I have
actually finished a model recently, but it is liable to be the last completion prior
to the LVAD cardiac surgery. It is by no means a great model, because it was snakebit
from just about the first act of construction.
This
is the Hasegawa MS-406. I found two Hasegawa kits and a Heller one in the box
(I suspect I got this from a fellow IPMS-Seattle member). Over the course of
the build, just about every dangly bit broke off. The antenna, the pitot, the
tailwheel. One of the pugs got ahold of it during the painting process and
swallowed one of those bits. The Hasegawa kit is well engineered and the fit is
just fine.
Painting
was a little tricky due to the number of colors in the camo. But at least it
worked its way through the paint queue without major trauma. A bit of pebbling
which required some careful buffing. The canopy masking took some time to
remove; not sure if that was due to the number of months it was attached to the
model, but that is certainly a possibility.
When I
got to the decals, a Berna sheet, the adhesive was either too little or plain
nonexistent. When I shot the matte topcoat, it actually blew some of the decals
off and they floated to the floor. I was able to replace them with kit decals, which (thankfully) were pretty close in color to the Berna sheet. The
markings are from GC 1/17, Escadrille 2 in the Vichy Air Force, based in Paris
in 1940.
So, it’s….
finished. Not a great one, but the models get displayed on this blog however
they turn out.
This
is completed model #515 (13 aircraft, 1 ordnance, 3 vehicles this year),
finished in September of 2019.