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This time the model with Polish insignia. MiG-21MF with side number 1910 stationed in Minsk Mazowiecki. The model is Trumpeter 1:32 scale, I hope that eventually someone will release a new version of this model. Model as always straight from the box.

Hi all, my another Mustang finished. Tamiya kit 1/32 Barracuda wheels HGW wet transfers Eduard Look dashboard Lifelike decals All colour MRP & Gunze Sangyo SM01

Thanks Troy! Well we officially have a GBPB! (Great Big Pointy B@$*!d) This is going to be one TALL model display when done The wings are at this time, just push fit into the fuselage, but the fuselage is 85% complete, and the fit was surprisingly good. Its a loooooooooong model though! The fit of the cockpit was good all around, and the nose cone has really started making it look like a zipper now. I have blended the sections of the cockpit that had to wait until the fuselage was assembled, but now I still need to go back and add the photo etch details to the inside areas of the cockpit, then finish up painting those areas the cockpit color. After those are dry, I will mask them off and repaint the ODG on the instrument hoods: Even the area at the nose where 4 panels come together fit exceptionally well, and needed only mild sanding to bring the nose cone into alignment and smoothness with the other 3 panels: The only fit issue I experienced was on the rear spine panel on the port side. This was likely due to my own error in assembly, but has been dealt with using PPP and Mr Surfacer Black 1500: Ok guys, this was shot with my crappy cell camera, and of course with the lights off and with YouTube dumbing down the quality, its kind of a crap video, but you can get an idea of what the lights look like with the fuselage closed up. The top and bottom asynchronous flashing beacons will get a small piece of fiber optic cable cut to a size to sit in the small cut tube that the MLED sits in, so it will shoot light directly up into each beacon light that will get glued on top of the hole. These both will eventually get painted red. The only down side here is the exhaust really only shows up bright like this with the lights off. In most situations, I will likely be displaying the 104 in a lit contest or show type lighting. However, you can still see the exhaust light flickering and the color by changing the angle you look at it, and if you look more up inside the exhaust. The effect is just a bit more subtle with the lights on. The other lights, including the cockpit lights you can still readily see with the lights on. I'm going for a very clean (display/vignette wise) look, so I'm hoping the clear rod will clean up nicely, and I can cut it off at a desired angle later on the bottom of the base. Ill likely add some chrome paint or foil there on the bottom of the display/end of the clear tube to help bounce the light back through the clear rod. I will determine the length of the rod later when I know how much room I have to work with in my display cabinet. (I'm definitely going to have to raise my second to bottom shelf to accommodate the 104)

This has to be one of my favourite kits. I have built quite a few. After we lost our little Daughter i built one and sold it for charity , along with an airfix 1/24 spitfire , so i have a very soft spot for it. Both are on this site. This one came courtesy of a facebook auction group and it came with Paragon , UC set , exhaust set , and ammo belts. It also came with Radus belts , airscale instruments , brass gun barrels , fasteners and grils , and Barracuda Wheels , and for a fantastic price. I have just added to it with eduard interior and instrument panel , with plans to add the metal legs from SAC and radiator from Eduard. I have the Tamiya 1/32 Mosquito so i can use that as referrence to scratchbuild some details too. This will be my own most detailed one so far. Im very much looking forward to the journey. I like the Tamiya 1/32 mosquito , its exquiset , but to me the Airfix one is a bigger challenge and it has more "soul". Stay tuned , this will be a long one....

