Jump to content

1:72nd Scale Bristol Blenheim B Mk.I & Mitsubishi A6M2b Zero Dogfight


T2B

Recommended Posts

This is my next build project. It will be the Bristol Blenheim B Mk.1 from the Far East Command being pursued by a Japanese Zero fighter. I have the 2 kits and a 'Dogfight Double' stand purchased separately as this isn't an offical Airfix Dogfight double set. A mask set and some resin intake parts for the Blenheim complete the parts for this build.

/media/tinymce_upload/7b6a97260391e7f2bcb27e549b7db805.JPG

Now for the plastic parts. The Blenheim B Mk.I was the first release by Airfix of the Blenheim's and careful study of the sprues shows that various versions of this aircraft were planned at an early stage. There are 5 grey plastic sprues, 2 x large 3 x smaller plus the clear plastic sprue.

/media/tinymce_upload/b57c006f54c3ff08d51521c082e4ccd0.JPG

The Zero kit contains 3 small grey plastic sprues and for a small single engined fighter is detailed including the wing-tip folding wing option.

/media/tinymce_upload/79c69c930e0212a7a7ce63a4b02fc69d.JPG

ThThe build will start soon  😀

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 75
  • Created
  • Last Reply

@ m2 Browning

 

Thanks and I'm looking forward to building it as it's many many years since I have done a Zero or any other Japanese aircraft.

 

But I have started on the Blenheim 1st, though I won't bother with too detailed a build post cos it has already been pretty extensively covered!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can't remember when i last did a Blenheim though I did do a couple, but maybe with the old tool kits I just accepted some work was needed to get the parts and panels to fit, once I wasn't just knocking them together any old way. And not doing kits from the competition apart from the odd Matchbox kit back in the day I probably didn't know any better.

 

But all reports say the current Blenheims fit is lovely, just like all the other new tool offerings!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I know I've built a Blenheim, but it was a long, long time ago. So I've treated myself to a new tool Mk IV which looks lovely in the box. It will be nice to see another one built (even if the greenhouse on the front is a bit different)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I got the Blenheim Mk.I soon after it was released and as you say it looked lovely in the box, so much so that when the Mk.IVF was released I had to have that too. I ended up getting carried away and have just added the fourth version to my collection  😉!!

/media/tinymce_upload/e7fe33232ca6e497091d9891094a3b3b.JPG

Don't tell you know who!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now for a little bit of the build.

 

The interior cockpit walls, bulkheads and main parts were sprayed grey/green cockpit interior, whilst the detail parts like instrument panels and seat faces were hand painted with Humbrol enamels.

/media/tinymce_upload/135ba184a78ff8c1d8142510abce9822.JPG

The panels were given a light oil wash to hopefully give a realistic worn effect. 

 

As I'm intending to display the Blenheim in flight I needed some crew. The Airfix kit provides 1 crew member (presumably the pilot),so I raided 1 of my other Blenheim kits and obtained an Observer. The turret will also be in action so I needed a WOp/AG, and this crew member came from my parts bin (the 1 missing his legs below the knee).

/media/tinymce_upload/3bbb56624918275c007653e305cf8661.JPG

Despite the quality of the new tool kits, I don't think the detail is much of an improvement on the pilots over some of the older tool flight crews. I painted them in tropical kharki drill, again with my trusted enamels and brushes and hopefully once behind the transparent glass parts they will look effective flight crew.

/media/tinymce_upload/73f1a034404b6811dc238dc5733c39d6.JPG

/media/tinymce_upload/a177a3abdbd99d8d21a9014f98421a69.JPG

Once the cockpit is complete I will begin masking before the cockpit section is attached to the body of the aircraft.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Might I ask a favour and that is that you reduce the size of your images to something reasonable, as their taking a huge amount of time to download and its gets worse the longer/more pics the thread has, might I suggest limiting them to 1MB at most preferably half that..

Thanks 😉

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I use Arcsoft photo studio the version I have is simple to use and can reduce the images to a fraction of the size in seconds, I dont often bother with threads with such large images, as it can take upto 20 minutes to view multiples photos of 6MB size which yours are, thats 6MB x the number of images!.. this is not meant in malice I would just like to be able to see your work thats all....

😉

   
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@T2B - The image size of a digital photo is given by 2 attributes, its area in pixels, say 800 wide by 600 deep, and how many bits are used to represent each colour. For "true colour" this will be 24 bits per pixel. So the size of the example photo will be 800*600*24 = 11_520_000 bits. We normally express this in bytes: 1 byte is 8 bits, so this image is 1_440_000 bytes plus any metadata (data about the image, like what sort of camera and lens you used).

