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I thought that Special Hobby chosed new direction and kits quality will be now something different, I was wrong. Ok some parts are well detailed, surface riveted, but fuselage and wing halves not cooperate with interiors. Lots of dry-fitting, sanding needed. Scheme is from British occupation zone in Germany sometime about 1945-1946. Work In Progress

Thanks guys, really appreciate it! Well I have actually been steady with progress, but with such things I didnt really have much to show until today A package arrived in the mail from Kerry! Somewhere in here is an FG.1 leg test print! I know that because I have seen this.... So I set about trimming and found this inside Now for those who cant remember, the reason for the completely new leg is because it is very different to a std Phantom NLG. Aside from the double extension with extra scissor link, the actual oleo itself is of a bigger dia and rakes rearward He nailed it.... a perfect fit! An overall shot showing the rearward rake, only done by eye, not actually glued in properly of course. I have started testing all the dimensions and so far so good! Also an area that needed attention was the aux air doors top and lower. Both sets needed scratchbuilding. First up are the lower ones, just basically layer upon layer of plasticard and raised rivet decals, followed by a layer of Mr Surfacer Raised rivets and extra details on the other side.... And a comparison on the other side with the kit ones. The kit ones are smaller and further back. Apologies for the lack of updates, had a bit going on. But still not stopped on this...she is still alive! Cheers guys and thanks for stopping by Anthony

Decalling I used Kits Worlds decals. National insignias are from an old CAM decals set.

All- I just got this little beauty in my hot little hands today, all the way from Russia via an intermediary from Romania I believe. I was able to order directly from KEP Models, and it took about three weeks to get here. Let's see what's in the box. Oodles and oodles of darker grey printed resin, and it is absolutely beautifully cast. The structures that support the larger pieces are quite impressive: The fuselage is molded into four main pieces; two tail halves with the horizontals already attached, and two almost complete fuselage halves. The fuselage and tail interiors have locating pins, which is a nice touch. They are quite large, and the fit is very tight. What's tricky is the break between the tail and the fuselage coes along side some beautifully cast stretched fabric, so care will be needed to maintain the texture and hide the seams. The interior is fairly basic, but the structure provided on the walls in the cockpit is very nice. Some bulkhead pieces are included as well, which are quite nice. But here's a real gem for the interior, the instrument panel with attached throttle quadrant, complete with some very delicate and detailed levers. Wings are each one-piece affairs, and they too have some nice molding on them with some subtle oil-canning: Engine nacelles are also molded as one piece: Speaking of the engine nacelles, the engines are absolutely exquisite. They feature some very fine details, especially on the crank case and piston heads: The most important piece not to get damaged was the canopy, and I was fortunate there: Two vacform canopies are included. Here we also see landing lights, and a sheet of protected acetate to make the side windows, complete with a sticker designed so you can cut out the windows from the sheet. The other stabilizer is loose in the box, along with some other small bits. Speaking of bits... Check out this fancy tail wheel, all one-piece: Other small bits included the landing gear pieces, optional skis, landing gear doors (not pictured, were lose in the box), and a really nicely molded machine gun for the top of the fuselage. Props, flaps, and bombs round out the bits: The bombs are beautifully cast as single pieces with separate bomb shackles. Decals are included for one option, with a color profile to aid in painting it properly. Instructions are two sheets, with clear pictures of the assembly sequence so that you don't have to worry about reading the Cyrillic. In it's trip from Russia, I only had one broken piece, which is a big surprise considering how brittle these 3D printed resin kits are: Fortunately for me, this means I get to navigate the fabric texture and a panel line three times, rather than two like the rest of you. That's what comes in the box, for roughly $106US shipped. I can highly recommend this kit, and anything else that KEP produces! This is a real gem. - Dennis S. Mount Juliet, TN USA

Some progress

Some progress Next step is decalling

Had some time to work on it, finally, switching cockpit to Mk II April 1941. Big changes from the MkI, not getting too over the top with it, just Spitfire-ish. 1939 Jag 100S coming along. Kotare Spitfire? It is a lovely kit.

