ladder4boy

Of course they did! And as soon as we all spend the better part of this year working on our mig problems, Tamiya will release one that will be perfect for half what it cost us to build ours! Murphy's law strikes again...Keep up the good work! Cheers! Jerry

yeah.. i saw that.. it is nice, but 2 beautiful ones came in the zacto correction set with the nose correction. they're resin too tho, so if i keep breaking them i may well opt for the master one later on down the road. cheers

this is gonna be sweet.. i haven't seen a Jolly Rogers in that scheme yet, so it's a fresh perspective of VF-84. all those panel decals should be fun as well! Work on the pilots thus far is, uhm.. what's the word i'm lookin' for.. stellar? Cheers, and Jerry

okay.. small update.. rivet detail on port tail.. inside will be the same but with a few more access panels.. the faint and/or red lines are the old panel lines that got filled.. the smaller rivets are new.. most of them are faint yet visible in the pictures i've seen, but some will need to be made larger still. a couple of rivet lines aren't evenly spaced.. i'll fix that later this evening with some super-glue and then re-rivet. still need to hack the rudder off, cut some off the bottom of the tail, and fix the top with a bit of an extension, re-work the radars a bit, and fix the rudder attachment points, fill some more, sand some more, and add the Zacto flare launcher to the front.

Thanks for looking in guys! Was going to put the Portable Plasma cutter and "jaws of life" from work in that pic, but i thought that might have been overkill. haven't had much time to work on this during the week, but i have the next 3 days off so i'm gonna do some marathon session work on it. Reworking the tails now and it's coming along fairly nicely. Revell plastic is a joy to re-scribe and rivet. Thanks for the interest so far guys! Mark.. the Decals for the Tomcat came in today.. many thanks again! they look awesome. Hopefully i'll save enough by the time i finish this build to buy all the AM stuff i need for THAT build. I'll have pics by tomorrow for sure.. Cheers guys

Thanks Karl... i've got a pretty good game plan in order right now, but i'm sure there will be a ton of changes before all is said and done! I have the entire weekend off, so i'm hoping to get a good start then, and just grind through all the problems as they arise.. I managed to get a good bit of the tail worked out last night...just need to actually scribe and rivet them now and try to find some more pics of the ventral fins to see how to work that issue out. Cheers

the best place to start?? the rear end! here we have the kit parts with a black wash to show the kit panel lines and rivets.. most of them are pretty accurate according to the sets of drawings i have.. there's just a good bit that needs to be added, and the inside and outside of the tails are different, as are the port and starboard tails, as they cant outward, while the flare dispensers cant inwards to fire the flares towards the center. after giving the entire kit a rub down with black (i use dry erase markers, let it dry, then wipe off the excess with a paper towel.. it stays in the panel lines and rivets pretty good and comes off with an alcohol wipe down) i decided i should probably have used red, as when i covered up some of the panel lines and rivets with super glue, they're now black and won't dissapear when i give the new wipe down to show all my hard work . lesson learned. anyhow, this is our starting point. cutting the rudders off and correcting those, correcting the shape of the tail, adding panel lines and rivet lines to them and adding the zacto flare dispensers next.. update coming soon. cheers, Jerry

Hi all.. The delusional idea behind tackling this build started as an offhanded comment by a fellow modeler at my LHS, turned into a dare, and pretty much snowballed from there.. I've spent about a month collecting reference material, a kit, and aftermarket for this baby, now it's time to start hacking up a perfectly flawed kit! I'll be using the Revell kit as a donor for the Zacto correction set, the eduard interior/exterior set, more zacto stuff later in the project (pylons and missiles and wheels, oh my!), the QuickBoost seat.. uhm.. begemont decals, and a ton of styrene bits and pieces to scratch build the cockpit and wheel bays, so now might be a good time to buy stock in Evergreen. I was originally planning on building a plane from 1521st training squadron at Mary AB in the aggressor scheme, but might change that to one from the 120th guardian fighter regiment from Domna.. that one's growing on me more and more.. especially since it'll be less work as it's a later model 9-12 and i won't have to scratch build the ventral fins and hack off the flare dispensers on the Zacto set.. time will tell. There's some big challenges ahead on this baby.. time to find out if i'm a "modeler" or "assembler" Lets get started, shall we? any and all comments on this build are greatly appreciated! especially if your name is Karl, Theirry, Andy, Alexander, Chris, Kevin, or Dave and you see me getting ready to do something really stupid. Cheers, Jerry

