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Almost finish A few other distractions and a busy work schedule has slowed this build down a bit, but now it is almost finished. Next week I will add the drop tanks and missiles. Then only wait for my friend Sean to return from his beach holiday and take some photos of the model. Then onto the next fuselage stretch, the Cheetah C, and hopefully the last. Nick

32D014 Bf 109 G-5 for Revell or Hasegawa kit £9.99

Sorted! Anyway, where were we... ah, yes! After making the canopy frame, I attached the hinges to almost all the doors and gave their interiors an additional layer of white: The small doors were put into the outer weapon and the main gear legs were painted :bay doors Deviating from the instructions, I installed the large inner weapon bay doors first: Followed by the small inner weapon bay doors: This way, they were much easier to install than toe other way around, as suggested by the instructions. Adding the pylons for the AMRAAMs was very fiddly. what I should have done was putting their mounting plates to the hinges of the small inner doors, before mounting them to the fuselage. This acually WAS suggested by the instructions! Now I had to remove small alignment pins in order to make them fit. Here are the results: The outer weapon bay doors were easier to install, but nevertheless fiddly due to the large amount of hinges: On the picture, the main landing gear is already installed. To be continued in the next post... Cheers, Peter

Lets continue with this build The interior and the engine are done - painted and weathered: Also paint the propeller, but still not weathered yet The wheels bays : And to assemble the units into one fuselage and half-wings Cheers guys

After calming my nerves it was time to break out the paint bottles... Vallehjo chrome and Tamyia semi gloss black made into a wash... Testors gold for the copper pipes.. Tamyia white for the spark plugs and hair for the ignition wires... All in all a quick and neat little engine kit to put together.. I'd love to see some of you nuts who REALLY know what you are doing make this up into the little jewel it can be ! Thats it for this week.. Tune in next time to see what madness is percolating in the madhouse !!

Hiya fellas, I managed to finally finish the HPH Tigercat! I gotta say it looks pretty impressive sitting next to its WWII cousins. Photos and even being next to one in person doesn't do the Tigercat justice as to its size - it's a big airplane, especially siting next to a Spitfire or -109! Thoughts on the kit: There's lots in the box, tons of detail and multiple subassemblies. Not as intricate as the Helldiver I did last year but still plenty to do. Most of the cockpit detail can be seen, not as much in the main wheel wells, very little in the nose wheel well (more on that later), and most of the engine detail cannot be seen if cowled up. Parts fit is mostly good - for a resin kit - and surface detail is good throughout. Having read and followed Brian's build thread on this kit I was aware of some of the shortcomings in the main wheel wells and outer wing panel misalignment but that really didn't bother me so I pressed on . After looking at period photos of parked F7Fs I noticed that the nose gear doors are almost fully closed on the ground so most of the detail in the nose wheel well can't be seen, so I didn't spend too much time there. Just built up the subassembly as per the instructions. Main wheel wells are pretty complicated with lots of bulkheads to be added. These areas really beg for superdetailing but again I just stuck with the kit parts. Engines are gems and would look really good sitting on a stand, or with the cowls removed. The cockpit really shines, with lots of room to see all the goodies. General construction is pretty straightforward and with not too much cursing the fuselage and wings/nacelles will come together. I had read from the other build that the nose weights didn't fit well, but on mine they fit just fine. Some filler on the seams and rescribing of the lost panel lines (didn't go overboard on redoing the rivets). Note of caution here: It is a tail-sitter even with all the weight provided in the kit! I even drilled the trailing edge of the stab at the elevator joint to remove some material from the horizontal stab and it still plopped on the tail. Phooey! No need for the brass nose gear! Paint is MM Dark Sea Blue. I decided to forego any weathering aside from light exhaust staining though I did go with a semi-gloss clear coat to knock the shine down a little. Overall, I put the kit in the win column. There's a 1/32 Tigercat on the shelf, which was the goal! On to the pics: More pics to follow, Cheers, Mark