Today's update

How effin cool is this- she’s a big girl, and needs some big legs. Timmy! Engineered all of this; incorporating brass inserts vertically and horizontally and high strength resin to ensure maximum strength…and the whole thing clicks together without glue. Ridiculous. This has easily saved me months of traditional scratch building, failures, and frustration. The whole assembly just drops into the wing- Those are Timmy’s! Fingers BTW- super cool. P

Here is Derek Stevenson's Hurribomber (IIB) which in the summer of 1942 was based at Warmwell, near the south coast of Dorset. The props/spinner are by AIMS, the fishtail exhausts by Grey Matters, the parachute by True Details, the wheels by CMK, the outer Browning machine guns by Air Master and most importantly the 250lb bombs and carriers by Tim Perry (ex Flying Start Models)....otherwise OOB! Great kit, very easy pleasant build. Build thread is here. BE687 was lost during the operation code named "Jubilee" attacking the Dieppe area:

Red stars... It's not Star Wars, but it's not far off! First of all, the masks: too big, too small, the ICM decals weren't much help because they're too big. Then draw pencil markers horizontally and vertically to ensure perfect positioning... Take into account the position of the camouflage, the quantum density of my glass of Redbreast and the age of the captain... In short, it took me over 2 hours to position these death masks! A shot of white, a shot of red (I love Chablis and Cote du Rhône...), undiluted of course, we go for a 30-minute walk and remove all the masks: The stars are in their right position, they are not crooked, the colours are the right ones and do not drool, no overspray, the old paint underneath has not torn away… A flawless, an Eagle at the golf or it’s as if Jack on the Titanic had survived with on the wooden board with Rose: a real little miracle!

So it's been a while but suddenly decided the 188 needed working on again. I decided to ease myself in gently and work on the engines. I'm not using the AIMS supplied resin parts but instead a couple of Revell Fw-190 engines instead as these although not 100% accurate allow a lot more surface detail when painted and propellers will be from Eduard The Eduard prop set is so good, I've used one before on my F-8 build and is super nice to work with. I've several issues to deal with on the wings but felt getting the engines completed was a good starting point. Regards. Andy

I have updates. My plan the last few weeks has been to finish up the "blue noser" painting, out of fear that the paint would degrade over time, and it will take a long amount of time to finish the fuselage to a point where the paint would ordinarily be applied. To do that, I wanted to finish up the windshield surround and instrument panel assembly prior to painting, in order to minimize handling the (fragile) painted surface. Last we visited the IP and windshield surround was Feb 1, where I posted this picture: Now, I have this: Added is a bunch of stuff below the IP: Armament switch panel Pilot's center switch box Fuel shutoff bracket and handle Fuel selector panel and handle Hydraulic pressure gauge and bracket Landing gear door emergency release handle A close-up: My stuff is never perfect, like some modelers on this site somehow accomplish, but this is the best I have done so far. I'm good with it. All these items should be familiar to the P-51 enthusiast. All parts (with just a couple of minor exceptions) were 3D printed from the drawings, like usual. The switch covers, turn knobs, handles and such were done separately and then bonded onto the panels, brackets, and boxes. And, I will say again because it deserves repeating - Peter Castle is reponsible for the outstanding decals. It must have taken him months to work it all out and have them printed. Also, there were a couple of items added to the RH windshield frame: They are: Type C-5 fluorescent lamp Recognition light switch box Also 3D printed. Very difficult and delicate installations with small parts. I might add - this is the first of my 1/18 scale models where I have decent thumb switches. Up til this point I have cut off bits of wire to do them, which is OK until you look closely. Then not so much. These however are 3D printed. And as long as I am careful not to break them, they are fine. MUCH better. I will also add that upon studying for the upcoming Malcolm hood drive mechanism, I found that part of the field mod was to relocate the recognition light switch box further forward - the very same part that I worked so hard installing! Grrr. Wish I had noticed that earlier. The reason - the box interferes with the opening/closing hand crank for the hood. This: I will have to follow suit and break off and relocate the switch box. And then, it was time for the blue paint. Assemble the forward fuselage with engine cowl onto the jig, and mask the critical paint boundary: Here she is: The masks for the white crosses are from Thunnus - provided to me quite a while back. Thanks John! Here is what it is all going to look like: I might add a semigloss coat to the new paint. I think that's what I did with the engine cowl, and it should better the match. BTW - the paint showed zero signs of degradation. I guess I didn't have to go out of sequence, but I also would have fretted about it. Now I don't have to. Lastly for this update - the Shapeways rear windows came in the mail: "Diamonds in the rough". And a bit pricey. They will polish up very nicely I guarantee. Recall the ones I printed off myself didn't fit very well; these fit perfectly: It is going to be a while before you see that crown part of the fuselage in action. First will be the lower radio floor and fuselage tank, and then the upper radio rack and the SCR-522 radio equipment and the battery. All in future installments. I believe the next step should be the Malcolm hood drive mechanism. It will be all guesswork - whatever I can glean from the photographs I have. I'm excited about it. And hope to have a great update in a couple weeks. Take care all, and thanks for tuning in.

Thank you John, Paul and Phil! More painting done on the interior and wings. Adding decals to the IP was a bit of a pain in the butt. I lost a few of the small ones. Then the side panels also got their decals. The instruments got a bit of kristal klear, but i barely shows. Then I started assemble the cockpit. I tried my hands at rigging the cockpit with wire. That kind of wire perhaps wasn't the best thing to use, but I didn't have anything else. While that was drying, I glued the wing parts. And the radiators. Back to the interior which got a bit of black wash. Next will be some cockpit assembly. Håkan

I received word today that Hannants had received my back ordered 1/32 HpH Nakajima B5N2 Kate, along with the 3D printed engine, cockpit and bomb sets. So I went ahead and purchased it all— it wasn’t cheap, but I did get 10% off for back-ordering it. The shipping by air across the pond to the USA cost a whole lot less than I was expecting and budgeting for— which was serendipitous. So, I’m finally getting a long-awaited 1/32 Kate! If someone else hasn’t done so first, I’ll plan on submitting a report of sorts on this kit when I receive it. In one sense, I can’t believe it is on its way….!

Here is my design for the intake interior as it turns and goes into the fuselage. Splitter plate is incorporated into the duct. I was going to design an engine front but you would not be able to see it....so not! Dan

Brown B-2 joined the rest of the collection, so I took a group photo of my 1/32 scale racers on this occasion :-)

My next project! Looking forward to this!

Thank you Dennis and Mike! The cockpit side panels was glued in place. As with everything else on this kit, it's a very tight fit. The wing roots was glued in place. The cockpit was glued to the fuselage and then the fuselage halves were glued together. The stabilizer was glued in place. The sight was assembled and painted. Then the front cover with the sight was glued in place as well as the engine covers on both sides. The wings was glued in place. The fit was very nice. I also assembled the propeller and spinner. Update coming soon! Håkan

Top seams now straightened out and windscreen glass temporarily test fitted; it fits near perfect too. Soon I’ll be ordering a Montex mask set for all the glass, and shortly thereafter will begin painting this baby.

A little more progress. Mostly bits and bots left ... Thanks guys...

Thank you all for your messages. Today I took care of the two "60s". If you look at the photos, you can see a thin border around the 6 and the 0 : I decided, in agreement with myself, that this border was red like the star's border. With this in mind, I placed the masks and painted them white, placed the internal masks and painted them red: Unfortunately, the "60" on the right-hand side was completely wrong: the "60" was leaning backwards and the "60" was squinting between the white and red parts: I had no choice but to redo it entirely (You can see it clearly in the photo above.). The right "60" completely redone:

With the engines painted it was time to move on to one of the really tricky parts of this conversion which is getting the nacelles mounted to the wing as there are no positive attachment points at all. I've been pondering this issue for such a long time now (Erm, just the 7 years) and after painting up the engines at the weekend realised it's a pretty simple and clean solution to the problem! With the engine secure inside the nacelle I then carefully taped it into the correct position on the wing and ran a drill down through the centre of the engine into the rear engine bulkhead And with a suitable piece of aluminium tubing inserted I was then able to slide the nacelle in to place and all nicely aligned I then cut the tube to the correct length as this will also then act as a nice positive location for the propeller Pretty happy how that's worked out so far, next up I will build up the prop hub and fan so I can get good alignment of the cowl ring before gluing in to place. Regards. Andy

Cockpit - done. These are the parts other than the transparent canopy parts: The canopy frames are painted from inside, and those ''other parts'' are added: The resin pilot figure... I had to add the head and the right hand/glove after the gluing of the figure, because it barely entered the cockpit... almost unbelievable. And with the canopy parts glued, finally. Note that I updated the seat ejection handles by using the twisting wire method... still not perfect, but times better than before. I'm very happy with the silhouette. All the ''seat transformations'' and improvizations worked nicely. And in the open position:

