The art of puttering

Lots of puttering around the modelling dungeon, though little that was worthy of a headline. It mostly consisted of taking some glamour shots of the last three completed aircraft in 2012, unmasking four models after their last trip to the paint booth, and doing some preliminary work on cockpits for some new items entering the production stream.

I suspect a lot of my bench time will be spent getting all the dangly bits hung on to the three P-47s and the Tornado GR4. Landing gear, wheels, doors, and then decals. The Phantom GR1 still needs two more visits to the paint booth (Black radome and Alclad for the bare metal portions aft of the exhausts) so it will take a bit more time.

I think the next items to enter the queue will be the three Hawks (two T1s and a T2) and probably the Trumpeter Wellington. Maybe the Zvezda Pe-8 if I feel the need to keep my WW2 heavies project in motion.  

I still haven’t reconciled myself to the way that Trumpeter did the fabric sections of wing and tail on the Wellington – it looks as though the world’s largest vacuum cleaner was sucking the fabric down into the interior space – but I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about the buildability of the MPM version. I’m really out to have a pleasant, low-stress experience at this point, and the Trumpeter kits have delivered well on that front. 

Here are a couple of shots of the state of play of the models that look to the be first completions of 2013.