Leaderboard

Hey all- heres a look at the progress on the dust application on the belly- tough to photograph, and the flash washes it out a bit.. what will visually tie the figures to the helo is the dust. It is important that the dust on the bottom of their pant legs and boots matches the dust on the aircraft, and in the cabin- getting there- cheers Pete

Scooby had a distinctive, heavily worn antenna cover below its nose. To simulate this kind of effect, liquid mask was used again. A light coat of zinchromate from MRP leads to this result. I'll play around with oils later today to add more different shades as on the real a/c. More "micro painting" adds a lot of interest and realism to small parts such as this dielectric panel on the fuselage side. The photo also shows that I need to rework the washes on the fuselage. I also corrected the initially incorrectly masked hot section at the rear fuselage by painting the two rear panels besides the fin FS36320. Note the red sealant in on the hot section. Bonus: the landing gears are nearing completion. The oleos were made with bare metal foil.

Hi Thank you very much for your comments. The MIG-17 is still moving slowly but I had a lot of work on it. The following in pictures. A few small occasions to do that appear better in the photo but it is progressing. It should subside with the paint anyway a bit. To begin with, I finally succeeded in drawing the riveting of a wing, tomorrow I will attack the second but the drawing takes a long time. On the other hand, we feel the old age of the kit and the beginnings of Trumpeter. The adjustments are all to be resumed and will have to take out the sealant. I used cyano black to harden the bonding between the large parts and to make a first joint. I finished my drawing part and started riveting. As a result, I had not yet incorporated the PE of the hatches in the model. So first a hole with a drill of different Ø then using diamond files' Thanks to friend Eric and I redo the recess. You can see the recess made with a file I place the blank trap This one is included at the edge of the sheet You can see the difference with the three big ones included and the three small ones not yet included. Sanding of my glue joint which required work but on the other hand its function of reinforcing the structure is great Suite à cela, un peu de gravure et rivets. and the barrel bay of which I still have the riveting and the installation of the outgrowths of the latter. and a wing of finished at the level of the increments of the PE A view of Canon Bay The Trumpeter working base. We start by adding the two lead sheet parts in the continuity of the air inlet. As we can see the gun arises without any problems .... A joint is made of wire drawn with Tamiya glue. Then we recovered the bulk of the plastic card form. A little engraving around this hole. Sanding the plastic card and finished with cyano black. We finally get the shape of the barrel. we wind a piece of copper on a strip this plastic card. Realization of the shape and the impression. We dig the ejection window. The machine guns are installed but there is still the seal and rivets to put in place to finish this part. An antenna support is also added, we finally arrive at a convincing result. End of the installation of the two machine guns, seal and riveting. Engraving of the lower surface of the wings. Realization of the lighthouse with lead foil to make the reflector of the lamp. I give the shape with a ball. a little bit of sanding to put it flat and the PE contour. remains to paint the interior in chrome, add the bulb and close with a rodoid glass to finalize. In the end, the cross is fast approaching That's it for the moment, to follow the end of the assembly and the painting.

My reason to be cheerful is this. It looks like I won't have my foot amputated. Such a relief. One more operation in 3 weeks and it should be sweet.

“Somehow, suddenly, the men did not feel tired. At debriefing nobody is. There is the excitement of another trip finished safely. The reaction after hours of comparative silence. There is so much to remember and discuss. ‘Who blew up over the North Sea?’ ‘Looked like a Lanc.’ ‘We had six combats. Six!’ ‘Anyone missing?’ ‘The natives, my dear chap, were positively hostile.’ ‘… a ginormous explosion.’ ‘I believe Willard bought it.’ ‘Six combats!’ ‘Who got that Ju 88?’ ‘… fantabulous …’ ‘… coned over Bonn.’ ‘Target was a shambles.’ ‘Shhh!’ ‘Who blew up over the North firkin Sea?’ The men queued for coffee and biscuits and their tot of rum. They were excited and talkative; most of them were really only boys. The rum would make them talk even more. That was just what the intelligence officers wanted.” — 101 Nights by Ray Ollis https://a.co/5X3e9xu I've been steadily adding some refinements to the cockpit, scratchbuilt the instrument panel support tower (which is not yet attached so I can modify the instrument panel later), and added rivets to the control yoke: After this I expect the level of scratchbuilding to taper off, and look forward to finishing the rest of the cockpit assembly. Thanks for your support! Cheers, Tom

