End of blog. Sort of.

Hi.
The last couple of years my posting frequency has plummeted considerably. It has its reasons. Mostly my personal situation. It's all right, mostly, but my work and other stuff keeps me occupied in a way that there's not that much headroom (literally) for paper models.

Having said that, the other issue is that Google has already been a nuisance to me for a long time. Their ways of handling my privacy and enshittifying what once used to be good silently enrages me. Fuck them. As I already have been playing with the idea of taking my blog to say, a Wordpress environment I can manage myself, I call this blog more or less finished. Until I find the time and place to do so, I might occasionally drop by to post an update but don't expect big posts.

Thanks for all your visits and comments. I will return - with the same name - somewhere else in the future.

--PK

EDIT - I changed some wording. PK, 20241128.

Nieuport 17

A little propeller. What plane will it belong to? Well, I guess I ruined it by telling it in the title. Ha.

Here's one picture, the rest is behind the jump. Klick on the orange text saying "Click here to read the rest of this story!" and read the rest of the story. It's not that long and it also isn't really boring. I also tell a little about the plane.

Even more flying stuff - a little Curtiss-Wright CW-21B

The aircraft that "our own" Fokker factory made in the late thirties weren't enough to fit the needs of the Dutch armed forces. Especially in the Dutch East Indies they desperately needed more planes to defend the borders of the big colony. Fokker struggled to build enough flying military stuff for the homeland, so the government turned to the US for some help.

The Curtiss-Wright company had this little fragile looking plane for sale called the CW-21 Demonstrator, or Interceptor or even Demon. It was a Radial-engined fighter plane with a slightly swept back wing and a fuselage that ended in an almost wasp-like narrow point where the empennage began. Small, but nevertheless an elegant plane. The newest version also had retractable landing gear and was quite fast in a climb. But it lacked self-sealing fuel tanks, the planes weren't adequately armoured, and all i all quite fragile.
They were no match for the Japanese Imperial air force. So in the end the 24 little planes the Dutch East Indies had contributed close to nothing to the defence of the country.

But elegant they were.

 

The model is designed by Der Kampfflieger, Roman Vasiiyev, and is originally in 1/48.
I rescaled it to about 1/72. The landing gear wheel wells are articulated and the prop spins.

More photos after the jump.

More flying stuff - A chequered MiG 21.

One of the more recent "discoveries" I did was how much fun it is to build the models designed by the members of the TSMC. These Japanese guys create some really well-designed models.

I already made their F-105, the F-16 and their T-38. Now it was time to take on the MiG-21. I chose the Croatian Mig, painted in the design of the red and white chequered weapon shield as seen in their flag.
So that is an extra thing on top of the already meticulous design, to get all the lining up of all these blocks right. As all TSMC builds, this one too is a bit of a challenge, it has a couple of parts that are very hard to get right in one go but the end result is marvellous. More build photos after the jump.

 

Hawker Sea Fury 1/72

Now, I cannot remember for all that is dear to me what kind of fun build I had in mind when I wrote that in my last post, but hey, a Hawker Sea Fury is fun. It is one of the coolest prop fighters ever built and certainly one of the fastest. 

So I had this model in my stash, made by an unknown designer because all I had was the sheet with the parts, no instructions whatsoever... I hope it wasn't illegal, because then I will buy the model in retrospect.

The model was weathered and that is something I see too little on paper models. A nice black streak of soot out of the engine and some dirt on the plane's surface. I decided that with the lack of space in mind i'd build it with the wings folded, since there were some parts indicating that this was one of the possibilities.

I really liked the design and the tight fit. It all went together reasonably quick. I didn't have to reprint it. The cockpit was very rudimentary and because the canopy was paper anyway, I decided to leave the tub out of the plane. The canopy was very well designed. It had the right curvature, a nice fit and it looks great on the plane. I gave it a quick dab of transparent acrylic paint to give it a glassy shine.

I didn't make any photos of the build, by the way, I wasn't really that inspired to do so. Sorry. (Life is a bit hectic nowadays and I needed my time alone just for myself and I wasn't thinking about making it into a blog build.

More photos are after the jump.

Aesthetic Brown Panther

I sometimes like to … well, ...study? -No, focus is a better word. Focus on the aesthetics of an aircraft. I pick a neutrally coloured piece of paper, like grey or brown and assemble a printed model inside out, so you are left with just the shape. The only thing I more or less accentuate is the cockpit. I think you can appreciate the actual shape of the plane better without all the colours, panel lines, roundels and buzz numbers. I did so with the DH.88 Comet racer (without the engine pods) and I also tried it with the Westland Whirlwind fighter (now with the engine pods). I now built the Grumman F9F Panther.

 

I first thought the paper would be kind of unforgiving because it really was on the thicker side and quite sturdy but that wasn’t the case. it actually was easy to cut and it glued quite well. 

Here you can see the model actually is built inside out.

And here the shape of things to come.

For this effect, I printed the model on regular paper @101% and used the canopy part as a
template on an unused bit of brown card. Then I just glued it over the original canopy part.