The B-17 is my all-time favourite aircraft and I've always wanted to build an early version in 1/48th scale. I bought the excellent Koster conversion a few years ago which gives you a new rear fuselage and stabilisers to convert the Monogram B-17G to an earlier B/C/D model. The conversion also comes with a Cheyenne tail turret and staggered waist gun set up to make a late G-model - parts I'd used previously: DSC_0129 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr The main components are all vacuform, and are molded very crisply. There are crystal clear canopies (the B/C/D models had a different flight deck arrangement as well as a more heavily framed nose piece) as well as decals for an early USAAF B-17C/D: DSC_0123 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr I decided to actually use the Revell B-17F kit, as it requires less modification to the nose than using the Monogram B-17G. However, you still have to do a fair bit of surgery to backdate the F to the earlier models. The nose needs cutting off and a section removed due to the shorter noses on the B/C/D models. The whole rear fuselage also needs removing just aft of the radio room: IMG_E1390 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr The new vacform rear fuselage can then be offered up to the Revell fuselage: IMG_E1388 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr Here the shortened nose has been reattached and mods carried out to the cheek windows which were the earlier style without the later enlarged cheek gun windows seen on the late E-model onwards: IMG_E1428 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr It was then a case of painting the interior and gluing everything together: IMG_1633 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr IMG_1632 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr And that's as far as things have progressed so far. All pretty straight-forward as far as conversions go, helped by the excellent quality and fit of the Koster parts. This will eventually be finished as an RAF Fortress MkI as a tribute to the pioneers of daylight bombing very early in the war. Tom

I decided at the last minute to take the 1/32 Corsair Mk II to one final show. Went to the 2019 SprueDoo in Little Rock, Arkansas this Saturday. Thought about not taking it, but decided to anyway. Glad I did!! I won a Gold, Best Aircraft and Best of Show Military! My first Best of Show! I was shocked and very honored!

Good thing no one has noticed that I put some decals on upside down....or zoomed in Random update, decided I would replace the headrest.....added the beading around the front and back of the headrest using stretched sprue. I think it's not bad...but let me know what you think!

thank you my friends been away on business a bit so not much done, but I guess enough for an episode.. ..ailerons... lets take a look - see how there are both raised & indented rivets... there is also what looks like an overlapping panel at the forward half of the aileron (forward of teh trim tab) so I thought I would make a folded metal part with the raised rivets, and add the other panel on top with indented rivets.. ..I started by adding both sides of the drawing together to get what it would be if folded out flat and pinpricked where the raised rivets were - also scored the trim tab... ..then after turning it over and adding the raised rivets, i folded it and folded the leading edges to get the inner (and main) part of the aileron ..then I made and rivetted the overlapping panel, also folding down the leading edges.. ..a thick plastic card spar was then added and once I had made both ailerons, they were filled with Alec Tiranti expanding foam - this stuff goes rock hard and was actually a bit of ballache to clean out of the open end where the aileron meets the flaps.. ..with both done, I started removing the trim tabs - these were waste - I made new ones with raised rivets.. ..soon both were completed.. ..the exposed end seen because the flaps are down was detailed according to pictures & drawings.. ..and with two fixing rods fixed into the leading edges, they were mounted to the wings - I might live to regret this but the wingtip fairings after profiling to neatly fit the ailerons were getting really fragile and will break so hopefully this will protect them.. ..Flaps next - they are an interesting, if similar structure.. TTFN Peter

started to add some PE in the wheelwells and on the wings

Here's the final photos of the Wingnut Wings Felixstowe I completed. I had posted a few pictures earlier in the WIP Section but these are much better shots. This particular model was completed as aircraft 4291, a Saunders built machine delivered to Killinghome on 4/20/1918. This aircraft, under the command of TC Patterson abd AH Munday, shot down Zeppelin L62 over Heligoland on May 10. In July of '18, she was transfered to the fledgling US Naval Air Service, after which it was painted overall black and had spot lamps mounted under the wings for nighttime operations. 4291 came to an inglorious end (along with the US Sailor responsible) when said sailor used a match to check the fuel level in the main tank. Seeing as this beast is too big to use my regular photo setup with, I had to shoot it outside on a cloudy day. Just as I snapped the pic a fortuitous gust of wind came along. Great timing. Running up Engine 1. I chose to model her as she would have appeared just before being painted black, as the natural look of the wood and linen was more appealing to me than any of the dazzle schemes. I hope you like it and as always, feedback, comments and critiques welcome. Cheers Mike

OK, time for a long overdue update. Lots of progress since my last post so there's a few pics to show this; This is a resin detail set bought from ebay. Can't remember the name of the guy who makes these but do a search and you'll find it. Well worth the cash but not sure how much you'll actually get to see on the finished build. and painted.... Instrument panel - all out of the box Engines painted Build complete and ready for paint; I have to say, the fit of some of the parts is poor for a modern kit. The nose/gun section was particularly bad and required lots of superglue/rescribing. It also needs LOTS of noseweight to avoid a tail sitter..!! On to painting then; All main markings are sprayed using home made masks cut on my Portrait cutter Paints used were Mr Paint for the Olive Drab and Neutral Gray, Mr Hobby for the yellow and green on the markings. I'm using an Eagle Cal decal sheet of 'Clana Louise' but have found the nose markings to be quite ugly (lots of creases) when applied around the complex curves, so I've removed them and will mask/spray them instead. She's still to weather/decal etc so still a lot to do. This needs to be ready for Telford in four weeks time (gulp..!) for our local IPMS branch (IPMS Cleveland) 25th anniversary group display. Come and see this in the flesh

I have used corrected resin tail and rudder which was purchased somewhere in Germany years ago. You can see the shape difference of the Revell s part and the corrected resin unit.

OK, consider these two well used warhorses: then these: and this, one of my favourite Lancaster pictures and I would suggest fairly typical of your "average" condition: Winter in Bomber County:

Some progress. Painting of the wings terminated

Hi All, the big airfix hellcat is finally finished! An enjoyable build of a really Great kit. No real issues just took some careful building and plenty of dry fitting before glueing in place. The blue was tricky to get any depth and variation and didn’t really like being worked with oils. I used a neutral wash for panel lines and as a filter. Resin wheels was the only after market and all markings are painted. cheers Matt

One more post for today! I have managed to finish the cockpit and it’s side walls. The barracuda parts are fantastically detailed but a few of mine had some minor shrinkage. The cockpit placards and stencil decals are lovely and a great bit of detail. I thought they were writing but have a similar block letter style like the Eduard pre-painted parts. It may not be 100% accurate (mustang fans, please forgive me!) but I’m loving the detail! First the cockpit. The hgw belts are great as always. The barracuda seat is nice but not much more detailed than the kit part, though the backpad is much nicer. As is the mustang standard I did the work black showing wood underneath. The wood texture is the decals that came with the seatbelts. The barracuda battery and radio are definitely worth the money though! The gun sight has been left off till I put the armoured glass in later so I don’t break it off. The sidewalls are a wealth of wonderful detail, even oob, but with the barracuda resin and decals they get taken to a new level. I still need to semi matt coat them and add a little bit of weathering. The photos tend to show up little flaws that are either not visible to the naked eye, or will never be seen once finished. Hopefully tomorrow I can seal up the fuselage and get going on the wings and wheel bay. So much detail to add!

Managed to get the rest of the camo on tonight. Just masking up various other parts now. Still got landing lights and a few other bits to put on and of course the weapons.

Hi all, I've been working on preparing the wings, fin/rudder, ailerons, tail planes, elevators and their associated support struts. The struts should, I think, have steel reinforcing pins moulded through them, but I found the 'Z' shaped cabane struts had ends without pins. Also the fuselage indents for locating these struts had no locating hole. The single piece fin and rudder had no locations for attaching it to the fuselage and neither did the tail planes. The separate ailerons and elevators also has no locating pins/holes. Therefore I added support pins of 0.6 mm diameter for the wing struts and ailerons and 0.4 mm diameter pins to locate the fin/rudder, elevators and tail planes. Mike

On with the engine. Radials are lovely to look at, and I think it has to do with the repetition of shapes and symmetry. When it comes to masking and painting however that means everything 14 or even 28 times over! The same applies to producing tiny bits like these spark plugs and clamps that I cut from hypodermic needles. Mass production thinking is the key. As you can see, I have gone with the colours in the tweak list. In essence it is pretty black, with the central bits in a blue enamel. The kit engine is a mish-mash of the Sakae 12 and 21, which was a bit disappointing in a way. They are very different engines. I sanded off the kit pipes from the rocker covers, and added my own styrene connecting pipes lower down as they are on the Sakae 12 - these appear to be natural aluminium. You may have noticed that I added baffles to the top of each cylinder, with a central pipe and a guide hole for the spark-plug lead. they don't look so good from the top as they are just straight styrene. The actual baffles are intricate shapes that were probably pressed metal. It would be great if someone could 3-d print these. On the captured engine photo, you can see a very obvious silver intake on the top cylinder of the rear radial bank. I assume it is a duct for cooling air into the ancillary compartment? This is my styrene version of it... Here the basic parts are, painted up and ready for assembly. Now I hope some researchers are watching since I need to paint the engine firewall and cowling supports next. I'm not sure that Tamiya have the colours right, based on photographs that I have seen. This is the dark art of black and white to colour alchemy of course! The cowling supports look like they could be black, not Aotake. The firewall is invisible of course. Any pointers here would be much appreciated. Sean

thank you folks - you are too kind carrying on with the wing fillets - the borders are laid out with tape to rub soft metal into to get the shapes in 3D after translating the plan profiles.. ..taped down & burnishing.. ..the forwardmost fillet is one piece and very difficult - there was nothing for it but to have a go at bashing some ali into shape - itv soon kinked and creased and took a lot of work to get even half right... ..you can see here how the material just wouldn't do what was needed and split in one place - no matter I thought I could let in a piece here - this had any inner creases filed down to give it the best chance of truly flattening out when fixed.. ..still working it.. ..and finished & with fixings.. it's not perfect, but good enough for me.. ..same on the other side.. ..the PE arrived for the front vents so I could do this panel too - another tricky one.. ..first step was to add the vent structure and then make the front seam of the panel meet the nose intake casting... the rest of the panel lines could be dealt with with overlaps being removed.. ..with both panels & the vents added..,. the fasteners are added, but not yet all the riveting.. ..and the nose is pretty much coming together.. ..still lots to do despite it looking quite complete... TTFN Peter

All- Here she is, in all her splendor! I may still fiddle with the weathering a little, but I sure am pleased. I wasn't able to get her into work today for good photos, so I snapped a few outside in the overcast with an actual camera, rather than a cell phone. I started this kit over 4 years ago, and its kind of sentimental to get this one done. She depicts my Grandfather's aircraft, 44-6888, of the 96th BG/337th BS. Her crew unofficially named her "Ragged But Right". The war ended before nose art could be applied. My Grandfather, Joseph Denver, was a bombardier and completed 13 missions at the end of WWII. He first mission was in February of 1945, and he remained in Europe until 1946 as part of the occupation forces. He flew most of his missions in this plane,and that is why I chose to depict her. This is the HK 1/32 B-17G, their initial release, with all of the bells and whistles from Eduard, Profimodeller, and some scratch building. She's airbrushed with AK Extreme Metals and Model Master enamels, and sports a combination of kit decals, Kits World, and custom J Bot Decals for the markings. Here's some photos: DSC_3323 by Dennis SAuter, on Flickr DSC_3324 by Dennis SAuter, on Flickr DSC_3325 by Dennis SAuter, on Flickr DSC_3326 by Dennis SAuter, on Flickr DSC_3327 by Dennis SAuter, on Flickr DSC_3328 by Dennis SAuter, on Flickr DSC_3329 by Dennis SAuter, on Flickr DSC_3336 by Dennis SAuter, on Flickr DSC_3338 by Dennis SAuter, on Flickr I wanted to close this post with the Eight Air Force's letter to St. Peter, which is quite sobering: Let them in, Peter, they are so tired; Give them the couches where the angels sleep. Let them wake whole again to find new dawn fired with sun, not war. And may their peace be deep. Remember where the broken bodies lie... And give them things they like. Let them make noise. God knows how young they were to have to die! Give swing bands, not gold harps, to these our boys. Let them love, Peter - they have had no time - Girls sweet as meadow wing, with flowering hair. They should have trees and bird song, hills to climb - Tell them how they are missed. Say not to fear; It's going to be alright with us down here. All always folks, comments and critiques are welcome. Thanks for tuning in. - Dennis S. Thornton, CO USA

OOB build. Wanted to try my hand at freehand airbrushing with the new AK paint line. Looks ok to me. Cheers Collin

