I-16 type 24 (ICM32001) – Dutch Scale Models

Still alive!

The I-16 has been sitting like this for a week. I ‘cleaned’ the green off the body, however I damaged it in the process.

Not sure how this will look after priming, but the beauty of working with WW2 gear is that we can make it work even with some damage to the kit..

Modelbuilding hasn’t been on my mind though. It could be because of this mistake, but more likely I am just in a bit of a dip of my life.

My mother died last summer. She was diagnosed with breast cancer 3 years ago, and although she survived the first hurdle, it came back sometime last year. By the time it was clear it had spread to her lungs and throat it was too late.

I guess we all thought she had overcome the cancer, but the truth is: it was never gone, and we knew it. Because of heart problems she wasn’t able to complete the entire treatment. We didn’t think too much of it, or at least I didn’t.. and it would have made no difference since the treatment was just impossible.

She had been complaining about having almost no energy since the end of last year, but in februari she had been cleared by doctors – no cancer, see you next year. I am not sure how, but she did actually have cancer, and she passed away on the 14th of Juli. 72 years old.

I am a grown man, and I haven’t ‘needed’ my mother in years, living my life on the other side of the country. I also would have expected to be devastated after losing one of my parents. But to be honest, I am not devastated. It has however given me a sense of how little it all means. We are here for such a short time, and even after that realization I have not been kicked into gear to get things done.

I haven’t taken a drop of alcohol since the end of March and although I don’t miss the taste or the loss of control, I have to admit I miss the feeling of not feeling.

I guess I am a little depressed at the moment, however I will manage it.. my other big hobby is sim racing, and the community I am an admin for will do a 24 hour race for the Make a Wish foundation. I also spend a lot of time on other games, so I won’t sit on the couch and do nothing.

Bit of rambling, this post.. I will get on my feet I’m sure, and I’ll build some more when I feel like it.

Groetjes,
Daniël

What do?

Just a tiny, tiny little blog as I am thinking about how to solve the pickle I put myself in back in 2017.

I had troubles with the exhaust back then, and as part of the solution I glued the entire engine block in the fuselage so I could attach the exhaust pipes again. I couldn’t make that work at the time because I didn’t use the right glue, but when I finally picked up the kit last week after 5 years I fixed it pretty quickly, although not perfectly.

However.. why did I glue the block to the fuselage in the first place? I probably could have done the same without doing so, and I wouldn’t have to mask off the insanely fragile engine block to be able to apply primer on this kit.

Ok, so thinking in terms of solutions: it seems to me I have to carefully remove the entire engine block. After that I have the green gun-cowling that I can attempt to mask off, although I would absolutely not be surprised if it would flake off after all this time.

I’ve also sort of decided on which paint/livery I am going for:

4th Guard Fighter Regiment of the Baltic Fleet Aviation.

The Revell version of this kit also has a unit of this regiment:

I don’t know if it would make sense for these 2 to ever ‘meet’ each other, but right now I have very blurry visions of a diorama with these 2 little planes.

Also: 2 white planes means it’s going to be weathering galore. That seems essential with white planes.

Groetjes,
Dan

Exhausted II

I am pretty happy with developments since writing the last blog where I wrote about my perfectionism and about how it kept me dropping the hobby again and again.

After that blog, the first thing I did was clean up my desk and sort out my tools and paint. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I can work in it and find stuff. That’s half the fun of building, right?

I don’t have any answers for perfectionism, but what I do know is that I enjoyed my first build even though I made plenty of mistakes. I even was of the mind to throw in the towel at some point, but I kept going after putting it all away for a few hours. And I think there is a huge clue there for me, because the main thing was that it was the only kit I was working on, and the only reason I have so many unfinished kits now is that I keep running away from my mistakes by starting new kits.

It all started going wrong with the I-16.. Or actually with a CargoLux 747-8F that I threw out. That kit is probably burned somewhere on a pile of trash, so we don’t talk about that here at dutchscalemodels.com… Back to the I-16, the last thing I did was trying to fit the awful exhaust construction, many moons ago.

I have 5 exhaust parts that I was smart enough to place in a bag before packing this kit up.

I do not like the instructions here, and I can only guess which part should go where exactly.

I am not sure about any of this, but if this isn’t correct that means I already placed some parts wrong 5 years ago..

Whatever.. it’s time to continue because that is what all of this is about!

