ladder4boy

Bill, Outstanding start! The wood effect looks brilliant! Will be following along buddy! Cheers, Jerry

update time.. Good news and bad news.. Good news first. Fit of the parts is extraordinary.. All parts on the interior are just press fit together.. no glue used and the hull (fuselage?) is taped together. Just the major big parts installed here to see if there would be any major issues.. Happily, none to report! Was laying everything out to see what needed to be painted on the interior and what could be left alone... and what injector pin marks needed to be filled. Now for the bad news.. This is what is seen when the lid is put on... may be hard to see because nothing is painted, but virtually all the interior detail is out of sight including the instrument board when it's all buttoned up. One possible solution would be to leave the front two fuselage top panels loose so they can be removed.. but the panel over the rear gunners position and engineers compartment will have to be fixed as there are rigging lines running through them and struts affixed to the center position. might be cool to do something like build the upper framing out of strip styrene and allow those panels to be removeable, but that's some serious scratch building. If you take a pen-light and look real close like through the gunners position you can see some of it, but if you're gonna close it up tight I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time trying to get your interior wood grain perfect and your post shading just so.. I probably will anyhow, but I suffer from an affliction and can't help myself. As far as all the interior rigging that seems to be scaring the crap out of everybody, 90% of it will not be seen if you close it up tight... so don't let it scare ya off too bad. Wish i'd stuck all this stuff together before I spent 3 hours delicately denting the fuel drums and adding archer rivets to them.. they're practically invisible in there. Okay, time to tear it all down and start putting some paint on stuff. Cheers guys, Jerry

sprue reduction complete.. Tom.. I used a combination of tools for removal.. if the attachment points look tricky, i'll clip the sprue off about an inch away with sprue cutters and then clip it off close with a set of tiny scissors I got for cutting PE.. works pretty good. a lot of the points at the wing got cut with a razor saw, and a lot of the fiddly piping for the engine and interior got cut off the sprue with the razor saw as well. still managed to break a few parts.. the bomb holder part A11 and the engine water pipes D55, but managed to get them glued back together fairly well. The engine parts are still on the sprue in the box.. I'll clip those and clean them up while i'm waiting on the oil paint to dry on the wood parts. Heres a pic of the wings and fuselage next to a yardstick.. measures about 35" without the ailerons... those should add about another inch to the overall wingspan. took about 4 hours to get everything clipped off.. spent about another hour so far cleaning up the parts for step 1. I'm anal retentive about cleanup so you guys can probably get it done a lot faster. hoping to get all my wooden parts cleaned up up today and tomorrow, then base painted on Monday and start the wood graining process. I'll build the engines while all that's drying. Tony and Cees.. the Lanc is my next big want.. Have been holding out on the B-25 and B-17.. but will probably pull the trigger on that one when it becomes available. Hopefully, i'll have this beast done by then! All in all, I've actually been surprised by the number of parts on this kit.. There's a lot of them, but for some reason I was expecting more.. Test fitting has been excellent as expected, and I've been able to develop a bit of a game plan for construction. I'll 'splain the plan after I've tried it out and made sure it works. Should have something tangible to show by the end of the next week hopefully. as far as aftermarket goes for this thing, the only thing i'm planning on using is the Gaspatch turnbuckles and 1mm tubing from Bob's buckles.. will probably use 2lb fishing line for most of the rigging.. maybe some ez line.. we shall see. cheers guys, Jerry

