A
pretty straightforward build, this one, despite a few mishaps.
I managed to lose the gun-sight pretty early on, so I had to fashion a
new one using a bit clear sprue and a tiny trimmed piece of clear plastic from
some packaging. Then I drilled the
hole for the antenna pole in the wrong place after I had painted the a/c, so I
had to fill, sand and paint that panel again.
Later on, I dropped the whole thing breaking off one of the wheel-well
covers (is that what they’re called?) And
then prior to taking the pictures, I snapped the antenna line.
That’s about the standard number of cock-ups for one of my builds.
Painting
was mainly Humbrol enamels. Of
course it was interesting to try and get some variation in the black, otherwise
it would have been a very boring paint scheme.
I mixed quite a bit of white in the first coat to make sure it wasn’t
too intensely black. A few panels
were later sectioned off with “post-it” notes and sprayed again, with a
slightly darker shade. After it had
dried, been glossed, decaled and matt coated, I went over all the panel lines
with straight black chalk pastel powder, applied with a fine brush.
Then the whole thing was again matt coated.
All in all I was pretty happy.
It
was slightly problematic hiding the carrier film of decals on the black
background; I just kept applying Solvaset again and again. Under the final
matt coat it's not too bad.
I
think the Beaufighter is an elegant aircraft and I am happy to have this one on
my shelf.
Click on
images below to see larger images
This
a/c is from RAF 29th squadron, a dedicated nightfighter unit
which converted from Blenheims to Beaufighters over the winter of
1940-1941, flying from West Malling in Kent.
I am afraid I do not know anything about the this particular
aircraft – but the nose art is cute!
Richard
|