Zac's Butcher Bird Double Act

[K5054NZ]

Hey dudes!



Last week I received my first ever Dora, namely the gorgeous little Academy 1:72 D-9. After spending several hours one night fondling the sprues of this and my RoG A-8/R-11 I resolved to start my beautiful Butcher Bird twins the next day.



Here are the cockpits. I put in a bit of effort here, referring to images of the Museum Of Flight's magnificent D-13 "Yellow 10" to get the correct cockpit and instrument colours. Argh! The JMN factor began to scare me so I just went hell for leather and enjoyed myself!



I'm building the A-8 as a Marcel Jurca MJ-80 - a full scale, wooden replica 190A powered by a Pratt and Whitney R.1830 radial. This means a DC-3 prop - how funny will the reactions of the numerous experten be when they see this?   I hope to one day build myself an MJ-80, so this is essentially serving as the prototype for that eventuality.



The two Wurgers "in formation" with the just-finished Yak-11. I've conducted many a test flight with each of these three, great fun I can tell you. I practically ripped the fuselage halves and wing of the Dora from her sprues so I could see just how good she looks!



So far this is the limit of my progress, after about 24hr work. I plan on doing Dora as Eric Vormezeele's "Weiss 3", in a drab grey/grey/grey late-war camo, and Anton in a more lively green/brown/grey. I'll keep you posted, but as only the Anton is really considered a whiff I'll limit the updates to just him. Her. Whatever.

Enjoy!  




BTW I will get back to the P-40s, I just needed a break before getting into the second half of the project.    

[cthulhu77]

Ultra great props !  You also have that wing root seam thing down to a science...looking very cool. It'll be neat to see them en-camou-ed.  

[Eddie M.]

Lookin' good Zac! Looks like you're making up for lost time...  
   Eddie  

[ysi_maniac]

I like this stuff. Sure!
     

[Brian da Basher]

Looking good Zac! Greg's right, those are some of the most invisible wing seams I've (not) seen recently! I wish mine were as well blended!

I also really like that Egyptian Yak too! Nice work!

Brian da Basher

[B777LR]

GReat zac! Getting better each day! (so do the skills! )

       :ar:  

[Chap]

Zac, the Focke-Wulf is one of my all time favorites! Can't wait to see them finished. Also, please post updates on the Dora as well.

~Steve

[Rafael]

Wow, Zac, What a pair!!  
Nice detail on the prop, too

Rafa

[K5054NZ]

Also, please post updates on the Dora as well.

Will do. I've had a lot of interest in these two so I'm extremely keen to share as much as I can. I have about two pages of backstory ready to post.

Thanks for all the kind words guys. Re the wing seams, don't praise me, praise Academy and Revell AG - this was all their work. No trimming of parts, no filler at all, this was how they went together OOB. Great, huh? I was *seriously* impressed.

B777LR - Why thank you! Each time I see your fine builds on the site I think the same. Looking forward to seeing more of them.

Eddie - oh, yes! I'm looking at ripping into my 1:48 Hasegawa P-40M later today.....I Love P-40s! But first I have to get these babies painted....keep your eyes peeled for updates later tonight!

Cheers,
Zac
(co-owner, ZeeBee Aviation)

[matrixone]

Zac,

Those are some nice looking ''Wulfs''.

Can't wait to see the finished builds.  Welcome to the dark side of modelling!


Matrixone

[K5054NZ]

Thanks Lee, I'm giving it some serious thought. Otherwise it *really* doesn't look right at all.

Matrix -   I thought you'd approve!



This was progress yesterday: I started to do the fuselages and undersides Sky Grey, but a combination of nearly-empty paint and hot, humid weather conspired against me. Thus, until I can get a hold of some more Tamiya Sky Grey acrylic, these two honeys will be put on the backburner.    Sorry all, I may however do the topside camo instead. I'll keep you posted.

[matrixone]

Zac,

If you have some white, black, blue, and green base colors you could custom mix the undersurface color to paint your models. Start out with white paint and add a few drops of black to it to gray it up then add 1 drop of medium blue and 1 drop of medium green and you should be close to the desired color, then add more blue or green as you see fit.
Very rarely do I use colors straight from the bottle, the Model Master line of Luftwaffe paints are easy to work with but their colors are not very accurate and I adjust the colors a bit so they more closely match my paint chips in my reference books. I never bother to try and exactly match the colors because the paint colors on the full size machines had variations in how the colors looked due to the skill of the painter and slight variations in the batches of paint.

Matrixone

[K5054NZ]

Thanks Matrix. As it turns out I was able to scrape out *just* enough Sky Grey today to do three coats on each.


Then I open up the profile of Dora and see my subject a/c had natural aluminium undersides on the mainplane! Argh!  Ah well...

More pics later, my Dad's on the good PC so I can't post yet. Masked off yellow areas on Anton, and the canopy for Dora is masked also. Still debating following Lee's advice and replacing the sliding portion of Anton's canopy....

[B777LR]

The short nose is my favorit  

[K5054NZ]

That's cool dude, I'll forgive you!  I must say, the stubby lil Anton is rather nifty. Hopefully you'll like the camo scheme I have in mind for it.

Speaking of camo, Dora is now awaiting that aluminium mainplane and mottling on the sides, then it's off to the decal shop! Hopefully there's enough yellow on Anton that I can take the masks off tomorrow and get to work on the uppers camo. Managed to slice off the moulded-on canopy setup on Anton and I'm currently working on getting the spare, flat Dora canopy to fit on there nice and snug. It's a little tall, and the area I cut off the spine a tad long, but c'est la vie!

Pics tomorrow. Promise. Honest! :zzz: