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I enjoined very much building this "Black Cat" almost straight from the box. There are a few things for which I thought that scratchbuilding was neccessary. These are the two little antennas on top in the middle of the wing and the antenna on top of the tail unit, the ladder, the little bollard below the bow turret, the antenna wires, hydraulic break wires to the rear landing gear and windscreen-wipers. All these items have been added according to photos of the real aircraft. The cockpit is not very much in detail, but the interior details in the cockpit are hardly visible after fitting of the canopy. Control levers, seats and the instrument panel (decal) in front are present. The interior behind the dome-shaped rear canopies I found quite good as these canopies remain also in closed position. The elevators have been cutted out by a sharp scalpel and refitted in the lower position. That looks more realistic.
The whole aircraft was painted with a coat of 50% flat black and 50% red brown. This looks in most circumstances black and allowed highlighting of the black exhaust stains (according to a photo of the real aircraft) and darkening of the panel lines. This all breaks the uniformly dark finish and make the looking of these aircraft more interesting and realistic. I painted the struts on the underside of the dome-shaped rear canopies as these struts on the canopies delivered with the box are totally missing. The formation lights were painted with Tamiya Clear Red (port side) and Tamiya Clear Green (starboard side) on white underground. It creates the illusion that the lense is transparent. The black underground would have been shined through the white parts of the decals (nationality emblems). To avoid this I have sprayed the nationality emblems by using my Aztec airbrush.
The panel lines were highlighted with 100% flat black with the airbrush. Little work was also done by black pastel chalk. Tamiya flat aluminium was used sparingly on edges and propellers to create wear & tear.
The Academy-kit fits very well and it is easy and nice to build. There are no better kits in the 1/72 scale of this aircraft and with some scratchbuilding you can make a very nice model of this famous plane. It is always possible to make it better, and the model on these photos is far from perfect, but looks quite realistic. I think I will build another PBY in 1/72 scale later. Photos made by using the Fuji Finepix S5000 at daylight, without using photoshop.
Photos © 2006 by Dietmar Carstensen March 17, 2006 |