As mentioned in the previous post, the main landing gear was installed. Remember that the instructions wanted you to put in the main gear in an early stage. Putting it in later could be troublesome. Well, indeed, withhout modification it would not be possible. The trick was to enlarge the holes a little bit and make the top surface of the pin above the main gear strut angled instead of 90 degrees by filing it skewed. I hope this makes sense, I forgot to take a picture of it. This way you can swing the main gear leg into position by rotating it around the side stay in the vertical gear bay wall. The gear legs will then click into position. By adding the drag brace (the forward strut) and the retraction jack, the gear will be secured in place. Here are the results: Then, work started on the stores: the GBU-31 JDAMs and the AIM120 AMRAAMs: The photo-etch parts on the JDAM's was fiddly to bend. In hindsight, I should have annealed these parts first. Painted and decalled, the weapons look like this: The AMRAAMS: The JDAMs without pylons: And here the JDAMs with pylons: And here are the weapons installed in the weapon bays: To be continued! Cheers, Peter

Thanks Marcel. For the windscreenof the Cheetah C I will have to venture into the dark art of vacu-forming. I have tried to sand and polish a Revell (old)canopy but without luck. In the mean time I need to finish the Tornado. I managed to finish the tanks and missiles today. The Tornado F3 initially carried the larger 2250 tanks. I gave the set on my kit away as I initially was doing a German ECR. Fortunately the RAF had solved the problem for me by swapping tanks between GR-1 and F3 Tornado aircraft later in the Gulf War as the mission profiles changed. So I can fit standard 1500 liter tanks and still have an accurate Gulf War F3. Only thing was the tanks were not repainted and retained the Desert Pink color. Here are the tanks and pylons all dressed up and ready to be fitted. Enjoy Nick

More pics: Thanks for looking! Mark

Here are the engines all done - ZM includes a way to make an engine holder to admire the engines from afar while you start on the cockpit. Neat idea:

Hi everyone, well it has been an interesting time since April when these sets became available. I only ever received half the amount of Profimodeller W.Gr 21s I paid for and never got answer to any of my emails since asking for the other half. I contacted Eduard to see if they could supply me and still no answer so I have done what I should have done from the very beginning - make my own bloody things! I love the detail of the Eduard set and the PE template for locating onto a Bf 109 was a great idea but I do think all the measurements of their tube are wrong as well as being too thick which helps casting obviously but looks wrong. Profimodeller measurements I believe are better and the brass tubing is perfect for looking thin but there is no detail and the part is heavy. So I have detailed a brass tube inside and out and filled it so only the top 8mm or so is hollow and I have a 98% casting success even with the top end being so thin. I am not doing the support arms - much better to scratch build these with wire - much stronger than the resin ones I did a test of. Photo etch will arrive at end of next week and it includes a locating plate using same idea as Eduard. Answers on a post card please!

The photo etch is nice, but those hair fine 'rods' just wouldn't cut it... I cut off the tops, glued them on and using stretched sprue made my own rods... My screw up with the casing meant I had to fill the openings for the intake tubes.. but that worked out because the rod housings needed slightly larger rod at the base.. so it all worked. But the valve rockers... OMG... drove me nuts.. so tiny... getting them on was a nightmare !!

Well I couldn't do it, couldn't wait a week for the paint to fully dry. So I have worked on the squadron markings on the tail. Not too bad, a few touch-ups. And a self made mask for the tail code. Later, Dan

