it after all!

Well, after a good long weekend, and a Build Night at my Orange County IPMS meeting; I was able to make a lot of progress. To start with, I added the wing to the C-46, gluing on the bottom side first:



There were some gaps at the wing roots on top, so I lifted the wings a bit to close the gaps and added Tamiya Extra Thin to glue them solid. Now to get this filled and sanded to be sure the seams are all taken care of:



Next up; it was time to do some painting. I pulled out all the models waiting for paint, fired up the compressor and got to work. The first one, and one of the easiest was the Japanese Three-ton truck. After painting it, I added the wheels as well:





Next I pulled out the Japanese radar and missile trucks. I had tried to mask these off, but there were too many nooks, crannies, and protrusions that made it almost impossible so I just hand painted the pattern on these trucks. Here's the radar truck after I painted it and added the wheels and other details:





The missile truck gave me some issues while I was trying to put the rear platform on the back of the chassis, but I finally managed to get it on the truck. Later on I got it all painted up and added the wheels and the rest of the detail parts to it:





Since I was already working on the Japanese vehicles, I pulled out the Japanese Type 10 tank and re-shot some green on it to cover some spots that got sanded off. Then I masked it with the Silly Putty to shoot on the second camouflage color:



A little later, I shot the brown color on this:



Since my Type 60 Self Propelled Gun vehicle was already masked, I shot the brown color coat over this one too:



A little later; after I'd finished painting the Atomic Annie, I came back and removed the Silly Putty masking from both these vehicles:





Now I just need to apply a clearcoat, then decals and then the final detail parts before I weather all these Japanese vehicles and call them all done.

Yes, I did mention that I painted Annie. Here's a shot of all the parts with the Olive Drab color shot onto them:



Later on I painted the chassis and engine parts with Floquil Oily Black dry brushed with steel color. After that was dry, I shot some Panzer Dunklegelb over the flat parts of the model to modulate the color. It was a bit too stark and bright so I re-shot a mist of Olive Drab over it again to tone it down. I'm pretty pleased with the current results:



The part of the barrel that is not painted will be done with a steel color. Then I'll do the same trick I did on the Dora to get the turned metal effect.

Moving right along, I decided to shoot flat black over the ends of the rocket stages and the rocket engines.

Here's the bottom of the second stage where five nozzles will be installed:



Next is the bottom of the third stage:



And the bottom of the command module:



And finally, the engines themselves:



Later on, at our first ever Build Night at IPMS Orange County, I spent the evening applying gold leaf to the bottom of the LEM. This took most of the night and was tough to keep burnished down sometimes, but here is the result so far:



The next day at home I test-fit the lunar module's upper stage to it since I'd forgotten to take it to the meeting:




While waiting for some of the above models to dry between coats, I found this old bottle of Pactra Navy Metallic Grey that was still viable after all these years. So, I decided to try it out on the engines to see how it would look. I took one of the main engines and painted it up. Here it is beside one still unpainted:



It is a bit darker than in these pics. The brightness is a bit high in these pics, but you can see it looks pretty good. I was about to put the color away when I thought, 'wait, lets dry-brush this color on the undersides of the rest of the bases of the stages' so I went to work. It's a bit hard to see the difference in these pics, but they do look good:







Of course, after all of this work; I'll be finding out that these should be painted a totally different color! Naturally!

Anyway, that's all I have done for now. I hope you enjoyed the Factory tour. Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.

Terrific progress on all fronts! Particulary interested in the Williams C-46...I have a couple of those waiting.

Thanks Lyle! Now I have to find the box with the rest of the parts before I can finish this. I also need to buff out the windscreen again, somehow it got overspray on it. I don't know if I'll get to it this weekend; I'm hoping to get some other models finished soon; as well as get more progress done on the Saturn V.

I had a little time to get some things done but since most of it was tedious sanding, filling, finding, fixing, and re-checking; this will be a short and sweet update.

To start with, I spent a lot of time sanding and re-filling and re-sanding the seams and these sink marks in the body of the rocket. They were particularly bad on the second stage here:



After I got tired of that, and my hands had cramped bad enough; I moved on and assembled the legs if the LEM. First off, there were three parts on each leg that needed to be glued a certain way. After gluing them together, I dry-fit them on the lower hull of the LEM to allow them to dry in the right position:



After they were dry, I pulled them off to re-shoot some Gold on them to cover the places where I scraped off the paint for gluing, or for repainting where I removed flash. Interestingly enough, I caught myself before I made a serious mistake. The instructions never once told me to use the part of the leg that had a ladder on it on one of the assemblies. I realized this and made sure I used the proper part so that Neil Armstrong would actually be able to climb down the ladder:



Later on, after doing some more sanding and smoothing to the body of the rocket, I finished painting the main exhaust nozzle for the LEM's engine and installed it:



I also had painted the black to the upper hull of the LEM in preparation for masking and painting the metal color on the upper part. Just for fun, here it is dry-fit to the lower hull to see how it will look:



Finally, after I'd smooth enough of the first and third stages, I shot the first layer of flat white on them to get started on the painting. Here you can see them next to the unpainted second stage:



It's not too easy to see, but there is a difference in color. I've been misting the white on to see if I can get a smooth even coat. I plan on adding more coats to this later. Then I have to figure out how best to mask this over those freakin' ridges so I can paint the black on it!

I had also painted the little Czech plane but it was only a base coat and so I didn't get any pics of it...yet. I had also painted the silver on Annie's barrel to try the turned metal effect. Once it dries, I'll do that effect. No pics of that either... yet. Maybe on my next update. Until then, thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.

Oh man I like how that is coming along! You can never go wrong with Apollo

Stikpusher wrote:Oh man I like how that is coming along! You can never go wrong with Apollo

Thanks Carlos! And yeah, you can go wrong with Apollo: it's an almost all-white model!

Hopefully I won't have that problem. I just need to figure out how to mask down all those ribs on the sides of this thing.