Hi gentlemen This is my last construction, something different today ... this is the Wessex HU 5 from Fly.... the kit is a "short term", the plastic is thick, the engraving is sometimes "soft", especially the multitude of small holes supposed to represent the rivets (they are raised on the real machine) but no matter that works, we have some nice resin parts ( cockpit consoles , rotor head , wheels etc ....)The decals are thin and nice , for 4 different colorful helos .. The instruction sheet is .....not clear , and I dare to say "messy" , ... But stop chatting, there is a complete review of the kit here....... Well, don’t expect a very detailed construction like "Shark 64 did it here some time ago, I’m nowhere near as skillful as he... My main improvement is in the cargo cabin. there is a lack of detail inside, and God knows this area is " occupied," so I scratch built it, and too bad if nothing will be seen afterwards..... I put some raised rivets here and there on some hatches, panels and so on, especially around the windscreen, for a more pleasing effect, I added some "pipes" along the fuselage on both sides , the rotor head needs more details , a good picture is very useful because of this complex area ........ what else ??, the paint scheme is not provided, but it's nothing, I just painted a big D on the fuselage, the decals are from the kit...... Is it perfect ???? no , but despite some issues , it was a cool trip ......so enjoy ....or not thanks for watching Alain some in progress pictures

With the rear deck now thoroughly affixed, glass fit is perfect. Yay!!! Waiting until the head armor was painted, may have been an error, as some sources say this area is the same interior green as used in the ‘pit.

The call outs for the cockpit specify a 'Supermarine interior green' using Tamiya's XF-71 as the base. I made my own using MRP-111 Interior Grey Green. Here's my first set of airbrushed components: Next step - some construction and instrument panel. I used the kit decals on my previous 'Mid version' Kotare and I aim to do so here too, as I thought they worked great.

MLG now gets their “knees”, and wings get their gun inserts. Fit of these items is generally pretty good, but some cleanup will certainly be required. One word of note: several of the ejector pins left bumps on the upper and lower wings, but with some fine sanding sticks, these can easily be dealt with. Bumps here are obviously not yet finish sanded.

And yes, Max, you're absolutely right: this camouflage looks very easy to reproduce, but if you want the 2 shades to "fade" perfectly evenly over all parts of the plane, it immediately becomes much more complicated... I had to rack my brains to get something precise and pretty. Thanks for your message Kev. Thanks Richard, I hope my Yak 9 will be as beautiful as your P-47! Thanks Biggles ! Thanks Troy! I'm also lucky enough to have 5 photos of this Yak 9 and I try to "stick" to reality as much as possible! Thanks Mat, yes, this Yak is starting to look like something! Thanks Mike, I thought I had done the hard part with my FW190 but I underestimated the difficulty of such a camouflage... Well, as I told you before, I've still got to paint the left and right spaces for the number "60", as well as the vertical stab. The reason is that on the photos, these 4 locations are darker, probably due to "fresh" paint touch-ups. I used Silhouette Studio to import a color profile that I felt was accurate. I scaled it and followed the outline of the "dark spots" to draw and cut masks. I put the fuselage star masks in place and traced their outline with a pencil to simulate their position on the fuselage, so I know where to place the "60" number masks correctly. Without this mark the mask is very difficult to position. Then I removed the fuselage star masks. I put the "60" number masks in place and did the same as for the main masks: double-sided tape, 1mm thick. I then took my AMT 12 paint and added 7.5% Tyre Rubber to make it slightly darker. I could have done this with black, but I'm very careful with pure black, which is too "violent" a color for the eyes. I diluted it with 30% thinner and here's the result. In the last 4 photos, you can see the star branch drawn with a light gray pencil, which I used as a reference for the mask.

Didn't like the numbers on the side (zero was too narrow) so I stripped them and replaced them with new numbers. Got some guns on board made from .060" aluminum tubing. The ID was much too small so I chucked them in my spinning device and opened them up and then stuck the opened ends in a buffing wheel to homogenize (smooth) the ends. It's actually browner in person, so how'm I doin' ? Critique welcome.

Not much over the weekend. Cone finally blue-white. There are also period photos where it is white. The brake hoses are still missing on the chassis kegs.

It also finally dawned on me (Duh) to use a dark grey wash to highlight the panel lines to help align them for any needed re-scribing, as well as adding the removed rivets.