I have a few projects on the go at the moment, but I needed to get started on a decent large scale jet as I have felt a little rushed come Model Expo in June for the last few years when I have been caught napping and haven't got my act together and almost not had an entry ready for the Large scale jets category. This will be a long term project so there wont be any rushing here and it will fit in nicely with the other stuff currently on my bench. I have wanted to do an F-100D for a long time and have felt that it would be a great addition to my collection, considering that I am well on my way to completing my collection of the Forward Air Control trifecta of the O-1, O-2 and the OV-10A as flown by RAAF pilots during Vietnam. It would be important to be able to display the aircraft that they called upon to deliver the ordnance and give some context to the mostly unarmed aircraft that were the FAC's. During my build of Mac Cottrells O-1, he supplied me with a combat report written by two F-100 pilots that he called upon to provide a strike assisting troops in contact. They recommended him for a Distinguished Flying Cross for which he was awarded. Here is the Combat report that Mac supplied me with. I decided to see if I could find either of the two pilots mentioned. With a bit of persistence, I was able to track down Ronald Swanson (Blade 02) via a photo of him that I found on facebook. He has agreed to be my subject pilot for this build and we have been having conversations over the last week via email and social media (we are on opposite sides of the earth after all). I am very happy to be able to make a model with such a unique connection to another in my collection and thank Ron for being the inspiration to do so. Ron flew 268 combat missions during the Vietnam war, between April 1968 and April 1969. He flew for the 615th Tactical Fighter Squadron, part of the 35th Tactical Fighter Wing based at Phan Rang Air Base. This picture is Ron immediately after his final mission in Vietnam. This picture is of Ron's Squadron, with Ron being the 5th from the left in the back row. Major Davidson, the flight leader mentioned in the combat report is second from the right in the front row. Ron will have access to much more information in October, so please stay tuned! The build. I am using the Trumpeter F-100D, with as much aftermarket as I could find for it. I started in the cockpit. The Aires resin pit is quite nice and looks to be reasonably accurate. I painted it all over black I then painted it MRP FS36231 grey. From there I masked the side consoles and painted them with an extremely dark grey custom mix of SMS Camo black and white. I followed the same paint process as above with the instrument panel. I then hand painted each instrument bezel with Vallejo black, and used the excellent Airscale Allied Jets decals for the instruments. I used a few 1/48 scale decals for the smaller instruments. Each instrument has a drop of clear glue to simulate the glass. The cockpit sides and rudder pedals painted using the above process. The kit pedals have been used with the Aires photo etch North American logo on the top of each pedal applied. For some of the harder to paint parts, I attach a piece of masking tape to a pop stick to enable me to stick parts to it. Part way through the cockpit. I have painted some of the button labels with white paint and started picking out some of the details with other various colours. I have applied a wash to build up a level of grime and have chipped the floor in front of the rudder pedals to simulate a well worn machine. There was almost a mini disaster here when I went and got a coffee inside and returned to the shed to a strong smell of Mr Levelling thinner. My son (almost 8) was looking a little suspect and quickly caved in under questioning and owned up to accidentally tipping over the bottle, filling up the tub with thinner! luckily, it dried OK with no harm. Visible here is a new undercarriage lever which I have fabricated from brass and plastic card. The silver chipping in front of the rudder pedals is visible here. I have painted the outline of the worn areas with a thin line of zinc chromate primer to simulate the various layers of paint down to the bare metal. Whilst stuff was drying in the cockpit I dry fitted the fuselage halves together and sawed off the really inaccurate intake from the kit. this will allow me to fit the Zactomodels correct intake, an essential upgrade to the kit. Once the intake duct was together, I fitted the Aires front wheel bay. This took a bit of work to get right but it is also another important upgrade.

I finally found and built one after all these years of waiting! OOB except for GT Resin intake; the intake looks seamless to the inlet fan. I used Microscale liquid Decal Film since I didn't want any unexpected incidents with the kit decal. Fuselage is painted in Testors Extreme Lacquer "White Lightning" and "Wet Look Clear"; the "WL" has a pearl effect, really makes the TB shine. I was worried about the stand keeping her flying, but it works perfectly.

After a bit of a delay, and getting so into the build I forgot to take more photographs; here is the Fw-190 with some paint on. It’s not the best job, I’m still learning (constructive criticism always welcome!), and I made a bit of an error with the landing light. Having seen one on the clear sprue I cut out the space for it before I realised the F-8’s didn’t have them! I patched it in, but it showed up under the paint. My story for the plane now is that it had a replacement wing from a night fighter and the ground crews removed and covered up the landing light. I masked the crosses as I thought it would look better than decals, and I’m happy with them. I’ll use decals for the numbers and side crosses, though they’ll have to wait for the gloss coat to go on. Definitely going to swap away from Vallejo paints though, they are a pain! Now for pictures!