hmmm.. so basically what you're sayin' is that all you need to do to accurize the revell kit are... 1. fix the LERX either by using Karl's (blackbetty's) method, or come up with some devilish engineering design of your own making 2. re-scribe and re-rivet the entire airframe, and correct the shape of the various appendages, wings, air brake, etc.. 3. use the zacto correction to fix everything covered by it -intakes and FOD doors -canopy -tail planes and flare dispensers -various scoops, lumps and bumps -exhausts -nose cone -a ton of stuff that i can't remember 4. fix the wheel wells, landing gear, and gear bay doors 5. fix the centerline tank if you want to use it 6. fix the bottom of the fuselage to add the curvature to it (thanks for that insight Karl!) 7. new pylons and missles (zacto covers this as well) 8. last, but not least, a new cockpit as the kit one is, to put it nicely, sparse. hmmm.. $50 kit.. $180 in zacto parts, 30 in eduard etch.. 20 or so for decals and a QB seat + untold $$ on reference material, divided by a year or so of your life that you'll never get back.. I say bring it! cheers, Jerry

Outstanding work Karl. I've been contemplating one of these builds for a while, then i stumbled upon this build a couple of weeks ago and you've motivated me to give it a go. Just like all your builds, this has been a joy to follow. Keep up the good work! There's light at the end of the tunnel now Cheers, Jerry

Mark.. i'll look around and see what i can find in the Daco book on swiss fighters when i get home. I have the eduard interior set and the BB set for the late c-model. The black box set is very nice and test fitting required very minor surgery. The eduard stuff makes for a very nice cockpit on it's own, but makes no provisions for the hell hole behind the pilot if you wanna expose that. The seats with the BB set aren't correct from what i can recall either. Wolfpack makes a nice SJU-17 seat, but it's too wide to fit the kit cockpit without taking a good bit off the sides. The Legend seat is supposed to be spot on but i haven't seen it so i don't know if it fits or not. On another note, outside of the fit issues of the LEX to the intakes and such, one thing you may want to look into is a set of D-mold or seamless sucker intakes. They REALLY improve the look of the model, especially when viewed from the front as the kit intakes are way undersized. You may want to try to get a set of G-factor gear for it as well, as the kit legs have a history of sagging over time unless you fill the gap between the provided plastic and metal parts with CA or epoxy when you build them up. HTH Cheers Jerry

have you SEEN any of my builds? This would be more like the tortoise vs.the glacier! serioulsy tho, i'm figuring on a good year from start to finish. Think i've found some resource info... gonna try to find that zlinek issue somewhere cuz i've heard good things from several sites about it after Theirry mentioned it. If i find anything, i'll pass it on to ya.

Andy.. give me a month or two to get all my ducks rowed up and i'll race ya with this build!

Thanks Thierry! I didn't think you'd done a tweak on this one since it would be several pages long! I've thought about kit bashing the two, but i've kind of just decided to see what i can do with the Revell kit on it's own. I've had my feelers out for a TAC/Cam pit, but it ain't lookin good... the one's i've found are quite expensive now. Usually, when i find something to build i don't have a subject in mind... i just know i want to build a Swordfish or something. I got the eduard/academy 48th boxing of the MiG from a friend and saw this scheme and i really liked it, and as a child of tcademyhe 80's i've kinda always been fascinated with the "big bad MiG" so this is gonna be kind of a "passionate" build for me. We'll see how it goes! On a side note, does anyone know about the accuracy of the eduard brassin stuff for their boxing of the 48th scale MiG? I know the academy kit has issues but was thinking of using the brassin cockpit and aires wheel bays for this kit as a loose reference. Thanks again Theirry.. gonna go hunt down that magazine issue. Cheers Jerry

Thanks Andy! the first link had the sharkmouth aggressor i was lookin' for at the bottom. I checked the Linden Hill site the other day but couldn't find any of the begemont stuff on there.. i shall have to check again!