Tom.. glad someone is interested! Ray.. the rigging on this thing doesn't really scare me that bad.. there's a lot more room on these big models to move my fat fingers and tweezers around than some of the smaller planes. I did order the Windsock Datafile on the Felixstowe as they're re-printing it, but as of right now its status is "delivery upon printing"..It'll probably show up after I get the fuselage closed up and have a dozen or so beautiful pictures showing me everything I did wrong on the interior after it's too late to change it. I'm hoping it has some helpful pictures of the rigging in it tho. I did find this web page http://www.seawings.co.uk/F2Amangal.htm that has some very informative pictures of the rigging and some of the technical data in it. first update.. due to some issues with my neck, I've had problems with numbness and loss of dexterity in my fingers.. so I've had issues with breaking small parts off sprues while handling them in the past. The way I've been avoiding this is by removing all the parts from the sprues and bagging them by instructional steps before I start glueing anything up. I've done this on the last couple of WNW kits I've worked on and it's worked out extremely well for me. The first thing I've noticed about this kit is the extreme number of sprue attachment points on some of the more spindly, tiny, can't wait to break in half parts!.. I understand the need for them and the purpose of them, and i'm super happy with the level of detail allowed by this technique.. it's just super scary when you see all the tiny removal points that need to be cleaned up! trying to get all my wood parts cleaned up and organized so I can get them base coated tomorrow afternoon, but it may take me a good couple of days just to get them cleaned up! I'll be sure to show you guys all the mistakes I make so you'll see my pitfalls at the least.

Happy New Years everybody! This was waiting for me on the doorstep when I got home yesterday, so I could think of no better way to start off the new year than with a new project. I haven't been on here or even touched a model for over a year due to work issues and some health problems, but since the holidays everything has slowed down and healed up enough to give it a go again. Will be building N. 4545.. Obligatory box art with Gotha box for comparison.. and a bunch of little bundles of joy... Lots of clean up and sprue removal to get started.. plan is it get all the parts that have to be painted wood done first so they can get the oil paint treatment and start drying, then work on all the sub-assemblies. Progress pics to follow as soon as I have some. Hope everyone's new year starts off as good as mine has! cheers all, Jerry

She's a beauty Dejan! Cheers!

Sorry.. No updates. Been working 90+ hours a week and haven't had a chance to do much more than surf the web LOOKING at models for a few minutes in the evening. I'll be back on it when things slow down a notch here. Cheers, Jerry

used to use this layout when I was in architecture school... I used a solid core wooden door (a hollow core works just as well and is much cheaper and lighter) placed across two metal 2 drawer filing cabinets. a 36" door will give you almost 10 sq. ft. of work surface and the filing cabinets give you plenty of storage space. got both the filing cabinets at a second hand store for like 5 bucks, and the used solid slab door at the same place for another 5. New would still cost you less than $100. the only down side to this layout is it makes it WAY too easy to leave stuff on top of the desk out of convenience.. thereby leading to large amounts of clutter

thanks for that guys.. that'll save me about 40 bucks and a lot of headaches!

Meindert... Saw your build page earlier when I was deciding whether or not to do the conversion.. It was what convinced me to give it a go! On a separate topic.. Has anyone used the avionix/bb cockpit for the E model and if so, was it more trouble than it's worth? From my understanding, the cockpit is pretty much the same in the "I" version, just a couple extra boxes that come with the assorted conversion sets and its all black on the inside? So far, plans are to use the isracast conversion.. Isradecals.. Weapons from isracast and paragon... And some assorted eduard stuff on the exterior. I've already scored a Set of cutting edge intakes.. This will be a winter project so I've got plenty of time to stock up on stuff before I start. Cheers

Thanks for the input guys. I'm actually building the block 40/50 right now in the Pope shark mouth scheme so I'll have the kit decals left over.. But I've pretty much made up my mind to do the Ra'am.. The camo keeps growing on me more every time I look at it! Cheers, Jerry

Thanks for the input guys! Guy.. Anything John Wolstenholme builds is worth looking at. Thanks for that link! I'd love to get that book as well, but an hours worth of searching for it online last night led to nothing. Time to start begging and groveling on my knees here soon. Paul and Dave.. Sent an e-mail to Sky last night, but haven't had a chance to check for a response yet. I've got a line on the cutting edge conversion, and I know everything they made was top notch, but I may go with the isra cast due to reviews I've read online. Note that the only reviews I trust online anymore are those where the review sample came curtesy of the reviewers wallet and they're not being paid to say how wonderful it is. Scotsman.. I may well be dropping you a line here in the near future! Haven't had a chance to search out your build yet, but I will later tonight. Petrov.. They have a revel kit at my LHS that's in the bargain bin for like $15.. I'm gonna hop over there Friday after work and grab it.. There are several side by side comparisons on the web.. But I may well use it for parts and as a backup..or try that Bazwith it down the road! Cheers guys and thanks for the input! Jerry