 

I can't see anything much more than that about the image except that it's already a jpeg, so it's about as compressed as it can get except by losing image size.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its not the compression thats the problem its the image size overall, I try to avoid uploading large images for this very reason and always edit the size, for example the first image in this thread has a size of 6.06MB and has dimesions of 4680 x 3456 pixels, and a resolution is 250dpi...

Altering the resolution to 125dpi will reduce the image size to 2.56MB without really altering the image for the viewer(on a PC)

Altering the physical dimension to something reasonable like 1200 x 900 pixels will reduce the size to 263kb!.. 1600 x 1200 to 411kb or the equivalent of 15 images for one of the larger size...

Essentially you could go from over 6mb to 263 kb for that image without making any serious impact on it or the post except it would load in a fraction of the time...

😉

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Again sorry but most of the last 2 or 3 posts are foriegn to me. 

 

I have tried 'cropping' the images on my photo editor to see if that helps? Well here goes ............

/media/tinymce_upload/a189d3da1310160613e400b9b6f879d0.JPG

/media/tinymce_upload/d264b8816efc66b712470f9554ce0b38.JPG

/media/tinymce_upload/8474ebf85096380bb18cf94d37949edd.JPG

/media/tinymce_upload/7a52e3ae6d0bd38c5c9fd2167b4a7112.JPG

Actually having just checked the picture sizes it does seem to have reduced them to about 1mb from 6mb! Its the same photo's as before as I'm not quite ready to show anymore progress yet. Maybe tonight?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Back to the build.

 

The 2 cockpit halves with canopy sections were put together last night. Not to impressed with the 2 canopy halves meeting in the middle of the cockpit, as the any splash of glue can ruin them. I had to use a drop of superglue and I think I got luck and didn't make a mess of the clear glass, but I think I would have preferred a 1 piece canopy?

/media/tinymce_upload/7630971358738d736c74781b5801efda.JPG

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@ironsides - Page 1 of this thread loads in seconds for me, and I'm at the wrong end of an "information B-road". Also, are you seriously suggesting that changing file format from, say, bmp or raw to jpeg doesn't have a compression effect without reducing the stated image size?

 

@T2B & @Ratch - Cropping an image directly reduces the size (see #13 above). Also, if Photoshop can do it, so can GIMP and GIMP is a free download.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@ P4T

 

Despite all the advice users have given me to try and help most of the info is foriegn to me as I'm not very computer savy, which is 1 of the reasons I like this forum as generally its user friendly and even I can manage to upload photo's direct from my camera to my computer (Desktop PC) and then to my choosen thread/post.

 

However I did try cropping some photo's yesterday to try and help @ ironsides view my build without his device being frozen for 20 minutes and I found that on average a 6Mb photo when cropped reduces to about 1Mb, though some were slightly more. I did upload these cropped photo's yesterday but obviously too late and they must still be waiting to be moderated, but hopefully they will be done soon.    

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@ironsides - Page 1 of this thread loads in seconds for me, and I'm at the wrong end of an "information B-road". Also, are you seriously suggesting that changing file format from, say, bmp or raw to jpeg doesn't have a compression effect without reducing the stated image size?

No such thing, I was refering to practical experience possible with a simple editor using the images in this thread, my connection is barely DSL, over 1MB and multiple images can become a problem.. its the quantity and size thats the problem here a single 6MB or 12 x 500kb image not so much..... and yes it did take 20 minutes to download I had to wait that long to reply in the first instance because it messes with the reply window...

😉

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@ironsides - Page 1 of this thread loads in seconds for me, and I'm at the wrong end of an "information B-road". Also, are you seriously suggesting that changing file format from, say, bmp or raw to jpeg doesn't have a compression effect without reducing the stated image size?

No such thing, I was refering to practical experience possible with a simple editor using the images in this thread, my connection is barely DSL, over 1MB and multiple images can become a problem.. its the quantity and size thats the problem here a single 6MB or 12 x 500kb image not so much..... and yes it did take 20 minutes to download I had to wait that long to reply in the first instance because it messes with the reply window...

😉

 

I think we're using "size" differently - If I use "size" I (at least normally) mean image size X by Y pixels @ N bits per pixel. If I explicitly say "file size" I mean "file of N kB". I'm sure you'll agree that, in that context, changing file type will change the file size without changing the image size.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
  • Create New...