forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com
WW1 Aircraft Modeling => Under Construction => Topic started by: Dirigible-Al on January 16, 2025, 07:13:32 AM
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I discovered the joys of making WW1 aircraft in the early 1990's. With no internet I relied on shops stocking WW1 subjects and that restricted me to Airfix, Revell and Smer with all but the last one being 1/72. That said I made multiple builds of the same aircraft albeit in shockingly bad quality as having no internet I had nothing to compare them to. When the internet became accessible I got into the hobby a bit more seriously I decided on 1/48 due to the now greater availablity of kits and started to build them to a better standard. This left an awful lot of 1/72 scale aircraft that I had no interest in. Many I gave away to the kids of people I worked with at the time, the ones they didn't want I luckily never chucked, they got banished to the attic. A couple of years ago I had an idea to revamp some of these in dioramas where the quality and inaccuracies wouldn't matter but have not followed it thru due to always being on some other project. One of the planned revamps was to make a Mesopotamian crash scene using a rather broken Airfix R.E.8 and some Imperial Camel Corps and Arab rebellion 1/72 figures I chanced upon a while back. I intend to put together a Camel Ambulance as seen in the picture below. I believe the figures I have can be made to look the part as they do not have over dynamic poses or be moulded into fixed firing positions. The camels will be a challenge as they seem to be cast in to different sizes with the heads of one lot being vastly bigger than the other. I may have to do some sculpting here which I haven?t done before. Although the R.E.8 is broken this is not a bad thing as it had no rigging or interior detail so I would have had to take it apart anyway. This GB will kill three birds with one stone as it will get a fair bit of stuff out the attic and used. I will finish the Zeppelin first but I should manage to do that this weekend.
Onwards and upwards, Alan.
(https://i.imgur.com/Ykq8GvJ.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/7xtxSNa.jpg)
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(https://i.imgur.com/okjCwO2.jpeg)
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Wow that's really interesting!
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'Cambulance', fun!
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What a great idea ;D
(I may have to rethink my own choices for this GB since they seem pretty vanilla compared to what's appearing) :-\
Paul
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Now that is a fantastic idea Alan, really looking forward to this!
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I am looking forward to the further development of this great idea!
RAGIII
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What a great idea, Alan! I hope it goes really well as it's a classic part of WW1... Lawrence of Arabia and all that... This fella, 1/35 Verlinden is sitting on my desk giving me the evil eye to finish him...
(https://i.ibb.co/82fM0YS/IMG-5301.jpg)
Well... maybe when I retire!
Regards,
Marc
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Thanks RAGIII, Nigel, Paul, PJ and Antonio. I love the look on the face of your camel Marc, he looks really pissed off! Mind you they never struck me as happy animals like dogs.
After a lot of tinkering I have made a plan for the layout. I wanted it to be no bigger than a A4 sheet of paper and I think this layout will work within that size. You cannot see it on the plan but there is a ridge Infront of the plane. To put the RE.8 in that position it would have had to been spun round so I will remove either a wheel or half the undercarriage, whichever is more realistic.
Thanks for looking in, Alan.
(https://i.imgur.com/gIfhmrB.jpg)
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I'm looking forward to it, it looks like a lot of work. Explicitly in 1/72.
Very good idea, looking forward to more pictures.
Servus
Bertl
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Good planning Alan, you are getting me excited to see how this one comes along.
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Looks like an excellent layout Alan. I look forward to the next update!
RAGIII
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I'm really looking forward to seeing how all of this develops, I'm always up for some 1/72nd fun.
Warren
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I'm getting more and more curious about this Alan!
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Thank you for your comments Antonio, Warren, RAGIII, Nigel and Beryl.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to put it any significant time on this because of unexpected events and my spare time is now going elsewhere.
I started on the Harry Tate, typical Airfix kit with very thick plastic, push rings, ribs too prominent and no interior detail whatsoever (the pilot and observer were glued on plastic tabs that protruded from the sides). I had built it out the box as well. The join seams are also very noticeable.
(https://i.imgur.com/JEpEbw1.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/IYV9D0i.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/9Mz365Z.jpeg)
The naughty bits that protruded were cut out and filler was put liberally around it.