Over the last few weeks, our daughter has started to recognise lots of things (she’s 2.5 yrs old). Chief among them is the babbled word “airbopwane” while pointing at my model display shelves. This has me fearing for my built stash’s future while simultaneously smiling inwardly as she shouts. Solution? Give her one to play with. I have a new one in the stash to build, that I intended to replace this with. It lasted approx’ 10 min’s before being reduced to a pile of plastic bits. She’s enjoying herself with it though. I have the perfect excuse to break open the new Tamiya now. I thought this image would give people a smile or a giggle.

Thanks for all the compliments gents. Alain you are a good detective Thanks for the info Viperfixer. You are right about the functions of the cables Being inside the flexible loom in stead of outside makes for a bit of a challenge to get a realistic result on a model. The very bottom cable is for the SPAD braking system and it transmits nose wheel speed. Paint on. Tomorrow I will try and figure how to get the edges on the lights which Kitty Hawk has omitted. Alain I wish I had your painting skill when doing small work. Cheers Nick

Look on the bright side. How often can you say "I won't buy that Revell kit, the Tamiya Spitfire is much cheaper!"?

Hello everyone, This is my recently finished 1/32 Hasegawa P-40 (M) Kittyhawk Mk.III with the markings of GA M FR864 from RAF 112 Sqn North Africa 1943. Cockpit modified by Eduard PE set. I have used Eduard s exhausts and Wheel sets. Paints : Gunze and Tamiya acrylics. Sharkmouth painted by using "DN models" customized masks. Happy modelling

Thanks again one and all! It really does keep me motivated on a complex and occasionally MoJo debilitating build like this. I have actually in fact found a viable solution to the problem of the ignition wires being too bright and new however! I experimented with a bunch of trials with the braided cord. Trial #1 was adding a straight wash to them with no clear (trying both clay based and enamel based washes) and just as I had suspected, the washes climbed right up the braided material, and really made mess of things. Especially the clay wash, as it just left chunks of black or brown behind with 0 opportunity to wipe any of the excess away. Trial #2 came when I did some experimentation with Johns idea of adding a clear to them to make them less absorbent. This actually worked! What I found however is even though the clear did prevent much of the wash from getting on them, the clear made the braided material very stiff in the end when enough clear was added to fully protect the lines, and they no longer looked as realistic. And on top of that, if you missed coating even one single place on them, capillary action would wick the wash into that little spot, and then inside the lines so it leaked to the outside of the lines underneath the clear. Again, a pretty big mess, especially if I had to had paint or spray 72 individual lines. Trial #3 was when I had a breakthrough after the wash experiment. I was sort of dejected as to how to weather the material, thinking that all the stuff I was experimenting and all the stuff I generally used to weather things like this was wet, AKA washes. I was thinking to myself how nice it would be if I somehow had a "dry" wash to add to them......................then lightning struck! I DO have what equates to a dry wash, Tamiya weathering pallets! So I quickly busted out my Tamiya weathering pallet of "soot" and started experimenting with the braided material...... BINGO! That was the solution. The dry powdered soot clung to the material in a realistic way, but because it was powder only, it never crept or went anywhere but where I generally placed it with a soft but thin brush. After 45 min or an hour of very gingerly placing the powdered material on the ignition cords, then carefully blowing the excess off, I had one engine weathered. I also got both front trans units glue on to the engines as well. It doesnt take much to see which one I weathered and which one I didnt: The lines are actually even dirtier than the pics lead on, as the light still seems to make them appear shinier and brighter than they actually are, but Im very pleased with the results. The weathering pallets took all the super bright/new look off of the ignition lines and blended them with the rest of the engine weathering very nicely. After another careful 45 min or so I had both engines lines weathered. Much better Once again, my bench lights make things look a bit more uneven than they are IRL, as one of my original lights burned out, and had to replace it with a different type, so the left one appears a bit brighter, which it actually isnt. With that task completed and can now move onto the main finishing areas of the R2800s, which are the 2 magnetos and 4 distributor housing covers. All 6 of those pieces will have additional wire to them, as well as the front trans cover will have additional wire added to it as well. Cheers!

Here some more: The slats need a little work, as the some of these tails have several ejection pin marks. Finally it is starting to look like a scooter:

A couple more:

I'm new to this forum and I've just started getting back into building scale aircraft models after Covid 19 triggered my earlier-than-expected retirement at age 61 due to redundancy. I'm a reasonably experienced scale model builder and am quite comfortable with photo-etch after-market upgrades. However, I certainly wouldn't put myself in the same league as the experts in this forum. I'm in awe of what you do. I'm interested in taking on Zoukei-Mura's 1/32 He 219. However, although every review I've seen on the web praises its superb detail, opinions seem to differ on the fit of the parts and the amount of work needed to assemble it. Would the members of this forum who've built this kit be kind enough to share their experiences with me? I'd like to know if I'll be biting off more than I can chew. I certainly have more time to devote to this hobby, however I also have grandad duties too (and happily so).

Good afternoon everyone Time for an update! In the last post I mentioned that I was having a problem with finding information and photographs of the area immediately to the rear of the tail wheel tub........Well since then I have had great help with photos and info from some fellow modelers ....so a BIG THANK YOU goes out to Ol'Scrapiron ,vvwse4 and dodgem37 (Steve,Rick and Mark) for their help in sending me the photos that I desperately needed to continue with this part of the build. I also reached out to the museum that looks after B17G "Fuddy Duddy" to see if they could help me but I never got a reply! So after shifting through all the photos and studying them I came to the conclusion that a lot of the detail that I had already built into the area had to be changed as I was just guessing what it looked like from the photos I had!......so I carefully took pieces off here and there ready to start a fresh......very frustrating but it had to be done! ..................but before we get into all that I can show you some new detail that didn't need ripping out! I made a fire extinguisher out of a plastic cocktail stick!......this first photo is of the real extinguisher.... ...and here is my effort.... I placed it in the rear of my model.....can you see it!!! I also placed all the electrical cables on to the side walls....... I also made a little tail wheel crank for emergency use....imagine how exhausting that was to hand crank down! So now to the correction of the detail in this area.............. From the new photos I noticed that there were not one but two C1 auto pilot units. In a sense I was pleased about this as the one I previously made seemed very long! After doing a bit of measuring I reckoned that if I cut the unit I made in half I could make the two I needed!...it would be just a case of adding some extra detail for the second unit and a bit of tidying up. So I carefully pulled the unit of its tray.....not easy as most of my detail I super glue in!...but never the less got it out without too much damage.It was then cut in half and made into two units........ ...and then carefully glued back onto the shelf..... OMG!.......The next correction was a lot more difficult! One of the bulkheads at the rear of the tail wheel was in the wrong position by at least 5-7mm. Doesn't seem much in the scheme of things but it was throwing all the detail that I had to do out of scale! ....here is what I mean..... It took me some time but adjusted it all in the end with pieces of plastic! Now I was ready to detail the area with the use of the new photos. Between the two bulkheads past the tail wheel there is all the pulley system used to pass the control cables to the elevator and rudder....all very small and fiddly.......for example here is one of the many pulleys I had to make....... So the next 6 photos show the re vamped bulkheads with all the pulleys attached ..... Here is that section painted........ Although it set me back a week or so I am pleased that I made the correction.....I have to say it was driving me mad as I knew it wasn't correct....at least now it looks a lot better! Finally the photo shot that I like taking....I know you have seen it before but there are subtle differences!....well that's my excuse anyway! Back to staring at photos before I attempt to continue to the rear of this B17!...Thanks a lot for looking at all this....appreciate it! Cheers Fozzy

