DeHavilland DH.88 Comet 'Grosvenor House'

Cockpit is straightforward. I deviated from the instructions and painted the office black - or better to say: dark gray - as it appeared black and not wood colored in one of the ol pics I happened to come across. 

For the floor I sticked to wood. The PE fret contains minuscle parts to detail invisible stuff - which I used, of course. I payed for it after all. 

With the wings in place it resembles a plane already 

Areas to adress. 

The landing gear is beautifully rendered and appears to be pretty much to scale. This of course makes separation from the spues and cleaning a bit of a challenge but the result when treated with care is quite convincing. 

The front part of the engine cowlings require an insert with a basic representation of the first cylinder of the engine. Everything was primed black and the cylinderrelief received a drybrushing with Vallejo aluminum. 

Wheels need some touch ups and I didn't realise the necessity of central holes on both sides of the hubs. Will have to drill those too.  

ClearProp suggests some grey for the inside of the engine nacelles. I went with lightened XF-53 and used the same color for the rear surfaces of the wheel covers in the absence of other information. 

I didn't like the kit's spinner tip and replaced it with a 0.3 mm syringe piece and a brass disc from my PE spares. 

Prop parts painted. Most of them the second time as merciless silver revealed even the smallest blemishes. Now you have to look realllly hard. 🙂 

With the installation of the shoulder belts assembly of the cockpit is complete.
Behind the cockpit is an access panel of some kind, or maybe even the nozzle for a rear fuel tank. Anyway I tried ro engrave it but ended up off center. So it was filled again with black superglue and sanded flush again. Will have to redo this.
There have been rather big oil tanks at the rear of the engine/landing gear nacelles. Their locks have been replicated with PE spares.  

Same for the fuel cells at the fuselage. To achieve a plain surface for the PE parts I drilled a hole and inserted a rod of corresponding diameter with a flat top. Like this the PE parts are flush with the surface and don't protrude.  

I am convinced that the whole front of the engine nacelle up to the oblique engraving (arrow) consists of a single piece. So the seam after attaching the front had to go. I filled it with black superglue and sanded it flush. 

I followed the instructions and glued the part outlined in red to the wings at an early stage (see pic 3). In a next build I would delay that and align it together with the nacelles as I had to close a bigger gap with pieces of styrene and superglue.  

The outlets for the exhausts were opened.  

Let's hope that my homemade masks are up to the job. 

Canopy colored with the interior color of the cockpit.
Silver at critical areas revealed some sloppy work on my part.
Detention. 

Wheels done after some drybrushing and washing. There are decals for the Dunlop-Text but I think it will be too prominent. But maybe I should bring it out a bit more still. 

Props assembled. 

Final go with Tamiya sanding sponge superfine, cleaning up with IPA and I decided it's time for primer. 

 

Highly diluted Mr. Surfacer 1500 white 

Not entirely surprising but still be a bit frustrating, as I had been in coloring mood, was the detection of some areas that needed a bit more attention. Most problematic are the right inner vents of the engine nacelle. I thinned the walls to open them up but that didn't work and I skipped it. Here I perforated it and repaired it with superglue. Should have put a piece of Styrene behind. Should have...
Was thinking hard how to repair this. 

I chose gluegue to have similar properties between the kits plastic and my repair material which - I hope - will make sanding and particularly rescribing easier afterwards.  

Some more filling, sanding and (re-)scribing done. Let's wait for the gue to dry... 

Reprimed. 

Masking? For a plane all red?

Wanna try something... 

Masking done 

By using pink as base color in certain areas I want to achieve different hues of the red top coat. At the top I limited that to the control areas. 

The bottom was covered with pink all over 

The control areas have been covered with doped linen over a wooden frame. The texture of this has been nicely replicated in the kits parts. I wanted to emphasise this and carefully sanded the pink down again to show the white primer. 

 

I more or less managed to bring out the texture without sanding down through the white primer and onto the grey plastic. 

Unmasked. Has it's own appeal. 

I am anxious to see how my strategy will fare when the red is applied.
Tamiyas LP-7 will be my choice. 

Deniz' comment let me test various base colors to find a good match to my imagination. Here I tested Silver (S), White (W), Pink (P) and Yellow 👍. I don't like the hue with a yellow base, it being too orange (doesn't really show on the pic). Will try lighter yellows. Contrast between pink and white is either nonexistent or the red looks too pinkish on a white base. Not there yet. 

