A few years ago one of the guys in our IPMS club was approached by Charlie McGill, pilot of the B-24 ‘Virgo’ to finish a model of his aircraft he started years ago. Just for the heck of it since I already had a 1/72nd Minicraft B-24 on hand I decided to order the ‘Virgo’ decals and build a second kit. I added an airfield and several vehicles and figures and it grew from that point. Sadly I ended up taking some time finishing the whole thing due to the masking of the canopies and building the plexiglass cover McGill pasted away before I finished. The dio ended up with his family though. My apologies with the blurry photos- if I still had it I could go back and retake them.
Very, very nice!!.. I cant imagine painting 1/72 figures, I already have a lot of problems painting figures… in 1/35!!. I always appreciate a lot when people can actually paint them correctly. Yours look very good.
Also liked the shadowing of the plane panels and the dio setting.
I’ll admit I learned a lot from this, buncha firsts on this one like making the tarmac etc.
Garzonh: Lol, at this scale you don’t have to do much with the 1/72nd figures- I just painted them and added a dark wash to the faces and uniforms. They’re so small you can’t really tell I used such a quick, cheap, dirty way to paint them!
The truck is Academy, the Jeep from Heller, and little yellow tow tractor/bomb truck is from Academy’s ambulance and tow tractor set, and the figures are from Preisler.
Hey Squatch thanks! The tarmac was pretty simple. I just took a piece of white poster board and cut it to the right size. I picked up a can of Krylon ‘Make it Stone’ (charcoal sand I think it was) textured spray paint at the hardware store and sprayed the whole thing. My can is a sorta off-white concrete colour and dries with a grit like fine sandpaper. When it’s dry I used a straight-edge and a Sharpie to mark out the cracks. All that was left was to load a medium sized brush with black and brown wash and flick it at the surface to make the oil and grease stains. I was quite happy with the results- really simple and it turns out better than the ones you can buy.
This problem is always around when the Tributee is my age or older . I have been in this position twice and it was a letdown that the person wasn’t going to get to see it . One had a son who was ( and still is ) a Lawyer
The model of his dad’s ship sits proudly ,in a case, in his sons office . T.B.
The Baron: Thanks but if it were 1/48th that’s a little TOO big for me to handle!
Tankerbuilder: Thanks for doing something for a vet there even if he didn’t get to see it. I’m sure his son appreciates having something to remember his dad’s service with.