And here she is! I last visited MOF in Seattle when I was 9, and bitterly disappointed that I had come all the way to the US to see a B-17 and it was not on display but being restored! Luckily, 27 years later I could finally see her in all her glory! I won’t get to Dayton while I’m here, so at least I can put some F model photos up for reference..... I’m only putting up photos which specifically show the nose shape, as we all know what the back end of a B-17 looks like! And a very happy visitor! Cheers, Craig

Thank you Anthony Yes the kit(s) are available through Aviation Megastore I was really holding out for the Scratchaeronautics kit as it was looking like it would be a nice kit (in resin) but having shut the doors and folded, it left me with the model (s) I have here in my stash, I have another one of these 72-500 kits...That reminds me, I bought 2 kits because I knew I'd bugger something up never having built a vacuform kit before and wanted spares. Finding myself thinking I'm "over the hump" I am looking at components I built earlier wanting to fix or refine things. Case in point the landing gear sponson. In my build it looks symmetrical through the long axis where it attaches to the fuselage (it looks clunky to me) It should narrow and taper towards the front and rear and have a airfoil shape viewed from the side. I knew this when I built it and thought I could live with it, in fact I was quite happy with it until the rest of the model started coming together so nicely. My boggle is, how do I fix it? I'm not against removing it (very likely destroying it in the process) to refine the shape...just not sure how to do it with all those compound curves. Here's a picture of what I'm talking about. The real aircraft: my boggle... I may have to live with it and attempt building my own on the next attempt

I still believe the Tamiya Mk IX is the best engineered 1/32 kit ever. A big part of my nomination is the engine assembly. So yes I hope they do a 1/32 Mk I/II. I also agree that Tamiya puts more into a 1/48 kit than many manufacturers put into a 1/32 kit. I have not purchase their MK I yet but will in time.

Ok gang...……..after 3 years the nose assy is installed at last. That part is why I shelved this build 3 years ago. Just couldn't figure out a way to mount all of that up cleanly. It took me a while to get it all sorted out with an approach to this but I think I found one that worked for me. I had glossed the entire aircraft, applied the decals and then adhered the cockpit assy to the front of the aircraft and masked it off. From there I filled the huge lip that was on the top of the fuselage to cockpit join and worked it all in together by sanding and yet more filling. This resulted in the seam not disappearing from the top of the fuselage at the cockpit join so I added a seam in the name of uniformity. It's not "correct" but it looks uniform. After that I black based the entire sanded and filled area, applied the irregular gray pattern and went back over it in RLM 82. Still a little touch up painting to do on the starboard side of the affected area. Here's where we're at so far.

32D013 Bf 109 G-3 for Hasegawa kit (same instructions and extra PE as above) £11.50.........note the G-3 kits have early wheel hubs with the correct larger tyre

32D012 Bf 109 G-3 for Revell kit £11.50

Bf 109 G-1 for Revell kit £13.50 Same instructions and extra PE picture plus......

Hi everyone, I am 1 week away from being able to sell these sets. Just waiting on an additional Pe set - the details of which I had over-looked when designing the first PE. Anyway due to designing for both the Revell kit and the Hasegawa I have 5 different new products for just 3 aircraft types haha. So I do as separate posts and hope it is not too boring for you! 32D010 Bf 109 G-1 for Hasegawa kit £11.50

There are no tabs or guides for positioning the back of the crank case.. check ref... me being the bright boy I got the thing misaligned but managed to fudge it. The bottom of the cylinders are formed to fit... And it is indeed a press fir... was VERY impressed with how they went in... and the fit of every part. With a bit of careful work one is presented with a very nice looking lump of resin ! It is designed to be a drop in fit for the Merit kit.

Rather than keeping the huge block or resin for the inner radiator I cut the front and rear face away from the resin part and glued them on the kit's part for the original radiator. The extra radiator was assembled in the same manner but I used 0.75mm plasticard to "copy" the kit's part that I am obviously missing. It's a bit messy but Nothing is visible from the oustide. The wheel wells received a little bit of detailling with platic strips and the radiator are puttied in place.

This is my scratchbuilt Hanriot HD.2 I built for a group build on WW1aircraftmodels.com. The only commercially made parts are the engine (WNW), machine guns (Eduard), and instrument face decals (Airscale). Enjoy!

Ok 1 last small distraction before I start the airfix hellcat! I’m building this small resin kit as a painting and weathering exercise and maybe try out some techniques from the armour modelling folks. The scale is roughly 1/35. And should make up into an interesting little model when finished. Cheers. Matt

I do not know if this has been posted here before. The photo is taken from German ffmc: https://www.flugzeugforum.de/threads/hph-models.59605/page-6 The posting says HPH and Fly will be going into coop as it was the case with the Hurricane. Also the A-20 Havoc will be released as an injection kit.

