Now here is what I got done at Maddog Manufacturing over the last few days of rain that came through Southern California here.
We'll start our tour at the Aircraft Hanger where my aircraft are being built...
I applied the decals to my C-46 and then when they were dry, I shot another clearcoat over them to seal them in as they were threatening to crack and shatter. Once that was done, I masked and painted the de-icing boots on the wing:
Next, it was time to assemble the propellers. And I mean, assemble the propellers! They gave two types of hubs and propeller blades that you had to assemble:
You can see the three-bladed hub parts (with one part missing) on the upper left of the pic. The upper right of the pic shows the four-bladed propeller hub pieces.
Now, my version was supposed to have three bladed props, but due to one vital part being absent as seen above; I had to opt for the four bladed propellers:
So, as far as I'm concerned, this aircraft was retrofitted with the new propellers but never got re-painted due to being on some remote airfield somewhere in..... a remote area.
Here are the two propellers fully assembled and sitting in the black-painted engines:
Later on, I dry-brushed Steel on the engines and painted the hubs dark grey:
Here's the engines and propellers all painted up and sitting together. Later, I added the engines to the cowl/nacelle assemblies:
Finally, here's a shot of the aircraft with the propellers and engine nacelles dry-fit on the wings:
All that's left for this is to remove the window masking, cement the engines into place, add the landing gear and gear doors and other fiddly bits. Then I can touch up the details and this bird will be done!
Meanwhile, I finally closed that awesome interior up inside the two fuselage halves of the Be-6 Madge:
Man that went together so well! So very few seam issues anywhere. Hopefully the same will hold when it's time to add the wings to this. Speaking of the wings; I finished them off and also finished the tail for this bird:
I had already finished the outrigger floats for this as well.
Just for fun, I decided to mock up this aircraft to see how it's going to look:
Yeah, she's going to be a fun bird to finish!
Once again, I also had pulled my Jet commando out to seal it after finally having a white coat I was happy with and the stupid thing just fell off the paint stand onto the floor and broke one of the tail surfaces off again. In the process of fixing it; I messed up the paint again.... Back to the drawing board.....
No pics of that Epic Fail; one posted in two weeks is enough!
Moving on, it's time to tour the Shipyards as they've been quite active this week.
To start out with; the USS New York got a coat of grey paint on her.... not that you can really tell from looking at grey paint on a grey-plastic-molded model:
Meanwhile, three other slips laid the keels to some additional ships for my US Navy that may just be available to escort the USS New York on her maiden voyage. In Slip Two, we have the USS Forrest Sherman; an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. I started out with the main superstructure and bridge tower:
You can see the first of a ton of photo-etch that is included in this model. This will be a tremendous challenge to me to finish because of it:
Here is the progress I got done on the Forrest Sherman so far:
The other two ships will be a bit easier to complete. In Slip Three, is the USS Ingraham, a 'stretched' Perry-class frigate:
And the last one is a Spruance-class destroyer christened the USS Arthur Radford sporting an experimental enclosed mast amidships:
As I recall, the experiment was not deemed a success; the enclosed mast made the ship too top heavy and she tended to roll heavily in moderate seas. Still, it is an interesting looking vessel. I've had it in my stash for a very long time, I figured it was time to start it. This one and the Ingraham will be waterline models; the Forrest Sherman will most likely be full-hulled.
Now on to the Maddog Manufacturing Vehicle assembly line...
To start out this part of the tour, we'll look at my M1A1 Abrams SEP TUSK that finally has a basecoat of sand color on it:
It's actually the wrong kind of sand color. Instead of a US Army Desert Storm sand color, I ended up getting a British Desert Stone color that was in the wrong place! Oh well, I wasn't going to drive all the way back down there to change out one bottle of paint! With the right weathering and other effects, I think I'll be able to change this sufficiently. I started with a brown wash, followed by a black wash over the grills and grates on the engine deck. It is really hard to see the brown on the tank in this pic, except in certain places:
I didn't do anything on the SCUDs yet as I was going to research more of their interior for painting purposes. I'll get to them hopefully at Hobby Day.
Meanwhile, I started a one model and fixed up another one that someone else had sent me from another Forums. The fixer-upper was a German WWI A7V tank that was leaning to one side and the builder didn't want it anymore. So I traded him for it and when it arrived, I took it partially apart and re-sat the tracks so it would sit level now:
This one already has a base coat of dark grey on it; I just didn't get pics of it yet.
Finally, I started this new model I recently got and boy was this a quick one! This is the Dragon 1/72 scale M-103 heavy tank. I started assembling the Hull:
Then I was going to add the fenders, but decided to wait. Still, here they are next to this tank:
Next, I assembled the turret:
Then I assembled the track runs; they came in two halves that I put together:
All of this and the track assembly took all of ten minutes:
After working on some other models for an hour or so, I came back to this and sanded the joins down to smooth everything out and then add all the fenders and fiddly bits:
That was another fifteen minutes or so, mostly because of the weird way the headlight guard braces had to be assembled. An hour or so later, after doing more on other models and then firing up the airbrush; I came back and shot a basecoat of Olive Drab in this, which took all of three minutes:
Later I shot a gloss clearcoat over this when the OD dried and then gave it a black wash over all the engine deck details and select other places; another five minutes worth of work:
All in all, this model took about an hour of actual work time to get to this point! I love it! It is a funky looking tank. The turret appears to me as if someone had gone up to the gun muzzle of an M--48 and blew real hard to make the turret puff out like that!
And that brings us all up to the present with what's happening at Maddog Manufacturing this week. Tomorrow is Hobby Day and I'm hoping to get more done this Hobby Day weekend on some of these projects while also starting a couple WWI planes for a Canvas Eagles game that we are planning in the future. Stay tuned for more and thanks for looking in. Comments are always welcome.
. VERY old system so not sure what "The Man" is going to want to do. 
