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IBuildEmBig

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Everything posted by IBuildEmBig

  1. That looks fantastic, Paul. And I have been contemplating what to build next... Terry
  2. Certainly, Kev. Please go ahead, thank you. Terry
  3. So here is something you don't see built everyday - a full resin Su-7 BM Fitter from Ukrainian Ebay seller Ruporator. Personally, I haven't seen one built, so I figured I should try to be the first one. The kit came in a generic white cardboard box with a B&W side profile of the Fitter on the box top. There was no brand name - it doesn't get any more no-name than that. All the resin parts were carefully wrapped in bubble wraps, no breakages were found (Aires could learn a packaging lesson from Ruporator). There was a CD-ROM with a bunch of pictures of the various parts that show how the kit progressively can come together. Calling it an "instruction" is a bit of a stretch, because there was no text and some guessing was needed to build this thing. There were also a bunch of pictures of the real Fitter taken from various boneyards as reference. Decals? LOL. None. I used generic Russian bort number decals from Delta One. The build started with the cockpit, which was reasonably detailed, although the details were more approximation than "highly accurate". I added some extra bits using plastic stock. The ejection seat was quite nice, and I added some PE seat belts from a left over Italeri 1/32 F-104 kit. The radome/intake cone was intentionally cast hollow because you would need every bit of space in there to fit ballast. I stuffed a bunch of fishing weights in there. Still, it wasn't enough, I had to fit more in the space behind the cockpit AND behind the canopy bulkhead to ensure the jet sits on its gears. The canopy was vacform. The plastic was uneven so I had a very hard time cutting it. I ended up using the spare as well. There were no details in the canopy inside so I added some framing using plastic stock. The nose was cast as one piece, with the radome, cockpit tub, and nose gear bay as separate pieces. The fuselage was left-right halves, and there was a full jet exhaust tube that comprised of 4 pieces. The exhaust tube was what made the model very tail heavy. Each wing was cast as a single piece including the wing fences. Vertical fin was two pieces - front and rear; each horizontal stab was one piece. Imagine the parts break down of a 1/72 kit scaled up to 1/32 - the build was that simple. I glued most fuselage and structural pieces using epoxy glue. The landing gears were resin with metal rods cast inside. The details were good, but the instruction (ahem, CD-ROM) was not very clear so I'm sure I missed installing a strut or two. Due to the tail-biased weight distribution, the rear gears still sag even with the interior metal rods. Therefore I am using a clear plastic cradle (otherwise known as a CA glue bottle) to support the jet's a$$ end in the display case. The kit is missing some minor things, such as canopy details, the leading edge guns/cannons, sway braces etc. Some of them I scratch built, some I said "eff it, this is not a contest winner so whatevs". The paints used were Gunze and Tamiya acrylics. It's a complex camouflage, so lots of back-and-forth touching up, and paint fading and post shading was done to give it that "pop". Please don't ask me where this jet was based, or what its back history was. I gave up researching in this thing two months into building it. So here it is. I enjoyed the build a lot - a relatively easy to build resin kit. Enjoy the pics. Thank you. Terry
  4. LOL. I should put my new found magic to good use. Ok here goes... It baffles me why there is no world peace yet. Cheers, Terry
  5. Am I the only one who finds it strange that there are no 1/32 kits of French front line fast jets of modern tooling (disregarding the ancient Revell mirage kit)? I mean the Mirage and Rafale family. Those are gorgeous jets used by many countries, and are relatively accessible. I'd think there should be pant up demand out there. When even esoteric subjects such as the OV-10 Bronco gets the 1/32 treatment, where's the love for the French jets? Why no one even bother to scale up the various 1/48 mirages and Rafales? It wouldn't be that difficult in this day and age, would it? Terry
  6. All, If you want to see built up Fisher kits to help you decide whether to buy one (or just want to see how big they are), now you can see them at Aviation World at Toronto, Canada (on Carlingview Drive). There is a built up Skyray and a Cutlass on display there. Not sure how long they'll stay there, though. Cheers, Terry
