Leaderboard

Looks like this build thread has brought back a lot of RCAF memories! Great to see, since Scobby Doo, Finn and I believe Winnie all worked on or were around CF-104's back in the day and can offer me tips. Speaking of Finn (Jari), he emailed me today with some good news and some bad news. The good news is that he showed me a third pic where the red and white arms at the side of the seat were poorly painted, likely by hand, so my effort wasn't all that inaccurate. Good, because I'm not re-doing these suckers! The bad news is that he has never seen those oval yellow things at the foot wells of my cockpit before. I wasn't sure what they were either and couldn't find a decent pic of this area, so I just assumed, wrongly, they were a couple more emergency pull rings since they were so well defined in the resin. They were tough to paint with a brush and even harder to decal. Well, after more research I have discovered they are nothing more than foot well vents, so it was back to the drawing board! I found some that were grey and one set that were black, so I went with that so that I could easily paint the interior black as well to indicate a cavity within. I have since re-done most of the photographs above that showed this error, just in case somebody tries to replicate my mistake in the future. Consider them repaired!.... Cheers, Chuck

Last finished model in this year. 1/32 HK models Eduard wheels Master Gun barrel Modellbau Schatton FuG antennas All Colour MRP

Just seen three new sheets... Available direct, website

It's still alive, if moving slowly! Pastel wash applied, a few decals for stencils here and there (another Archer release!)and Alclad dullcoat on. Getting closer to adding the final few details. I wasn't going for a worn out, beat up look....more just slightly dusty from (assumed) land based dirt strips. Hopefully, it's not overblown. A bit of polishing to do on the canopies and hopefully some light dust removal on the inside, but, overall they look pretty good. I've yet to tackle the bombs, so I should probably jump on those so I can get them underneath sooner than later. Let me know what you think!

Hello friends, At the end of the year, I managed to finish a plane that I love. It was a birthday present from a dear friend, whom I thank once again for the gift. This is my vision for this aircraft. Except for the data stencils, everything is painted! Fully painted with MRP. HAPPY NEW YEAR! L-29 DELFIN, Romania, around 1968

the year ends, here are the kits I made this year :

Alright – let’s get started! Construction begins with the cockpit nicely detailed rocket motor. I was overly optimistic about the flash – once I started clipping and fitting bits, flash became apparent on every single part. Granted, considering the age of the tooling, and the number of re-issues over the years, this is to be expected, and is by no means a deal breaker. The silver paint is Rustoleum 2X straight from the rattle can – and I have to say it works really well. I stumbled across a model car guy on YouTube that paints almost exclusively with Rustoleum rattle cans and gets fantastic results. The price is right, they are easy to find, and you get a lot of paint. A quick wash with Tamiya black “Panel Line Accent“ and it definitely passes the ‘3-foot’ test. The black bits were sprayed with Tamiya Semi-Gloss Black from the rattle can. The steam generator was brush painted with Tamiya Metallic Grey and given a quick black wash as well. I initially planned to build the model all closed up, but after seeing how nice the rocket motor looks, I may have a re-think. While it looks good enough for me at this point (might still need just a little dry brushing here and there), there is ample documentation online and should one wish to take a little more time, it could be made into a very nice model all on its own. Next up is the cockpit and landing skid assembly. Thanks for watching. Cheers! John.

Hi all and a Happy New year to you all. Yes I am still alive although it was a rough 3 and a half weeks leading up to Christmas culminating in my spending 6 and a half hours in the Emergency department of the local hospital getting a CT scan of my Brain due to intense stabbing pains! Well two items of good news - 1. They found my brain, 2. no problems - turns out that the nausea, dizziness, headaches, diarrhea and then stabbing pains all down to one thing - reaction to a opiate based medication doctor had prescribed for my bad knee 4 weeks ago. I stopped taking it - no more symptoms! As for AIMS - well the wait for getting raw materials and lead times for parts other people do for me has gotten longer and longer due to pandemic but a number of items are ready now 32D025 Monotone Spitfires £11.00 24F001 RAF/FAA 1950's pilot £25.00 32F005 RAF/FAA 1950's pilot £16.00 32P023 Ju 88 A-1F/A-5 F Camera fairing £6.00 Coming soon.... 32PE017 External details for Roden SE.5a kit £TBC Bf 110 G-2/R1 (Feb/March? £TBC) Meng Fokker DR.1 replacement wings Many thanks, enjoy

