Steffen Arndt
As I find the application of decals rather boring I need a lot of time for that .. thus my Spitfire project will take a little more time and i started something fresh to keep motivated. The Revell 2018 Beaufighter was released this year as Mark If and it includes decals for an ace pilot with John Cunninghams NG o R in which he eventually shot down 10 of his opponents. I bought some Eduard sets and took some of the stuff I already had for the Mk.X and got started.

First let me say that I hate the colour of the plastic. It is a dark grey with some metal flakes included. I do not know why Revell does not just make it a light grey like most of the other companies do or at least choose a solid colour (except black or white)... Anyway. The kit is rather nice. Fit so far is good. I am still undecided if I will replace the throttle blocks with the Eduard PE ... it is a lot of work to make these folded boxes look convincing.

Anyway I started with the wings as I am not a big fan of doing cockpits. I must be the only one on the planet because everyone I talk to tells me he likes doing the pit. The wheel wells are rather nice and fit very well. I am not sure i took the correct parts for the supercharger intakes .. need to check my refs. The flaps can be positioned open and are not so bad but need some detailing or replacement with PE. So I chose to keep these closed. The inner flaps fit excellent while the outer ones need a little work to fit, nothing difficult though.

The parts of the interior also fit well. As written above, I need to make a decision and so the side consoles are not yet glued but just "clipped" into place. I will use the Eduard instrument panel ant the CMK pilots seat (plus steelbelts for the rear seat). As I have bought the larger set for the interior (491124) which has some side wall details for the access bay I will pose the entrance door open. Else the Zoom is more than sufficient for this kit.

Steffen Arndt
After some more masking and painting silver and white I finally started with the upper camo today. I used Mission Models Dark Earth as the first layer. These paint works pretty well though I still prefer Gunze and Tamiya.

Steffen Arndt
For the camo I copied Tamiya's large instructions As per Eduard instructions this has the mirrored scheme compared to the Tamiya kit (I always forget which is A and B) So after some weeks on and off this is ready for Mission Models dark green. (...which is in the paint shaker right now)

Clifford Keesler
Looks good all masked up ready for paint. I am growing rather fond of Mission Models paints as well as MRP acrylic's.

Steffen Arndt
Cheers Clifford!

Well, I would prefer Gunze or Tamiya acrylics any time. But I bought some of the MMP (Mission Models Paint) and Mr. Paint products to test these. I still have to use Mr. Paint (bought some jet colours for my Iranian F-14A) but I have tried the MMP and the results are so so. The colours are good but the behaviour of the paint is not to my full satisfaction.

1. sometimes I need to touch up with a brush but the MMP paint does look very different to the airbrush application (I'll add a photo to the McKellar gallery later today to show what I mean.

2. When airbrushing thinned paint I got some build ups that have a totally different tone than the base paint. This only happens with some colours. I had bad results with Azure Blue for instance

To round things up: MMP is not bad but I prefer Gunze/Tamiya. I thint it is a matter of formation fluid as Gunze/Tamiya are alcohol based while MMP seems to be kind of water based. I also know people who get premium results with Revells acrylic paints, while I always have similar problems like with MMP. So from more objective point it is probably a matter of handling and mistakes on my part.

Steffen Arndt
Here is the kit after airbrushing the DG and a gloss coat with Tamiya X-22 Clear Gloss.

you may notice the sunk in plastic near the wing tips ... this is the result of too much glue. Nothing I can do about it without ruining the whole surface as you can see here I tried. Stupid mistake. luckily it is the underside.

Clifford Keesler
I like Tamiya paints also. Gunze are kind of hard to get here in the States, the ones I have been able to get I like. I used to use Model Master acrylics, but they have discontinued alot of their colors, so can't use them any more. So hence the MM and MRP. I have used Ammo of Mig and vallejo. Vallejo is kind of hard to get the right thinness to spray.

Steffen Arndt
I also started applying the decals on this kit. I prefer to apply the larger decals first to get a bit of easy progress. Still it was necessary to start with the wing walks ... now on to the many stencils

Clifford Keesler
Looking very nice.

Steffen Arndt
So after another week here we are also close to finish the pit. As with kit No.1 I left of the foot straps as these are only hardly seen on the finished model. Everything is oob. I used the other seat type for this model so I could better distiguish them during the build phase.
I only noticed after the start that I would need the tank armour on this model too. The Antenna base rather looks like the early fuselage on the picture of the original I found (see here top picture: hyperscale.com/2014/reviews/decals/fundekalspreview_5.htm there is also a colourized version of this one online). I already masked the tank area, cut the mask to shape and used it as a template for a thin plastic sheet armour ... should look o.k. if i can get it on

Tom
Lovely work

Steffen Arndt
Thanks Tom!

While I was working on the pit I also completed the wing. This way I could proceed pretty fast after the fuselage was closed. The filler hole in the armour plate was done with a punch and die set. Well see if I will have some melting on the armour. I do have this problem on the lower outer wings and I do not know yet how to cope with it

Steffen Arndt
I have added the gun sight and the head rest and put the fixed parts of the canopy on

Steffen Arndt
I have glued in the cockpit door with Maskol and cut one of the spare closed canopies to shape to fit in. I masked the canopy with the included kabuki tape masks. Here again only one set for the armored windscreen is included so I had to make the other one fit this kit. I sprayed interior green first and the underside got some black...

Steffen Arndt
After some more masking and painting white I also started on this model with the upper camo. Again I used Mission Models Dark Earth as the first layer. These paint works pretty well though I still prefer Gunze and Tamiya.

Steffen Arndt
For the camo I copied Tamiyas large instructions This crate has the same scheme as the Tamiya kit (I always forget which is A and B) So after some weeks on and off this is ready for Mission Models dark green.

Steffen Arndt
Here is the kit after airbrushing the DG and a gloss coat. After de-masking I noticed some imperfections and touched these up by brush... well that did not go well with the Mission Model paint (no problem with Tamiyas white and black). After drying over night there still was no improvement so I will keep it as it is. I airbrushed the whole kit in Tamiya X-22 Gloss. Much of the touch-up will be hidden under the roundels and I hope I can hide the rest with weathering and flat coat --- we'll see

Steffen Arndt
P.S. you may notice the sunk in plastic near the wing tips ... this is the result of too much glue. Nothing I can do about it without ruining the whole surface (I tried). Stupid mistake.

Steffen Arndt
I have started to apply decals. on the first try the decal slipped slightly down on the front side (pic 11) which I only noticed after it was dry so I removed it and applied a new code ... looks much better now (at least to me pic 12)

Steffen Arndt
I demasked the clear parts and mounted the head armour with two braces from thin copper wire. Also antenna wire (UvdR Rigging thread fine), Master 20mm guns and position lights (painted silver and clear green/red/orange) were added. I still need to glue in the MG 17 barrels ... should have done that earlier.

Rui S
Beautiful result. Well done

Clifford Keesler
Very well done.

Steffen Arndt
Many Thanks Rui and Clifford. I have added the barrels and the kit ins now done. I'll be posting some more pix later.

Steffen Arndt
So here are the final 10 Pix of this model. It was a fun project. Thanks to all for checking in and commenting or liking my gallery!

James C
Congrats Steffen, very nicely done

Eelco Gregoire
Lovely bef Steffen!

Steffen Arndt
Thank you, James and Eelco!

Edward MacKenzie
Have this kit on order. But now i have to watch yer review, they always are helpful! Thanks mate

Steffen Arndt
Thanks for watching!