The main problem was the not-so-good fit of this older Fiddler’s green model I had laying around. In the end it turned out nice enough to add to the collection but it isn’t the best I could do. I only built it in a couple of hours, so I don’t really mind. These builds are sketches, studies after all, and I do really like the end result. 

I certainly like the aesthetics of the Grumman Panther. Way more than its semi-successor with swept wings, the Cougar. The way those straight wings of the Panther blend back into the fuselage looks so right to me. In general, there is something with those early Grumman jets that really looks aesthetically pleasing.
Taking away the dark blue and all the signage on the plane just leaves you with the pure shape of the plane and then it is, in my opinion, more about the shape than anything else.

I usually use embossing tools to get curves into shape. Nowadays I found a shammy underneath is ideal to get more effect. This brown card however, was sturdy and a little reluctant to become rounded.

I am not really a fan of petaled pointy bits. it is always hard to get them to fit snugly and nicely next to one another. But in this one it looks okay, apparently. Especially the nose. Well, anyway, not much more commentary to add to this one. here’s the result:

 

 All right, I have another funny one for you soon.

 Stay tuned. And safe.

--PK

 

 

 

Update on PK.

Although I have a love-hate relationship with printers, I need one for this hobby.

A week ago, my printer, which miraculously survived my last rage attack, acted up again with fake paper jams and it couldn't be convinced of the fact it really didn't have a paper jam. I only have so much patience. And I only have so much respect for machines. And my hatred against printer companies is bigger than the appreciation I could have for the good prints this machine had given me over the last seven years. I actually was surprised I had the machine for that long. It might have been at the end of its life anyway. But apart from the prints still being all right (when the machine was in a good mood) it caused me mre and more trouble. So...
This time I actually DID kill the machine. I had a bit of an aggressive approach to the poor bugger and I destroyed the paper tray. And tore the lid off of the machine. It now is dead and it soon will be brought to its last resting place, the scrapyard.

Its successor has been ordered today.

I asked my friends over at Papermodelers.com for some advice. I can't and I won't recommend any printer myself, except I strongly advise not to buy an HP at any cost at any time and avoid them like the plague.
I used to have a Brother all-in-one with a paper feed thing on top I never used, now there will be an Epson all-in-one on the way. Without that paper feeder on top but with built-in ink tanks. No cartridges any more. I really am curious how much money that will save me in the end. And whether this printer will work for seven years. We'll see.

For now, I have something I will show you next week or so, and I started another build which turned out to be a disappointment because the fit was afwul and some part were just not goming together like they should. So I stopped that one.
I was thinking about building a big fantasy rocket which was part of my alternative history story of the Netherlands but then I thought about where to put it and what the use was of creating something that big. So, no. for the tim ebeind, those models will only exist in text.

Anything else? I am a little occupied with my regular day job. Since the filming business dried up, I took a job as a film archivist at the provincial archives in the neighbouring province. Something I actually really like and something that ticks a lot of boxes in what I like to do anyway. But it takes a lot of time, although I only work for three days and a bit. I do not have all the energy I had before to dedicate my free time to paper stuff. I picked up reading books again, though.

I've read Iain Banks' novels The Wasp Factory, Walking on Glass and Canal Dreams. And now I am reading Daisy Jones and the Six. I might fill you in on that one later. I can tell you, I do like the accompanying album to the TV series which was made from the story. I will wait with that until I have finished the book.

Ayways, now you know all about what I do and where I am nowadays. I will chime in soon with hopefully some positive news on that printer.

Until then.

--PK

**UPDATE**

I have connected my new printer. I was surprisingly light compared to its predecessor. Must have been because of not having the paper feeder on top. Filling the reservoirs was easy,  just like linking the machine to my network.
it is noisier than the Brother. But the prints are good. Nice sharp and crisp colours.

Now let's see how long the ink will last.

  

TSMC YF-16 1/72

 Hi there.

The Japanese Tokio Scale Model Club TSMC regularly puts out new paper models. They usually are in or about 1/72 and the three models I have made are amazingly accurate in their shape. And if they aren't, then the designers have done an amazing job in recreating the flowing curves in fuselages with the minimum of means and parts.

This time I made their recently released YF-16. Miku-chan, the designer, worried about the difficulty and was not sure whether the complex curves of the model would hold in paper.  (this is a link to the instructions translated to English by the way) 

But they do. I think it is a very good looking model.

 

More on the build after the jump.

Two planes

A new year has started. My last post was about what I hope for in this year, so i don’t have to get into that any more.
During the first month of 2023 I have made two models and brought back my models from their two and a half month stay in Uithuizen, where they were shown in the local library. I have had positive reactions so I think you could call it a succes.

In the meantime I was looking for new models to build. And I decided to keep it familiar territory. So it became a Fokker D.XXI and later on I had fun building a little Zio plane. Here are two pictures of the planes; after the break there is a more detailed report.

Zio's Breda BA-65

Nobi's Fokker D.XXI