The 1/144 Braille Scale World of Sentinel Chicken

[Sentinel Chicken]

Finished this a few days before Scalefest yesterday:













This is the Minicraft Bf 110 kit, the floats came from the Minicraft Aichi Jake kit, the float struts were a combination of styrene strip and the inner wing panels of a Ki-84 Hayate. The auxilliary tailfin is one of the tailplanes from the Minicraft Ki-44 Shoki kit. Torpedo came from the Minicraft He 111 kit. Decals were a mix of the kit decals and some aftermarket decals. Testors Model Master Acryl paints were used along with a Future and final top coat of Testors Flat Lacquer.

[Sentinel Chicken]

Decals were from the 1990s Welsh vacuform Vulcan kit, they provided a nice big sheet of low viz roundels, fin flashes and serial numbers/letters of different sizes. The carrier film of the decals was a bit thick but durable and held up well. I did the Future trick again, after getting the decal off the backing paper, I blotted out the water and then dipped the whole decal in some Future and then applied it to the model which already had been given a Future coat to give it a glossy sheen. By dipping the decal in Future, you pretty much eliminate any silvering and don't have to worry about setting solutions eating up the decals.



I used Testors Radome Tan for select areas where there'd be a dielectric panel- the top of the fin, the gun laying radar for the tail guns and part of the undernose bombing/navigation radar. I used Testors Bright White from the rattle can to overspray the gray markings which toned them down and also brightened up the white, too.



There's a slight yellowing in the roundels which came in two parts- a pale blue/white part and a separate red part that you applied over the base decal. It wasn't too hard to do. After the decals were in place, I gave each one a quick brush over with some Future to seal them and then after 24 hours, oversprayed the whole model with Testors Flat Lacquer to seal it all.



Top view. If I could do it all over again I'd use narrower lines for the wing and fuselage walkways.



Underside view where I used some black pastel chalk to weather the underside. Tried not to over do it, every pic I've seen of an RAF V-bomber in this scheme it looks like the ground crew did a good job keeping them clean presumable to preserve the anti-flash qualities of the paint scheme. There's an area just behind the aft landing gear I screwed up with the dreaded ham-fisted thumb in the wrong place. Oops.

If anyone's going to do this kit, let me tell you what a ROYAL PAIN IN THE ARSE putting the outrigger gears in place was. You have to trim them to they sit even with the main landing gears but they don't fit very well in the nacelle well. Don't attach that little door to the aft part of the strut first or it just plain won't fit into the well at all. Dammit. So my outrigger gears sit further forward in the nacelle well than they should, but oh well, lesson learned when I decide to attack that RB-47H in the stash.

[Sentinel Chicken]

This is my kitbash of a Ki-44 Shoki and a Ki-84 Hayate. The outer wing panels, tailplane and landing gear came from the LS Hayate kit. The tailplanes were cut at angle to sweep them. The Shoki's fuselage, vertical fin, cockpit, engine and inner wings were used and the spinner came from the Minicraft Tempest kit. The supercharger on the belly came from 1/2 of a DML Kfir drop tank.

















For a frame of reference, three of the squares on the base I used to shoot these pictures is about an inch.

Everything was brush painted with the exception of the yellow theater markings on the aft fuselage and underside of the wings, those were airbrushed.

The decals were aftermarket 1/144 scale that I picked up off eBay. The carrier film was bit thick, but the decals were nicely printed and durable.

After hand brushing, I airbrushed the model with Future. This was the first time working with Future and was very pleased with the results, I'll be using it on all my subsequent builds. After airbrushing several coats, the finish was nice and glossy and because it was self-leveling, it definitely evened out a lot of the brush marks. Not all, but enough of them. In applying the decals, I would first soak the decal in water to get it to slide on the backing paper. I then blotted out the excess water and then dipped the decal in Future before applying it. They went on without a hitch- no decal set or Micro-Sol needed and absolutely no silvering at all if there was any imperfections on the gloss coat underneath. I used a Q-tip to blot out any excess Future so the decals would stay put. I think brushed a quick coat over the decals and let it cure overnight.

The following day I rattle-bombed it with a coat of Testors Flat, just enough to further seal the decals and dull the finish to the desired flat appearance. Last thing I did was attach the prop and the guns- one on each wing and one in the spinner, those were just simple styrene rod painted steel and a dab of black on the tip.

The right landing gear angles out more than it should, Chicklet 004 conducted a nuisance raid on my workbench and that was the best I could get with my repair efforts and my 41 year old eyeballs. This is 1/144 scale, after all.

Markings are generic and not specific for any Luftwaffe unit, but my back story would be Nakajima engineers being dispatched to Germany to work with Focke Wulf on a Shoki-Hayate hybrid with a supercharger in the belly that would have the performance to take on the B-29 Superfortress at altitude. Operational testing might have been done in Germany but the war situation meant that the prototypes and Japanese team never made it back to Japan before the end of the war.

This was my first build after being away from the workbench for several years, it feels real damn good to finish something, learn some new tricks (Future) and was a total blast. No more real world for me unless I'm dying to have it. It's WHIFF or nuthin'.

[JayBee]

Excellent work, Sir, and a truly well argued case right at the end. The last sentance says it all. 

[Ed S]

Superb models, in any scale, especially 144.  I really like the Bf110.