Hi I present to you the start of the assembly of my first plane at 1/32. No more getting used to building Russian equipment at 1/35, I am happy with this photo montage. Be forgiving this is my first plane in at least 30 years. As I like to work on photos, I started from this one, representing a Mig-17 F taking the sun at Bamako airport. The idea is to make the Mig-17 first and then the Mig-21 Bis behind on the same diorama. At the moment I'm stuck because I can't find a conversion to convert a Mig-21 MF to a bis. I might see to change later, the idea being to present the two planes at the same time. Compared to the photo, I opened and remade the entire interior of the cockpit to bring an interesting visual on the Mig-17 I also removed the seat and left holes in the instruments to accentuate the "parts store" side After painting and adding various cables As in the photo, I opened one of the inspection hatches and reproduced as I could the interior design. The wings have been refined, there will be rivets to redo The additional tanks and landing gear are ready. opening of inspection hatches Currently I'm redoing riveting at the Rosie This is where I am currently. I think there are a lot of mistakes to fix but this is my first plane in thirty, sorry. I'm more used to building tanks. I like to work on photo and I admit that I challenge myself although it is relatively big. Hope you like it. Hope you like it.

It can be done, not too difficult as I recall (back in the '90s). Careful cutting and some reshaping/thinning inside of the bay that the lower leading edge of the flap goes into the rear gear bay. 1/48

Hi Alain the twisted cables is a bit of a problem to do realistically. I wound .2mm wire around a.4mm core and then glued it to the leg. Not perfect but I thinks it works. Here is a better photo taken in the sun. One or two more wires to be added. A photo I found on Master194. Cables on the real u/c leg. The profile photo just a photo I found. See if you can figure it out. Cheers Nick

The tree on the parking strip in front of our house has changed into its fall colors and the leaves have an amazing shade of orange red. Contrast that to the brilliant blue sky and white clouds and that makes my day. I am thankful for color. Tnarg

Hi Kosh, Just a note about your images: you'll need to use direct links from now on, as the current version of our forum software no longer supports bbCode. So, rather than this: [url=https://www.casimages.com/i/20111808072922087717132723.jpg.html][img]https://nsm09.casimages.com/img/2020/11/18//20111808072922087717132723.jpg[/img][/url] Use this: https://nsm09.casimages.com/img/2020/11/18//20111808072922087717132723.jpg Which should give you this: Kev

Well, exiled to Page 21 of Works in Progress. Guess it's time to resurrect this one now that colder weather is here and get started again. There isn't really a lot left to do, although some of what's ahead is a bit delicate, and some tedious. The big barrier has been the sliding portion of the canopy which has fought me. I have assembled a huge arsenal of different glues and adhesives to try to see if I can tame it. More later. In the meantime I took better photos of where I'm at right now. Hope it won't be too repetitive, but these have less cluttered backgrounds. Thanks Richard

I find this rather amusing; for the last two years or so, I periodically discover random bits of what appears to be small black and orange bits of decal on my right hand. This has been a real head-scratcher for me, and only ever appears on my right hand, never my left. I just went out on the deck for a smoke, but before I did, I crushed an empty pack for the trash, something I frequently do. Sure enough, small bits on my hand again, but I now finally understand that it's the tax stamp decal from the bottom of the pack that's been leaving the deposits all along. Two years it took me to figure this out, as I never realized the correlation before today; mystery now solved, and that makes me smile, as well as feeling a bit silly.

It also helps it's summer down under, hopefully the vaccines will be available Worldwide in the next six months or less.

That looks very good Mike, I like it a lot....which kit is it....Revell? This is the especially tricky area as Mike says: This is the Hendon one, I photographed her in 2011 and given "special access" to get up close.

Well, it's been almost a month since the last post!! It's been really busy at work with winter and possible lockdown coming, could work on the build intermittently. I have paint on everything but the prop, will paint it....soon...everything else has been gloss coated, will apply decals soon...This is a simple build, should be easier to finish.

New South Wales has not seen any person to person transmission of covid in 28 days. That is a reason to be cheerful.

