Night Swallow's hull and wings

Sealing the body

Now that I got the extra weight measured and fitted into the nasal cavity I glued the cannon module into the first hull half. When the glue had set I dry-fitted the second half in and then glued it shut. The fit was great and the only problems I had came from my overapplied and running glue.

When the glue had cured I reinforced some joints from the inside with Vallejo's plastic putty. Then I attached the cockpit's upper edge into the airframe.

At this point I could install the radio's frame that I had assembled some time earlier. It was such a flimsy-looking bit that I didn't paint it separately. The radio belonged into the same set, I had only prepainted its face but not the sides yet. When the glue was set I painted the missing parts in black grey, and a bit later drybrushed them with cold grey. Installing the radio unit waited until the painting was totally dry.

I was pretty paranoid with the dry-fitting. So far the cockpit assembly fit in very nicely and I didnt' even snap off the radar display while moving the bits around. While checking on the things I applied some gloss varnish on the radar displays before I forgot them completely.

Installing the radio didn't cause any toothgrinding even if I was somewhat concerned of the frame being a bit too tight or even misaligned. My fears were pointless, the device sat into its perch pretty nicely. At this point I still had time to tweak its colourings, the overall RLM66 coating was something I was doubtful of, from the user perspetive.

Then I made the mistake of searching for details about the different radios used in these planes, so I could paint it to look more correct. The radio that was sitting behind the pilot's head was a FuG 16 ZY (Zielflug; Y-Verfahren) had at least the two systems used for the radio direction finding. Maybe using the reference image copied below I could slap a couple of whiteish blobs of paint into the facemask.

Compared to that and the decal I used to paint the piece my version was a bit different. So I had things to fix but not that many, in the end: the tiny frequency displays had to be painted white, the knobs ought to be black or just black gray again so they'd stand out from the drybrushed body. The lump was a bit different from the b&w reference photo but I didn't let that bother me, I wasn't going for a photorealistic hyperhobbyist build anyway.

It was pretty difficult to hit those tiny tiny bits even with my tiniest paintbrush. Still, I attempted to do some black lines for the scales, just like I touched up the larger knobs with black. From the top of the box I repainted the flat surfaces with black grey to make them look a bit less overworn and grainy. This was much better.

Below the cockpit's floor

With the top side in a good state I moved on to the underside with extra pieces. To the back end I installed a wall that was a bit difficult to set into the correct spot, due to the isometric image in the instructions with the installable part just floating near the installation location.

Confirming the actual and correct place was when I installed the lever complex under the pilot's butt. I read the situation so that these hinged bars were connected into the base of the joystick and these hinges translated the left/right movements into the steering surfaces with some fantastic mechanical engineering sorcery.

But what was the idea of having them painted in advance in the instructions when gluing painted bits was always a pain? Now I had to glue some sort of a fire extinguisher (I assumed), then something to be painted in blue came next to it, and I expected that to be an air tank of some sort by the colour. Then the instrcutions showed a shelf of some sort in the upper side, with some things to be painted black. Maybe they were batteries or something. There was no hint in the instructions.

At this point I felt like screaming, looking at the instructions and the duraluminium tub. Just above the extinguisher-like piece there were two installation points and in the step 31 that little two-legged thing was supposed to be installed the way the picture said. In the next step 32 the next part was shown, and the little piece from the last step was shown in place but this step showed it facing in a completely different direction! I didn't quite understand what the hell they had in their minds so I installed it the way I actually could.

While removing the piece for the step 32 it broke. I did not feel like forcing it into an unspecified angle and probably guessing wrong. So I painted the existing parts according to the instructions: bars and such in duraluminium, the side bit and the extinguisher-like part in olive green, and the assumed air tank in UK Mediterranean Blue (VMA 71111).

As I had painted these, in my opinion it was going to be a wasted time, I weathered them with Citadel's Nuln Oil. Probably it made no difference as I excpected all of it to be invisible with the body of the plane sealed shut. Had I known something about aircraft modeling, I'd thought for myself instead of relying on the instructions but as we knew, I didn't know better so I tried to skip the guessing part.

Wings

I felt the instructions jumped around a bit sillily back and forth but I guessed Revell modeling engineers knew their job. The next part to be built and installed were the wings. I had always found this stage the most unreliable and unpredictable in aircraft modeling so I was a tiny bit worried.

Main landing gear bay

This fun seven-part himmel was going to live inside the wings. Between the horizontal support parts I installed five bits. While dry-fitting they wobbled like an old amusement park ride, the setup ended up being nicely rigid when the glue set.

