Berlin, early 1946 - the phrase Cold War might have been born on freezing mornings like these; already the dividing lines between East and West were becoming obvious across the ruins of Berlin and it was clear to all stationed there that the strong RAF presence was intended for Soviet eyes, not German...
A relatively simple OOB build that I picked out simply because I had several metallic schemes awaiting painting.
The well known scheme for 5R-S is included in the box. One of the first of the Berlin Tempests to have its paint stripped.
Like most of the Mark 1 Models kits, fitting is reasonable but the mouldings are short run and some filler is needed - in this case, particularly along the wing roots.
Put together and masked. I have taken to putting the whole thing together before painting, rather than leaving props and wheels off as I did before, since I found they often ended up languishing on a shelf of shame while I put off the fiddly final assembly.
Reference photos of 5R-S show rather distinctive difference in the metal shades - apparently caused by differently orientated aluminium. I tried to replicate this with two shades of metallic paint but I got the contrast rather too strong and would have to correct it later.
Decalling was straight forward.
Testing the base layout. You can see the rather dark patches here. I later hand painted over these with a lighter Vallejo metallic to tone them down.
For the base, I kept things simple, lots of photos show the snow of early 1946 so it seemed a good choice to set the scene and the David Brown VIG tractor (a 3d print from Ray Rimes Minatures) matched those in use by the RAF in some reference photos of the time.
That was it, thanks for reading, comments and feedback welcome. The vignette has already been on display at a few events and will be Scale Model World, Telford this year with SIG144.
