Beginnings of my 1:144 aircraft fleet

[Dauntless]

The Armstrong Whitworth Whitley huh. Didn't even know it existed.

Found some pics of it.
http://maxaviationarchive.blogspot.com/ ... anded.html

I'll be extremely lucky to find it. Looks like I'm just scratching the surface here. I do feel a little fortunate to have found a Hampden. Though the shipping was almost the price of the plane.

May get a few IXO/ Altaya Coastal Command bombers. The Halifax I noticed has the Merlin engines on it, but he top colors look a little off. Same with the Wellington.

[aferguson]

do you have the Stirling? It's getting hard to find as the Hampden.

The colours do vary a bit on the British bombers and are not always totally accurate. But i can live with them as i feel they're within normal weathering and wartime paint shade variations.

The Wellington also looks odd because they chose a Pacific theatre livery for it. Hence the roundels without any red in them.

[Dauntless]

Yeah got the Sterling from a Hong Kong seller. It's a decent model.

The Wellington's got what they call a SEAC insignia then? Could change it with some decals, but good to have a little variety. There's plenty of them available.

At least most of the top colors are consistent from model to model, with the exception of the newer Amercom Halifax with more intense colors, my least favorite scheme.
The others just look faded, and the Stirling has a more gray undersides, but I can live with it too.

[aferguson]

yes, SEAC insignia. The Wellington represented is actually a somewhat famous plane, iirc. I can't remember why right now but it's easy to look up.

Don't be dissin' the Halifax, it's an RCAF bird.

[Dauntless]

Didn't know that. How can you tell? Wouldn't be doin' it, I'm half Commonwealth on the Aussie side

Anybody buy that Bristol Bueafort from D' Agostini? It's not a night bomber, but it's an obscure RAF. Or is D'Agostini a non-starter?
At least the Italian bomber looks ok.

[Epap]

Didn't know that. How can you tell? Wouldn't be doin' it, I'm half Commonwealth on the Aussie side

Anybody buy that Bristol Bueafort from D' Agostini? It's not a night bomber, but it's an obscure RAF. Or is D'Agostini a non-starter?
At least the Italian bomber looks ok.

The Beaufort is an old Atlas model. I bought one about 7-8 years ago. I can't say for sure that mine is typical of the entire production run----but I suspect so. First and foremost, the entire tail part was so warped that I couldn't bend it back into reasonable alignment with the fuselage and wings. Second, there are huge gaps in the model. Third, the colors are wrong including the roundels. Fourth, the antenna looks like an Oak tree trunk. I'd pass on it.

BTW, are you talking about the Atlas ( DeAgostini, currently ) SM-79 or the Cant? The former comes in a sand and green squiggle scheme, with gigantic pitot heads, but is passable. The latter is in a ho hum co-belligerent upper surface green and gets only a C- from me.

[Epap]

Arrrg! Youv'e got the Manchester. Forgot about that one. I think that's the hardest to get after the Hampden no?

I noticed the engine fairings in the Hampden are copper red, you paint them correct?

What the...Hudson? Wher'd you get that? Who makes it?

Yep, I painted the collection rings on the Hampden. The Hudson is from the old Atlas line and had numerous problems---like misplaced insignia, wrong colors on the roundels and unreadable lettering. Even though its under carriage stinks, I'd get one if the price is right and do some decal work on it.

[Dauntless]

Didn't know that. How can you tell? Wouldn't be doin' it, I'm half Commonwealth on the Aussie side

Anybody buy that Bristol Bueafort from D' Agostini? It's not a night bomber, but it's an obscure RAF. Or is D'Agostini a non-starter?
At least the Italian bomber looks ok.

The Beaufort is an old Atlas model. I bought one about 7-8 years ago. I can't say for sure that mine is typical of the entire production run----but I suspect so. First and foremost, the entire tail part was so warped that I couldn't bend it back into reasonable alignment with the fuselage and wings. Second, there are huge gaps in the model. Third, the colors are wrong including the roundels. Fourth, the antenna looks like an Oak tree trunk. I'd pass on it.

BTW, are you talking about the Atlas ( DeAgostini, currently ) SM-79 or the Cant? The former comes in a sand and green squiggle scheme, with gigantic pitot heads, but is passable. The latter is in a ho hum co-belligerent upper surface green and gets only a C- from me.

