The new Wessex

(Courtesy Italeri)

It's been a long time since Revell issued the 1/48 Wessex, and the market has been waiting for a replacement.  And here it is.  A new tooling that includes a small set of photo-etched parts and markings for four aircraft - and all for £25.  The parts are engraved and riveted, albeit a bit on the shallow side.

The cockpit is quite nice, and has an etched panel and seat belts, although I chose to fit a set of Eduard colour belts.  Don't we all?

As I am building, I can't help but think of how similar it is to Italeri's 1/72 scale Wessex.  Yes, it's the same aircraft, I know, but the build is identical.  To merely upscale the tooling probably helps to keep the price down.

Here are some photos.  I'm pleased with how it's going.  More later.

Dora-Rama

After taking so much time getting it right, your pride and joy deserves much more than just a shelf. Since there is now such a wide range of figures and accessories in 1/48 scale, I felt a 'mini-rama' to be an entirely appropriate setting for the FW190 Dora.

For a few of your English pounds, you get a nice selection of Luftwaffe officers and men in useful poses - you even get a dog! So using a 10" by 8" picture frame, railway ballast and assorted static grass, I go to to work.

The whole thing rests on regular plaster filler from a local DIY store. While it was drying I carved out some rough planks and added the ballast. The idea was for a small revetment which the Luftwaffe were forced to use during this period of war. With everything painted and grassed up, I felt the scene was still lacking something. A search through assorted stashes revealed some Verlinden late war signs and a length of chain. Check the photos, you can see where it all went.

I think today, more and more, just completing the model isn't always enough. The resources are there to enable the modeller to go a step further and really make the most of his (or her) creation.

Spectre Analysis

So what has been taking up so much of my time lately? Ok, here is the list.

• The Eduard FW190 D-9
• The Hasegawa A6M8 Zero
• The Special Hobby Fiat G-55
• The C205 Veltro by 21st Century Toys (Yes, Toys...more on this later)
• The F-5E from AFV Club

Italeri's AC 130H 'Spectre' gunship is a nice build. This is not their regular old C130 with raised panel lines and just upgraded with a few extra parts. This one is quite new, though as the French say, plus ça change...... It's typical Italeri - big chunky parts, not too much interior detail. You can lower the ramp, but there's not a lot to see. Lots of guns, but the walls are a little bare apart from the armoured ammo box. The cockpit is similarly sparse; pilots' and engineers' instruments are ok, but four seats and a bulkhead and that's it. To bring this up a bit, I've added seat straps of tinfoil so that when the big transparency went in it would look reasonably busy.

This transparency was not the best part of the kit - it needed several pieces of plastic card and some filler to get it to fit right. If you're building this, get a pre-cut masking set - freehand takes all night.

Fit of parts overall was ok. Lots of rubbing down, but then it's a BIG model. No filler required after the transparency, so I was able to make good progress, and suddenly I had this great big plane on my bench.

What do you think of the results? I think it is rather charismatic.