You never really know when creative inspiration will strike. Back in November of 2019, I started a (now defunct) build thread for building a pair of P-47D Thunderbolts - the Razorback from Trumpeter, and this kit from Hasegawa. Despite the best intentions, the Trumpeter kit fought me all the way, the ignition wiring on this kit turned out like garbage, and so I shelved the whole project. The Trumpeter kit went on my son's ceiling with a cursory finish and this one hit the shelf of doom. Every now and then, I'd pull it off the shelf and do a bit here and there. I kept putting it back on the shelf because I'd intended to do a natural metal finish bird (even bought the decals) and, try as I might, I just don't like NMF on WWII aircraft. To each their own, but to me, they're just boring. So, after cracking the canopy on the absolutely craptacular Special Hobby Brewster Buffalo I was working on, I shelved that and pulled this out. Sometime between 2019 and pulling this off the shelf of doom, I'd picked up a Cameo Silhouette mask cutter, so now I had a lot more marking options available to me. I decided to poke around the web to see if I could find an OD green bubble top P-47. Ultimately, I found several including this one. And creative inspiration struck. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Capt. Arthur Bux. He flew with the 61st Fighter Squadron of the 56th Fighter Group (the famed Zemke's Wolfpack) from Boxted England. I'm not sure exactly what it was that caught my eye, but I decided this would be the paint scheme I would pursue. Checking various sources shows that there's considerable debate about the finish of this particular Thunderbolt. Is it OD Green? RAF Dark Green? Black as some of the 56th's later aircraft? We'll likely never know, so I went with something that landed (pun intended) somewhere between US OD green and RAF Dark Green. The further I got into the build, the more I realized that I wanted not just to recreate the aircraft, but the whole scene itself. So, I pulled a figure from the Tamiya 1/32 Mustang kit I had, mated it with a 1/35 head from some rando Dragon kit in the spares bin (I never realized how hard it is to find a head without headgear that's not wearing an utterly dour expression) and custom-sculpted the right arm and leg to more closely match Capt. Bux's pose. It's not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with it since sculpting is something I just started doing. As to the rest of the build, this is Hasegawa kit 08077 (the Gabreski boxing) and it's ... okay. The step at the bottom of the fuselage & cowl annoys me somewhat and the wing roots were not a great fit. Back in 2019 I had built the flaps in the down position, only to realize that I'd need to break them and rework them to put them in the up position to match the photo. Ultimately, that turned out pretty well. I ended up redoing all of the ignition wiring, so that was a hoot. The Thunderbolt has roughly 700 cylinders with 16 spark plugs each. The ground work includes a sandpaper tarmac and good old fashioned dirt with static grass thrown in for fun. Chocks are ChuckD custom shop work. Anyway, I hope you like it as, despite the fits and starts, I'm really happy with how this turned out overall. Doubly happy because it wraps up my builds for the year 2020, and I'm jazzed to end 2020 (of all years) on a bit of a high note. Enjoy!

This is blamed on Ron & Chuck - they badgered me to post these LOL - no laughing. Chuck's superb build a few years back (was it really that long ago?) is the inspiration to do this and my familiarity with the Hornet. Been wanting to do one of these for some time and finally got a kit late last year (I'm known to procrastinate). Cockpit is coming along - many knobs, decals and switches from Anyz in the Avionix tub (was a bit of a bad casting on the one side, so I added a few too many - learned for next time). Airscale instrument & cockpit decals round out the IP. Working on the GT seamless intakes - fairly straightforward. Used the 'latex dip' technique but wasn't deep enough. hit the mark on the outside keeping it level but the paint didn't come up the inside quite as far as it needed to be. I'm still debating if I'm going to redo them. Tail reinforcements were added as found on most all CF-18's. Tried the Flying Leatherneck vinyl ones, I used them as a template instead and made these and adding rivets with a beading tool. Detail on the tails are soft and needed lots of rework - which I suck at but am working on it. Good example of the disappearing panel lines. It'll be a slow process to redo and clean these up. In the mean time, working on the 'Fat Pylon' ECM housing, modifying the SAC gear oleo and lots of the fitting and research that goes along with a build of this size.