Howdy folks, Later today (my time - it's 7am here currently) I'll be performing a minor upgrade to the forum software. I say minor, but it actually takes a while to do, and the forums will be offline for the duration. I'll try to give everyone a heads-up as it's about to happen, but no concrete time has been set yet. You can always check progress on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/largescaleplanes/ Kev

I'm just building Tamiya's new 1:48 Spitfire Mk I (yes I know which forum this is, but please bear with me, it is relevant ). As well as plastic and decals, you get etch and masks (albeit Tamiya's cut-'em-out-yourself type), and the level of detail is absolutely amazing for a 1:48 scale kit. The parts layout tells me there could be extra variants planned, perhaps Mk V-related. But my point is that the level of detail is such as may be found in any respectable 1:32 scale kit, so notwithstanding any previous "What-do-we-want-from-Tamiya-next" threads, I now find myself hoping they'll see the light and extend their range of 1:32 scale Spitties with a Mk I. Ah well, a chap can dream, can't he?

Tail markings are done, except for the serial # and that will be decal work in the near future. You can also see the "M" tailcode which I sprayed on from my homemade stencil. Later, Dan

Yep I just finished they're 1/48 F-14A not even a pin head size of filler was used and I have the 1/48 109G-6 waiting in the pile. Don

Haha, thank you! I’ve done some large scale armour before, but planes are a whole different beast! I glued the cockpit to one side first then sandwiched it between the fuselage halves. The upper cover beneath the windshield I added after the fuselage was together. It didn’t have a lot of surface to bond to and that seemed easier. You can quite easily insert the cockpit from below though if you wanted to avoid any damage while sanding the fuselage, which needed quite a bit of filling and sanding in my case, though this was most likely due to my own inexperience.

Yes Brian, they are counterbalanced.

I just cobbled together this hand-drawn template that I used on my build. I'm not friendly with computer graphics software, but I included a scale at the bottom in inches and mm. I can send the full-size file in an email. If anyone can clean these up in a suitable program that would be a big help, and appreciated. The wingspar is based on the drawing in the book published by Patrick Stephens. The other bits were templates I drew for improving parts of the kits, especially the gear doors and wheel well roof with the ribs. The resulting parts required some sanding and dry-fitting but it worked. You can see how they were used in my "In Progress" thread below. This is how it ended up looking: But...if you can wait a while, ModelMonkey is going to be producing a wingspar/wheel well fix, and their products are brilliant. They have a shape-corrected cowling for the Airfix Mustang, as well as exhausts and shrouds, radios and one type of seat. All of them are sharp and accurate, so I am expecting the same for the wingspar and wheel wells.

available now - AIMS 32PE008 Polikarpov I-153 Čajka bracing wires for 1/32 ICM kit £10.00

Nor that the post-Roman period in Britain called the Dark Ages wasn’t. Funnily enough, like the Romans, the Angles, Saxons and Vikings could both read and write, but I expect at least one of them could claim American ancestry.

another hurdle I was dreading... nav. lights are done

Thanks Kevin! Really appreciate your thoughts. I decided to play around with editing software and convert a couple to aged WWI looking images.... just for fun.

Diorama Scene I finally have the W.12 on a proper diorama setting that I thought would be so applicable to the plane. As described in the 1st post to this thread, I am made the assumption that the W.12 1410 had added the black tar base floats by April 1918, which was documented on her sister W.29s aircraft from the same unit when the 1410 was written off that same month. Thus, I thought I would build a dio showing my imagination of the planes fate; that is an emergency (albeit controlled) landing in enemy territory near the coast of France. the environment is more of a tidal lagoon, bay, marsh, etc. Thus, I made a water/beach scene with low energy waves revealing minor damage to the engine area. The damaged included a couple of bullet holes in the right engine covers, with the fragile cover fallen off soon after reaching the shore. Finally I show the pilot assisting his injured gunner down the beach with hopes of reaching friendly territory or rescue. He is carrying his flare gun with hopes of signaling German aircraft nearby. Anyway, that was my imagination of what could have been. In reality I could not find anything on the real fate of 1410.

