Night Swallow's night fighting double cockpit

A two-person tub

My best understanding about any of the WWII plane cockpits came from flight simulators, the one with the most hours was a slightly ageing European Air War, while IL-2 Sturmovik was a bit fresher, but I hadn't touched that one in something like 15+ years now. Luckily the wonderful world of the interwebs contained reference images such as this one here:

SRC: https://airandspace.si.edu/multimedia-gallery/image/web10866-2008hjpg

There was no way I'd get that hysterically close even if I did my bestestest. This photo helped me to figure out what all that crap in the cockpit was, and that was valuable in deciphering the instructions.

The pilot's workstation

In the two-person cockpit the frontmost was the pilot's place and that was where the adventure started.

Assembling the front seat

Having very little clue of anything I didn't try to optimize prematurely, and instead I followed the instructions as obediently as one could. An airplane model started from the cockpit, that this time wasn't a simple tub with a couple of tiny flakes glued into it, but it was a couple of separate plates. These first pieces became the arm consoles of the pilot and the sides between which the pilot sat. Well, I knew that the throttle controls lived on the left side, and if I remembered correctly the landing gear toggle was somewhere front left. This construction was glued into a wall, and I assumed the bit behind the pilot's butt was a battery. At least it looked like a battery to me.

The floor piece got a bar for the rudder, and the pilot's joystick. This also got glued into the back wall with a pretty tiny grabbing surface but I trusted it would become sturdier as the build progressed.

The foot pedals sat nicely on their cradle, and they looked pretty nice to my amateur eyes.

This pedal setup also fell in place pretty conveniently, so I could proceed to install the instrument panel parts in place. Now I was in a place where I had to seriously consider picking up the paints if I wanted to fit inside the model with my paintbrush. Maybe I had already passed that point from a airplane-dedicated hobbyis't viewpoint but I didn't know how to be the most efficient here.

I still had no dedicated weights to add into the nose, I remembered seeing that while skimming through the instructinos. I felt mad enough to consider pulling some cables or wires from the back of the IP to also add some little extra weight. The risk was that I'd stupidly do something I felt like instead of doing it correctly. Perhaps that was a silly detail to be left for the serious and dedicated ones.

While playing with these loose bits I was concerned with the positioning and alignment: if something was a degree off, the whole shebang would be wrong when sealing this setup into the plane's hull. After taking this last photo I glued the assembled subassembly into its front wall. If my memory served, that was the wall between a fuel tank and the guns.

Weirdly early painting

Now I was in a stage where I had to start painting if I wanted to reach almost everything. Or like I thought before, I may have already gone past that moment, simply being unused to planes. I got my paintbrush and coated most of what I had built in a dark grey paint (VMA 71055 Black Grey RLM66). Instead of using the metallic paint that the instructions were pushing I drybrushed this with Cold Grey (VGA 72750 Cold Grey). On the surfaces I followed the guidance and shades as I could, only Anthrazite was something I didn't own so the front right panel was a bit different.

The most colour variety came for the joystick's base and the throttle levers that got a Wood brown on them, and the valve manifold levers next to the throttles got painted black. At this point I noticed I didn't actually have the correct green so I didn't finish the front wall or the joystick's stick part.

On the instrument panel I based the dials black. I thought I got them nicely done in one go but the photos revealed how wrong I was again: half-coated at best. Then I touched up a couple of toggles with red (VMA 71003 Red RLM23) but I didn't pull button or switch colours out of my hat to force variety.

 

After a couple of days in between and popping by a paintshop I continued on the plane. Some of the RLM66 bits got mostly prepainted into the sprues so I wouldn't be in weird problems in a difficult moment while building the cockpit. I didn't expect to have pinpointed all the difficulties in advance so it was more than likely that I'd be still touching up for days to come.

While I was fixing my doings, I filled up the panel faces in black (VMA 71057 Black) and then smudged some dial-like stuff on them. I really didn't dare to try to poke any white, yellow, and red sectors onto the three rows of engine dials on the right, I'd only made a mess if I tried to. Of course I didn't try to fill them all semicorrectly, I wasn't even sure if these could be seen in the first place. After taking these photos and letting the paint dry, I coated the dials with Vallejo's Gloss Varnish.

Onto the engine's three-row dialset I just painted the background in cold grey and then off-white (VMA 71119 White Grey) switches. I didn't try to do anything cooler than that, I imagined one could barely see these later on. After taking the photos and allowing the paint to dry I coated all the dial faces with Vallejo's Gloss Varnish (70510). 

Radar operator's workstation

Now that I had spent a couple of days on the pilot's stuff and partially painted some upcoming things, I finally could glue some radar dude's things together. When I was prepainting I concentrated on things I now knew to be difficult to paint later. While painting I left the attachment points as clear as possible, when I recognized them, to avoid making a mess with the glue. This wasn't perfect, of course. Compared to the pilot's space the radar operator's side was much flimsier and only connected to the whole from a tiny stud hooked into the pilot's back plate.

