Starfighter

Absolutely love it - great work as usual, mate!

Progress has slowed down significantly - as has the photo quality! Anyway, I am currently trying to spend every available minute working on the model and the only possibility is to work in the kitchen whilst the kids are playing in the living room. So, without any further explanation, here comes the progress. This has to be in my personal top three of the most annoying tasks in scale modeling - building the nets. The curved parts are 3D printed, the golden parts are obviously brass tubes (2mm diameter). The initial idea was to print the entire frames, but 1) they are not *that* easy to print and 2) my experience with 3D printed parts tells me that long, thin parts tend to deform over time. Let's hope that won't happen with the ones I have printed this time. Some of the finished frames. The wider ones are slightly less high than the ones at the bottom as they aren't fitted to the hull at the same height (see reference pics a few post earlier). And in situ. The frames will be held in place by a 1mm axis.

Mate, try with ONE fuselage part first - and use thicker supports! Looking forward to seeing the ugly bird in the flesh!

After some additional sanding, it doesn't look too bad I'd say. A tiny bit more of sanding and I'll be ready to fit the nets and start painting.

I can totally understand your disappoint that it's required to spend additional money to get usable parts for a kit you have already paid for... on the other hand, I am sure either an Orion or Electra yould look great in in-flight mode. Now: BTT!

Kev, what about robbing a Hasegawa Kit to get the landing gear for your 72nd scale Electra? They appear cheap(ish) from time to time...

Now we're talking - awesome project! Can't wait to see this one come together. Reminds me of the printed 32nd scale one sitting on my shelf...

That's the right mindset for sure, Derek - it has to look right. Like I said, I just wanted to play devil's advocate. I am sure the modified model will look spot on!

Brilliant work, Derek! Just playing devil's advocate and I know you know the real thing inside out - are you sure the DACO drawings are correct?

More canning. I am quite happy with the overall effect, but I will use thin plastic sheet over a skeleton next time. Fiddling around with superglue in such large areas is super annoying and causes unwanted bulges when thicker spots of it dry below the foil. This requires filling and sanding... I hope it won't look too bad under a coat of primer. The welding lines were made of round 0,5mm diameter styrene profiles and stretched sprue.

I don't think the height is the issue, but the width of the strips. The stressed skin looks very prominent on LCS-3 IMO.

Here comes the test on how to simulate the stressed skin. I am quite happy with the result, but I should have turned the plastic profiles by 90° to obtain sharper argles. Lesson learned for next time... The hull was covered with soft embossing aluminium foil.

Cheers! Some important accessories have arrived yesterday - the baseplate and the patches. Time for a quick'n' dirty setup (and pic...) to check overall proportions. I am not totally unhappy but I guess the real effect will only become visible once everything has been painted. I should have some bench time later today; I will try to simulate the stressed skin of the hull. We'll see whether my idea works or not.

Cheeers Craig! I glued them with low viscosity Superglue; after finishing, I realised I had bought some water soluble glue just for that kind of work. I may give it a try next time I play around with soldering balls.

Very nice! I used to be responsible for quite a few colour versions of the 956 during my time at Minichamps - which ended ten years ago. I'm getting old it seems... looking forward to more progress! I am pretty sure this one never had Rothmans decals or tampo prints by the way.

You're welcome! I bought mine on eBay but that auction is no longer available. There are several vendors still selling them; I have used 0,35mm ones. 0,3 and 0,35 appear to be the most appropriate sizes for 1/32 and 1/35.

Thanks for your positive feedback! Building a slightly canted deck has been on my mind since I have started the (still unfinished and not canted) base for my AH-1Z. I thought this was the right opportunity to give it a go. The difficulty is to make it lok intentional without overdoing it. I'll let you judge whether I was successful or not. Whilst my family is on holiday, I had a very productive weekend at the bench. Probably the only time of the year I could watch TV (and having a beer) Uin the living room whilst guesstimating the padeye pattern and the dimensions of the deck details - and even drilling the holes for the padeyes... but don't tell anyone! I managed to design and print several parts for the LCS-3 flight deck, to design and cut several masks and to apply the nonskid surface and welding lines. Several areas were masked before the nonskid surface was applied. As usual, the masks were cut on my Silhouette Portrait using Oramask. Welding lines were simluated with stretched sprue. The hole will be filled with a (non-functional) flight deck light. And here's the setup with the printed details in situ. I am rather pleased with the result so far I have to admit. I now have to draw the nets; I also have an idea how to replicate the heavily stressed skin of the hull. Once that’s done, painting can start. I will leave the MQ-8 as it is right now - I’ll add the remaining parts once it has been fitted to the base.