Hi all, On the top of the fuselage and to the rear of the radiator is a condensation matrix for cooling radiator steam back to liquid and returning it back into the cooling system through a pipe connected to the rear of the assembly. Apparently this avoided a build up of steam pressure being lost through the filler cap and losing coolant. Anyway I wasn't happy with the resin one piece part in the kit. I felt it was too large at the base and anyway the top was slightly off centre with the bottom. Also the kit doesn't appear to have the 90 degree pipe at the back of the assembly. So I cut the part in two, re-shaped the base, connected them with brass tube and added the rear pipe using annealed 0.8 mm brass rod. Strangely the photo-etch in the kit supplies only one 'matrix' disc for the condensation matrix, which presumably like a radiator, would have the matrix from front to rear? I used the photo-etch from the front of the matrix (as that will be more visible) and drilled 0.3 mm diameter holes in the rear face to replicate the matrix, Mike

Hi all, The undercarriage assembly is completed. Struts modified by removing the pre-moulded axle ends and bungee suspension cords. Cross bracing anchors points added to the bottom front of the forward undercarriage struts. Axle secured to the undercarriage struts and 0.4 mm diameter lead wire used to replicate the bungee cord suspension. Bracing bar in kit replaced (too short) with 0.9 mm diameter brass tube, Mike

The days I strived for perfection and accuracy have long gone. These days I'm just happy to finish something. This is my 5th model this year. Paints are Gunze, decals are from HAD - a bit brittle, otherwise excellent - conform to panel lines beautifully. seatbelts are from Radu (superb!). Hope you like. I've also finished a Revell P-51D which I will take pictures of later today. Lothar

A Thing Divine For Nothing Natural I Ever Saw So Nobel Special Hobby Tempest Mk.V #32052 was used for Evan Mackies mount. Mackie, RNZAF, was the highest scoring Tempest ace with 20+ kills. Albeit, most of Mackies kills were in Spitfires. This kit is a most difficult build. I started this almost 2 years ago and binned it several times as my MoJo was clearly flattened with this. From the cockpit, wing root and landing gear construction offered me plenty of WTFFF! and Are You Kidding Me! moments. There was a good chance you may have heard my screams. This kit is clearly recommended for experienced modellers only. I chose Mackies build as I have several Kiwi friends and the lack of ordinance and invasion stripes show the beautiful lines of the Tempest. Weathering kept to a minimum as this aircraft was delivered to Mackie May 1945. See my build log. Build Details Yahu 3214 IP, center panel only as side panels do not fit Barracuda 32334 Nose Correction Set, 32140 Tempest Wheels, 32011 Spitfire Cockpit Upgrade Part II (Acemaker II gunsight only) Master Model 32096 Tempest Mk.V "short" Cannon Tips Maketar Masks 32122 Tempest Mk.V REXX 32043 exhausts ANYZ AN011 .5mm Braided Thread, AN016 Line Connectors MV Lenses 197 Amber, LS800 Red & Green, PN21 Clear Albion Aluminum Slide Fit Tubes .3mm, .5mm, .7mm and .9mm MR Paint 77 Nato Black 110 RAF Green 111 RAF Interior Grey Green 112 RAF Medium Sea Grey 115 RAF Ocean Grey 118 RAF Sky 122 RAF Marking Yellow 123 RAF Marking Red 135 Insignia White 183 Oxford Blue Vallejo 306 Dark Rubber Various Alclad Colors Tamiya X22 Clear, XF86 Flat Clear MiG Washes Dark Wash Streaking Grime 1203 Engine Oil 1408 PLW Deep Grey 1602 PLW Green Brown 1612 MiG Pigments Light Dust 3002 Black Smoke P023 Rust P025 Russian Earth P034 These publications, highly recommended, were critical helping me on this build. Especially the landing gear rake. Airframe Minature No.4 Hawker Tempest Osprey 27 Typhoon and Tempest Aces of WWII Warts and all this build yielded some great lessons. Thank you all for your encouragement and support during this build.