The cockpit opening is completely the wrong shape and it's sides have the scale thickness of Tiger Tank armour. I cut a large section out so I could heat mould a new one in hot water using plastic card and a balsa pattern. Using that big opening I carved out a lot of the plastic from the sides and put in the wood formers and thier rigging using plastic card and fuse wire. A floor board was put in where the observer goes and a couple of planks in front of where the seat will be. The top former was made a bit thicker than it should have been because two of the cabane struts attach to it (and it was at least that fat before anyway)
(https://i.imgur.com/q1Rcz1P.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/nhWA1q9.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/jTQiozg.jpg)
There are a few differences in the underside of the engine between Harry Tates and the Airfix kit doesn't cover any of them but conveniently the kit does have a very shallow bottom making it easy to put this one on. I also thinned the hideously thick plastic air intake and removed all the oversized nuts that are on either side of the nose. I put the nuts back by drilling holes with the thinnest drill bits I have, putting stretched sprue thru them and cutting them close to the panels, although they are now a lot smaller they still look like Scania wheel nuts but having broken three drill bits doing this I don't have the heart to take them off.
(https://i.imgur.com/Xb0R4K2.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/5TUaSad.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/IYycLg9.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/JyiMCLG.jpg)
Lastly I worked on the cockpit. Seat was scratched and whicker detail painted on. The picture looks like it is glued to the floor but it is actually quite high up and sits on top of two plastic card beams spanning chord wise. Instrument panel is plastic card with photocopied dials cut out and glued to it with fuse wire rings put atop them. Pedals, joystick and connecting tunnel is all stretched sprue. I think I have put enough detail in the interior, it might be noted that although this is 1/72 the size of the opening is about the same as some of the 1/48 kits I have done. If I am wrong and after closing it up it still looks like it needs something I can't see it being a problem because of the huge opening.
https://i.imgur.com/NertXV4.jpeg
(https://i.imgur.com/5HRaKWd.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/3IymNsr.jpg)
Seat belts have been made out of masking tape but will go on later.
Thanks for looking in.
Alan.
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That's a lot of work Alan but it's paid off, the interior looks great and you knocked that old kit in to great shape. I hope you can find the time to continue with this, it's a fascinating project.
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Just catching up here, Alan - great idea for a project and looking forward to following your progress.
Cheers,
Gary
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Outstanding progress. I Love the details you are adding to this one...only to crash her in the end ::) Lovely work!
RAGIII
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Hello everyone, sorry there's been no updates but I got thrown one of life's curveballs since starting this which has meant changes and that has meant bench time has gone down to near nothing. I got some spare time today and decided that whatever I do I will post anyway. A day on the RE.8 would probably show little difference so I hit the figures.
I have probably painted too many Camel Corpse figures and definitely not enough Arab Revolt figures and the camels, though partially done, are not worth showing at this moment. I haven't painted soft plastic figures for a while and it has it's challenges. It is too bendy so handling them meant the paint kept flaking off. To prevent any more of this I stuck drill bits up their bottoms and they behaved themselves then. Cutting the flash off and trimming them was difficult because anything less than a surgical blade left bits hanging off them and they were hard to clean off. Although that was what I used a heated needle also worked well. Of course a file is out the question because it just turns the plastic into fluff. These were all hand painted white then once dry all the colours went on. I finished up by putting washes over them (basically the same colour as what's to be covered but darker). And here they are!
(https://i.imgur.com/ElFz2oZ.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/haHtxcV.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/TxgpEQl.jpeg)
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Excellent progress Alan. Those flexi plastic figures are a pain to paint but you are doing a great job.
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Cheers Nigel.
Sorry I haven't been able to get to this. I have managed to put a few more things together today though and here they are. The RE8 will go on with a collapsed undercarriage with one of the wheels busted thru the bottom wing and the wingtip of the same wing will be torn off. I was going to take an aileron off too but after cutting them out I discovered they were roughly the same scale thickness as the armour on the Bismarck. It would have been too much work at this stage to thin all the wings down. The prop will have to be broken too. This is only light damage but enough to show it crash landed and has no hope of taking off. An advantage of not having too much damage is that the rigging stays the same, I think it would have been a nightmare trying to get the rigging right unless the whole top wing was off.
All the bits between the wings are now on so the top wing can go on. I made the windscreen out of an empty packet of pills. It was almost the right shape but got a little persuasion with some heat. There is a compass under the windscreen made out of copper. Gun sight is a piece of brass tube with 2 turnbuckles and some aluminium foil wrapped around the pilot's end to make the tip fatter. The cylinder guards are just paper. I will do the broken parts of the wing with paper, as you can see I have cut a section out and cut off the wingtip. A bit of tidying up and a few washes of paint are needed now.
