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.