Well, not really. Bud/Wibhi2 just shot this photo a couple of days ago.
But here’s my 1/48 Tamiya D.520. Again, this is a simple, perfectly-fitting and just plain relaxing kit to build. This is an early Vichy scheme, so I’m told, with no red stripes, at least when its tail was first painted over by the Vichy. The scheme and decals are modified OOB, copied from the great old Squadron “Flying Colors” book and painted with Polly Scale acrylic WW II French colors.
I added an Eduard Zoom (the small frets) PE set to it, though it’s mostly in the cockpit except for the ring-and-bead gunsight on the cowling. I drilled out the exhaust manifolds and did some minor surgery to improve the seat, which on the D.520 was a canvass-and-frame affair.
Hope you like it.
Notice how the closest gear leg looks crippled. Though the D.520’s legs do extend forward like those of an Me-109, Wibhi and I looked at the model again and concluded this exaggeration is an optical illusion, because the legs on the model do match. No, really.
TOM
Looks great! I like the three-tone camo.[:)]
Another great build, Tom!
Thanks for the info. That’s on my ‘To Buy List’! Now if I can only get thru the 32 kits in my stash![banghead]
Great looking model of an a/c that fell behind both the power curve and the failed military decisions.[8]
Tom,
Great model. It looks like a cross between a Mig-3 and P-40, both very good airplanes.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
Nice build Tom, I like the camo.
Thad
Good looking little Dewoitine. One of Tamiyas’ simpler kits, but very nicely executed.
Regards, Rick
It looks good sharkskin, please keep them coming when you’ve got the time.
Tom,
It looks very good. You said that it was a 1/48 scale bird? I have its little brother - a 1/72 scale of what appears to be the same bird. Will post a pic of it here tonight.
Keep those pics and builds coming. They are looking greeat.
Kurt
A great build, thanks for the pics Tom…
This is the first time I seen one of your builds Tom… SHes a beauty bro… nicely done.
Thanks for the kind words from everyone. I really was nervous about posting my builds for the first time. Rick is right. One of the things that makes this kit so relaxing to build is its simplicity, and yet the cockpit detail is as sharp and nicely rendered as any model in this price range I’ve built (it’s one of the cheaper Tamiya kits at around $23 retail). The PE in the cockpit only added a crude throttle quadrant, some electrical and hydrolic lines that could be done better with wire, and seat belts. Trim out the inside corners from the seat back to better simulate the canvass stretched over a frame. You’ll see the outline of where to cut when you look at the seat part. It’s precisely one of those modeling details that takes a minute, costs nothing, and adds more than you put into it.
And one more thing: I did the camo with a $14 (including the can of air) Testors spray gun. Freehand mostly, as well as using generic Post-It notes stacked up to hold the camo masks, cut from the 1:48 drawing that comes with the kit, off the surface about 1/8". As I’ve been saying over and over, if you don’t have an airbrush yet, you can do this on the cheap. In scale modeling, resourcefulness can always compensate for poverty.
TOM
Very nice! I like it! It looks like a typical WWII French a/c, they were nearly always outclassed by the faster and more powerful German fighters, however they fought hard.
Cheers,
John
Another excellent build! I really like the paint scheme. Very colorful. You’ve been holding out on us.[:D] You’re obviously a talented modeler. Keep 'em coming and thanks for the peek.
nice work Steve!![tup]
Alright!! [:D] You finally ‘figgered’ out the posting pictures thing I see, congratulations!! Now we can see your stuff, which has looked pretty darn good so far. [;)][tup]
I like these kind of subjects because it encourages us to reflect, to a much simpler time in the hobby… when we’d slap 'em together in a single afternoon and think they looked just GREAT! And you know what? They WERE great, all of them, because they each demanded our undivided attention for a period of time, provided us with a material something to weave our daydreams around, and in a lot of ways, made us each a better person today!
I toast your post, Tom, thanks! [:)]
Take care,
Frank
Frank, you really hit on it. I realized when I had to pick from the few recent builds I have had photographed by Bud and ready to show, that the ones I’ve picked have been the ones that I didn’t spend a year collecting just the right books, paints, AM parts and getting everything just perfect. You know, those models that, when you finally start to build, there’s so much pressure to get it right because you’ve invested $300 and 300 hours of thinking about it.
Well, it turns out that when I went to my shelf to pick four or five subjects, they were all builds that were OOB, or close to it. And just simple fun models. A bit more sophisticated than those Revell box-scale kits with the dramatic paintings on the packaging, the ones I built in two hours on our big front porch in East Texas on beautiful summer days when I was nine or ten. Just my new model (remember that old-timey Revell plastic smell? Nothing like it, wafting out as you opened that magical box.), my new model, a tube of Testors glue and my excitement, and maybe a bottle of black and a bottle of silver Testor’s PLA Brand Paint (15 cents and they only came in the 1/4 oz. size). No pressure. No research except the one you saw at the base or flying over the house or in the encyclopedia. But, there’s no going back to that. Our hobby grew up with us, or we brought it along with us as we got older. Made it so danged sophisticated and expensive.
Those models I made as a kid would not win any attaboys on a web site, certainly not good enough to go in some model magazine, but they sure looked like the airplanes they were supposed to resemble, thanks to Revell and Hawk and Aurora. And they looked good hanging from my ceiling.
And, come to think of it, they looked awfully good just as the Black Cat went off in the tail pipe and made the coolest flak burst that ever destroyed an airplane.
TOM