SPA Modeler

Thank you Carlos! And similar to the pic you just posted, the model can be posed with the cowling off like so...


No cowling but with the prop on...


And the cowling and prop in place...


I also taped the cowl flaps on to give a better sense of how nice and tight the fit is with the magnets holding everything together.








I'm going to take a few days to deal with the soft scribing on the clear engine cowling.

John, beautifully done, as usual!

Do you brush or use rhe a/b for details like the propeller shaft?

Even at this stage, with the prop dry-fitted, looks like she wants to fire up and launch right off the building stand.

Very cool the magnet idea worked! I figured it would with all of your planning.

Thanks guys!

LyleW wrote: ↑Wed Dec 07, 2022 8:18 am John, beautifully done, as usual!

Do you brush or use rhe a/b for details like the propeller shaft?

Thanks Lyle. I try to use the airbrush whenever possible. For the prop shaft, I didn't like the look of bare plastic so I sprayed it with a coat of AK Extreme Metal Duraluminum. To protect the engine from overspray, I punched a hole in a Post-It, ran the prop shaft through the hole and use the Post-It as a mask. The paint on the shaft got scraped and discolored with all of the handling.

Finally got one of my overdue AM shipments from Poland. This one was ordered over a month ago and includes the HGW seat harnesses, the Eduard canopy masks, brass gun blast tubes by Profimodeller and a mask set by Montex. I bought these primarily for the cowling checkerboard but it might be easier/cleaner to do them manually.


A quick check of the blast tubes to verify that they are drop-in replacements for the kit barrels. I'll deal with the guns later.


A PM exchange with Citadelgrad at LSP about his experiences with his Hasegawa P-47D build, which I am using as a reference. Specifically on the subject of the oil cooler and intercooler vents. He replaced his kit vents with PE versions from Eduard. Not wanting to spend anymore money on this build, I thought it might be pretty easy to fabricate my own. The intercooler vents mid-fuselage are the simplest so I used the kit part to trace out a pattern on a sheet of brass.



After cutting them out, a slight curve was added by gently rolling the piece over a curved surface (in this case, a fat Sharpie marker).


The ends were folded using a PE bending jig (Small Shops Bug).


Curvature and angle of the folds can be adjusted easily to accommodate an acceptable fit. Some detail will be added to the base of the vents but In essence, the new intercooler vents are done!

Thanks for the info! Those look much better!

Now you're sheeting.

mostrich wrote: ↑Thu Dec 08, 2022 1:19 pm Now you're sheeting.

Sheet happens!

The last piece of AM arrived at my door today... the Yahu instrument panel.


Comparing the Yahu and Eduard ... Yahu has better resolution but the Eduard panel treated with a flat coat is surprisingly smoother than the Yahu panel. If the Yahu panel was not pre-assembled, I would shoot it with a flat coat. I guess I could still do that if I were to mask each individual instrument gauge but I'm not that crazy.


The Yahu set also comes with a main circuit panel and some smaller instruments. The finish on this fret is super glossy. Interestingly, the switch and toggle positions have tiny holes, which lead you to think that you COULD pose some tiny switches there... hmmm.


The instrument panel backing part has some extra plastic along the top edge, which I'm going to get rid of.


I scanned the Yahu instrument panel and cut a mask for it. The outline of the Yahu panel was painted in black to serve as a guide in the trimming process.


After trimming, the top edge of the backing part matches the Yahu panel.



The main point of this exercise is my desire to get rid of the obvious join between the PE and plastic parts. After the IP is completed, this top edge will be sealed with CA glue, sanded and painted.


But there is still work to do on the IP including the back.

I had a hard time trying to scribe the fasteners on the clear engine cowling. So I decided to take a different route...


I filled the fastener details on the cowling with black CA glue.


You can see that some of my scribed fasteners were ok.


While others were not.


The fasteners that I fashioned out of thin sheet plastic were glued into place with CA glue and then sanded down to reduce their height.


Here is the cowling after the the panel lines were rescribed. The rivets were wheeled on using a circular rivet tool and the cowling was given a primer coat. In hindsight, I wish I would've persevered with the scribing of the fasteners instead of doing them this way but it's too late to go back. Regardless of how they turned out, I think they will be largely camouflaged by the checkerboard pattern.