This has been a want of mine for for a very long time, and now with my CAD skills getting to a point that I'm comfortable with I've started designing a conversion to take two Hasegawa 1/32 bf109 kits and stick em together to make a Zwilling. D Bellis has been a huge help with details already, he scratchbuilt a conversion for these kits back in the 2005-2007 timeframe and has been sending many suggestions recently to help the design be as accurate as possible given what information is available. If I can get the parts looking nice enough I'll look at opening this up for sale to modellers who want one, but that's something I won't start looking at for a few weeks/months yet. Will post on the vendors board if I opt to start selling. In the meantime, here's the first test print of the wing and tail parts to check the fit - the contours of the belly insert are deceptively complicated and it took many hours of trial and error in Fusion360 to get that part to look as close to identical to the Hasegawa part as possible. I blew the fuse in my basement when this was 90% complete which killed the print job, that's why you're seeing a gap in the center wing and at the rear of the belly insert... Still to design are the cockpit cover for the starboard fuselage, cowling top panels with gun troughs removed, long-span ailerons, mk108 30mm cannon gondolas, a new wing spar setup, and of course, all that detail for the relocated gear wells.

Ok, now I am back in. Here is what I found out. When I place the widened intake up against the fuselage all the angles seemed out (to keep the opening at 14mm) as well as have the front splitter sit on the vanes that hold it out from the fuselage. I ended up with a gap half way down. No matter how I tried I could not figure out why. The answer was so simple I just couldnt see it. I needed to glue in a piece of plastic card wedge to fill the gap. It was only a small gap, but otherwise would have ment the front splitter would have touched, the rear intake would have touched and the lower intake touched, but it appeared kind of cranked in the centre at the top. Then I remembered from earlier on, that the upper bleed air width wasnt quite wide enough (almost a mm) and I know that sounds a silly insignificant number but the wedge instantly corrected the straight line that it should all be in and unexpectedly corrected the bleed air vent width at the rear! The fit up against the fuselage is almost perfect now and no brute force and epoxy will be needed. The intake sits at 14mm perfectly too. The corner of the intake shoulder still needs addressing, but that's for another day. I am probably making no sense at all, but this is for the benefit of those embarking on this conversion themselves and saves you a few hours figuring out how to make it all work. For those building, here are the measurements A=1.6mm B=2.3mm Now I am back to boxing in the louvered vent box Feeling like I am posting too much again, but it is for the benefit of those wanting to do this themselves. Rather than finish it and show a pretty picture I think it best I explain how I am doing it. I am sure there are other ways, but this is just my way around it for what it's worth. Cheers...again Anthony

A good start made after taking notes from Tom and Dennis's builds currently going on with the pilots seat and pedestal heights etc adjusted as necessary. Been a little lazy taking pictures so far but realised that chopping the pilots pedestal up and refitting could well cause problems bringing the fuselage halves together once the instrument panel/ pedestal is installed so to avoid any nasty surprises or the sound of an etched instrument panel pinging off I decided to fit the basic plastic part and get the alignment right with the cockpit floor between the fuselage halves and once dry I will prep the kit panel to take the Airscale assembly. Hopefully tomorrow I can get all of the prep work for painting done on the radio sets and instrument panels. Regards. Andy

Thank you Oliver very much. I do appreciate every single comment, correction, and sometimes just aircraft stories above that might make my threads more interesting to read, so I do them willingly and with some enthusiasm when I have reached a certain build point worthy of an update. I don't respond to all of them to try and keep the clutter count down, but I do appreciate and read every single one. Thanks Guys! Cheers, Chuck

Thanks, and same to you! Began emptying out the kitchen cabinets today. Demo day tomorrow. Once we wrapped up for the day, I managed to work on the exhaust stains. More like burns. If you look at period pics, especially color ones, you'll start noticing things. The 100 Octane fuel they used, burned really hot. As a result the exhaust tended to scorch the paint. Especially the GSB. There's a series of photos of David McCampbell sitting in his cockpit that shows the staining very well. You can even see scuff marks in the soot (beyond my ability to replicate however...) Here's my attempt. Shot it with some dark gull gray, followed up with a gentle rubbing of brown and black pastels. I've had these pastels forever and a day. Here's the brush I use. Its an old brush with the bristles cut down to about 1-2 mm length. Allows me to scrub the pastel and work it into the paint. Follow everything up with a quick shot of flat varnish. Peter