She had a go, using melted chocolate as glue

The small bits towards the end of a build always seem to take much more time than the big ones... but at least I managed to paint the nozzles and afterburner cans. The nozzles needed a bit of extra attention; they are 3D printed (not by me though!) and needed some careful sanding to obtain a smooth surface. The upper parts of the Aires afterburner cans hat to be reduced in diameter in order to fit the nozzles. All parts were first painted with Mr Metal Color Iron. Great stuff! The paint was not yet polished when the photo was taken. After polishing, liquid mask was applied with a sponge in order to obtain a slightly splotchy look. The recessed triangular areas between the feathers were tediously masked... And the feathers were painted with dark steel from Humbrol Metal Cote. Note how dark the paint looks before polishing. After polishing, I dabbed on some Mr Metal Color iron with a sponge. A dark wash reduces contrast and adds volume to the recessed areas. The afterburner cans are more difficult to photograph than to paint... The cans are green and buff on the inside, followed by a dark wash. The flame holders are PE parts which I heated with a lighter - what looks more like heated metal than heated metal? They look quite convincing once in plate. They will be barely visible at the end, though. Nozzles in situ. Their diameter is significantly than the Aires parts and definitely improve the overall look of the model.

AIMS Bf 109 Late War 109's Vol. 2 Hi everyone, hope you are all safe and well. As you all know there is a terrible shortage of Bf 109 decals on the market lol so with my 1/48 Late War 109 decal sheet selling out last week I thought I would get on with my Volume 2. After the Spitfire decals are printed then this lot will be sent off. Hope you like, I know some are available in kits, some have been available in kits - for better or worse but it is the selection I wanted regardless, perhaps there is still something there for you - I hope so. Best wishes, John

The Trumpeter P 38, very nice kit indeed. It was a joy to build. I decided to use alu foil for the bare metal parts which turned out rather fine. Greetings from Belgium. Luc

Hi, The guys making the special effects sets are located in Belgium: https://www.magicscalemodeling.com/shop You can compare the price of that 'all-inclusive' Revell Spitfire with the ones of the combinations directly sold by that very small company... This will give you a better view of the Revell margin.

Thanks Anthony! No need to be sorry - the forums are the place to ask questions, aren't they? The sealant is simple red paint indeed; I think I used Mr Hobby red. It's the kit undercarriage spiced up with a few wires and Brassin wheels; I did not bother using PE parts on it as I don't think the Eduard parts look that much better than the kit parts. Talking about PE parts - this reminds me that I'll have to add a few of them to the painted hot section... "funny" times ahead!

The decals mostly behaved.

I've given my son a half dozen or so finished kits. My wife always wonders why on earth I would do that. My rationale is that he will get more joy out of playing with it than anyone else will as it collects dust on a shelf. It's sparked a huge interest in aviation for him, so I consider it a good investment.

I think a Pe-2 would be a good choice

Its arrived... Stunning. If you have any interest in this era then I highly recommend this kit. The level of detail is amazing.

Just passing through.....more progress from today. Sharing before I run out to pick up the daughter! Wing process.... And rivet love.....

If Revell make enough profit out of these things to keep releasing cheap 1/32 WWII kits, then I say they should sell as many as they possibly can.

I live in Western Australia and we haven't had community transmission for nearly eight months. The reason is a very early hard lock down and border closure from the rest of Oz. Any travelers, including locals, that return from overseas have to hotel quarantine in a nominated hotel (at their own expense - AUD$2500 per person). Australia is now ready to have no inter state borders closed as all the states now have no community transmission. Melbourne was the basket case because they let Covid get out of the quarantine hotels and had to do a severe lock down for about 6 weeks. The way forward for us (until there is a vaccine) is each state now has excellent contact tracing teams so that when there is a breakout, the cluster can be contained. Aussies are great international travelers but as Qantas says nobody will be flying overseas unless they are vaccinated. TRF

Christmas and New Year's time. A "perfect" gift to a modeller from a person that only looks at the box.

Found out today that I won four out of five auctions on a FB group, possibly all five, so that pleases me a whole bunch.

No longer pondering I actually took the unprecedented step and actually opened and read the instructions. Now don’t I feel like Col Jessup - thanks for all the replies and sorry for sending you all on a goose chase.

an update after a long gap: - glued wings and added them to fuselage, masked and sanded - Trumpeter decided that it's a very nice idea to give flaps and air brakes in parts like this - fuselage is ready for painting - masked and glued canopy, covered with primer To be continued...