Thanks Tom I was inspired to get back to work on this almost 2 year old stalled project by seeing your B-52 build to be honest. I doubt I'll be making the engines commercially available, I cant see a market for them other than the 2 of us building this kit...well me and another fellow has ordered one at this time, I agreed to send him engines and flap actuators but He's probably the only other one who'll use them. I made molds so I could build a couple of these models and make life slightly easier for myself by not having to build 4-6 vacuformed engines... I added a new tail from Milliput, a simple thing that took more than just a couple of hours to fair in and refine and add the tail light (a nose from a 1/48 missile) Milliput in place sanded to shape and filled imperfections finally sanded smooth and tail light added. It's only on with crystal clear in case I need to remove it for painting or some other silly reason.

Well, PCM did a couple of really nice Mk1 Hurricanes as well as Fly having a go, personally I prefer the PCM offerings and oh maybe if we are lucky the big T will give use a Mk1 Spitfire sometime soon, however my guess is someone is hoping this thread turns in to another boring ( my view only) Peter Jackson/ WnW what if thing again.......yawn, time for bed. Regards. Andy

This Photo link shows Curtiss Workers using templates on a P 40 Wing, whether it's an F Model ??? Curtiss Wing Paint Templates If you click on this link, and scroll down there are good colour photos of P 40's in Desert Camouflage (some look to be more M's than F's), and it certainly looks hard edge RAF Desert P 40's Edit - This looks to be an F model - Camouflage a little more harder to see, but again certainly looks hard edge -This is from the Asisbiz Website - So I'm a bit Leary of their Photo annotations P 40F - Desert Hope that helps you? Regards Alan

exactly what I said in the first place. The issue here is not to discuss about the possibility to retain the moving gears (I think it's clear from my initial post that I didn't care about moving gear) The fact is more that even when you commit to fixed down gear you have two problems: 1. your inserts prevent the modeller to attach the gear leg. You can't attach them at all unless you modify your inserts to let the gear attach point pass through and therefore glue them in place foir a solid gear on your model => nothing a bit of extra work can't fix (as I equally quoted above) - but it would have been equally easy to fix this on your master IMHO 2. the modeller doesn't know if he has to remove or keep the parts I identified above. Not to retain the moving gears but because he doesn't have a clue if these parts are necessary for the stability of the inserts or if they are conflicting with the inserts. So it's not really a case of choosing our battles, these are well picked way before this issue. I removed them because one of the two was half visible, exactly on the edge of the inserts and I thought this can't be. But seeing the gap between the insert and the top wing anyway, Maybe that pin was helping stabilising the insert. Even now I am not sure if I did the right thing, I still have a small gap visible which kinda spoil the purpose of the insert. Maybe I installed them wrong? Hence my simple request for just a bit of guidance on how this is supposed to be installed. As I said, mine are in, I have nothing to gain from mentionning this. Let's just say that if it helps fellow modellers in the future, it's all benefit. After all that's a prurpose of a modelling forum, No? Cheers

Really looking forward to that injected Gladdie!

The MkIX conversion adds another big radiator under the wing. Both radiators are provided in resin but the bottom wing need to be adapted for fitting the second radiator. I started by marking the position of the resin part and then milled a layer of plastic to insert the new radiator. The panels were all closed on the top and bottom wing. As you can see from the picture below, I decided to cut the flaps to display them out. the flap Indicator panel was also opened from the top wing. The second gun is not installed and the gun ejector has been filled.

There are hundreds of photos showing that the skin was uneven! That was the reality, the kit is replicating it. What is there to talk about? Radu

I have seen people do this in video's.. but never tried this myself so with some anxiety I started in.. first, cut off the barrel leaving a 1/16 bit to mount the rear end of the cooling jacket to. Adding the side bits The port side detail needs to be built up as it is too thin.. just a strip of sheet added to give the right thickness.. The cooling jacket was carefully rolled, the muzzle was nipped off, drilled out and a bit of salvaged copper wire was flat rolled, cut to length and the drilled out muzzle glued on. I didn't drill into the rear of the muzzle too deep, just deep enough to allow for a firm mount on the copper wire. Not too bad for a first try....