Time to get this airframe assembled. There are some 'hard to get to' areas associated with the intake that are probably best painted before assembly, like behind the splitter plates. I sense a tricky bit of masking coming up. Having cut out the auxiliary slots, it will look better if they have a dark background. The same applies to the boundary layer duct openings above and below the wing. Thanks to Tony alerting me to the Reskit exhaust, I took a good look at how it is assembled (to allow for painting), as well as how small the thermocouples actually are. My first attempt was a bit overstated, so I redid them. A good shot of Alclad 'Jet Exhaust' helps to tone it down and darken the interior. I stuck a ruler down the fuselage, with the intakes in place, to figure out just how long the exhaust actually is. Remember the tail cone is approximately another 3cm to add to this. It's a long plane! Before glueing the tail-section in place, I had a look at the airbrake. Initially I felt that it should be closed, but many photos show it slightly open on the ground (as the hydraulic pressure drops, it droops). The inside of the airbrake itself is actually rather nicely done, probably by the 'Chaps from Flaps'. That being said, the hydraulic actuator was clearly made by the 'Intakes and Instructions' crew - very much a 1:72nd scale approach to things! So, I chopped an opening into the fuselage and made a long actuator body that can be glued into the opening. Much better for 1:32 scale... The horizontal stabs got a bit of refining, sanding the 'roundness' out of the elevator (which many kitmakers employ to get a fake sharp trailing edge), and lightly riveting them. At last, it is starting to look like a Hawker Hunter! Even without the wings in place, it has beautiful lines - a real thoroughbred. Thinking of Max embarking on the last bit of work on his Hunter, I thought of how many times the placement of gear doors and their fiddly little connecting arms has flummoxed me! I am hoping this solution will help avoid the typical outcome of that step, when I end up looking like a kindergarten kid, full of glue, and not one ice cream stick attached to the toilet roll. I've reversed the 'paddle pops' from the instructions, drilled holes in the paddles, and inserted pegs on the gear legs for these to fit onto. The lengths are still a bit of an unknown, but at least one side of the linkage won't need glue. Let's see how that goes. Nearly time to attach the wings, but I thought I'd finish the wheel wells and flap interiors first, while they are still easy to handle. You'll notice that this is going to be a well used fighter! Cheers, Sean

Thank you Kev and Andy! The fit sure was tight. If I ever build one more, I'll try glueing the fillets first. I did a pre-shade with brown and then painted the underside with sky type s. Then I masked the underside and gave the topside a black pre-shade. Then on with some dark earth. Some black goo was applied to mask the camo. Dark green was painted and then the goo was removed. I wasn't happy with how some of the camo turned out, so I applied goo again. Don't leave it on too long though! After a few paint sessions it looked like this. I accidently got some overspray on the underside. Easily sorted! I've clear coted the plane and have started with the decals, but no pics yet, so this is where I'm at right now. Håkan

Well considering HK are rumoured to be following my lead with their 1/32 range (by lead I mean I spend 2+ years building a vac and then an injection one comes along!) you can count on a Stirling being next

I didn't like the looks of the spinner on Italeri's Mc.202 and picked this item up from Aircraft in Pixels. This thing is awesome. He has other 202 accessories as well, also Spitfire and WWI 3D prints...

I'm pleased to report that I can finally declare this one finished! The livery decals are from V1 Decals, and the cockpit windows and wing root landing lights are from Authentic Airliners Decals. The two VHF antenna blades are from CRM, while I scratch-built the red anti-collision light. I must say, it's quite difficult to photograph a mostly white object against a white background! But my coloured backgrounds aren't big enough to accommodate the low-down shots, unfortunately. The model has a lot of flaws, but I'm still really happy with the way it turned out. Now to finish its Welsh Models stable mate! Kev

You're right, fixed it , thanks.