My border collie, “Ludique” is learning how to bring kindling wood in from the garage. She shortcuts through the garage to go out onto the the deck to bark at the birds in the trees. For that treat she now has to grab a piece of wood, bring it into the house and drop it by the fireplace. She loves doing things. The wood in her mouth and her prancing along makes me smile. I really crack up when she drops the wood in the kitchen along the way to the fireplace when she thinks my wife may have a snack for for her. Smart dog = con artist sometimes. Next training step is to move her to put the stick into the kindling box.

If I was going to suggest something, I would say maybe an SU-34 conversion for the Trumpeter Flanker kit: Or how about an SU-33 conversion for the Trumpy kit, complete with folding wing/tail option:

The painting of the cockpit components has started. Here is the starboard electrical switch panel, which is a combination of hand-painted switches, an Airscale instrument decal and Eduard PE for the strip labels under the switches.

Hi All! The wheel wells repainted in a nice, bright red color )Hu.19); I primed the metal nose cone with Alclad Black Microfiller and then I painted it Wood Tan (Hu.110) Some of the instruments were missing so I used some from an old Mike Grant sheet; Much to choose from, but I tried to follow my references as far as I could; I painted the instruments gloss black (Hu.21) and then i placed the individual decals with micro-set and -sol, then I topped it off with some gloss varnish; Front cockpit; Rear cockpit; As You can see, I have done some detail painting with red, black and white knobs and handles. The sight was painted silver (Hu.11) and then clear orange (Hu.1321),,,, More to come soon! Stefan

Thanks Terry! Yes after much much procrastination the lights do look good, I'm just hoping that they'll continue to work once I've committed to closing the fuselage up once and for all!!! I had that happen on my chinook build a few years ago, but then again I was using light bulbs, not LEDs! Time to get the rear fuselage moving along. I had long looked at the walkway areas, particularly around the bathtub and wondered how I was going to work that out... Like so many aspects of this build I defaulted to the trusty calibrated eyeball and got it sorted. I began with a styrene floor, covered in 400 grit sandpaper and lined on the outside by litho. There's still a few dimensional errors around the bathtub/floor height, but not having great information on this area, it looks close enough for most to work out what it is I think! I also added the padding which you can see from below.... Now having finally made a start again on the area, I was on a roll.... Next up were the gunners steps. Due to the angle of all photos of this area, it is very hard to tell their dimensions, but I think I got it reasonably close. I also made these out a single piece of litho, as for some reason I felt like challenging myself to some metal origami As always, the second one worked better, but I think they both look the part more or less... The ugly looking hacks in the back of the closest one are to give clearance for the formers on the other side when the fuselage comes together. Hopefully I've got them in the right spot; it's very difficult to measure something inside the fuselage with both sides together!!!! And definitely worthwhile with the big waist windows! Next up I'll be playing with some gun mounts and the racks for the spare ammo cans aft of the steps. It's getting busier finally! Cheers, Craig

The shining light here with these engines is the look when done. I really have to thank, and all thanks do go to our own Peter of Air Scale who basically designed these engines entirely. The look when done is really stunning to say the least, and I'm not sure how many individual parts have gone into each engine, but its a lot...........like a LOT. 18 cylinders, two spark plugs, two ignition wires, two push rods, an upper heat shield an exhaust stack and two intake runners per, DOUBLE everything for the other one, and you can see how it can get overwhelming. However, there is some MoJo flowing now, as I have come to a mile stone on the two big radials. I finally got all of the above actually installed!! It felt like a herculean job honestly. But the major part(s) of both R2800 radials is complete. The engines are not finished yet, as I still have to glue on the front trans, connected oil lines and a few other electrical lines and a couple decals to go. The fun got started with cutting out 72 resin ANYZ spark plugs, followed by various sizes of braided ignition line. The ignition line is actual braided material, so when cut the ends frayed a bit. In experimenting with how to attach the ignition line, I also found it was NOT compatible with thin or even medium thickness CA, as it just wicked right up the material and turned it stiff and dark. The solution to both issues I found was as a simple one, a soldering iron. I just headed up my soldering iron, and used it to cauterize each end of the cut lengths of ignition wire. After the ignition rings were painted and the ignition wire connections detailed, the park plugs were attached and front of the rear row of cylinders ignition wires were cut and attached to the ring The back of the rear row of cylinders now glued on, and getting crazier to handle Now comes the front of the front row of cylinders plugs and wires (the shortest runs of any) and getting even crazier.........like the brittle star-fish my sister used to have The strategy here for me, for the last set of wires, the back of the front row (by far and away the hardest ones to reach) was to attach the wire to the cylinder first and wrap it around the intake ring at the back while I glued the ignition rings to the engine body, and after I had inserted and glued in all the rest of the plugs and wires. This strategy seemed to work out really well, as in the end, I managed to get all two rings, 72 plugs, and 72 ignition wires on both engines (YES I broke a lot of other misc parts with a LOT of cursing while doing all this) Is the wire over-scale along with probably the ignition ring? Yeah, probably a little bit. Honestly I like the looks of it all, and in scale, I think it will all turn out fine. My camera and lights also have a bad reputation for doing funny things with yellows and oranges, and the color of the wires is really way brighter looking than IRL as well. Pfffft, 75% of what you can see in these pics will probably never ever be seen again once the build is complete anyway! I set the front trans units on the engines to see what it looked like, as I still have some work to do there before gluing them on yet. So, YAY! I'm a ways toward actually finishing something/any part of this build, as I have to take small wins, and let my self celebrate small completions inside the larger build itself, or Id go mad. I'm not going to relent on this one again, so its hell or high water toward the finish (of the engines that is)! Cheers!