  7. Hi all, I am currently building the Planet Models 1/32 Flying Pancake resin kit. I'm pretty sure I'll finish it in a what-if or some kind of fantasy scheme, and probably have custom decals printed. So far I have these two related ideas, and would like to hear your opinions on them. 1) What-if USN scheme. It will be painted in polished aluminum. On the top side of the pancake (where people on the ground won't see when it's airborne), it has a large post-war nat insignia and "NAVY" on it. On the bottom side (where people on the ground will see), it has a large set of con-centric green circles that covers almost the entire bottom surface. The purpose of these circles is to create the illusion that it is a flying saucer from Mars, thus confusing the populace and Soviet spies into thinking it's extra-terrestrial. It'll also have Marvin the Martian as a nose art, just for fun. 2) Marvin the Martian's personal ride scheme. This is obviously the fun one, and also will be polished aluminum. It'll also have the con-centric circles on the bottom, with Marvin's mug right in the center. Instead of the NAVY and insignia on the top, it'll have some silly quotes from the man/martian himself. Something along of the lines of "you make me very very angry". There'll be the same nose art, and also some martian roundels. What do you think? Thank you, Terry
  8. that scheme looks very nice! and the cockpit is outstanding. Terry
  9. Normally, I do this kind of things on ARC. But it's been offline for weeks now, so I'm getting my fix of silly showing-off on LSP here LOL. So here's my display case. Only those 1/32 models are numbered. 1. F-5E Aggressor, Hasegawa kit 2. F-16B Aggressor, converted Academy F-16I kit 3. Marines AV-8B NA, Trumpeter kit 4. F7U Cutlass, Fisher kit 5. F4D Skyray, Fisher kit 6. F-100D Thunderbirds, Trumpeter kit + CAM decals 7. Italian Tornado, Revell kit 8. F-14D Tomcat, Trumpeter kit 9. A-7E Corsair II, Trumpeter kit 10. F-4EJ Kai, Tamiya kit + Wolfpack conversion 11. F-16XL NASA, Tamiya kit + Cutting Edge conversion Yes, it's all jet, heavily USN biased, and unfortunately has nothing that's Russian (except for the 1/72 Sotka on the bottom). I plan on changing that in the future. Show us yours, and have fun. Cheers, Terry
  10. So here's what I'm building after finishing the Fisher Skyray: The kit has a small number of parts. Basically just the top and bottom fuselage "pancakes", an ok cockpit, control surfaces, and metal landing gears. I'll build this thing out of the box. The canopy may or may not be opened. As for the paint scheme, I find the real life dark blue scheme of the prototype kind of boring. I am leaning strongly towards some kind of fantasy, or steampunk based natural metal scheme. I haven't decided exactly how it'll look like yet. So how does the kit fit? Well, it's not Fisher kit, but it's on par with most other resin kits out there - which is anywhere from horrendous to so-so if you're used to building plastic kits. The first order of business is to fit this chip or short shot on one of the engine intakes. I'll probably use a combination of plastic card and CA glue and epoxy. More to come later. Terry
  11. Ooooh excellent! It's great to see another one of these beauties built. Terry
  12. Thank you, everyone for you kind words. I'm glad you enjoyed the pics. Sure Kev, please go ahead. It's my honour to have this featured on the page. Thank you. Terry
  13. Just finished this absolutely beautiful resin kit from Fisher. The fit was good, details were exquisite, and the decals were first rate! IMHO, it was an even better kit than the Cutlass. In fact, I like it so much that I plan on buying another one later. Everything was from the box, except the canopy actuating rod which came from a F-16, and the IP bezel decals from Mike Grant. The paints used were mostly Gunze acrylics. Metallic paint on the exhaust was Alclad, oleo struts were painted with Gunze Super Metallic. This time, I used Alcad Klear Koat gloss for the gloss surface for decals. It's a lacquer based product, but went on both Gunze and Tamiya acrylics just fine. The final top coat was Alclad Klear Koat "light sheen". Weather was kept to a minimum. Thanks for looking. Terry