Dave.. Thanks! That's kind of what i was finding but i always like to double confirm before buying

Kevin.. didn't even think of checking the Kagero list.. i pretty much just did the cursory amazon search.. That's why i ask YOU guys.. cuz you're all in the know. Stephen.. the sad thing was, no effort had even been made yet! brand new in the box academy mig 29.. I would never say anything less than nice about somebody's efforts on a model.. even if there's a cheeto and some dryer lint stuck to the outside (don't ask.. and yes, it did happen at a local contest).. i use "constructive criticism".. as in.. "wow.. nice paint scheme... good job on filling those seams.. i like the use of the dryer lint to depict your p-47 breaking the sound barrier there.. what's the cheeto for?".. y'know.. constructive! Kage.. if i can get my hand on the Begemont sheet i'm gonna do the shark-mouth from the training squadron.. which is the one on the cover of the Eduard/academy 48th scale kit. It's a trainer so the weapons load-out will be semi-fictitious, but i'll just use artistic license and say it's a "red dawn, what if". If i can't get the Begemont sheet, i'll just see if i can send a photo-copy of the eduard decal sheet to Ian and see if he can blow it up and make some masks for me. I'll still need the stencil stuff tho. Planning on using the eduard PE stuff and the QB seat..as long as the seat is correct for the 9-12 model. I'm sure someone makes one if not correct. Also, all of Zacto's stuff. Haven't seen his resin for this kit personally yet, but i know Karl (blackbetty) used it on his UB build and it looked fan-freakin'-tastic. The finished model did too, but that was all Karl. And i've got his su-27 resin and it's beautiful.. and the easiest resin i've ever used as far as fit/complexity/instructions goes. I'm gonna go look for the +4 book and see if i can find it anywhere, but i think i'm gonna go with the kagero, lock on, and other Gordon book as i can get them all at a reasonable rate! my biggest problem right now is finding out what version of what missile was used when so i can order them with the other stuff. I'm gonna google.. but google is a strange mistress.. she's let me down so many times before. Cheers guys, and thanks for the help so far! Jerry

hi guys. I've never really built much in the way of Russian stuff (or modern stuff for that matter) but I recently opened my mouth at a local model club meeting and accidently offended a modeling friend of mine by saying something as harmless as "that's a great kit, but it would still look better if it was 32nd scale". who knew people take offense to stuff like that? anyhow, i'm planning on building a MiG 29A 9-12 airframe and i need info on what's good reference and what's not. i've heard that the Mikoyan MiG-29 (Famous Russian Aircraft) by E. Gordon book is pretty much the bible on this aircraft, but since i can't take out a second mortgage on my house just for the book, it's a no-go. Gordon did another book "mikoyan MiG-29 Fulcrum" and it looks pretty comprehensive and all.. was just wondering if it had good walk-around pics and drawings in it. Also, any info on the Lock on No. 19, Janes MiG-29: at the controls, or the warbird tech vol. 41 would be mucho apreciated. I'm planning on having to scratch-build the cockpit and wheel wells on this baby, plus attempt to fix the LEX.. LERX.. whatever those things are called, so info on books with decent drawings would be helpful-ish as well. Another big question is what kind of missiles would this thing be carrying in say, oh, 1986 and on which station? I'm getting ready to make a big order to an awesome resin guy in Idaho and i'd like to get the missiles when i get the other 15lbs of resin corrections that go with this thing! Thanks in advance! Jerry

. That pretty much explains the way your updates make me feel Guy.. pretty much in that order. the ROFL is the closest i could get to a "delirious" emoticom BTW. Again.. OUTSTANDING job thus far!! Can't wait to see what you come up with next on this baby. You still hand-painting these things or did you finally break down and buy an airbrush? cuz if you're still brush painting i need to throw another whole line of emoticoms in there! serious slick work there. Are you using the Daco book on this one? Cheers buddy, and keep up the good work! now i'm motivated to go work on something in the stash..

