Magna Models 1/48 Miles Martinet
I built this as a comission for a fellow as a 90th birthday present for his father who used to fly these out of Walney Island in 1944. Not my usual scale and not a subject I would have picked but I think it turned out okay. Apparently the old gent was chuffed to bits and that's all that matters. The last time I built a comission was well over 20 years ago and I swore then that I would never do it again. The fact that it was a horrible Smer 1/48th Fairey Swordfish (this was long before the Tamiya kit existed) and that I, a chronic procrastinator, ended up pulling an all-nighter on xmas eve to finish it may have had something to do with that vow.
This was my first experience with a Magna kit and though it isn't perhaps the finest resin kit I've ever seen, it's by no means the worst either. The white resin has the texture and hardness of a bar of Dove soap but with the added bonus of a zillion air bubbles in it. A great deal of time and effort therefore went into filling all the tiny - and some not so tiny - holes. The end result is okay, perhaps not to my usual standards, but it was a good lesson in banging something together and actually finishing it within a limited time frame. I had a hair over 6 weeks to get it done and yes, once again I put in a few very late nights the week it was due but at least I didn't have to pull an all-nighter this time.
With the exception of some instrument dials from Reheat and an antenna from brass rod and Uschi rigging thread, this is straight out of the box; I had neither the time nor the desire to go to town on any extra detail. Would I build another comission? Probably - but I'd rather it be a bit more "shake 'n' bake" next time. Not a resin kit in other words!
Paint is Humbrol Dark Earth and Pollyscale British Dark Green, cockpit is finished in Humbrol Interior Grey Green. The bottom is Humbrol RAF Trainer Yellow and Pollyscale Black. Decals are from various sources with the kit serial number re-arranged to represent JN601, a Walney Island based aircraft. It's a big, ugly beast of an airplane, but I found myself kind of warming to it after a while. Another unsung hero from the second world war as were the people who flew them, overshadowed by its sexier contemporaries, the Spitfire and Hurricane and the exploits of their pilots.
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