 

Seats with belts

To support the gluings I used Vallejo's liquid putty. While that stuff was curing I finished up the seats that also ended up getting the decal seatbelts on them. They were neat-looking, but just as annoying as decals usually have been. Both had the same problems, maybe I could use a drop of paint to get the left shoulder belt's attachment loops stuck in place?

Inner armoured tub

Getting the tub's halves together was more bothersome than I hoped for. As I guess I should've expected, I hadn't been as precise as German engineers when building the cockpit so I had to sand and file a bit to get the crap squeezed in place. To support my inner peace I used more liquid putty to seal the setup, and left the setup to cure. I could sand them down the next evening before jumping a couple of sections noseward .

It was funny how quickly the cockpit turned much more claustrophobic. Not much of the tub's inner walls were visible but I had painted and drybrushed them so they would be properly done. There was a red handle on the righthand side of the pilot's side wall. Again, if my memory served, it was for releasing the drop tanks or bombs. That most likely wasn't something one could see from a closed cockpit, but it was there, a RLM23 red handle in a sea of RLM66 darkness.

As planned I sanded the largest clumps of dry putty off the next evening and painted the outsides metallic (Vallejo Metal Color Airbrush Colors 77702 Duraluminium), and the upper edges in RLM66.

Project IX/26

Revell's larger scale night Swallow

As you could tell, the madness had struck me. I had contacted Tieto-Nikkari last year and asked if they had a 1:32 scale German planes to try out. My wishlist was pretty predictable, I guessed: Bf-109; Me-262; He-162 and I didn't mind the variant or model manufacturers. They had a Swallow in the shelf so I didn't need to toss a coin. This B-1/U-1 variant was a two-crew night fighter with a Neptun radar

Some ages ago I have made three of these in 1:72. One of them was the basic version (A-1a), one a camera plane (A-1a/U3), and one was the Storm Bird (A2-a) aka the fighter bomber variant. It was going to be interesting to see how over two decades showed in the end.

 

Pieces in bags

There was a silly amount of pieces and I left them waiting for a better moment to look at more closely. At a very quick glance this kit had at least four times the parts compared to the smaller planes.

 

Decals

No, they still did not call my attention. I also hadn't made myself order stencils for German numbers, so I wasn't sure if I had many options.

A peek at the instructions

First thought was that I could build it with its paws on the ground and the hatches opened. That I appreciated, even though I hadn't given a thought on how I'd want to build this plane. A standing one was nicer to photograph and I really enjoyed building and painting all the soon-to-be-hidden details. What annoyed me already was the little note telling me I had to find out 15 grams worth of tiny weights to hide inside the nose.

 

Finished: Project VIII/26

Catapult K2K

Just for the fun of it I checked my previous DCMS paintjob's post and chuckled: in 2012 I thought I'd paint more of them. It only took me about 14 years to reach the same area with my paintbrushes. The eighth Regiment was nicknamed the Jade Dragon and it, or at least its name did, represented the economy of the Draconis Combine.

The other four pillars were steel (military), ivory (religion and philosophy), teak (art and culture), and gold (the sociopolitical structure). Five pillars, thirteen Sword of Light Regiments, the last of which was logically numbered the fifteenth.

With very superficial sarnaing I assigned this one and its three non-present siblings in arms to the fifth battallion's second company's heavy Lance. None of this was actually meaningful, I just documented these for my own strange amusement.

As everyone knew, the Catapult was a Heavy 'Mech, massing 65 tons and its base model was also nicely jump-capable. Kuritas tore the Jump Jets off for their K2 model, probably to keep the heat management somewhat simpler. K2K's armament was pretty clearly visible: two ER PPCs, and also the ER Medium Lasers somewhat more hidden under the cockpit.

To keep the Particle Projector Cannon -provided heat buildup in some kind of check this 'Mech had 20 Double Heat Sinks and carried 13,5 tons of armor for protection. I gave a personal bucketful of style points, as you may have expected.

Photos

Being the first and currently the only one of its Lance there were no group photos to be taken, so individuals is what we got today.

A Kuritapult from start to finish

Colouring pondering

My map was completely open and I could've assigned my murderous tin can anywhere, there were many groups in this universe that I had not poked at yet. My own Merc band also had two Lancefuls of spots open. In my mind I got taken to a red space, as I like the colour in general and I had used red as one key colour in all the possible BT games (Mechwarrior:Online; BATTLETECH; Mechwarrior 5:Mercenaries). The title revealed it already, I went with the Kuritapult theme and chose a sibling unit for a Lance I already painted: the 8th Sword of Light or "Jade Dragon".

A red-sponged surface

Coating all the armoured parts I brushed a layer of reddish brown (VMA 71105 Red Brown RLM26) and left the joints and barrels clear. I did not stress too much about the coverage, as you could see.

