Ta Ctic Al Notes

January 2008 THE NEWSLETTER OF THE MILITARY MODELERS CLUB OF LOUISVILLE IN THIS ISSUE: From The Cupola: The P resident speaks, a l Anti-AMS: L uf The MMCL gif t’46 Modeling ot! A plea for Ar tshop ticles Tactical Notes Tactical Next Meeting: Thursday, January 17th, 2008, 7:00 P.M. Featured Topic: Internet Modeling WWW.MMCL.ORG To contact MMCL: What you missed at the last meeting President: December is the traditional MMCL Mikey “Thumbkin” Baskette Christmas (and Hanauka, Kwannza and Email: [email protected] Festivius) party. For the second year in a row the meeting/party was held at the Vice President: Stuart “Fish boy” Cox Logans Roadhouse restaurant on Email: [email protected]. Shelbyville Rd. Approximately 18 members and their family members attended. Much Secretary: steak was consumed and everyone was put Rich “Bonebreaker” Gueting in a holiday mood. Email:[email protected] Member at Large: In addition to the fine food and spirits at Noel “KFB” Walker the party/meeting, a Panther smackdown Email: [email protected] contest was held. There were three entries, including a very unique “pink” Panther by Treasurer: Brian’s employee Chris. Mike “Danger Boy” Nofsinger 5011 Wabash Pl. Louisville, KY 40214 2007 was a good year for MMCL with an Email: [email protected] ever growing membership and many good meetings with great presentations. 2008 Webmangler: promises to be even better. In addition to Pete “The German” Gay many exciting programs at our meetings, Email: [email protected] we have an Invitational contest we are Editorial Assistant and whipping boy: hosting in May. If you like the way the Casper “The Friendly Ghost” club has progressed, please get involved. Volunteer to do a presentation; Write an article for the newsletter; Bring a kit for the “Tactical Notes” is the Newsletter of the Military Modelers Club of Louisville, Inc. We put this really tiny monthly raffle. It is your club. Help make print here to see if anyone reads this. We doubt that they it better! do. This hurts our feelings. But, we’ll get over it someohow. Oh what we suffer through, just so you modelers can have your fun with your little toys! Please, please, please we are begging you to write something for the newsletter. If you don’t, then we will have to keep filling up space with stuff like this. 1 Camouflage schemes for the in the vain hopes that the vastly beer coaster Luftwaffe improved performance of a small by Dennis Sparks number of these aircraft would somehow be able to stem the tide One of the major areas of of an overwhelming number of divergence between most military Allied bombers that were intent modelers and “the car guys” is upon rearranging the landscape. that the preponderance of Over the last few years, a number automotive modelers are willing of model kits of these “Luftwaffe to engage in “what-if” modeling at ’46" aircraft have been produced, the drop of an Xacto knife. To be representing the types that the sure, some will indeed try to Germans might have been flying reproduce the exact engine had the war been prolonged until details, wheels, trim packages 1946 or later. While extensive and colors that were offered on a design calculations were made for particular car, and will thus try to many of these designs, others model reality. But the vast look more like they were derived majority would seem to prefer, to from no more than a hasty sketch misuse a phrase, to “wing it”. on the back of a beer-soaked They paint their models in paper coaster. whatever colors strike their fancy, and will often go to great lengths In the past, I’ve always tried to to add structural details that produce models of actual aircraft, resolutely defy the laws of logic, though I will freely admit that I basic engineering or even gravity. am more often than not drawn to Compared to car modelers, we the more brightly or unusually military modelers can be viewed marked examples. I’ve also as mere craftsmen, however deft, always been fond of producing a constrained by our own series of models with some philosophy to reproduce only common theme. Readers of this what we can actually see or newsletter will no doubt recall touch. with some trepidation the spate of articles about the various Fortunately, modelers of military “Bluegrass Brewsters”, for aircraft have an out… instance. It was my interest in building a series of models of During the Second World War, flying wings and other such aerial with Allied armies advancing oddities that led me dabble in inexorably toward Berlin, German Luftwaffe ’46. aircraft designers conceived of ever more