Took another look at the Beaufort, yup that's a non-starter. The gaps where they put it together are just too glaring.
The Cant Z 1007bis though looks put together a little better for some reason, and doesn't have the typical Atlas/ D' Agostini wonkyness.
( Co-belligerant as in they were on the allied side by then with the roundels insignia?)
Looks a lot like the Cant 506B floatplane, same upper surface grey-green scheme but with axis markings and different tail. I think Aferg mentioned these two earlier in the thread.

Haven't even started on the italian bombers yet, but looking them over. The Italians sure had some unusual paint schemes. I'll bet some of the garish ones could be not quite accurate?

Wanted to round up some 1:144 RAF bombers first, but looks like I got most of the ones that are affordable or even available for now, give or take some Coastal Command bombers and the Wellington night bomber that can be had easily. Thankful I could get what I have so far though.

[Epap]

The IXO Cant Z 1007 and Fiat BR.20 are pretty good models. The problem is that the factory didn't carry the white fuselage band all the way around---easily fixed---and the little blotches on the upper surface are far too pointy/sharp. To fix this I took red brown and olive green ( light Olive ) and dabbed it over the corresponding colors of the original camouflage, thereby softening the look. The Cant Z 506 sea plane is also a good buy. The picture, below, shows how the IXO Fiat and Cant ( middle of the picture ) look after such treatment:

[aferguson]

both the Beufort and Blenheim by Atlas/Deagostini are ghastly. Stay away. Gaps, mishaped noses and lots of other problems. A real shame too because i would love to add both planes to my air fleet.

I have the Deagostini Cant 1007 and it's not bad, not as good as Altaya but passable. The only problem with it is a bland paint scheme. Yes, co-beligerant was post surrender to the allies fighting against the germans. I only got it because it had the twin rudder design while the Altaya has the earlier single rudder design. I will probably repaint the Deagostini one.

The paint schmes on the Cafereo SM 79 are both wrong. The overall grey is totally wrong and was never worn by the SM 79, although it was seen on other Italian bombers. The sand and green is sorta wrong in that it should be a sand base with green mottle, and Cafereo has it the other way around. However, there should be a third colour to the scheme and that's a reddish brown mottle. If you add that skillfully, you can not only make the paint scheme more accurate you can create the illusion that the base colour is sand and the green is a mottle applied over it.

As for the coastal command Wellington: it wears an unusual scheme of brown and green over white, whereas most coastal command planes had grey and green over white. This is because it was originally a night bomber and was converted for use by coastal command. They left the upper surface cammo as is and just painted the underside white.

That said, it is very boring. The plane was to be used by a Polish squadron for torpedo bombing in 1943. They trained for six weeks but then the whole idea of using the Wellington for a torpedo bomber was scrapped because it was too slow and big and would be a sitting duck. The Poles then transferred to Mk XIV Wellingtons and hunted u-boats. So the model represents a plane that was never used for anything but a bit of training for a mission that was never flown. With work it could be repainted and converted to a more interesting Mk XIV however.

[Epap]

I found an Italian eBay seller with a not so good positive feedback score of 97.6% who is offering the entire GE Fabbri series----he calls the models Italeris-----for $52 per item, including shipping. Another caution is the fact that many of his scale info is wrong. For example, he lists the SM-81 as a 1:100th scale model but it's 1:144th. The item number for the SM-81 is 380580453763.

[aferguson]

thanks for the heads up, Epap.

[The_Helicopter_Pilot]

Epap, you should just start a thread, and show us ALL of your models...

[Epap]

Always happy to comply. Here are pictures of a former main bedroom where I display about 800, WW2 U.S., German, British and Japanese warbirds:

[Epap]

The cabinets wrap around the walls, as you can see:

[Epap]

And end on the other side:

[Epap]

This is from another room where I have wooden bookcases and had just reorganized things---hence some empty shelves:

[Epap]

Here's a current shot of the partly empty bookcase in the picture, above. It's now full of models:

[Epap]

My Russian collection, plus the RAF's desert air force:

[Epap]

My WW2 North African Axis Display:

[Epap]

Some odds and ends:

[Epap]

More of the same:

[Epap]

A few tanks and AFVs:

[Epap]

Last but not least, a mixed group of warbirds and tanks:

[aferguson]