213 Squadron Finished At Last

When I started I honestly didn't think it would take 5 months to finish.

Working on the finishing touches, I got the undercarriages on, added the final wires of rigging and was ready for decals...

The roundels went on just fine. The numbers (1 & 6) came in two parts. Whose brilliant idea was that? It was a large white decal and a smaller black decal so the result would be a decal on decal black number with a white border. Really?

Of course you have to get it lined up perfectly.

I decided to go with 9 instead of 6 by the way. Then pretty much the rest of the decals went to crap on me; breaking apart, tearing, curling up to where they are impossible to uncurl without ripping them to shreds. It was very disappointing.

This 9 came out okay, luckily the indian heads all came out great!

Actually the 1 was only the black and the outline was done by hand. Also I had to hand paint the stripes as the decal was shredded beyond use. (each one from all three decal sets!)

So I touched up the number outlines on the 1s & 6s, freehanded all the other numbers, stripes, and the tail markings. Here is how it all turned out.

Just to prove I didn't shortcut & finished the bottoms and well.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So what have I learned from all of this?

1. Go ahead and spend the money on a good model kit.
2. Don't do more than two at one time. In my life it's very hard to block enough time to get a step done on four models in one sitting; two - chances are good, three - possibly, four - very difficult.
3. 1/72 WW I pilots are virtually unavailable. I found the one kit that's out there - only half are in cockpit positions and/or dressed for flying, and some pre-painted ones on e-bay but they were way too expensive.
4.  Go with products you know, i.e. Gorilla Glue, as opposed to trying something different just to see how it works.

Well that's it! Hope you enjoyed following this build. Leave me some comments.