Starfighter

Brilliant work mate, can't wait to see it in the flesh in two weeks time!

Thanks Zac and special thanks to Maru for your great ideas! I have continued painting and weathering the hull and deck. As usual, the masks for the hull numbers were cut on my Silhouette Portrait. During the drying time, I have started painting the figurines using acrylic paints from Andrea and Vallejo.

Thanks geedubelyer and Maru! Geedubelyer, you are right about the nets. I have tried to make the sag more using a hair dryer but to no effect. They get back into their initial shape once the cool down. I guess I'll have to live with that. The fun part has started. After priming the base with Mr Surfacer 1500 black (and breaking the nets I had to fix countless times)... ... I started painting the deck. Deck markings add life and interest. I have also started to figure out what will be going on on the base (see what I did there?). The guy looking at the rotor already had some hand surgery done. I am not super happy with the guy looking on as he does not look in the right direction (he should look up a bit) - but that will be pretty hard to modify. Not sure what I am going to do about that. ## The guy kneeling will check the plug of something I drew up yesterday - a Tesla GPU. I will have to slightly modify his hands as well. That thing should add a touch of colour and a bit of interest. Looking forward to seeing the printed parts. The handles will be made of wire. A good friend of mine is currently printing it on his Sonic Mini 8K along with some other goodies like die towns and Pitot tubes.

Thank you! Fred definitely made a great discovery . The only problem is to get enough of it. Nobody can eat so many onions to get enough of that netting... The other frames are ready, so I fitted them temporarily to the hull to check the overall look. In the end, the frames will be held in porition by a thin wire; I am currently waiting for the turnbuckles and clevises to fit them. I hope painting will start within this week. BSMC at Putte is approaching very fast...

Absolutely brilliant, Anthony!

Thanks a lot Maru and Pete! Well, building the frames was already super annoying, but it's easily topped by webbing the nets onto the frames. It's super tedious, boring and takes way longer than it look. I have spent the whole evening doing it while watching a replay of this year's Le Mans 24 hour race (which I was not able to finish either :D) and I only manage to finish five of them. That's less than half of the nets I have to build. And I am not even taking into account the nets I need for my two elevators and the diorama for the AH-1Z... anyway. The nets are actually bags containing onions my good friend Fred aka @stusbke has discovered and was kind enough to provide me with. Thanks a lot, mate!

That'S absolutely stunning to say the least, my friend!

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!