Halinski standard on new Modelik kit

[Don Boose]

Many thanks, Leif, for once again providing a thoroughly-researched, gracefully-written, beautifully-illustrated, fascinating, and informative thread about a most interesting and attactive airplane of the Golden Age of aviation.

Don

[Bomarc]

Originally Posted by Don Boose

Many thanks, Leif, for once again providing a thoroughly-researched, gracefully-written, beautifully-illustrated, fascinating, and informative thread about a most interesting and attactive airplane of the Golden Age of aviation.

Don

What he said! This is why I always look forward to a Leif thread.....

Mike

[Leif Ohlsson]

I just wanted to say that the Avia BH-5 arrived today, from Slawomir Wojcik. I believe I must be one of the first people to possess this beautiful model - along with others who may have pre-ordered it, of course.

In regard to some of my previous notes, I'd like to make a correction:

There is absolutely no need for recolouring. The artists seem to have hit the correct nuance of beige-yellow spot-on. My initial impression was from web images of obviously poorer quality than the original print.

The quality of instructions sketches, and the parts sheets themselves, are of even higher quality than I expected. The weathering of the interior is absolutely beatiful. And the instruction images are more plentiful than I thought was possible. I have not seen quality like this, not even in Halinski kits - and it is a civilian aircraft, of a very attractive 1923 vintage!

All in all, this model makes me very happy.

Leif

[Don Boose]

I very much hope that we will soon see a Leif Ohsson BH-5 build thread.

Don

[Damraska]

Originally Posted by Leif Ohlsson

Oh, how I would like to know what technique they used for those valve springs...

Take fairly soft, thin gauge wire and wrap it around a small screw. The treads on the screw will space out the coils of the resulting spring. Remove the screw from the wire and poof, perfect spring.

-Doug

[Leif Ohlsson]

Thanks, Doug - and good to see you back around the site! - L.

[Damraska]

Thanks, Leif, I am enjoying my card modeling renaissance. Three years working with other mediums has expanded my horizons and changed my perspective for the better, I think.

-Doug

[Leif Ohlsson]

I remember how completely set back I was when I realized that M. Golovanov ("mgolovanov", a distinguished member of this site) actually scanned and redrew his models before printing and building them (see this thread about his Zero build). Stunning as the result was, I quietly regarded this as being a bit over the top.

Not so, I've come to realize. Here's my belated attempt to stumble in M. Golovanov's footsteps, along the well-trodden path of his beautiful builds (see his gallery photos).

Studying my own scanned and enlarged sheets for the Avia BH-5 I came to realize that the printing process itself, much more so than the scanning, created a pattern of small dots which became embarrasingly visible when enlarged to roughly double its original size (from 1/33 to 1/16).

So I started to redraw a couple of sheets, in Adobe Illustrator and vector format, as distinct from the pixel-based scan of the printed original. The most visible difference would be on the outer covering parts, I thought, since the original replica of the BH-5 is so immaculate and shining, and the matrix of small dots on the covering parts was particularly unattractive.

For a test print, however, I chose the instrument panel, mostly because it was such an enormous work redrawing it. Here's how the original looked, scanned & enlarged:


Note how visible the dotted pattern is; this is not a result of the scanning, but of the original printing process of the kit and the comparatively low resolution of the commercial printing process. Sometimes you may even see this pattern in macro-shots of details in build threads. The conventional wisdom that purchased and printed kits always are of higher quality than purchased and downloaded models doesn't seem to hold up any longer. The ideal would be a Halinski-quality original as a download kit! As support for this, I offer the same part after redrawing:


I think the result is pretty stunning, even if I say so myself. The instruments are drawn against a panel of my favourite Redbeech texture, and Illustrator renders perfect shiny metal surfaces at a mouseclick. I haven't drawn all those instrument faces myself, though, far from it - they all come from the generous owners of Aerocockpit.com, who sells these instruments to scale model builder, but generously let's the rest of us copy high-quality images of them; see this thread. Even with this enormous help, redrawing the panel was enough of a chore, I can assure you.

If nothing else, I hope this exercise will have demonstrated the value of the Aerocockpit site. But however stunning the panel may look in its present shape, was it worth the trouble? The proof of the proverbial papermodeling pudding of course lies in the printing of it. So I prepared a test-printing sheet:



And here's the outcome, photographed on top of the original 1/33 kit:



Whether it was worth it, is hard to say. It is immensely satisfying to be able to accomplish a redrawing like this, and the final result may actually be a bit better than if printing the enlarged original straight off, but there is of course no proportion between the work involved and the outcome.

Thus, if you apply utilitarian measures to your papermodeling efforts, this exercise might not be worth it. But if you are prone to utilitarianism, you are probably not a paper modeler anyway. So I will take my time and continue redrawing the beautiful Avia BH-5 model. It is a real peaceful and soothing exercise.

And, of course, at some spot down the road I simply must get down to adjusting my printer so that it renders a bit more colourful prints. Unfortunately, I don't have many clues on how to go about that, since the adjustment panel for my Epson D88 printer driver is very difficult to locate on my otherwise so helpful Mac computer. And when I sometimes do manage to find it, it is always exceedingly difficult to understand what adjustments I ought to make.

Leif

[Wilfried]

Hello Leif,

after reading your lines, I think we need an index/archive for all those ressources for our hobby that you and other members offer to us?!

With lovely greetings - nice cockpit layout, too
the Wilfried

[Leif Ohlsson]

Here's a typical former before and after redrawing. I think this is worth it. The matrix of coloured dots in the scanned printed version shows up too clearly when enlarged.



The scale at the top is in millimeters, so you can see that the image is about twice the size of the printed part, which in turn is twice the size of the original 1/33 scale. It is true that the printing pattern is twice as apparent when enlarging like this. But I would ask you to take a closer look at some of those detail shots of master builder's work published on the site. For example, have a look at Rutek's build of the PZL P.11c. Here's one of his detailed photos:



Notice how perfect the build in itself is - and how the printing pattern shows up at this magnification, even though he is building in 1/33. The grey of the metal would not be a dotted pattern in the original file - this only happens when you print. This is an illustration, I believe, of the builder being far better than even the high-quality material he is working with. Rutek's building skill would have deserved a repainting of the kit - or better, a download of the original file, which would not suffer from this printing pattern!

What we have is a situation when the best models do not make justice to either their creators, or the master builders taking them on - and only because the only way they are distributed is in printed form. A suitable system of downloading models has not yet won the day at the top notch publishers. Michael Krohl at Gremir models really has the edge here - he is distributing high-quality models electronically, with an option to rescale them without loss of quality. This is a great system, much ahead of its time - my only lament is that it doesn't work on a Mac!

Leif