Assembling the wings

Yeah, this was the most stressing part of the build for me, or if we weren't there quite yet, we were approaching it at ramming speed. Into the underbelly part I glued the undersides for the external parts of the wings. Supporting these we had those little flaps that had to be press-fitted tightly without snapping the floppy pieces. A gentle amount of tool-assisted violence was enough, which was nice as simply using my fingers left them both at a weird angle so a bit more force was required.

I didn't trust on glue alone so I used a liberal amount of Vallejo's liquid putty to support the connections. When the wing parts were set I glued the previously assembled frame into this setup, and I also reinforced that one with putty.

While the wings were still open this way I followed the wisdom of the instructions and built the flaps and glued them in place. The first step had the innermost ones and the middle ones, the outmost ones had to wait a bit more.

The moment of scary truth was approaching. I installed the top halves of the wings and pressed them together with clothespins as I had nothing better at hand. When the glue was set the outer wing thingies, ailerons or whatever they were called. Onto the leading edge I installed the automatically opening and closing slats. Those were open by default and that's what I used instead of snipping bits off. This could be a plane in maintenance or something.

With an amount of dry-fitting I glued the wing complex into the airframe. I had to cut off some plastic from here and there to make the damn thing fit, as something was not the way it was supposed to be. I couldn't recognize the culprit from the inside. To help the glue I used more of the liquid putty, as you could see in the photo. I had to do this a couple of times to cover up some gaps after I removed the masking tape that held the thing in place.

For some reason the tail wings (horizontal stabilizers iirc) were not a part of this show, so I didn't install them now despite installing them now would've made sense to me. Probably that wouldn't have hurt but as I didn't actually know better, I didn't try to optimize myself. The instrcutions were supposed to be trustworthy.

Night Swallow's beak

The quad hidden in the beak

The typical armament of a Me-262 was a set of four 30mm MK108 autocannons with a relatively small ammunition load. This was, again, the first time I saw these things in any scale instead of little holes on the nose cone.

The cannon department

At least the beginning was simple. Between the cockpit's front plate and the fuel tank space we had an armoured wall and the gun area's baseplate that got glued into it. To the front end of this setup I glued the next wall that was the base of the actual nose cone. If my memory served me correctly the nose cone then contained the gun camera or at least its lens, and in this model the antennas of the radar were installed here. Then, on the flipside of the baseplate the walls and the mounting point for the nose wheel was built, as I was going for the standing model instead of an in-flight one.

Around the central cylinder I glued the lower ammo feeds for the cannons. At this point I had to fish out the paintbrushes and paints, so I could get the paintables done before installing the cannons that would be blocking out a lot later on. 

I left the front half unpainted as it was only going to receive some weights to stabilize the model. I also tried to avoid painting the things that were going to get stuff glued on to, like the installation points of the cannons and the spent casing chutes. While I was at it I also painted the cannon's front wall that had holes for the guns to poke through.

Everything was painted green except the ammo feeds that I painted with black grey. In the back wall there were also those four blocks that needed to be black.

The model one-oh-eights

Rheinmetall-Borsig's autocannons numbered, like I said before, four in total. I painted them all in Black Grey and then drybrushed with Cold Grey. When the paint was dry I pushed them into the front wall and started gluing this crow's nest into the baseplate. This was a lot more confusing an operation than what it probably sounded like.

 

When the cannons were stiffly in place I glued the ammo chutes in. Based on a quick read I didn't find any super detailed description of how these actually worked, so I boldly assumed that the fresh ammo feeds were located by the core of the plane and the spent shell casings were ejected outward, making the left/right cannons mirrors of each other. My justification for this was that the bottom of the hull had the paired ejection ports, or so I believed, and they were located on the outer side of the hull, not evenly spaced.

I painted these new casing ejector transporters also in Black Grey but left their drybrushing much lighter so they'd stand out differently. Then I glued in the lenghtwise-running support bars and painted them in Black Grey with a heavier Cold Grey drybrushing than the cannons, despite the instructions recommending metallic steel. 

Finally for the weaponry post I glued the ejection ports into the bottom parts of the airframe halves, and painted them olive green as instructed. While I was at it I also painted the more or less visible insides in Black Grey and drybrushed with Cold Grey. Repetition ad infitum.

 

Before sealing the airframe halves I glued and puttied (Vallejo Liquid Putty) a screw next to each of the spent case ejectors. Dry-fitting showed they fit in perfectly, and the cavities were completely sealed in the next stage. This, then, raised the question why did the instructions tell to paint the outsides of the ejector chutes green in the first place...

Finished: Project X/26

WAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

Here we had them, two teams for a strange sporting event to celebrate Orktober.

Santerz lil helpaz

The name for the red team came from the very coca-cola-santa look that I came to accidentally. As the orcish decorations they had chessboard marks wherever they fit.