Final assembly is proceeding slowly. I have further pushed the weathering which is more pronounced on the real a/c than I initially thought - thankfully! Meanwhile, I've also been thinking about a diorama base for the Fire Scout. The idea is to build a cutout of LHS-3 aka USS Fort Worth's flight deck. In order to obtain something dynamic, I have decided to slightly incline the deck to simulate the ship's movement. To get an idea, I made a simple 3D model to check proportions and size. The lwoer part will be a 400 x 300 wooden frame onto which the hull will be fitted. Whilst the little ones were playing in the living room, I cut and glued some plastic sheet in the kitchen, hence the super crappy pics - but you get the idea. The wide angle photos kind of eat up the base's angles... but I am rather happy with it. I have already selected some Reedoak figurines from my stash. They'll need a few minor modifications to go with the MQ-8.... but more on that - later!

It's an interesting looking aircraft for sure. Final assembly is taking a lot of time again. I have tried something new (for me) on the FLIR - I have applied 0,35mm soldering balls to the recessed fastener detail to simulate the bright silver fasteners on the real thing. As the should be flush with the surface, I pushed them flat after wards - pic of that will follow.

Well, I think that if vinyl was attacked by paint, it would not be suitable as a material for paint masks. I have the impression that unused pre-cut masks deform over time on the sheets. I hope this is not the case under a coat of paint.

Cheers Thierry! The only problem with the Takom kit is it being Tamiya box scale... but I think I'll get one of those as well. The Brengun kit is too expensive for the quality offered IMO - but it is an interesting subject for sure. Your Zulu parts aren't forgotten by the way!

The decals were then sealed with a coat of VMS matt varnish. A warm grey wash was applied first, followed by drybrushing with dirty white oil paint to accentuate the raised details. The thick decal carrier film is still visible below the first coat of varnish (and VMS is rather thick!). Spoiler: it completely disappeared under the second coat. All of the larger fasteners were then individually painted with a 00 brush. The big golden fasteners on the nose section are a nice touch. Oramask is actually a perfect material for such intricate raised surface detail. One only must hope the vinyl won't shrink below the paint over time. Weathering consists of my usual mix of oil paints, airbrush and water based weathering pencils. The off-center position of the sensor package in front of the dog house drove me nuts when applying the squadron badge decal by the way... I am currently working on the super declicate main and rear rotors and the remaining small parts. Smart as I am, I also forgot to fit two more intake scoops on top of the NACA ducts which have to be added. Once the model has been finished, I'd like to build a little diorama or vignette for it.

I defintitely hope you are right, Steve! Preshading was next. As usual, I have combined "soft" mottling, masking individual panels and mottling templates in several areas. I still wasn't happy with surface quality at this point, so I decided to sand the surfaces again with some high-grit sandpaper. This does not only smoothen the surface but creates very random patterns which come in handy during the final painting stage. The resulting finish is extremely subtle; my mobile phone (which isn't the worst) actually isn't able to capture the texture. The walkway texture on the sponsons was made using AK "Asphalt" texture paste. With the grey paint applied, more air bubbles becam apparent. Those were closed with Mr Surfacer. Also note the less than neat transitioin between the boom and the large blade antenna. I have sanded it again and closed the gaps using Mr Surfacer. Next, I applied the decals and added a first wash. The decals are nicely printed but rather thick. The exhaust stain was applied by airbrush using highly diluted Tamiya Smoke which was also used for the weathering around heavily used fasteners.

Well... shortcuts aren't my thing I guess. What followed was a long period of repetitive sanding, puttying, spot priming and rebuilding rebuilding raised surface detail. Once the overall surface quality was close to being acceptable, new fasteners were cut on my Silhouette Portrait using Oramask. Raised fasteners were restored using individually applied raised rivet decals from Micro Mark. Then, it was time for the fun part of the build (was about time!) - painting! A coat of Mr Surfacer Black was applied to provide a base for the MRP paints to be used. Note that some areas still look uneven - this was addressed later on.

Well, I'm obviously not (yet) dead, so I started yet another project earlier this year. My finger was hovering over the "buy now" button since Brengun's 32nd scale hit the market - but it's anything but inexpensive. When I found one for around 70€, I finally pulled the trigger. Anticipation was high when the little box finally arrived. The part count is reasonable; the fuselage consists of one large center casting and separate parts for the nose, dog house and the tail section. A perfect little kit for a quick, fun build. Or so It thought at least. My anticipation was quickly curbed when I looked at the surface quality of the components. The surfaces are not smooth and riddled with fine cracks. The groove lines are flat and the raised details are not what I'd call "crisp". On above photos, some of the groove lines were already rescribed. The fit of the nose section would turn out to be a significant problem as well. The close-up photo gives you an idea of the surface quality. I had no other choice than to remove around 1mm fron the lower "chin" section and to significantly sant the nose section in order to obtain a smooth transition between nose and fuselage. This destroyed most of the raised surface detail in that area. At this point, I discovered a certain similarity with a well-known Disney character: So, instead of messing around with surface detail, I decided to take a little shortcut: And that's another finished model in 2022. Final pics in the RFI section!