My wife and I just got back from seeing a specialist and are giddy after learning that the scare was no scare at all. All is well, so we celebrated with my famous chicken soup known for its magical restorative powers and a bottle of organic Pinot noir. The soup was grand but the wine would have been better left in the bilges of the wine boat. No matter the label, wine often leaves me waxing eloquent. So I will share a true “There I was” story with which hardly any of you can relate. Maybe not even Pete. Once upon a time I was a young USAF officer on a major base down south that played host to flying units from all the services save the Coast Guard. There were F-15s, A-7s, OV-10s and OV-1s, C-130s, etc based there. All but the C-130s did their best to out do each in the break at mid field. Of course, the F-15s won but the A-7s held their own, while the rest were mostly pitiful. Since I am not rated, I never got to play their reindeer games to prove my prowess. Later in life after I had retired from the blue suit, I bought a very nice Piper PA-12 and proceeded to fly the hooey out of it nearly every day for seven years. Now, the PA-12 and I became good friends once it had taught me how to fly and we shared many adventures. We went where most airplanes don’t, flew at airspeeds slower than most cars, flew formation with a B-17 with a tailwheel problem, took off behind a Dauntless, tried to catch the Goodyear blimp on a cross country flight, hovered over one spot on the globe at 10,000’, etc. I think you get the idea. The airplane and I liked each other and got along very well. One day we were returning from having great fun zipping along down low among the low hills of a neighboring state when I heard on the radio a local group at my home drome called Tiger Flight. Tiger Flight was several nerdy guys in flight suits who flew Ercoupes (If you don’t know, google Ercoupe and try not to laugh.) painted in orange and black Tiger stripes. Their stated goal was to introduce teenagers to aviation but they mostly were involved in self admiration. Their leader took great pride in teaching his pilots formation flying and could be heard over the local freq reporting in, switching to “Tac 2”, shifting left and right, etc - all at less than 100 mph. I found these wannabees laughable as did others on the field, including a retired USAF fighter pilot who raced a very specialized Lancair at Reno every year. His airplane was a maintenance nightmare and he was forever blasting about the countryside trying to work out one bug or another. On this particular day he was up on a check flight when Tiger Flight cruised down the center line of the runway in an echelon right and called for a midfield break. The Lancair was close enough to see it all and had several disparaging things to say over the radio, ending with, “You want to see a break, watch this.” At which point he came screaming along at the speed of heat and pulled on the pole until you could actually hear his airplane grit its teeth under the g load. Tiger Flight went “Oooo! Ahhhh!” like so many Minions. Tiger Flight 0; retired Air Force Guy 1,000. Well. The PA-12 and I were next in line for a landing and had a quick discussion concerning whether we should or not. We decided we should so we arrived over the numbers with all the speed we could muster. I announced our intentions and at midfield, I slammed the stick over and pulled as hard as I dared. The Cub was feeling its oats that day and surprised me. Instead of a cheek sagging groaner of a break, we simply pivoted on a wingtip and were headed back in the direction we had just come, directly over the center line where we started. It was all very helicopterish. The Cub was very proud of itself, but now what?? The radio was dead silent and I had no idea what to do next. It was all very embarrassing. We had no choice but to land and taxi past Tiger Flight and the Lancair to my hangar, mortified. We obviously had no Right Stuff at all. Tiger Flight tried to think of a witty rejoinder, but being nerdy guys, was limited to fart noises on the radio. The Lancair guy simply turned his back, disgusted with all of us. The PA-12 refused to talk to me for at least a week and fouled two plugs on our next flight out of spite. We eventually got over ourselves but it was an uphill battle. At least that’s the way it seemed at the time. No real relevance here or even a moral to this story and maybe not as funny as I first thought but, damn, that was a good bottle of wine.

thank you @Madmax !

Finally managed to take photos for the gallery, I know photos taken quickly but you can see something on them. I invite you to view the gallery of the Northrop P-61 A "Black Widow" model. - "Lady Gen", Florennes, Belgium, december 1944.