Somewhere I had encountered an idea of bringing brightness and noise to the paintjob by poking the paint on with a sponge. I thought I could give that a shot, sponging around instead of trying to paint individual panels in a gradient using a paintbrush. Very shockingly I used a bright red to be dabbed on (VMA 71003 Red RLM23). As usual, I concentrated on the top and most noticeable surfaces, where I thought the light would hit most. This got repeated on gradually smaller surfaces two, three times.

Next I mixed some Lemon Yellow (VMC 70952) into the red for brightness. This stuff got dabbed on a bit more cautiously than on the previous red layers.

Finally I mixed one final serving of even brighter yellow-orange and touched a few key points with it. Looking at it this close made the effect look a bit strong. Black Grey bare metal parts didn't look too fitting so I started thinking of making them somewhat lighter.

Metallics

Apparently I went insane and thought that I could try to do something as deranged as having a go at the NMM effect. Simple on paper: narrowing cold and stonewall grey bands over the black grey base. I even got a reference for the gloom from the dark barrels, but it definitely didn't work out :D At least I had now tried it out.

To get them forward I painted the bare metals in Stonewall Grey and then highlighted with Greyish White. That ended up a tiny bit on the overbright side so I washed them darker later (Citadel Nuln Oil).

 

To highlight them somehow I added narrow horizontal lines along the ER PPC barrels. They would not really stand out but I had them done now.

Lenses

Each of the four lenses and the cockpit's panes got based with flat black.

 

The underjaw ER Medium Lasers (Escorpena Green) were a bit tight to paint, but the ER PPCs got a friendly coating of Electric Blue. For the cockpit panes I used the slightly darker Magic Blue. This photo here showed that I had forgotten the opposite reflection spot from the main viewport pane, I fixed that much later.

 

I especially liked the particle cannon lenses, this time they succeeded pretty nicely. A nice change from the usual mehness.

Hex bases

Having no specific idea I just used a random amount of blobs of Vallejo's Mud for the base and left it cure overnight. The next time I covered the dips with a Light Green for grass.

A contact who does lots of minis and shares their stuff online recommended using some brighter colours like pinks and such as drybrushed alien flora on the base. I gave a shot at a pink (VGC 72013 Squid Pink) and Lemon Yellow, and yes, they did add some fun variation. Now I had to remember this when painting anything else to accompany this one here...

Looking at the sizes and shapes of pieces available I decided that I did not feel like trying to freehand the Jade Dragon or a flaming sword on this bugger. I sealed the miniature with AK's Super Matt Varnish, and then did the seven glass bits with Vallejo's Gloss Varnish. This was good and I had a really good time painting the beamy Catapult.

Project VIII/26

The only reason I immediately bought the GDL ForcePack

The box had one of my greatest favourites: Catapult's K2 version. Otherwise the same old but instead of LRM launchers it had PPCs on its shoulders. Sarna also listed a CPLT-2K2 that had the PPCs upgraded to ERPPCs, and the machine guns and their ammo replaced with two ERMLas. Running this sort of a cooker without ammo was maybe a healthy life choice. At some point after buying it I primed the mini black, but hadn't bothered taking a photo of it.

Airbus assembly

Airbus factory

A plane that was made out of a couple of silly pieces was indeed pretty simple to assemble. The plastic felt a bit flimsy to me, though. The cockpit area was built out of a few little pieces and that got sealed into the hull. I then glued the passenger windows in with white glue as it has worked nicely for transparents. When the hull halves were cured I glued the wings in, and added the rudder in place as well.

Both of the engines were built out of four pieces: the disc with the turbine blades, its rear end, and the two halves of the casing. I didn't glue them in place yet, I'd do that when I had the landing gear firmly set.

Getting the landing gear was surprisingly bothersome and I blamed the plastic type for it. Somehow this material just didn't want to cooperate with my glue (mr Surfacer S), and that caused tooth grinding. When the landing gear was in and cured, I then glued the engines in place.

I did not have any weights to hide inside the nose (the instructions told to use ten grams, and I was absolutely unprepared for this sort of nonsense), even the old fishing-related lead balls I had had were gone for decades at this point. Perhaps I could hide a black-paited screw behind the pilot's and copilot's seats if nothing else came up.

 

Apart from the cockpit window the plane was practically built. You could tell from the photos that there were some gaps, and I had to do something about them.

Puttying

I squeezed Vallejo's liquid putty where I decieded it was needed, and then blended the stuff with a damp paintbrush. When the goo was dry, I sanded the excesses away.

Maybe that was it for me, and I could hand it over to be painted? I thought I could recommend the Project Assistant I to start with the cockpit so we could glue the final transparent piece in its place. Their inspiration was fleeting, so it was pretty likely that I wouldn't be sharing the progress on this project quite as reliably as I did with my own builds.