Kage, was thinking about just starting with the trumpy cockpit and depending on how bad i muck that up going from there. Would hate to drop 30 bucks on an aftermarket pit only to hack half of it up! Don't think there are many changes in the 'pit outside of the IP, but i really haven't spent much time checking pics and references. When i start digging through stuff i'll send ya all the pics I took if you're interested. Mostly exterior shots as the cockpit was closed.. gonna have to get on the google machine to find what i can on the insides Mike, that engine correction set looks awesome! I'm not going to be able to attend the nats this year, but a buddy of mine is going and i'll have him swing by and grab a set from ya! I wanted to get everything together and try to get started on this thing in the next month or so, cuz i wanted to build it for the "fallen comrades" GB in memory of Texas.. We chatted a bit when he was building his and i sent him a bunch of pics i took of an A-10 C at a local airshow.. would be good motivation for me to get on this thing and get it finished by the end of the year. Cheers Jerry

Thanks Kage.. those should do nicely for the guages.. i'm just having a hard time finding warning placards and such for the cockpit sidewalls and for the ejection seats. I know eduard makes a lot of stuff for individual seats, i just don't want to shell out full price for a set when all i need is a couple of placards for the headrest and visible areas. Wish someone did more for jets like the ultra-cast set for the p-51 cockpit. My basis is that i'm wanting to upgrade the Trumpy A-10 to a C model, so i'm gonna have to scratch the whole instrument panel and some of the side console stuff... just trying to save myself some cash in headache medications..

Hi all. Was wondering if anyone knew of a good source for generic modern jet instrument decals. I know airscale makes some, but i'm looking for more modern stuff for american and russian cockpits. stuff for info placards, ejection seat decals, and PE bezels, etc. any info would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Jerry

Sad news indeed. I hope the best for you Charles. My thoughts and prayers will be with you. Jerry

Thanks Tim and Harv.. You're FE-2 is just awesome Tim! (so's your p-38 Harv!) It's a great little kit. Had kind of a happy accident with this. Seems my burnt umber oil paint is old and rather thick, so after i brushed it on kind of heavy, i used a sponge to remove some of it, but i drug a pretty stiff brush over the remainder and it left some nice, thin, plywood lookin' lines. The only downside is that i did that 3 days ago and it's still not completely dry. I'll probably leave it alone till next weekend and then add the interior rigging wires and clear coat it for a light oil wash. I painted the base color xf59 as per wingnuts hints and tips page, but i went back and pre-shaded with a light mix of flat black/dark earth around the structural members and lines in the floor and stuff. I also went ahead and glued the side pieces to the fuselage so they'd have a good glue surface before painting. Makes it a bit more difficult to paint the wood grain and stuff, but i was afraid of them popping off if i tried to glue over all that oil paint. For the interior rigging i'm using some 25lb stainless steel wire fishing leader, which happens to be just the perfect diameter to fit inside Bob's buckles tubing, so i'll just glue that to the fuse sides when she's all dry. don't know if i'll try it for the wing rigging tho... think i'll need something more adjustable. Going to start working on a bunch of other pre-assemblies this week if i get some time... mostly the undercarraige and bombs and racks and stuff. I stuck the bottomw wings into the ceter section to check for fit earlier and the wingspan on this puppy is quite impressive. if i get the gumption this week i'll tape my he-111 back together and do a wingspan comparison for you guys. This kit takes a lot of pre-planning and prep work. As far as fit/finish/mind-blowing technological innovation i'd rank it above the new Tamiya kits, but it takes a good bit more "some modeling skill needed" than those kits... mostly in the areas of patience and more patience. the only downside i see to this kit is that now i want a FE 2b, a couple of Albatrosses, a Hansel-and-Gretelburg, a D VII, etc... Thanks for the feedback guys! Cheers all Jerry

small update here.. lot's of work to do on this thing and not much time to do it lately. finally got some wood graining done on the interior so i can start putting stuff together. Was just looking for an opinion as to how it looks from you guys before i start detail painting around it. This is my first attempt at graining and think i got the "look" of it without the grain being too "in your face".. sorry for the crappy pic quality.. what do you guys think? good to go or not? Cheers, jerry