Seasons Greetings all I hope you all had a great Christmas, even if it was a bit different this year. I had about the best ever with just my immediate family and zero stress or hassle Hi Craig - if you mean the little stringer 'T' sections, yes, they are folded litho - I think I folded once, then splayed out the 'T' bar of the Tee to make them, then rivetted from behind Hi Mark - yes me too - this is a Nimrod rather than a Fury, but you can see it packed in there on the outside of the main tubular fuselage assembly.. ..likely to be a bit of a nightmare to get these sorts of tolerances and fits when the time comes.. I have considered leaving one of the big side access panels off so it can all be seen, maybe I will, I just need to work out how much work that means as much more than just the cockpit can be seen.. unlikely, but possible... so, been busy with a couple of things, first I have skinned the 'easy' constant chord parts of the wings - I ended up using very thin card, lined from the back with a ballpoint pen to define ribs and contact adhesive to stick it down (plastic cements seemed to distort the skin too easily... ..holes were made where the struts & rigging goes.. ..the wing tips are proving difficult and frustrating, simple scoring a skin doesn't work as the skin has compound curves as the skin gets both smaller at the tip, but also shrinks in chord - I am trying to vacform a base part and score that (not going so well), but I might just end up filling with P38 and shaping from a solid - though that means a bit of weight at the tips I don't want... ..with that not going smoothly, I decided to change tack and start the fuselage.. this will be vacformed over a basswood master - the first time I have tried this and I really want it to go well as it means I can scratchbuild any subject in 1/18 in the future ..the first thing to do was to create all the relevent sections and outlines as scale plans - the outlines to define the outer borders of the shape, and the sections to be used when shaping the wooded master to the shapes needed.. ..each section was created as a side profile and as a top and bottom profile and numbered to the station position.. ..the basswood core is four machined 4cm square bits that get painted black on the mating faces which defines the four datum lines that run through the fuselage.. ..you can see one half has been painted, then stuck together, then the side profile applied.. ..I bought a small bandsaw just for this job to get nice perpendicular cuts - here I am starting to cut out the side profile.. ..I had also drilled holes where the mainspar was, and the front and rearmost exhaust stack while I had theri positions to hand.. ..I didn't run the cut all the way to the end, so it kept the cut-off bit in place so I still had a square block to then cut the top profile.. ..once the cuts were finished, the front and rear cuts were made and a disc stuck to the front to denote the spinner size.. ..you can also see the datum lines showing through.. ..then it was lots of rasping, sanding , filing and generally making a terrible mess to get the Fury within to match the contour profiles... ..the two halves were only lightly stuck together, so these were broken apart after fully finishing - I had been too aggressive in places so used P38 to build it back up and/or primer which I also needed to get a better eye on the shapes (though this needed to be removed for vacforming..) ..then the halves needed a 1.5mm plinth and some fillers at the nose and tail so the plastic doesn't have such a drop off and to space the mould up from the vacforming plinth by the thickness of the material.. ..now for the vacforming itself... I couldn't hope to do this at home, I don't have the kit and as it's quite a big part even if I did I doubt I could do it. So I asked my good friend John Wilkes (Tigger) who offers large scale vacform kits like B29's Do217 etc to do them for me (and had advised me on making the mould). i sent John the mopuld and he very quickly turned around a few copies - they are nothing less than perfect! ..I have just started to cut them out and get the mating faces right - here you can see the fuselage sat with the wings (ignore the incidence..) ..so now I have the basic form, and am forever in debt to John.. ..next is planning how to proceed - I think to get all the skinning on the nose right, and to be able to integrate the delicate internal fuselage framework & cockpit, i will need to assemble the vac halves and then cut in two at the cockpit so I have one form for the nose for skinning, the tubular cockpit slides forward into that, and the rear fuselage & tail (with stringer detail added), will slide forward onto those.. ..thats the working theory, but as I am making all this up as I go it may change TTFN Peter

So after the Christmas festivities I managed a hour or so yesterday. Looking at the reference photo Ive thinned the damaged wing tip in preparation for some internals and damaged skin. Still struggling with the best way for the damage inward, so any suggestions are welcome. Glued the wings together and added the other sides clipped endplate. And also installed the Master brass barrels to both wings Built up the pit And temporarily installed the Barracuda seat I do need to get to the paint booth to finish off the training day 109, so may push this to one side for a day or two. Aaron