Paul, thanks for the info. Looking at the set #23/24/25 with the eagle on the tail.. Apparently it has all the airframe and weapons stencils in Hebrew as well as English on it.. Can't find it in stock anywhere, but I'm gonna e-mail 'em and see if they're still available direct. Looking at conversion sets now.. Toss up between the cutting edge and the Isra-cast. Now the search for research material begins..

Yeah Paul.. Also gives me an excuse to but the Sufa kit! The Ra'am conversion doesn't really seem that bad... Really thinking about going that route.. Researching what all is out there for it now. Does anyone have any experience with Sky decals?

ahhh.. enter the tiger meets... didn't even think about those. Decals may be hard to find tho as f-15 decals in general seem to be scarce! I did notice in that pic that the guys in the air force seem to be getting younger and younger

Hmm.. The F-15I is sounding promising...I saw that sky decals does a set.. Need to start looking around.. Boredom at work leads to this y'know.. All of a sudden your learnin' and spending money

Kirk, it's the Tamiya F-15E.. Not the bunker-buster version. Traded an F-4J for it. I just am not a big fan of gray jets.. Got a couple already and want some pizazz in the display case. (I'm fully aware that I have to actually complete something in order to have pizazz in the case as well.. I bore easily and get distracted by shiney things). Do the Israeli's use anything based off the "E" platform? Or the Japanese? I'd love to do an Israeli camo job or one of the Japanese aggressors... Or the great "white dragon". I'm lookin for out of the box here... I've got a while to plan, horde AM, and acquire reference material.. Maybe wait for DACO or Melampy to do a book on it.. LOL

Okay! Gray Seymour Johnson bird it is then! Got intakes and exhausts squared away.. Will order Eduard down the road.. Thanks for the input guys! Jerry

Just traded for this kit and was thinking of maybe doing one of the aggressors out of it sometime down the road.. how much pain and suffering am I in for? Can I just pop in a new cockpit or are there major changes required? I know almost nothing about the f-15 except they're big and usually gray. thanks in advance guys, Jerry

I know of one set from Xtra decals.. http://www.amazon.com/F-4-Phantom-Starize-decals-XtraDecal/dp/B0088I3J5O two sets still available! cheers, and good luck! Jerry

$30... Not bad at all! Too bad shipping sucks for all you lads across the pond tho.. http://www.squadron.com/product-p/rg4666.htm Cheers, Jerry

Really looking forward to this! Your builds are always inspiring.. Should be a cake-walk for you after the MiG! Cheers, Jerry

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/g220000/g227991.jpg Found on the net. Great pic with the tail dragging in the water!

I'm definitely in for one. One of my fondest memories as a child was visiting the USS North Carolina with my dad before he died. Back then (late 70's), you could crawl all over the kingfisher they had on the stern. I remember my dad talking to one of the guys working there and getting permission for me to sit in the cockpit. I've been waiting for one in 32nd scale ever since. Would love to do a dio of the one off the Carolina.. There's a pic somewhere of the pilot cruising up next to the ship with 5 or 6 rescued sailors or pilots clinging to the floats and on the wings (can't remember the exact scenario). That or on a catapult.... Or both! Thanks for bringing it to my attention Iain! Cheers, Jerry

Chuck.. Glad to see it again! Your build along with John Wolstenholme's are pretty much the best references for building this kit that I've ever seen.. And I'm using it to navigate the pitfalls on my build. Glad to see ya on LSP and looking forward to your next inspirational build! Cheers, Jerry