Tested now various yellow and grey tones. 

Everything grey darkend red considerably. The only yellowish color that led to a nice shade was H413 from Mr. Hobbycolor. Unfortunately it appeared darker with a yellow base rather than lighter as I would like to have it. 

Another series. Grey, yellow and pink were lightened 1:3 and 1:5 with white. 

This attempt didn't show the desired result either. Either contrast was lost or it appeared the other way round.
Running out of ideas and not wanting to repaint the whole plane I decided to cover the white/pink base with red - and expect to loose the desired contrast. 

As expected. But looks nice nevertheless. 

Let's slash on a gloss coat and then onto the decals. 

I was a bit afraid that the mostly white decals would not be completely opaque. They are not but appear only a tad pink. Not too bad. 

What bothered me more were their almost complete inertia once placed. It was almost impossible to just adjust their position on the X-22 gloss coat. Often I had to remove them completely and as a memory for that I was left with quite e few air bubbles. A bit annoying. 

I want to depict the Comet on a field fuel stop on the way to Australia. So some equipment is needed. 

Most of the work is done. The issue with the decals could be ameliorated with meticulous puncturing of all the little bubbles and another generous flush of Mr. Mark Softener added by a final coat of gloss varnish. 

A bit of weathering will be added. As much as I deem reasonable for a long distance flight with multiple stops in a new aircraft.
I painted aluminum colored stripes at the engine nacells. I interpreted one of the old pictures as such that this is the contact area between the nacelle halfes and paint is rubbed off there (or there never was any in the first place). 

The tail skid will be next. In my eyes it requires some modifications as its configuration seems ok with the tail of the plane lifted but not when weighted. Then the angle seems off. I will alter that.
The kits exhaust pipes were replaced by metal ones 

And a few preliminary motivational shots. 

Pretty happy with the canopy. Was worried about paint seepage, but everything worked out fine. After placing the masks I sanded the frame more flat to achieve a more realistic appearance (I think that in most kits the canopy frames are way too prominent). 

Ok. Wasn't to be the last build for last year. So it became the first completed model of 2025. 

Calling it done after adding the details. 

Masked and sprayed my imaginary fuel tank locks and added some pigments where I found them convincing.  

Last bits to be added included the homemade counterbalance weights of the rudder and stabilizer and the pitot tube at the wing. 

 

 

 

 

 

Exhaust stains were replicated with pigments too, oil stains with oils. 

 

 

A light overall application of Tamiya pigments added some decent dusting. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diorama stuff 

Rough layout for a little vignette. 

Not 100% sure whether I use all. Let's see how they will work out 

 

After quite a bit of back and forth I finally made up my mind for the refuelling setup. Airmodels fuel drum and pump provided PE parts and the template for the pump. For the barrels I chose Balaton Models barrels bespite their flaws as they are closer to british barrels.  

Slowly I inch myself forward. Prepping the base. Glazing, building a frame from styrene rods and filling it with a plaster of Paris/Elmer glue-mix to form the ground 

Primer 

Whichever way I turned it, I wasn't happy with my diorama layout (see pics 71 and 73). Something was off and I think it was the missing convincing interaction between the pilot and the food vendor.
For some subconscious reasons I grabbed this figure for a modelling session with friends. Surprisingly though as I didn't like it when I inspected it together with the other figures of this set. It looked more like a lump of plastic than a genuine figure. But on closer examination it looked more and more like a girl with a long headdress and not so much like a begging child. Inspired by a picture from the web I opted for a grey basic dress and a bright red headdress. To let the red shine a base layer of white was followed be a yellow one which then was painted red. 

And here is the completed figure which I grew quite fond of during the painting. 

 

 

That's the final layout. All major components are pinned for enhanced stability when finally mounted. 

Somehow I even struggle with the most simple groundwork. Took me a few attempts to achieve smoothness, texture and color to my liking.  

A small test was promising so I use VMS' ENML Binders for pigment fixation for the first time. Anxious about how that will turn out. 

 

 

That much for today. A few details and some touch ups are still missing. Maybe tomorrow I can finish it 

Half a dozen minor mishaps impacted speed and level of frustration. Let's see how I will like it later on. 

 

After some final touch ups at the base I declare this one finished. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe I manage to shoot some better pictures under daylight conditions.