@Russelle Isn’t there a saying “never put your skis where your mouth is”? I’ve been lucky with my skiing but the road bike has cost me a broken collar bone once. When on the MTB, a good ride always comes with some cuts and bruises !
On a serious side: having to visit a dentist while abroad is one of my nightmares. Japanese dentists probably are world class but I still would be very nervous having someone I can only communicate with in a limited way fixing my teeth…
Still in the “almost-ready” stage. More almost ready than last time
@Russelle I crashed during a long distance event (“Vätternrundan”) that is 300 km around one of the biggest lakes in Sweden. I made about 290 of the 300 km, finishing the last 10 in an ambulance. No cars (apart from that ambulance) involved !
@BlackWidow You survived TORSBY! That’s something !
That’s it, two from my quartet of Eduard 109s finished!
Since I’m doing four in one go, there are two left to finish. I’ll continue with the Finnish theme and will do a G-6 from Finland while the remaining G-4 will be Italian.
@BlackWidow That’s a beautiful photo Torsten, thanks! MT-213 looks really well maintained.
As I wrote earlier, there are two further builds in this same batch.
Masking on the Finnish G-6. It had a symbol on the rudder showing an odd-looking, yellow, creature that I cut masks for while I was doing the number 9 anyway. This one differs from the G-2 in that it has blue backgrounds for the Finnish markings and also it was painted in a German standard camouflage.
The same process on the Italian G-4.
And this is what I managed to do last night and this morning! Still a bit more painting to do but they’ll probably be ready for decals during the coming week.
@BlackWidow Keskinen and Stenman are legends when it comes to Finnish aviation books, I have a few but they are printed in rather small quantities and tend to sell out fast.
Italy got many of their 109s second hand from the Luftwaffe (they were really modern considering how popular second hand is today!) and the Italians painted over the German markings using their own paint stocks. There are a few colour photos where this can be clearly seen, the Italian grey is a lot warmer/browner than the German colours. Eduard suggests mottling using Italian green as well, I can accept that on the fuselage but on the wings I think they simply stuck to grey. I have a colour photo of this aircraft in an old Italian book I bought in Vigna di Valle more than twenty years ago, this suggests some kind of mottling but it is difficult to tell. I ended up with this interpretation and I think I’ll stick to that. I now see that I need to repaint the fin as well using my Italian grey but after that everything should be ready for a clear coat and some decals!
Lower surfaces finished as well! No decals yet, all visible markings were done using masks.
Friends! Everything is fine but I have had a bit of a low period when it comes to modelling since the beginning of the summer but now I finally feel a bit inspired again!
Let’s get these two finished this side of the New Year!
As I wrote earlier, let’s make sure these sneak in the right side of the New Year!
An Italian G-4…
…and a Finnish G-6!
I once again realise that I have missed painting the trim tabs red but I’ll save that for later. Even without red trim tabs, I consider these enough airworthy to count towards the 2024 (rather meagre…) total!
One thing to improve that is sadly very visible, both in the pictures and IRL, are the white edges around the clear panels. That’s white primer showing through, I’ll go easier on these in the future!
See you in the new year and thanks for the welcome-back greetings, much appreciated!
…and I’ve managed to both assemble both kits and paint the rudder of one of them!
The red masking sponges come form-cut from the Royal Class G-10-box (as you might have already suspected, there’s no end to this…) and really work well. And they are re-usable, not that it is that difficult to mask using tape but this is even easier!
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