Though I have not posted any updates recently, I have been either researching or testing techniques on mockups. After a lot of reading about how running rigging actually worked, and then testing some ideas over several bench sessions, I finally arrived at the stage where I feel like I can put the sails on the yards and then either rig to show them brailed or clewed up, or deployed to catch the wind. Following is the Mizzen Royal sail, that I have rigged clewed up. Detail shot of part of the sail "bent" to the yard. Due to the scale it is not possible to bend sails to the yards as they would have actually been, so I used a technique I learned from a very good sailing ship modeler. Though I did not get everything perfect it actually looks pretty good when the entire process is complete - IMHO that is! This poor shot shows the two different lines that were either attached to the lower corners of smaller sails, such a Royals; or blocks positioned at the lower corners of larger sails. The smaller line on this sail will be run through the clew block and the larger line will be run through a pair of blocks on the Topgallant yard below the Royal sail. The lines in place. On actual ships they work in together as we shall see. Ok stupid me, ignore the image above, below is the correct one. The small frays will not be seen once I have clewed the sail up. For sails that will be displayed as deployed I will have to make sure I get them cleaned up. An example of how this part of the running rigging works. I have pulled on the clew line (the smaller one) to bring the corner of the sail towards the center of the yard. The heavier lower would have been slackened on real ships to allow the sail to be clewed up. The process was reversed when the sail was deployed. Though I still need to make some adjustments to the footropes, and do some minor forming of the sail, it has now been "clewed up" just as it would have been on sailing ships of the day. I brushed on watered down white glue so that I could shape the sail and also stiffen it in place when dry. I then bunched it as would have been done on an actual ship and tied off what were known as long reef lines to finalize the placement. I made sure to keep the two rigging lines clear as they will be run down to their respective location on belay pins and tied off later on. Photo of the front. Again, I did not do a perfect job here, but I think it looks the part. I still need to do some minor cleaning up and shaping, but this Royal sail is almost done. I plan to do the Main and Fore Royals next. The huge challenge is going to be "brailing up" the Main and Fore Courses as there are a lot more moving parts and the yards are much more crowded than the Royal yards. Keeping my fingers crossed I am up to the challenge. Ernest

Riveting is completed. I've got nothing but good things to say about those Archer decals. I applied them to unpainted plastic, flat painted surfaces, whatever. They stuck perfectly and after a quick dab of Micro Sol, the carrier film disappeared. Very resistant to handling as well. These things are great. I added a few solder balls to areas that were impractical for decals. In retrospect though, I should have done the entire fuselage in decals. would have been much quicker. Oh well, maybe on the next kit (NOT!). Note also that I modified the aft trailing edge to represent the later style shape with the Common Missile Warning System (CMWS) sensors added. These were introduced in the 2006-2007 time frame after Blackhawks began taking losses to MANPADS in Iraq. After that, a quick paint job on the vertical stab. I also very lightly hit the "United States Army" markings with a dusting of green OD to tone down the starkness of the black. I really wish decal manufactures would go with a very dark grey color for these markings, straight black just doesn't look realistic. After that, I applied the tail markings. Werner's Wings got the serial number wrong. On the real thing, it's Gunship Grey, not white. Not much I can do about it. They also left off the subdued 101st Airborne division patch on the nose. Thankfully a kind ex-Blackhawk crew chief over on FB send me the marking, which was contained on the Academy UH-60L decal sheet. I'm really impressed by the support I'm getting over on FB. Note the overpainted United States Army marking isn't quite as stark compared to the picture above and the newly applied markins on the tail. I'll get the tail markings overpainted next. Next up will be to add some last details to the cockpit and get the windshield and crew chief's windows installed.

Hello, here is the CAS Viper finally with the decals applied and a nice, truly matte finish. All the black stencils come from the Uprise decal sheet printed with FFA technology.... simply fantastic and very easy to use... saved me so much time, without needs to apply layers of glossy and matt clear varnish and no danger of silvering because no clear film remains on the model. The only "legacy" decals are the codes & numbers on the vertical tail that cames from a Two Bobs's decal sheet and the red outline around the ventral jet exhaust outlets. Now it's time to work on the undercarriage legs. CIAO! Piero

Sooo...cockpit is almost ready, engine os only primered.

Good evening to all Sorry for my continued absence ! In fact, I've been working on our house and the garden, so I don't have much time to devote to models and, alas, to LSP too. I'm sorry !!! Nevertheless, I'm making slow progress on the G6 ( 3 pictures ) , and I'll be showing you some more pictures soon. In the meantime, I'd like to wish you all the best of success with your superb assemblies. See you soon ! Best regards Gilles

Must be something in the air (or to do with people named Kevin!) These came through the post today, so this is a placeholder for now. Derek

How about a Hawker Fury like my 1/24 build?

Guys, slowly but surely. The cockpit is almost ready to be glued into place, as is the cooling system. The oil wash dries, so I'm waiting for spraying with matte varnish. The next step will be the unpopular riveting. Actually the title of the topic is not entirely accurate. This is a special edition Eduard with all accessories.

Slow progress this week. Working on getting the intakes glued together and sanding out the step on the inside. Finicky to say the least. But I think I am there. I also removed part of the round part of the duct. You can't see this part of the duct when installed and it makes painting much easier. Dan