Ed

[PR19_Kit]

LOVE the RAF B-47! 

If you  hadn't have told us I'd have assumed it was the 1/72 Hasegawa kit.

[kerick]

If I tried to paint something that small it would come out one big blob.  Do you hand paint or airbrush these little gems?  Enamals or acrylics?  The inquiring mind wants to know.

[Sentinel Chicken]

If I tried to paint something that small it would come out one big blob.  Do you hand paint or airbrush these little gems?  Enamals or acrylics?  The inquiring mind wants to know.

The Ki-44/Ki-84 hybrid was hand painted. The Stratojet and Bf 110 floatplane were airbrushed. I used Model Master Acryl on all three.

[Weaver]

Wow - they're all great builds, and hats off for getting such good results in tiny-scale! 

[Spey_Phantom]

excellent looking builds, sir 

[NARSES2]

Great return to active modeling sir 

[lancer]

Welcome back Mr Chicken sir. Love the builds - amazing.

[RussC]

Great collection. 1/144 is not just for airliners anymore! 

[Sentinel Chicken]

About 2 years ago at Scalefest Tony Morgan (RotorheadTX) had taken the 1/200 Spruce Goose kit and did it up in RAF Coastal Command colors but out of box as a prototype and unarmed. It was beautifully executed and this past weekend at Scalefest I was kicking around ideas for my take on a patrol bomber Spruce Goose. Scoot then hands me an old 1/200 Spruce Goose kit from the orphan kit table and says "Take it. Do it." Free of charge. So who am I to turn down a challenge when he throws down the gauntlet with a free kit?



It's one of the many boxings of the Entex kit, I think. I was going to build it as a 1/200 armed Spruce Goose but a look over the kit the engines looked like they'd need work and I wasn't up to reworking eight engines. Not to mention the atrocious fit of the fuselage halves. But I had two ideas rattling around in my head- a US Navy patrol bomber in the WW2 Atlantic scheme of gray over white or a USN bird in the three-color Pacific scheme of two blues and white undersides. Then it donned on me as a examined the sprues.

SCALE-O-RAMA!

Cut off the engines and build it as a 1/144 aircraft that would go with the rest of my builds. My original plan was to use the Minicraft B-29 Superfortress kit for the engines and turrets. But even scale-o-rama'd to 1/144, the Spruce Goose is still a big donkey bird. It had eight Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major engines. Well what else has Wasp Majors? The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser/KC-97. Some quick calculations ensued- a 1/200 Spruce Goose built as a 1/144 means that if it were done in real life, what I had planned would be about 70% the size of the real Hughes HK-1. So I'd need roughly three-quarters the engine power that the real HK-1 one had and that comes out to about six engines.

So the four-engined idea is out the door, I still may make use of the B-29 kit for other parts. Like the tail gunner's position. I have a Boeing 377 Strat in the stash along with a KC-97, so the plan now is to take the engines from those two kits and build this as a 1/144 six-engined patrol bomber. It's not too out the realm of possible. After all, the Luftwaffe flew the six engined Blohm und Voss BV 222 flying boat- 13 were built during the Second World War.

With Dremel rotary tool I made short work of the kit nacelles and then did some putty slinging with Squadron White into the gaps. I put a bit of scrap sprue into the openings first to give the putty something to hold to and give it some strength during the sanding as the wings do flex a bit with modest pressure during sanding:



Each wing has an upper and lower half and they fit about as well as a porcupine in a jock strap. Holy smokes. I can't imagine how they fit together if the nacelles were left on as they were molded into the wings' upper and lower halves. The left and right wings then fit together to form the upper part of the mid-fuselage. This is a big assembly. Probably the biggest I've even undertaken in 1/144. I feel like I'm building the wings to a 1/32 fighter or something:



This was where things stood yesterday. I used some Testors Armor Sand on the leading halves of the wings to help visualize where more putty-foo is needed.

So now I'm thinking of what the wartime designation would be. The idea is that a 70% scaled-down Spruce Goose is built in very small numbers as a very long range patrol bomber for anti-shipping/ASW/minelaying in the war. Maybe the war in the Atlantic or Pacific drags out a bit more before the Axis surrenders and this is the sort of thing the Navy could use to close the air gap in the Atlantic against the U-boat wolfpacks or prosecute the maritime blockage of Japan in the Pacific. A review of Navy manufacturer codes shows that Kaiser did have the letter "K" assigned and Kaiser was an original partner in the Spruce Goose development. That would make my what-if a "PBK". Hughes never had a Navy manufacturer code assigned it seems. So I thought I could get away with a code that fell into disuse and came across "Z". It was assigned to Wilford-Pennsylvania Aircraft in the 1930s and they only built one aircraft for the Navy, an experimental observation autogyro called the XOZ which was based on a Consolidated biplane design. So PBK or PBZ. Guess I got time to mull that one over while I sling some putty.......

[RussC]

Yep, the Goose is a big build, so is the C5A, I had to put a lot of stuff out of reach to keep them from getting knocked down by those wings.

I used the wings and engines and actually extended the center section another 5 inches to make a gigant 8 prop German transport flying wing with partial tails.

Keep plugging away at it, its either that or next stop = 1/288 !

PBK1 "Narwhal" perhaps.