I went straight for this stuff, since much plastic had already melted away back in 2017.

Picture made this afternoon just after I finished putting the last exhaust parts on!

I faced my exhaust/unfinished kit demons and I am pretty happy with the result!

Unfortunately, I did lose one of the pipes in the process. Working with tweezers somehow always is a risk for me and especially for the smallest parts. I seem to pinch too hard so they fly across the room, never to be seen again. The good news is, it’s one of the pipes at the bottom end of the engine. No one will know.

Well, now you know, and perhaps it would be in your best interest to look over your shoulders more often for the rest of your life. Of course I’m just kidding. Or.. am I? Obviously I am, because this is a modelbuilding blog and not a meth lab.

The even better news is: I don’t care too much about losing that part. At first I had the idea to probably turn this kit into a sort of wreck to serve in a diorama. I can still make it part of a diorama of course, but right now I feel I sort of saved it from destruction.

I am not out of the woods yet though! At some point, we’re going to have to mask those exhaust parts off to be able to prime and color the fuselage. I am skeptical of these parts being able to survive that. Not sure how I will make that work, but we’ll pass that bridge when we get to it.

I haven’t even taken a look at the instructions to see what the next step would be, but I feel relieved that I know this is the project I am finishing first now!

Groetjes,
Dan

I don’t want to say I am back again, but..

It seems I am back AGAIN.

The previous post is from October 2019, eh? A full 3 years then.. Of course a few things happened in all that time, but not so much on the modelmaking side of things.

The Spitfire I was working on back then is finished. Went a bit overboard with the weathering so definitely not my favorite.

I also started work on A-10, and of course didn’t finish it. Then I started work on a flight deck carrier, of course didn’t finish it. I also started work on a Messerschmitt BF-109 E3, but that one isn’t finished.

Yes, I absolutely do have a problem with perfectionism..

And it seems to make it impossible for me to enjoy this hobby for more than a month before I mess up a model and throw it in a box to return to a new model a while later. I start on that enthusiastically, then mess up and on we go for another cycle.

I’ve suffered from perfectionism for as long as I can remember. As a kid I would come home crying because I thought I just wasn’t doing good enough compared to other kids. As an adult, I finally found some rest in my work by taking anti-depressants which take a huge deal of the anxiety off. I’ve tried going without them in the last few years, and immediately the fear and insecurities come back: I am not doing enough, and it’s not good enough. Those insecurities are the reason I got a burn-out back in 2017, and the reason I started taking those meds back then.

So, those work for me on a professional level and I’m very happy to be able to function with them. I turned 37 last week, so there is still a while to go before I can professionally retire, and I simply can’t afford to question my own professional worth for another 30 years! Because rationally I do know I am good enough, and I know where my qualities lie and how I can use them effectively. It is just impossible to function when you are constantly second guessing yourself.

But although the meds seem to work for fine for the things that I have to do, like work. But not so much for the stuff that I want to do, like hobbies. In modelbuilding, that means I just stop as I describe above, and start a new kit after a while. In gaming, my other big hobby, I just keep buying new games so I can run away from the nagging feeling of perfectionism whenever the going gets tough when playing a game.

I am a man of solutions though, and I feel the best thing for me to do is get rid of the stash-of-doom with all those unfinished projects, and focus on a single project from that moment on and force myself to finish it. The first kit I placed in the stash-of-doom was the I-16 after the exhaust assembly didn’t go the way I planned it.

I see two options with that kit:
-Get the exhaust assembly right. Might be impossible since the tiny exhaust parts are likely to have gone missing after moving the box a few times.
-Make a diorama with it. I have another 1/32 I-16 lying around. It’s essentially the exact same kit, however rebranded by Revell. If I can get the both from the same squadron or at least of two squadrons who were historically based on the same airfield that might be a nice little project.

I have absolutely no idea how to go about making diorama’s though, so that would take some researching. But that’s half the fun, right?

First things first though: my workplace has become my office, and it’s a huge mess not fit for building anything.

Time to first clean up all that junk..

I always enjoyed writing, so it felt like a good idea to start up this blog again. That also takes a bit of cleaning up though, since after 5 years I see some dead links and incorrect categorization which I want to fix.

By the time my next blog comes around I should have sorted out the desk, and hopefully fixed the blog as well!

Groetjes,
Dan

Exhausted

I got off to a good start after the last blog and it didn’t take long to have the engine assembled.. however while attaching the exhaust I already started to have my worries about this step in the instruction manual.