Thanks for looking in, Alan.
(https://i.imgur.com/oVLzGVh.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/FyN4yri.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/tALBwzY.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/65lLmqG.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/xXzYziR.jpeg)
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Good to see this one back on the bench Alan, I hope life's curve ball hasn't disrupted you too much. Those details look good and I will be interested to see how you do the torn off wingtip as I have a crash diorama coming up soon......
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I like how the project is heading , looking forward to the next update AL
Alexis
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Thanks Nigel and Alex for your comments. The Camel Ambulance part of the diorama is now finished as are the people bar one or two tweets. I still need to do a few camels sitting down because the Arab Revolt figures are all standing and an impression must be left as to how they got there.
The Camel Ambulance was to be pulled along by one of the other camel riders but I thought it best to have a couple of A.R. figures leading it because that is what they most probably would have done on seeing it arrive. There was nothing appropriate amongst the A.R. figures I have so I adapted a couple of WW1 German Infantry figures with a scalpel, a hot nail, some masking tape and a bit of filler. One has turned out very shiny but I will fix him before it all goes together.
The ambulance was made from plastic card with a frame of copper wire glued to it. Some masking tape was added as the bed and part of the structure underneath. Folded masking tape was put inside the stretchers to simulate blankets. I wrapped cigarette paper soaked in PVA around the frame because it is super thin and when it dries it becomes crinkled. There was also an unexpected bonus of it being partly transparent when it dried allowing some of the frame to be seen thru it. The crosses were made from an old decal found in my spares box. Luckily Hawker Hurricane has two 'H's.
I now have the Harry Tate and the desert base to finish. Thanks for looking in, Alan.
(https://i.imgur.com/csBxqd2.jpg)
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Very neat! Excellent figure transformation.
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Lovely work all round Alan, this will be such a unique and interesting diorama I am really looking forward to seeing the end result.
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Firstly sorry for not being able to finish this on time. At the start of this group build I thought it would be no problem and even considered sneaking in a second project if possible but my personal circumstances changed and the result was loosing most of my bench time.
I managed to do all but finishing touches and corrections on the base and thought it worth showing. I started with a block of inulating foam because I want to push impressions into it where parts of the RE8 skid and as long as it's not sealed with oil based paint or non water based glue this can be done. The terrain is based on a scene from a film set in mesopotamia that I saw a while ago and it looked like an alien landscape. It must have been a lake or river bed dried up and it resembled acres of grey crazy paving. Out of coincidence I saw an advert today set somewhere in Africa looking similar. I stumbled on a technique for crazy paving by accident when I soaked paper in white glue, formed it around the model and painted it too soon. Basically if you paint acrylic directly on white glue you get crazy paving. After experimenting I found you get different effects depending on the viscosity and depth of the glue. Thick glue gets you wide cracks, thin gets narrow and watery glue gets lots of weird small paving. I wanted a bank/raised area and made this by putting a mix of water, bleach, glue and blue paper in a liquidiser and just pasted it on. I had to do this 3 times as it shrinks a lot each time it dries. When I was happy with it I mixed wood dust from a sander with white glue and pasted this on the flat parts. The foam was painted with dark acrylic and the raised area with white poster paint. When dry I masked off the raised area and brushed the PVA on the bed making most of it thick but not entirely even. I then sprayed a very thick layer of lighter acrylic over the glue, I put so much on if I had tilted it the paint would have run off. It was then left for a few hours. I got the undercoat a little too dark by mistake but I can live with it. The raised mud/rock area got a brown wash but unfortunately the effect that was supposed to be achieved went wrong because the cheap poster paint did not seal the paper mache and it just evenly soaked in rather than run off the raised areas leaving light and dark parts. I didn't want to paint the whole thing white again and was worried about spoiling some of the crazy paving so when it dried I gave it another darker wash then when it was dry I dry brushed it with light brown. It ended up darker than I planned but once again I think it is good enough.
I just have a few touch ups and tweaks to do on it but hope this is of interest to some of you. Thanks for looking in, Alan.
(https://i.imgur.com/EPE5oVp.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/5tUaNVa.jpeg)
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As a diorama person, this is all of great interest to me :) That dried river/lake bed looks very effective, especially as you achieved it without buying commercial products designed to make these type of effects easy! Excellent modelling. The base looks really good so far, looking forward to seeing this all come together.
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This is already looking great and I can't wait to see the end result Al.
Willem