That’s turned out really nice John. I think the weathering and exhaust is just right. It’s too easy to overdo those effects, subtle is sometimes more effective.
Have been meaning to try one of these myself.
Managed to get the fuselage assembled on the Macchi today. Think I managed to get a nice neat join.
Very nicely turned out John. Thanks again for joining in.
Bit of Mr Surfacer and a light sanding made quick work of that join.
Today’s job, scratch build the missing carb intake.
Mission accomplished.
Intake was made from some U-section plastruct with strip details. Luckily I was able to find some 1/72 plans in Osprey’s Italian Aces of WW2 book. These were a big help here.
Nice little addition Stephen. Quite a significant improvement.
Well the Valentine III Mark V is finished. Will put it on a little base when I get my tools back from my son and I can make one…
And with Aerials
Damn. I just realised one of the forward hatch grab handles has gone AWOL…
Wow, that is awesome!
Of course the camo is what immediately grabs one’s attention, but everything I can see on it looks great.
Thanks Phil.
Really nice intricate paint scheme Peter, well done… Looks very good and overall effect is a real winner 
Thanks Peter.
Strange that Hobbyboss missed it off. Wasn’t difficult to make it up though. They also missed the inboard landing gear doors. I used the doors from Revell’s ancient Macchi as templates to make those.
Great work on the Valentine. The stone wall cammo is very nearly done.
Excellent job on the camouflage! Looks great!!
Never mind about the handle sure this kind of damage happened all the time. 
The new intake and gear doors have been fitted today. Also spent the better of the afternoon masking the canopy.
I think she’s now ready for some paint.
Sprayed a coat of white primer, followed by some matt white on the rear fuselage.
Now for all the fun and games of masking the band and crosses. I absolutely hate trying to mask fuselage stripes, always a struggle to get the m straight. Even after half of hour of messing around, it’s still wonky. Why this can’t be provided as a decal is beyond me.
I’m calling mine done. I put a little dust on it, and even though I think it may be a little heavy, it does NOT show up this heavy in real life. The camera really makes it jump off the plane and it’s pretty subtle (if not quite subtle enough) in real life.
And the underside:
I really like this kit. The only ding I have on it is that the panel lines seem pretty uneven in depth. The tail and some parts of the wing took the wash really well and it popped as a result, but others wouldn’t take it at all. Had I known this I might have been able to deepen them a little where needed but I wasn’t going to redo it all as late in the build as I found out.
Everything fit pretty well - there are a couple of places on the finished model that I think don’t look that great, but I imagine that is me not taking enough care rather than a shortcoming of the kit. As I was building it everything went together well and fine.
Great work Phil. Looks Fantastic.
Have you tried Tamiya’s flexible tape Stephen? One of my clubmates uses it and says it is great for this type of work.
Yeah that’s the stuff I’m using.
It’s a real pain to get this one lined up. I’m trying to get it all straight and level as I move around the fuselage. But then I look at it and it’s wonky. The top and bottom seem to be the most troublesome areas.
I’ve given up for now and got the tail cross masked out. At least that went well.
I’ll have another go at it tomorrow, but it really has felt like a day wasted. I had planned to get masking done and the grey on the underside done today.
We all have days like that. Hope it works out for you in the end.
I’ll try again tomorrow. It’s fiddly job. And the more I tried to adjust one part, the other side got worse. Felt like a losing battle.
Today’s attempt seems to have gone a lot better.
I ditched the Tamiya vinyl flexi tape in favour of some regular 1mm tape. I think this has worked a lot better. The Tamiya tape might need a bit of practice to get the results you need. It’s very stretchy and I do wonder if I stretched it out of shape while I tried to pull it around.
Of course using white tape on white paint doesn’t help either.
The final proof will be when the tape comes off.
