Summer Scramble 3 week painting challenge day 8 "Pierdoly"

The Squadron drying in the summer sunshine

 ........which my Polish friend Pawel says means something like annoying embuggerations, but he has a sharp sense of humour so he could just be winding me up.

So where to start?

When I printed the models I just loaded the file on the printer and pressed "print". What I forgot was that some of the early PlanePrinter models had a slightly undersized mounting triangle slot. I usually run the file through Blender and double check, but this time I didn't. When I tried to put them on the stands so I can paint them, err they don't fit. Bugger! Now I must admit this sometimes happens if you don't carefully wash the slot thoroughly before curing, which of course I forgot to do (bugger), so it may also be that.

There are two or three options to fix this. Firstly I could restart, check the file and print again. Don't fancy that plus its a waste of otherwise fine models. Secondly I could try and carve the slots open with a knife. I didn't fancy that either as it could easily result in a damaged model and therefore another print. Luckily there is a third option - the Hawk Widget. Old timers will know all about these, and in fact I did a blog post about them here . I drilled the slot out to take a widget and I'm ready to move on.

At this point I also realised that there is no pilots in there. This isn't a deal breaker as I can pop a blob of greenstuff in there I suppose. A more elegant solution would have been to speak to the talented Roger Gerrish and get him remix the file to add a pilot - he has done this a few times in the past and the result is good, however that would mean getting Roger to do his stuff, then reprint, which I want to avoid so greenstuff it will be. 

Remember I thought the colour was a bit green? This bugged me so I decided to tone it down a bit, overpainting with Vallejo brown violet. I was a bit happier about this, and painted the undersides light blue \ grey. I painted the engine block silver and whacked some more Nuln Oil in there, and painted the tyres in grey. The last colour was a bit of a reach. The Pzl P11 has a Bristol Mercury engine. This has a metallic cover on the front cowl. On the only surviving P11 this is a dull green but I've seen these on other planes in various metallic colours so I went with a bronze colour just to give the model something other than the rather drab brown \ green that is currently dominating. Lastly I painted the windshield in blue. 

So end of Day 8 I've ran into a few unexpected speed bumps and minor problems but I think I've either solved them or have a plan to sort them.

Next, decals.