NOPE! Avoid! There is plenty of good info on Romanian aircraft now. There is actually a whole book dedicated entirely to Romanian Hs 129 written by Horia Stoica, Dan Antoniu and Radu Vasile (I translated it into English). There is no more excuse for poor research. The crosses in that decal sheet are hopelessly inaccurate and unusable. There is no black in the Romanian cross and there is no navy blue in the Romanian flag. The blue should be similar to the French Royal Blue. The type of cross included in this decal sheet looks vaguely like the cross used on the Bf 109 E. There were two distinct types of crosses used on Romanian Hs 129 and they are quite different from the crosses included in this decal sheet. Furthermore, all 6 crosses were the same size on the Romanian Hs 129, not two different sizes as included in this decal sheet. It took a 1-minute Google search to find this photo. Look at the the Ms in the cross - the angle of the "chevron" is 90 degrees, not the obtuse angle of the crosses on the decal sheet. The red circle of the cockade is thicker in the photo than the thin line included in the decal sheet. Radu

Foyles War was good. His son was a Spitfire pilot, right ? I think British shows are the best. I miss the old Sherlock Holmes series. Doc Martin, Last of the Summer Wine, old comedies from the '90s that were on PBS here in the colonies..

Just a short update. I've installed the aluminum panels on the bottom of the fuse and done some weathering. The aileron cable system is on the exterior of the wings, so they protrude from the bottom. While awaiting for some paint to arrive, I've done some work on the struts and cabanes. These are wood and will be stained and will have brass ferrules on the ends (painted black). Thanks for looking in on this project.

Got the numbers sprayed. The vinyl masks *barely* wanted to stick to the corrugated surface, especially on the (curved) sides. Had to burnish them down hard and then immediately spray. Still a few little spots of overspray, but not terrible. I figure in reality they probably were spraying these things with cardboard or sheetmetal templates, which over a corrugated surface was going to produce some overspray anyways (neat rationalization there, huh?). Next up, trying to get a few decals to work.

I hope this trend continues for this scale. I would however prefer sets of detail parts for a particular tank (e.g., clamps, rivets and engine vent details). This would be similar to PE sets. https://store.spruebrothers.com/product_p/mjmez16002.htm

2 updates in quick succession? What’s going on? I’m making more progress in a week than I would in a month. Drivers office glued in, I’ll build the canopy frame and attach it after the build. For now, I’m gonna use the kit canopy as a mask set. ....and I’ve made a start on the nose wheel bay. I’m going for a VERY grubby looking jet. Air show examples are too clean for my liking when compared to line airframes.

Hello everyone! Hope you enjoyed your Christmas day and gearing up for a better, safer and happier 2021! bIn my previous post, I was in a dilemma on how to best deal with the faux wooden surfaces on the wings. The kit provided decals were just completely inaccurate and were rejected from the beginning. I had narrowed it down to two options; use wood decals or do the whole painting myself. The first option was later ruled out as the wood decals were just too "realistic" and completely missed the fake, rather cartoony look of the real thing. So, I eventually bit the bullet and decided to do the effect myself. After thorough cleaning of the model and priming in black, I started by painting the exhaust area in various metal colours. Then the front fuselage was painted in light gull grey while the rear area in Ukraine AF blue. Reference photos show the blue colour having been overspayed over the exhaust area creating quite a distinctive look which I tried to replicate as closely as possible. Both colours were from MRP. As if the "wooden" wings don't give a wacky enough appearance to the plane, I also noticed that their leading edges as well as those of the horizontal stabilizers have extensive chipping with the metal construction showing through and adding even more to the whole crazy scheme. So, with the fuselage carefully masked, I proceeded to paint these areas with Alclad aluminum. I then used a small piece of sponge dipped in masking fluid to cover a few metal areas to replicate that chipping. With that done, I applied a base coat of Lifecolor light wooden stock and then used Tamiya red brown to pre-shade the panel lines. The faux wood grain was brush painted over two sessions, totalling four hours... With the main colours fully cured, I used 4000 grit sandpaper to smooth out the wing surfaces before applying a final coat of Tamiya clear orange to complete the effect. The masking fluid was finally rubbed off to reveal the chipped metal areas. I think the overall painting turned out much much better than I expected and I'm glad I decided to take up the challenge! Next step will be to apply the decals to complete this, by all accounts, special scheme! I will be taking a much needed break as my wife and I are expecting our first baby in mid January and will be travelling to her home country to deliver! Will be returning to this built in February again! Wishing everyone a happy New Year!

