Now let me bring you up to date with the events that have happened over the last five months. Well, the club I had joined when we moved up here, called it a day in February due to there only being three/four members attending meetings. Meanwhile, I had been in contact with a fellow model builder nearby and we got onto the conversation about clubs. Over the next couple of weeks, myself, Mark and Alastair set up a new club called SESKU & Hemsworth Scale Model Club. We decided to hold the meetings on two Saturday mornings a month in all places, a public library. This has been one of the main things taking up my time, but the progress of the clubs development and growth has been rewarding. Since that first meeting back at the beginning of February, the club has grown to at present, 32 members including 3 juniors. You can see some of the clubs activities on its Facebook group.
SESKU & Hemsworth Scale Model Club Facebook Group
So, lets get onto the modelling side of things.
E.E.Lightning F.6
I will start with the Lightning as that was the last "WIP" back in March. I am glad to say, she is finished. After a long time spent on it, adding all of the aftermarket resin sets, it has produced a beautiful finished model. Now all that is needed to do is finish writing up the magazine article on the model and take the photographs to go with it. Another thing that I need to set some time aside for. But here are some photos of the finished Lightning to see how these aftermarket set can change a model.
McLaren F1
This is another "WIP" project from last year, put on-hold for not being able to decide on what colour to paint it. Well, I had finally decided to take the plunge and paint it with Alclad 2's Indigo Blue Candy. This was going okay until I noticed some ejector pin marks appearing through the paint on the doors, plus some marks on the front boot lid. So after stripping these parts, re-prime, base silver and then re-apply the candy. But I could not get the shade to match the bodyshell. So I could either strip everything and repaint from scratch, or go with a completely different colour. So I chose this path and went with Tamiya's Racing Green out of the rattlecan. It's not a perfect finish, but it had got to the stage of either finishing it then and there, or giving the model a permanent position on the "Shelf Of Doom"!
Alice
This is one of the 1/24th female figures from Master Box that I have acquired over the last year and the first one to be built. Alice is from the 1940's Pin-up range, available in both 1/24th and 1/35th scales. The others are from the 1950's and current day, with some new ones being released covering the 1980's/90's. Now I am still not an expert in figure painting, still have a lot to learn about this. It is getting the skin tones right, with the highlights and shading. I think I will have to get my mate Blas up for a weekend to give me a lesson on this. well, here she is, in all of her glory.
Spitfire Mk.Vb "Scramble"
A quick project, originally started by my grandson's friend who lost interest in it after a hour. So after having it sit on the shelf for a year, I decided to finish it off myself. This is an old Airfix kit from 1970's, raised panel line, etc. So I thought it was not really worth doing a fancy job on this one. My plan was to mount it on a base, just after taking off from a scramble. I made a few little cuts to allow me to re-position all of the control surfaces, then alter the undercarriage to have them in the retracting motion. The model when finished was mounted on a length of acrylic rod on a MDF base.
Well, that is the finished models so far this year, as well as the 1/48th scale Spitfire I did at the beginning of the year. So what is on the cards now? I am going to try and clear a couple more of the part build projects on the shelf of doom. One is the 1/48th scale F-14A Tomcat, that one where the decals started to break up on me. After a long time thinking about it, I decided to give the kit decals another go. The remaining ones on the sheet were given a couple of coats of Liquid decal film and the tails were then stripped, re-painted along with the red sections masked and airbrushed onto them. So far, it has worked without any problems, except for just one decal that decided not to follow the rules. I am not going to rush with the Tomcat and will keep going back to do it bit by bit.
Other projects on the go is the 1/16th scale Ferrari F40 Blackstar, which after a reaction between the clear and basecoat, it was put back in the box for another day. Well, I have finally stripped the paint from the bodyshell and other body parts. This took some time as it all had to be done using car brake fluid. Nothing else would touch the paint. The body just needs to have a couple of repair jobs done on it and then we start the painting process again. This time I am going to use the trusty Tamiya rattle can to paint her. Also on the conveyor belt called my workbench, is a P-51C Mustang from Academy, a Gloster Meteor T.7, part of my RAF 229OCU project and whatever else I decide to resurrect from the shelf of doom.
That is basically how things are at the present time in the mad world of plastic that surrounds me. Soon I am going to have to make a decision on what major project to start. This would be one that I will be building to enter into competitions at shows that I visit through the year. There are several on the shortlist, including the 1/24th scale Mosquito and Typhoon kits, the Zoukie Mura P-51D Mustang, or one of the other kits that I keep thinking about starting. It is a hard hobby to be in at times, the trials and tribulations that we have to endure in the name of relaxation!
So, now that things are hopefully starting to settle down on the club side and my wife does not find me too many jobs to do around the house (that was another source of time diversion), I can start to get back to some serious time at my workbench and get some more models built. This year has been a slow one so far and I need to get back on track.
If any of you happen to visit any models shows here in the UK and at one I am at, try to track me down and say hello. I will be at the East Riding Of Yorkshire Model Show this weekend at Driffield with the club stand. Also the IPMS(UK) Nationals at Telford in November on the Milton Keynes SMC stand. I am also planning to be at the Southwell Show near Newark in October, hopefully with the club stand to. So if you happen to be at one of these shows, pop along and say hello.
Also feel free to leave some comments on here to.