exotic flying machines 2 After finishing models of the Me supposed to transition to 163S two-seat trainer version of horizontal flight, and I suspect the Komet rocket plane, the Ju that any actual first flight for this 287 with its four turbojet engines machine would have been nearer and forward swept wings and 1986 than 1946. finally the circular planform Sack AS-6 (all REAL aeroplanes), it was In common with all of the Huma just a hop, skip and a jump on to kits that I’ve built, this one went the stronger stuff. So far, I’ve together well, requiring very little tried to limit myself to the of the hacking and filling that one cheaper 1/72nd scale plastic kits, would normally expect from avoiding for now the mostly resin short-run kits. I usually paint a 1/48th scale offerings. model from light-to-dark, starting with the lightest color (usually Okay, I’m still just a craftsman in the undersurfaces on more at least one regard, building the conventional aircraft) and kits pretty much “out of the box” proceed in sequence to the next instead of adding extra wings or darkest color. But I reversed the engines as suits my fancy. Ah, sequence on this model, painting but the paint schemes! Since it first in an overall dark gray, most of these Luftwaffe ’46 and then applying a heavy mottle aircraft never really existed as of lighter blue gray. For the hardware, just about anything Luftwaffe modeling experten, could be posited as a camouflage that’s RLM 75 Grauviolett over scheme. Even here I tried to rein RLM 76 Lichtblau. In retrospect, in, limiting myself mostly to the I probably should have used the standard RLM colors used by the darker color for the canopy WWII Luftwaffe. But these self- framework. imposed constraints still allowed some room for “artistic expression”. The first Luftwaffe ’46 subject that I built was the 1/72nd scale Huma kit of the very bizarre Focke Wulf Triebflugel. It was intended to be a VTOL aircraft, with three ramjet-powered rotors encircling the waist of a cylindrical fuselage. I’ve never understood exactly how it was 3 I also built Huma’s kit of the test launches were made, but the Messerschmitt P.1106. According wings were reported to have to a Luftwaffe ’46 web site, this parted company with the rest of design was envisioned as a the airframe early into the flight. development of the earlier Special Hobby also produced a kit P.1101. Project 1101 was a real of the revised version, which aircraft, and was the sire of the instead used very short span post-war American Bell X-5, a wings that extended for most of swing-wing research aircraft. the length of the fuselage, similar Even squinting, for the life of me I in appearance to the leading edge can’t see any resemblance chines used on the much later between it and the P.1106. For American SR-71 Blackbird or F- some reason, the P.1106 mostly 18 Hornet. reminded me of a catfish, so that’s how I painted it. It’s a Special Hobby elected to depict muddied mottle of late war RLM the contemplated manned 80 and 81 greens and browns versions of the A4b, with a semi- over a fish belly of RLM 76 gray- suicidal pilot added to improve blue. targeting accuracy. In painting it, I reverted to my usual light- to-dark painting order. A small tightly spaced mottle of RLM 75 was applied over a base coat of RLM 76. As it was intended as an expendable vehicle, no national markings would have been applied. This is about the smallest mottle that I can reproduce with my trusty Badger 350 single action airbrush. Another example from Special Hobby is their Blohm and Special Hobby produced a couple Voss P.215. Compared to the two of kits of different versions of the Huma kits, the Special Hobby A4b, which was a variant of the kits show a little more of the V-2 rocket with wings added in an characteristics one would expect attempt to increase range. Several from a limited run kit. Overall, the surface detail is good, but 4 there’s the odd ding and dent to was apparently so enamored with tend to, as well as the usual flash the look of this model that I failed and thicker sprue attach points. to notice that I’d managed to When I couldn’t convince the break off one of the gun barrels P.215’s vacuformed canopy to fit, on the rearward-facing turret I opted to cut it and pose it in the before Randy got the chance to open position. Still, I’ve built photograph it. worse, and the aircraft’s unique design was sufficient to keep my Finally, I’ve included two interest from flagging while Luftwaffe ’46 subjects from Revell building the model.

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