Well, time flies fast! It's been more than 3 weeks since the last update. I have holidays now, and intend to make quicker progress. Anyway, there IS progress. I've filled in the gaps between the horizontal stabilizer and the fuselage: It is probably not very visible on this picture, but I used some plastic strip and Vallejo arcylic putty. The latter can be smoothed with a wet finger or a cotton bud, which saves sanding and damage to the surrounding surface detail. The fuselage has a luggage hatch modelled-in: Which PH-MBK does not have. (note that there are plenty of Fuji's with a luggage hatch, the kit is correct for them): So, away it went: I used 2K putty for this to avoid shrinkage. The rivets will be reinstated later with Archer or Mikro Mark rivet decals. Remember that the model can be motorized and equipped with working landing and taxi lights? Well, these features need a switch and Nichimo cleverly uses the control yokes as switches. Therefore, large bushes are moulded below the glare shield and behind the instrument panel to install the switches: But I will need all the space available to put my ballast lead out of sight in the fuselage. Soo,these had to go: The parcel shelf has some cut-outs to allow the backrest of the rear bench to swivel upwards and access the batteries needed for motorization and lights: These were filled in with plastic card and sanded smooth. Reinstating the surface detail (straight ridges) with stretched sprue is in progress: More has been done, but that is for the next update. Cheers, Peter

Almost at the point of closing the fuselage. Then things will speed up a bit. Started the cockpit painting. A bit of a dilemma here as the Dassault cockpit instruments are mostly dark colored. The aftermarket instruments do not reflect this well and are way too expensive for an semi realistic 2-dimensional representation. After much thought I decided on dry brushing some dull silver and toned down white. Tonight I will do the instruments and knobs which are colored and try and do the instruments on the IP with some instrument decals. Cheers Nick

Full scale version: Jari

The left side of the cockpit is now finished. This is probably the easier side to detail. It's close to OOB but I have added some Eduard etch as well as the cabling. I've also mounted the voltage regulator on the lower edge, moved from behind the pilot's headrest. MkVIII's had quite a few differences in the cockpit layout which Tamiya haven't carried through to the model. Unfortunately I don't have enough pictures of the MkVIII cockpit, but I do know that the voltage regulator was mounted roughly where I have it. It definitely couldn't go in the kit allocated spot as it's too visible there and not appropriate for the MkVIII. I think the air tanks were somewhere else, as was the map pocket, but I don't know where. The space occupied by the map pocket had a large electric junction box in it's place, but I decided not to replicate that as it would be too time consuming, and I think it would have been better to make a junction box before gluing anything together. I'd already gone past that point, and the lack of decent pictures also contributed to my decision to go the way I have. So the cabling goes to the stock kit fusebox instead. Here's a couple of gratuitous shots with the cockpit "floor" in place, just for effect. On with the right side. Cheers, Michael

Something that I just noticed looking at archive photos of Red 10. It appears that Red 10 had the older style enclosed tail light? Looks like I'll have to modify the rudder accordingly since Revell has depicted the later exposed bulb tail light...

Your models are really fantastic, definitely something to work towards. I have been stalking your model building for years. I badly want an A-10C in 1/32 and I have read through your build at least 100 times. I am not yet ready to start that but I sure enjoy your work, it really is fantastic. The only part of your work that is bad, for me, is that I want to be that good now and I am just not there. I have picked the hobby up again after a few years and am surprised as to how much I have lost lost. Thank you for the motivation and the intimidation your F-104 is remarkable, as are all your others!

Hi Winnie, I think you are half right. While your colors may be correct, I have to go by what the DACO book says below. With so many versions of this aircraft and many variations of CF-104's, if I can't find what I need for references, I need to default to this reference book. Please continue offering advice however. I need all the help I can get! Cheers, Chuck

The TV series “V”. The alien beings turns out were lizard like and were stocking up on human meat for a trip home.

https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/jj121/heloman2008/20201227_163125.jpg

Oh, OK. That's the outer shell of a 7 quart crock pot, which at the moment is in the refrigerator, chock full of spaghetti, and in another week or so, will be full of 7 quarts of chili.