A look at the top of the wing, and fuselage, of a Lanc showing how weathered they got: Jari

Ok ... so this stuff arrived a couple of weeks ago ... Unfortunately at about the same time ... or maybe a few days earlier ... I had a couple of software updates ... They usually go off without a hitch ... but this time with the Catalina update and the iOS 13 one - something went wrong with photo sync. Good thing about the internet is ... you just type the issue into Google and find out that everyone else has the same problem ... There's still an issue with the new "Music" app ... it switches off the equaliser/pre-amp after every track ... but at least I can download the photos off my phone now! A LARGE box arrived from Frontline with some goodies for RAAF builds: With large kit boxes inside ... An EA.18G ... A couple of F/A.18A's With Australian Markings included ... The pilot is damned Collingwood supporter!!! And an F.35 model ... of which we're getting the real deal here someday. And meanwhile this came from Metro's ... cleverly disguised with the wrong box art for the ad ... That makes Just 2 SWS kits short of the entire 1/32 collection now ... The Navy Spad ... and the Do.335A-12 Rog

Thanks guys! Now Available!!! www.Zactomodels.com

I have recently finished my Ar 234 so now I fancied doing some Allied aircraft for a bit of a change. To start them off I thought I’d work on my first Tamiya kit, and it is a lovely kit! After the frustration of working on the Ar 234 and Fly’s lackadaisical sense of proper fit or instructions Tamiya’s kit is a dream. As always I’m not modelling a specific machine and I’m doing a fictional paint scheme. I am adding a lot of aftermarket to this one as well, including: Eduard’s Bid Ed set HGW belts and wooden floor CMK wheels (still not sure about these) Aires M2 .50 Cals Eduard ammo belts HGW wet transfers for markings and stencils Yahu control panel Barracuda seat, cockpit upgrade set, cockpit side walls, and placard decals. Ive never done a NMF before, so this should be a learning experience. Has anybody done one using MRP paints before? If so, any tips? I have been using a combination of Brett Green’s How To Build book and following Chuck540z3’s “kicked up a notch” build to help, along with a ton of internet reference photos. Without further delay here are the first pics, shots of the completed Packard Merlin; i added the various wiring and piping needed along the sides as well as the Eduard crank arms and scratch building ignition rails and wires. Sorry for the photo quality! Hope you enjoy the thread and I’ll post some more soon

I have been cracking on with the kit over the last couple of days and have a few more bits to show once they are nicely dry and weathered. For now though I have the oil tank and control panel to show. The yahu panel is lovely, since the photo below I have given it a semi gloss coat and a touch of gloss in the dials.

All done Build thread here: Very hard to photograph being so large... Surprising how different the colours look with a differing background... And, again, don’t usually do black & white for aircraft, but it kind of suits the aircraft... Thanks for following along, Guy

Hi, not been around for a while as I’ve been building smaller kits. I have always wanted to build a museum type model of the Camel and finally go around to buying one. This is the plastic version and not the larger wooden type so creating the wood effect was a learning curve for me as I’d never done it before. Here are some pics of my build for you to look at. As you can see I’m trying to rig the structure as it would have been using reference photos as the kit asks you to rig most of the parts with one continuous piece of line. I’m making the turnbuckles by hand as no one seems to make 1/16 versions. That’s been a job as there are around 300 in the whole aircraft. Anyway enjoy the build. Hope the image links work ok. Matt

Not a LSP but this baby is bigger than my 1/32 PhantomII! My daughter loved the real plane at the USAF Museum in Dayton. She had my wife look all over for it online so I did my best to make a quality build out of it. Surprisingly the seems are really tight on this. lacking detail but hey that's what painting skills are for :-) So Revell released this before the public unveiling. They tried to predict what it might look like. Not so close. I took pics from the real Spirit, pulled out every decal sheet I own and found individual decals that would make a legit looking bomber. I tried to get some better shots outside tonight to show the weathering I did. Somewhat better. I think in the end though I was a little too heavy with the top coat of grimey black and splotches of tire black. Next time even less of a covering would show off the weathering better. I tried this in B&W to see if it shows better online Next here's some glamour shots... I think this one shows the weathering the best And the pièce de résistance, a bronze award at the Cincinnati Scale Modelers Show last weekend!

