Model Forum / General / Models / October 2007

i have/had the airfix/mpc ee Lightning with crazy decals and IIRC some extra
wierd plastic bits.

I always was trying to track down off of which kit each of those
particular parts was from; one of them was a British style vented
exhaust pipe and others British style bombs that looked like they came
off of a WW II British medium bomber kit. Then there were the rockets
that looked like they came off of a Hawker Typhoon, a direction-finding
loop and "football", and some other parts I don't remember.
I was digging around for a photo of those parts on the web and found
three of the Profile kits; the Ju-88A4, He-177, and A-26B/C:
http://www.cahood.com/M8469.htm
http://www.cahood.com/M8479.htm
http://www.cahood.com/mpc2003.jpg
IIRC, there was a B-24 in this series also.

Pat

didn't they do those fanatsy abortions, too?

The three bladed prop with seperate spinner in the set of chrome parts
were from the Airfix P-40E. I just used two of them for a couple of
Yak-11 conversions. Cut down slightly they work fine, too bad  that I
had to sand off the chrome. This Yak has a P&W R-2000 with a modified
prop from a Grumman Tracker and seven exhaust stubs on each side. The
original Yak-11 had two exhaust stubs under the fuselage at the aft
end of the cowling.

This is my first attempt at doing chrome. The canopy frame, panel
behind the exhaust stubs, landing gear doors, forward 1/3 of the
cowling and edges of the prop blades are chrome. The rest of the plane
is gloss black. I'm doing one basic model for the owner and one
detailed model for myself. The Aeroteam kit's interior is pretty
crude, so I'm using etched metal Entropy and Interavia detail parts,
Elf wheels with rubber tires and a vacuform canopy from my own MAI kit
#001, long out of production. The engine is from a Revell Grumman F4F
Wildcat suitably altered and detailed for both models.

Markings are quite a variety. Personal markings (BLYAK with a
Bullwinkel Moose on the left side of the cowling) and registration
NX242IX are complicated red/yellow reduced from color photos and
printed on decal stock. Large yelllow 711 on tail is done in the same
manner. Yellow outlined red stars from CAM, red lightning stripe
outlined in yellow on fuselage side made from Microscale red stock and
yellow strping from one of their HO RR sheets.

Last details are Pratt & Whitney decals for the cowlng and Hamlton
Standard decals for the prop. These are really tine. Any suggestions?
I have hundreds of after market decals, so I probable have them.

Just goes to show that one never knows when a seemnigly useless part
such as the chrome stuff in the MPC/Airfix kits can come in handy.

Cheers,

Tom

The carrier film was very thick and wouldn't allow detail to show
through no matter how hard you pressed down on the decal while it was
drying. On the upside, they were flat finish which was good for military
aircraft. But they were so thick that they looked like peel-and-stick
markings used on toys.
Airfix's decals were so bad that they would drive kit reviewers into
fits of rage during the late 60's and early 70's in Scale Modeler
magazine, and might well have had something to do with the development
of after market decals due to their  complete unusability on the
finished model.
People who tried to use Solvset on Monogram decals back then were in for
a surprise also, as it dissolved their pigments.

Particularly the two-in-one box kits that contained only national
markings...minus swastikas of course.

Pat

I remember that. Maybe that's why the B-17 decals were opaque,
they tried something different to do them thinner. I think some
worked, some didn't. I remember a tip in one of my first mail order
catalogs, Miniature Aircaft, from Indiana, maybe? Anyway, the tip was
something like, "If you're having trouble getting MPC decals to stick
to your model, mix a few drops of Elmer's Glue in the water."

They did that one; I had it.

Pat