It’s clear which part needs to go where, but the exact point the exhaust will need to point to isn’t at all. There was an attempt however.

So far so good..

I applied black primer, and I dry brushed it with some steel color.. it looked nice, but while dry brushing the first trouble started.
The exhaust pieces started to come off..
Since I was having trouble with getting the exhausts back in place, I decided to first place the engine and then try to re-attach the pieces. This would allow me to see where the exhaust ends would have to be.

With hindsight this was optimistic.. obviously I was having a trouble with attaching the exhaust parts before I placed the engine, so I didn’t expect things to magically click into place once it would be seated. My plan was to somehow attach the exhaust ends to the panel sides and not worrying about the fiddly attachments to the engine. This is easier said than then as it turns out..

I think the big mistake I made was using the good old TAT to attach these parts to the engine.. I use the stuff most of the time, but Revell Contact does not melt the plastic, and would have given me the chance to re-attach them when I made a mistake.

What I am left with now is a few exhaust parts with melted ends. Since I can forget about attaching them to the engine I don’t mind about that too much, and I just want to focus on letting the ends stick out of the panel holes in a good looking way.

There is a chance I might give this model a rest right now and pick the Cargolux B747 back up. But when I do decide to continue I will have to try again to attach the exhaust ends at the panel holes. It is the only way I can think of to pull this off..

Things are warming up!

Even though I made an effort to isolate my new workplace, it can still become (at least) a degree colder than the comfortable living room, which kept my away for the last few weeks.

However spring is upon us, and I find myself back at the workplace daily!

A goal I set for myself in the last blog was to finish the I-16 cockpit. And I have! High time to write about it.

New Airbrush

But first.. I already considered purchasing a new airbrush at the time I was writing my last blog, and once the thought of buying new stuff sets it never seems to take long before I actually do!

This time I didn’t drive straight to my main hobbyshop to splash the cash. I like Hobbycar and I have most of my stuff from that place, but although I started my search there, I really took my time to see what is what in the world of airbrushes and get the best deal out there. Especially now I have lost my 10% IPMS discount, there might be better alternatives around.

My current airbrush is a Fengda BD-135. It did a good job, and it gave me a good idea of what works and doesn’t work. Unfortunately, it broke fairly quickly: although it still functioned, the black cap at the end had come off, probably because the screw-thread had come off. Nothing more but a minor nuisance, but I do like the cap to be on so I don’t accidentally poke my eye out. A bigger problem was the persistent clogging I have experienced with this airbrush, basically from day one. I have gained a lot of experience especially with thinning my paint, and it has gotten better, but still a lot of the trouble was down to using a 0,2mm nozzle and needle for all my airbrush jobs.

With this experience in mind I had an idea of what I wanted in a new airbrush

Perhaps pay a bit more if the results will be better.
Something easier to clean.
A bigger paint container, preferably one I can close off while using the airbrush.
The possibility to use larger nozzles.

I realize that a higher price doesn’t always represent a better result, but my first Fengda already cracked after a few months of (fairly extensive) use. I started my search for the names I have seen in many discussions about airbrush.. but even though I have my own experience of my 20 euro airbrush failing so quickly, I still couldn’t find a lot of good arguments to go straight for the high-end airbrushes.

As I’m sure you recognize if you have been involved in any online modeling community, the argument to use a particular brand of airbrush is usually something like ‘I use Brand X is so it is great, I don’t use Brand Y is so it is shit, hurdur’.

For me this just isn’t a good enough reason to spend more money. Although I hope another low-end airbrush will not break again so soon, I ended up looking at the Fengda alternatives.

Taking into account my other wishes, I ended up with the FE-130:

This particular set has a three nozzles and needles included: 0,2; 0,3 and 0,5!

So far I have used only the 0,3 nozzle, and I have to say that for the things I am doing this has probably been the size I have been waiting for. I like to airbrush basically every part because I just like the end result a lot better. I imagine myself using the 0,2 size for finer detail and 0,5 for larger areas or primer jobs.

Although I first aimed to spend somewhere around 100 euros on something not-Fengda, I ended up with this 35 euro Fengda set.. Ofcourse I can only hope the quality will be better than the BD-135, but for 35 euro I can’t complain even if it only survives one year.

I-16 Cockpit

In the last blog I considered ripping apart one of the first assembled and painted sub-components.