I will be present both days manning the HK Models stand. So don't be shy and say hello. Cheers Cees

I don't know what I was thinking but it was a good price, this kit arrived today. (image borrowed off the internet)

Here is one, in b&w but the caption says it was in 1944 and you can see a lighter colour in the nose turret: Jari

Hi everybody! Thank you all, I appreciate you like my work! Absolutely agree, moreover, problems how to dye the surface are gone using real materials Finally, I have gathered some pics of the current state. The fuselage itself is complete, the port side wing needs only a few touches to finish it. I am slowly approaching to the moment, when all the rigging takes it's place. For a long time, I have been thinking about the best way how to make the structure of the fuselage. A friend of mine, who is an RC modeller gave me an advice to try carbon rods or profiles, available at RC models shops. It is quite difficult to glue this material together, as well as it is almost imposible to bend it. BUT, it is a great material as it keeps its straightness. It is very solid and strong, but easy to cut or sand it. I used those rods make all the masters and then as reinforcements whithin the parts when they were casted. Traverse struts of the fuselage are those carbon rods only. The result is satisfactory, strong enough and nice to work with it...

Hi folks! I finally managed to paint the Elan13 figures to complement the wonderfull WNW Sopwith Camel. The WIP: It is OOB, except for the seat belt. Rigging was done with EZ Line and Prym knitting elastic. The grass mat is from Polak models. Here it is in all its glory: Cheers, Markus

Two really big boxes added to my stash: If I get the courage to tackle a lot of resin, the Junkers will be converted to a Ju 188F-1.

I just dared to cut off the forward fuselage-section from the kit part, using a printed template to guide the scriber. I hope I don't regret this act of slaugther The printed fuselage section will need some sanding to get a nice transition to the kit part, but basically it works. Now, I'll try to make a new nose, based on better plans. Cheers Alex

Today's progress on F4U-1A "5".

So a little more work done over the last few days, first up I built up the bomb bay assembly, not to many parts really but some care is needed in getting everything square but the close fit of parts does help. In general I think the interior is pretty good on this kit, however I do think the bomb racks are very very clunky and poorly done but not a lot will be seen when complete. I believe Eduard make a couple of sets to replace a lot of this but its an expensive upgrade to be honest, I do think when its all painted up and closed up nobody will really notice to much as its hardly like a B-17, Lancaster or even a Mosquito for that matter with big wide open bomb bays showing everything off. I've also test fitted the whole interior in to the fuselage before moving on to adding any further detail and the fit is very good, here are a couple of shots. and a quick shot of the cockpit opening. I've got a good picture on which direction I'm going on this now and which area's to add further detail to. The nose and waist areas will get the main attention from here now. Regards. Andy

This is one of my favorites. I very much need to model at least one truck & Komet combo. Someone else did here (smaller scale though)... http://hawkeyes-squawkbox.com/2009/08/25/after-action-report-ipms-national-convention-pt-iii/

He is!

Hi everyone, my name is Gianluca, i'm 21 and i'm writing from Italy I'll leave some of my recent builds, i hope that some of you guys like it All models are in 1/48 except for the Japanese H8K which is in 1/72, As you can see i'm a Seaplane Lover, now i'm trying to figure out how to make 1/48 floats for the XC-47C, wish me luck!

I’m from the UP. Glad I moved to CA. For those who don’t know, The UP stands for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It has four seasons, Last Winter, Winter, Next Winter, and Mosquito/Black Fly Season.

Hi Gord, Here are a couple of pics of the "extended" nose gear strut. I am not sure that this is the actual total length of the nose strut when it is the "hike position" used for cat launch. I extend mine for the airborne position when fully extended in the Weight Off Wheels (WOW) when in the retraction mode. I determined this by placing the upper trunnion mount in its position and then determining the maximum length with clearance to the aft wheel well bulkhead. The spacing marks on the mat are 1/2" apart. This is the nearly retracted position needed for my purposes. Hope these are helpful and if I can help further just let me know. The build up to the point I stopped is here on LSP but the photos went the way of many others. Barry

Had a really productive day at the bench adding all of the basic internal details. A couple of areas worth noting are the rear bulkhead parts, I would suggest anyone building this fits one at a time, let it dry and test fit the fuselage halves as they are well oversize and need some trimming down ad the fuselage halves just will not meet. This is the worst offender of them all due to the way HB have engineered the fit of this sub assembly and leaves a huge gap in the top of the fuselage joint. Some very careful trimming is needed and plenty of dry fits but eventually I got a good fuselage fit. So with the basic internals fitted I need to decide which areas I will add further detail to bearing in mind the interior will be painted dark dull green. Regards. Andy

The model contains a PE cockpit and some other bits for the gears and flaps from Eduard. thanx for watching! Piet