  14. I gloss coated the whole thing with Alclad Klear Koat gloss, and started decaling. The kit's decals are nice and thin, and conform to the glossy surface very well. A bit of Microsol here and there was all that's needed. The only part that was tricky was the thunderbolt on the fin. It was printed as one piece so I had to cut it at the right place to fit it on the rudder. I was worried that the yellow stars wouldn't cover the dark blue very well. It turns out that's not a problem at all: Ironically, the national insignia's blue had trouble cover the red band. Notice the little bit of red showing through the blue here: There were lots of stars to apply, but unlike the Cutlass, their placement do not need to be exact, so it was a breeze. An hour later, I have one side all applied: I'll work on the other side, and bring her to the club meeting tonight. Terry
  15. All the colours have been painted. You can tell from the pics, but a lot of masking tape was used (way more than I anticipated). Next task is to do some touching up on the overspray and paint creeps. Some very tricky masking was needed to paint the intakes red. Terry
  16. The multi colour panels were meant to break up the large areas of gull grey and add some visual interest. However, the red was too red and everything else was too light, so the intended result just isn't there. I might go over it again with gull grey to just cover up all the red. Terry
  17. Painting has started. So far the white, gull grey and dark blue has been painted. I still need to paint the intakes red, the leading edge silver, and the radome and anti-glare panel black. All colours were Gunze acrylics. Here are the pics. Looking at them now, I realize all that pre-shading and panel-colouring was just a waste of time because the gull grey covered it all up. I know some spots need some touching up. I'll get to those later. Cheers, Terry
  18. Minor update. Instead of using my trusty stash of Alclad to paint the landing gear struts, I tried Gunze's Super Metallic metalizer. I used lacquer gloss black as the primer. MAN is it shiny!!! The rest of the airframe has been primed. I'll post more pics as the painting progresses. Terry
  19. Thank you, Matt. I plan on building it in the VFAW-3 scheme, ie the one with the blue fin and yellow stars. Terry
  20. After glueing on the rudder this afternoon, I declared main construction effectively over. Here is the airframe along all the odd bits. I also included a pic of the belly with the ordnance posed in place. Next tasks are the ones I hate most - masking and priming. But the fun part of painting will follow shortly woohoo! Terry
  21. The solid resin drop tanks presented a couple of problems. There are some nice ribbing details cast into the circumference of the tanks. Unfortunately the bottom part of that detail was filed away at the factory. The ribs are so subtle that you can't recreate them with plastic sheets (too thick). So what I did was I ran a thick layer of putty to rebuild the lost ribs (using masking tape as guide). Here is the putty after the tape is removed: Then lightly sand it with 600 grit sandpaper, then polish with 2000 grit sandpaper: Here are all the restored ribs: The second problem is the tanks are so heavy that merely gluing them to the pylons will not provide enough strength. So I had to drill holes and insert pins to add strength: That's it for now. Terry
  22. Oops... I guess the bad news is my model's rudder isn't accurate, the good news is contest judges wouldn't ding me for leaving a gap open LOL. There are some pretty big gaps between the flaps and the wings' trailing edges where you can see right through them (mostly of my own undoing). Since these are moving parts on the real jet, they obviously should not be filled, so I flooded the gaps with Mr.Surfacer 500, then wiped off the excess with lacquer thinner soaped Q-tips. This process filled the see-through and retained the details. Top side: Bottom side, note the nicely detailed actuating rods: I also assembled and painted the ejection seat. I saved a lot of time by re-using the seat pull rings from a previous f-8 Crusader build that's already painted with yellow-black spirals. The yellow handle on the right side of the seat was broken and I couldn't find missing bit, so I repaired it with a carefully sculpted piece of plastic sheet. The windscreen was also painted and installed. The kit supplies you with vinyl paint masks. I find them harder to use than Eduard's paper masks, but they do work well once you get the hang of it. I had to use a bit of filler at the very front of the windscreen to blend it in properly with the fuselage/nose. Here are a couple pics with the seat in it. The landing gears were also built. They are absolutely exquisite! Paul, I know I sanded the intended notches away. Next time I'll read the manual more carefully. Thanks for looking. Terry
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