That news makes my day. Keeping positive makes a difference and you never seemed to dwell on it and get you down.

Hi there guys Time for another update My last post was the building of the bottom half of the tail wheel section and this time its the detail above the tail wheel!....I have had a lot of trouble finding information and photos of this area as I mentioned in the last post which forced me to kind of use my imagination a bit!....Well I was photographing what I had done and decided to take it all apart because I came across a photo of a C-1 auto pilot unit that sits on a tray just above the tail wheel!(2 days of work down the drain!) .....I have found that there seems to have been different pieces of equipment depending on the model and year of the aircraft!....this of course gave me a headache because I had to decide what I was going to place in this area ....so I went with the C-1 autopilot. The other big problem I had was the fact that some of the parts extended from the roof of the fuselage down to the floor!....this was difficult for me as I had to line it all up so that when the upper and lower halves were joined it all connected up!...so a lot of trial and error and dry fitting took place!...the joys of scratch building! So the first 2 photos is of the retracting gear assembly just above the tail wheel it self....I built this out of bits of plastic and a cutting of one of my Bass guitar strings (kind of looks like the activating screw!).... A few more parts now added and more Bass guitar strings! The two white unpainted plastic parts you see in this next photo was the real problem lining up with the bottom section! Here is my attempt at making the C-1 auto pilot unit....... ...and painted... So after it was all painted ,here is the end result with the two halves together showing you different angles.... ...and my favourite shots of looking down through the fuselage!!.... I still have to place a few cables coming from the Auto pilot unit but that's basically the tail wheel area complete. So I turned my attention to the control line rigging that I thought would be easy compared with the last bit....I guess it was just time consuming and fiddly! I first made 8 x cable guides that keep the control lines away from the fuselage sides...it took me hours!! The cable guides were then put in place and then using some fishing line I pulled it all taught from one end of the fuselage through to the rear. I did made a mistake and had to move the position a tad as I forgot to line the cables up with the cables on the front section of this B17G already built ...duhh! Okay.....so now I had to turn my attention to the area between the tail wheel and the Cheyenne turret at the rear. This is causing this project to come to a grinding halt! I have trawled the internet for hours and hours...looked in books and I just cant seem to find any photos/drawings/diagrams....absolutely nothing except the flooring!...There is the Elevator and hinge control cable actuated mechanisms above the floors ....but alas nothing but a few obscure photos either out of focus or just a slight glimpse of what I need!....I resorted to looking at photos of damaged B17s that have the tail unit blown off!....you kind of get a rough idea of the area but of course it's all mangled metal!....I have also written to the Lyon Museum in California who have "Fuddy Duddy" on display to see if they can help me...waiting for a response. Here is the said area.... So if any of you great modellers have any info or photos that I haven't seen then PLEASE PLEASE give me the heads up!....but I'm not holding my breath! Well that's it for now.....till the next time... Cheers for looking in Fozzy