I ended up doing that, and to be honest I don’t see a difference with what it was before, and I still don’t really like the end result. The good thing about the cockpit on this model though: you can really spend time on the details if you want to, but even if you look down into it once it is finished you won’t see a lot.

The black parts on the chair are my own interpretation, and it looks a bit shabby. Next time I’ll make sure to not limit myself in terms of reference material. The back of the seat is based on how things look in IL-2, but later on in the cockpit build I actually started using anything I could find.

The bottom plate of the cockpit should be light gray according to the instruction booklet, but most reference show a green metal color. I changed this later on.

I quite like the instrument panel on this kit! It actually has a back plate which you need to paint black, then place a decal on top of it, and after that you place a clear part on top of that. The instruction booklet actually seems to indicate this clear parts needs to be painted black as well, that doesn’t make a lot of sense and obviously I didn’t. I did paint the sides of the clear panelfront.

The end result of the instrument panel.

Before closing off the cockpit I had seen so much reference photo’s with the green steel parts that I did a last-minute change of the bottom plate as well as the control. After applying a clear gloss coat I did some weathering, including a bit of a dirt wash.
The almost-end result, but this is before applying the wash.

Like I said the end result doesn’t show much of the cockpit anyway, especially if you decide to close the ‘canopy’ (it is basically two doors) you won’t be seeing much of the interior.

The result so far. The cockpit is finished, and now it is on for the engine!

I like this kit a lot so far. Things fit together perfectly overall, and on the parts where it doesn’t I don’t mind too much: a WW2 aircraft to me doesn’t have to fit a 100% perfect, as long as it doesn’t have enormous gaps between.

One of the things I am less enthusiastic about is probably the instruction booklet. I especially feel the range of colours has been simplified to not force a builder to spend a lot of money on paint. However, there are a lot of reference pictures available and I actually enjoyed the search to find a plausible set of colours. After a few months of building I have collected a respectable amount of paint too, so I can deviate from the booklet and go for what I think makes more sense.

Next up on this kit: the engine!

Groetjes,
Dan

Going down

It’s been a while since my last blog so here we go! I have been building a bit more the last week but before that it has been pretty meager.

The Zero

I put primer on most of the final parts of the zero.. unfortunately I found out later I forgot about two small panels that are part of the wheel covering. I’m not going to make a mess of my airbrush just to put primer on two parts that I can put on my fingertip so I will either have to wait for more parts before I get the stuff out again, or I might just see what the result is when I get around to finishing this model.

There is some decision to make about the color of the wheel bays. Some internet sources show the A6M5 with either brown or light blue wheel bays. Then again, there are different tints of green, and things like the propeller cap are either white or green as well.

I will have to see if I can find more sources on the specific plane I want to make. Since the original decals are eaten away I purchased some after market ones.

Workplace

The last couple of months I found that one thing that kept me from doing some work is having to go upstairs. I do spend quite some time in ‘my room’ but right now it is mostly to do virtual flying in IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad.

So I am now slowly moving my stuff to our house extension. It’s a bit colder there, so I have some small isolation work to do, but there is nothing wrong with that. Besides the summer will be here before we know it.

I-16

Another thing that has probably stopped me from doing work sometime is a promise I made to myself.. to not have a ‘stack of doom’. To me that meant not starting work on a new kit before the old one was finished. In fact I actually broke that promise pretty early on when I start working on the Cargolux B747-8F, a kit which is still standing half finished in my room upstairs.. recently I also started work on the ICM I-16. Since I feel more like working on the I-16 right now I decided to stop making life difficult for myself and just go for it!

I already started work on the wing a while back, so the next step was now to apply a layer of gray in the wheel bay area..
..and the first cockpit parts.

I am not sure if I am too happy about this so far though.. The instructions says the chair needs to be all black. I am using a different source though, which is the cockpit view in IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad. Which shows that the chair itself is a dark green (like the outside of the plane) and so I brush painted the chair and the rests.

But looking at the end result, I think I will tear the chair off again, clean it completely and just spray the green on and I will just hand brush the headrest. For the color of the rests I used anthracite which made more sense to me.

IPMS

I did some thinking and I decided that I am not going to renew my IPMS membership right now..

When I became a member I had just spent a couple of hundred euros on modeling stuff, and the 10% discount for stuff alone felt like a good reason for a membership. But the spending spree has stopped so that’s not a good reason any more. I don’t particularly enjoy their magazine, and I don’t have time or energy to spend time on visiting events or meetings.

