Now that, by the grace of God, my friend and yours, Bud (Wibhi2) is back on his feet after dodging a pretty serious health bullet, my ignorance has been defeated by the light of his great and mighty knowledge. As a result, with humility, I once again attempt to offer you my 1/48 Nieuport 17 in Bolshevik markings, circa 1917:
The kit is from the Eduard Limited Edition Series of fancy reissues (a good value for what you get, which is outstanding markings, some of the best kit decals I’ve ever seen, unique subjects among the markings, expanded PE frets, etc.). It was painted using mostly MM acrylics with my own mix for the silver-gray (silbergrau) using a mix of 70 percent MM acryl aluminum (the only use I’ve found for this lousy, transluscent shade of otherwise good paint I can find) with 30 percent of the same brand Gull Gray, 36440 (or is it Ghost Gray…anyway, the FS no. is correct).
The interior has some outstanding PE furniture, and is mostly painted with reddish-brown shades of MM acryl from their new colors, with a light wash and some minor drybrushing. I outlined the control surfaces and few panel lines with a simple artist’s pencil. The cowl and the two large oval PE brass access panels on the forward fuselage were painted in Alclad Duraluminum over a MM acrylic black primer. As you can clearly see, I’m still trying to learn how to paint natural wood props. The boss on the prop is plain MM brass with a tire gray wash over it.
The rigging is fine wire installed using one of the three IPMS Stockholm methods. I involves using holes drilled through the various surfaces, the end of the wire anchored in the holes with superglue and accelerator, the wire held tight with clipped-on weights such as forceps or any kind of heavy-ish clip, and then glued at the other end. After it was zapped with accelerator, I trimmed the ends and disguised them as well as I could with CA and paint. The model was so robust I broke the wire a few times pulling it tight, without breaking the model.
This is a fine kit, and there were no serious fit problems. My most major screwup was in mounting the gun too far back, which made it impossible to install the large PE piece that makes up the windscreen frame. I hope nobody notices.
TOM