Foyle's War. No one I know besides my wife and I have ever watched it. Good show with fairly accurate historical tie-ins. D

Did a bit of work at (what I think is) a camera mounted below the cockpit. The kit part is on the right and not very representative shape-wise to the real part, my crude fabrication on the left. I think it looks better, we’ll see after some more sanding and paint. You can see the hole drilled for the power / actuator cable (if that). Still getting the hang of this sort of thing.

A few of my latest. Special Hobby Hawker Tempest Mk V- Kit plastic and resin parts, Airscale decals Italeri CF-104- Black Box resin cockpit made for Hasegawa kit, kit upper IP and rear wall, Airscale decals. Cheers, Chuck

Machine_Marty has this little lot on their way to him today Happy Christmas!! The HK Lanc Nose gets posted to Blackbetty tomorrow Peter

I was hoping to build the full WnW Lancaster but like many things this year it wasn't to be! So while still holding out hope it will appear at some point I was very happy to see the HK nose art kit appear and decided to purchase one and build Victorious Virgin as a tribute to 424 "Tiger" Squadron. and a few extras to add to the build I've also ordered the Iconicair Bimb trolley with 4000lb cookie to add to the display base when finished. Regards. Andy

The tiger stripes are on! In case any of you will be using Jim's masks, you actually need to spray the dark blue on first, I initially got the painting order wrong. Also, I am not quite sure what was going on with the mid-blue masks, I ended up doing those myself, which is easy to do once the main shapes are down using the AMS masks. I used Gunze glossy blues because they are a very good match (to my eye) and I also really like working with the gray TPS Gunze colors, which are satin. However, these blues don't behave quite the same way, they take forever to really harden. If you look closely a the pics you'll see what appears like adhesive from the masking tape on the paint, but it's actually the surface of the paint having been affected by the mask. It's very subtle and unnoticible to the touch, so I hope that some layers of X-22 and possibly some micro-mesh sanding will take care of it. The final coat will be semi-flat and will therefore presumable hide this in any case. Magnification of the nose area. I really like how those vents turned out... somewhat beaten up like the real deal. Overall view... phew that looks gaudy in the glossy finish. Cheers, Marcel

Glad that I could be of service to you Peter.

My Dad took me to Edwards once. He was an instrumentation technician on the SR-71 , Yf-12a. I wasn't allowed to leave the car.

Printed the two differentials out, adding the M6 nut and some detail stolen from the 1/16 M-ATV. The M6 bolt had been screwed into the nut to keep paint out of the threads. The 1:1 truck has a 400mm ground clearance, equating to 25mm in 1:16. Here’s the first iteration of the lower suspension arms. Once some of the interface areas have been re-finished, I’ll get them printing. Upper arms are next.

“He’s more machine than man...” Obi-Wan was clearly talking about Miloslav rather than Darth Vader

Just a quick update showing some work on backdating the kit's GRU-7 seats to a somewhat more representitive GRU-5, though the detail level reminds me more of 1/72 than of 1/32. Man, those ejection seats, even those older ones, are complex, and there's no way I can capture all that with my limited attention span, time and above all, skills....! Anyway, here's my attempt with Milliput for the parachute pack and rear cushion (the rear cushion is a bit meh, not happy with that) , lower cushion is Evergreen attacked with a #10 blade. The rest is the kit, some details removed/added from the kit seats, copper wire, punched disks, etc etc. The ejection pull rings have been made from 0,5mm tubing as that bends better. They're just in their base-colours, there are not a lot of references out there regarding the colours. black: Revell Tar Black cushions: revell Ferrari Red #34 with #15 yellow 50-50, matched approximately to the orange-red decal colour from the A-6E's on the decal sheet (looks a bit odd in artificial light) hoses/lines: Revell #47 Mouse Grey with #39 dark green mixed in Still a lot to do... The seatsbelts are made from a Verlinden set, where I replaced the PE belts with doubled up Tamiya tape. I still need to do the leg restraints. I read these were light blue, is that correct? Hope you had a great Christmas, and all the best for 2021, Jeroen

Well it's clearly a Tiger Moth, but oh......that dihedral.......I must add it looks worse in these photos than sitting on the bench though. I'm so glad the undercarriage is finished, fiddly or what, though I did make life a little more difficult for myself by adding a few extra nuts and bolts on the centre "X" section. Getting nearer though still quite a lot of detail stuff to do.