The money I saved with not paying for another year of membership will go nicely towards buying my next airbrush!

Next blog I will show the end result on the cockpit for the I-16.

PS: my dad’s P-51 is coming along nicely! That Revell kit looks so great and my dad is doing an awesome job. Really curious to see how it looks when the paint is on!

New year

Yes, it has been a while since last blog!

First off all, a late happy new year to all!

As I covered in my last post, I found another way to spend my time. I went all out as always when I try new things, and have probably spent about 100 hours on the game since I purchased it last month. Of course the first enthusiasm at some point fades a bit and I’ve slowly been finding myself behind the bench a bit more that last week.

The last few weeks

With the holidays and my new hobby, work has been slow the last couple of weeks. A brief overview of what I have been able to achieve.

Just like the last time I visited my parents, I took a kit with me to get some work done. I went for the new I-16 type by ICM. Very interesting little plane and a fine kit. I’ll be writing more about it in the future no doubt.

Back to the Zero, I still had that nice job ahead of me.. masking the clear parts. I decided to just go for it. The result wasn’t perfect, but I figured it would still be better than hand brushing.
Here goes nothing! As long as the clear parts are not messed up with green paint I am happy.

It won’t be visible on this picture probably.. but in my last blog I noted the color was probably a little too light for the Zero, and I did another layer with a slightly darker tint of green. The good news is this color seems a bit better to me. The bad news is that the darker undertones might have disappeared a bit too much. Then again, they should be subtle so I could still be all right.

I wanted to redo the black around the cockpit area a bit because I hadn’t focused on it so far, and there was some green residue around.

Here is the result so far! I am fairly happy with it, although I doubt this will look as pleasing as I had hoped when I started it. Being an older kit it really takes more skill than I have to make it look really interesting, but once again I learned a lot so far and I’ll be focusing on some newer kits for the foreseeable future.

A present for my dad

When my dad gave me some of his old kits this summer he told me that he basically wouldn’t be buying any new kits, but he was still looking out for a good P51 kit because he really loves the Mustang. In the weeks after that I looked around a bit for what was available in 1/32 scale, but the offerings were either a expensive or seemed to be lacking in quality. My dad’s main brand has always been Revell, so I was very happy to see Revell had a new tool coming up:

I initially wanted to build this one myself, and it really is a fantastic looking kit if you’re looking for an affordable Mustang. I went for the I-16 in the end because at the moment the subject interests me more, but this could very well still end up on my shelve at some point. For now, I looked forward to giving this to my dad as a present.

My dad is really happy with the kit and has made some good progress in the last couple of weeks! I gave him some brushes and glue to start off with, and my mom bought all the paint required so he could start again with an acrylic color collection. Not having to use enamels really revived the hobby for me, and I think he will probably feel the same. Finally no more hassle and horrible smells and the result is fine.

Veel plezier, pa!

The future of this blog

I didn’t forget about the blog in the last weeks.. but I have also been thinking about where I want to go with it.

When I started it this summer, I was starting to feel better recovering from my burn-out. I was still sitting at home, trying to find something I could do. Modeling really was a blessing: it allowed me to reboot my engineering brain without any pressure at all. A big part of my work is documenting, and the blog filled in that part. I was able to spend a few hours on building, and do regular updates on basically anything modeling related.

Right now I have my job again to get my fill of engineering and documentation, and doing 3 or 4 updates a few on my models is out of the question. Obviously, after the first build it is probably natural to zoom out a bit a take bigger steps in reporting on the model.. I like gluing part 24 and 25 on part 37, but doing a weekly update rules out that sort of close reporting on my progress. I would annoy you as much as I would annoy myself!

The way I see it now, I will probably keep trying to do a weekly update on my modeling stuff, but I do have some thoughts about not renewing my WordPress subscription. I know, I can also continue with the free plan, but I like the blog as I can deliver it right now and that’s only possible because I spent some money on it.

And I have to admit I have even been thinking about moving to YT once I stop this blog, but I honestly don’t know if it would suit me and if people would be interested. I am happy to see I have more followers than I would ever have expected, and a few more than some of the people I started following last summer. I take that as a complement, because I see even some non-modelers follow my blog and that tells me I am doing something right.

Some more soul searching required the coming weeks!

Groetjes,
Dan