Player / Troll-yeti

Red team's anchor point was this Troll-yeti in their leather pants.

Player group / Ulfhethnorc

These fellas were clearly meant for bone-breaking.

Player / Stoutswiller Gorksson

Mr Gorksoon was the Stretch Goal 4, and looked like he was smasing a fallen competitor in the head with a beer barrel. Apparently that was cool in the rules.

Player / Beerzerkork

I glued this guy onto the base to have him kicking something fiercely. In the kickstarter's demo pic he was standing on the other one, but that was ok, I found this pose good. The teeth were left in a bad state, they were a bit too small for my limited detailing skills.

Support / Apoth-orc-ary

The field doctor's role in the game was a total mystery to me but there had to be an explanation for it somewhere. This one had steel-reinforced boots in their feet, and I couldn't help thinking that steel-capped sandals would've been even funnier :D

 

My white painting wasn't great this time (again), those blood splatters would've stood out better from the blue team's stuff. Again the final photos revealed misses: the forehad lamp's leather band was left undone. That got sent to the post-processing.

Player group / Lineorks

I really had no idea what the lineorks were but here we had five of them. Those two rightmost ones were clearly to stop any opposing player, the two in the middle were kicking the not-ball into the distance, and the leftmost guy with his barrel was already talked about above.

Jerkz in jeanz

Being orcs and wearing blue pants I felt that this was a fitting name for this group of characters even if I only tried to paint anything denimlike on the one troll. 

Player / Mork Frostfur

Blue team's big walking piece of wall was also the stretch goal #5 but also the centerpiece of the team, a tall troll. He had a team scarf and I thought it was a huge risk, a quick opponent could just pull him down from it.

Player / Igor Ripgutsson

Igor, being also the stretch goal #3, clearly was caught in the middle of a pre-game posing.

Player / Beerzerkork

This Beer berserker had his own mead for the game. I was assuming them to be a player and not a fan on the sidelines, but it was a bit difficult to tell with the British sportsfans, who was a brutal player and who was just a brutal hooligan. I didn't follow sports myself so I relied on hearsay.

Player pair / Valkyrork

For the blue team I had the super special characters, these two Valkürenorks. The figures were glorious, which wasn't what one could say about my white painting skills. As a fun detail these two had steel-reinforced kicking boots.

Player / Alternative thrower

Another stretch goal (#2) the alternative thrower of the not-ball also had their own horn to toot. Or had they just stolen it from a referee?

Player pair / Beer Bork

In my miniature splitting process I gave the two Squigs with beer barrels belted on them to the blue team. I was especially happy with how the helmeted one's eyes ended up. They didn't have much blue, only the beard-ponytail-wrapper of the other one had a distinct blue on it.

Player group / Lineorks

These five line orcs formed a cruel-looking wall that I expected being difficult for the opposing team to get through of.

Player group / Throwers

This happy group of four were marked as throwers even if only one had anything throwable in their hand.

Player pair / Gobbos

Last and least the blue gang had two tiny goblin-gretchin chaps in their steel armour, running in the opponents' feet.

Orktober: details

WAAAAAAAAAGH!

My teams were pretty much all painted now, I had even got those spiky disks poked at. I really didn't know what their purpose in life was but I assumed they were some sort of trackers for something in the actual game, like heat levels in BattleTech but for unsportslike behaviour. Now I painted the bases with my other Soviet green (VMA 71281 3B Russian Green). Their rims, as always, I painted in black grey. Now they were much nicer to look at.

At some point I had painted some cat- or snakelike pupils to the squig eyes, and now used Vallejo's gloss varnish on those and their tongues, and the sunglass lenses of the blue team's troll.

Static grassification

My colleague Jesse said that he haid some idle static garss that I could freely use to try it out. I accepted the offer and had a bit of a chat about how does this crap even get used, I had never touched this product so far. Based on that I prepared the grounds with diluted white glue, sprinkled static grass in abundance. Right away I knocked off the most excesses, and left them cure overnight.

Gaming zoning's linings

The next day I knocked more loose stuff off, and cut a piece of a wooden ice cream stick to use as a line stamper. I had never seen a Blood Bowl playground so I made this thing based on my gut feeling. Stamping was simple: I coated a lenght of the piece with off-white (VMA 71318 Greyish White) and pressed it on to make the line on the grass.

Some of my gaming lines were neater than some others. There'd been way too much to mask for airbrushing, and a colleague had suggested using clingfilm but I felt too lazy for that.

Matt varnish

As soon as the paint had cured I used super matt varnish on the bases. Otherwise the static grass glistened a bit too much, and this also sealed the bases even more than the already had white glue.