"Adding planes to my projects" Topic

Hi guys

I bought a thing, most people in hobby circles know me as a builder/collector of WWII ground vehicles and figures, and I haven't built a plane in 35-40 years, but I have been playing with the idea of adding a couple of planes, 1 fighter and 1 ground attack aircraft to each of my projects, unfortunately this side of the hobby is a whole new knowledge and skill set, so I am on a steep learning curve.

I took a stock take of most of my aircraft kits, half bought over the last few years, the other half bought recently, they have mostly been impulse buys with my ground projects in the back of my mind, but without much research, I'll undoubtedly pay for this later with planes that don't quite match their ground units in time periods or AOs, so I'm going to have to be flexible in my accuracy expectations. I need to add more British and US aircraft, but I want to research them a bit more to get the right ones, I only want Brit planes for 1940, North Africa and the far east, and US planes for Normandy and the far east, I'm going to find it tough to gain the knowledge, then source the required decals and paint jobs for specific units, so I've decided to stick with the paint jobs/decals supplied in the kits, I'm also going to try and reduce the work load by painting the canopies rather than keeping them clear, which I'm sure in aviation modelling is taboo but quite common in wargaming.

I've started building the first few kits, a mix of French and German, even though they have half the parts as a 1/72 AFV kit, they are taking me longer to put together, and they are a lot more fragile, I'm finding I'm breaking a lot of small parts with my clumsy fingers, I'm wondering if I should replace antennas and such with wire, some of the kits are only designed to be built with wheels down, I'm making all of mine in flight and stowing the wheels can take work, so far I'm less than pleased with my results, but I'll press on and take pics once the construction is done.
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You've got some nice model kits there.

I understand the challenge. I have been trying to add some ground liaison aircraft to my forces; Lysander, Storch etc. It is a whole new ball game with fiddly bits and canopies etc, etc. My first couple of attempts have been frustrating. I am now looking at pre-made die-cast models (such as Oxford Aviation) with a view to repainting them to suit my ground forces and style. Relatively inexpensive but no great choice.

Years ago, I purchased allot of Doyusha prepainted 1/100 kits for my 15mm WW2 armies while they were still relatively inexpensive like $5 USD to $10 USD a kit now, they're crazy expensive on Ebay including shipping $23 USD to $50 USD a plane. If I had to do this now, I would move to 144th scale. Good luck with those and I feel your pain as the prepainted planes still need to be built but luckily not the number of parts that are in a 1/72 kit, plus painting and placing decals on them.

One way to get the wheels to fit into the wells is to sand them down until they sit flush with the wing, mate. Then putty the inevitable gaps. Scale aircraft kits are fragile (especially things like the dive-breaks on a Stuka), and sometimes it's better to leave them off, before they get broken off. As for antennas, pitot tubes and similar, make it a soft wire that you can bend back to shape, not a rigid wire that may crack any seam it goes through. Also mount the plane on a stand and yell, at maximum volume, at anyone who grabs the model and not the stand.

Not that that works, but you'll have made your point and may feel a little better about the bit that broke off and disappeared into another universe. :-)

You have some pretty exotic stuff to work with there. French 1940, USSR, Roumanian, Hungarian, Italian and captured planes to mention but a few. OK, you could do with some Finnish aircraft, as surely the most extraordinary collection of planes in any WWII country, but not often seen in the Western Desert, I admit.

I would suggest a P47 and a Typhoon, at the very least,for NW Europe 1944 and a Hurricane and Kittyhawk for the desert.

I do enjoy your postings especially as the whole forum has gone quiet (heck, I have been swamped with 1815 work for a year or os now)

Good luck with the Fiat CR-32, fitting the top wing is by far the most difficult I have ever done in sixty-odd years of model aircraft!

" Good luck with the Fiat CR-32, fitting the top wing is by far the most difficult I have ever done in sixty-odd years of model aircraft!"

That's encouraging, I'll leave that one til last.