red Dog

It was tedious but it's done, picture as soon as i have a minute home while i still have natural lights the basket challenge was nothing compared to chosing the colour of the wood base. I have no freaking idea

you sure will, i'm sure it will stand proudly next to your viking

Well beside trying out new technique, the idea to use this one was mostly decided by looking at pictures of real weathered intruder the initial idea came from studying the white nose on that picture. You clearly see that the nose is painted white then a layer of dust changed the colour to smoked white, then some areas where cleaned up randomly according to maintenance or even repainted during corrosion control The tail in the picture above was used as model for my weathering. you clearly see that the dirty area have been cleaned in a non uniform way (by hand or airflow) and leave hard edges most of the time Another example oin the tail about corrosion control where a dirty area has been repainted, mostly in the jointure of panels (i.e along panel lines for us) to be able to do that with base colour, then you obviously need to alter the base colour on your model first. Same here on the nose and the fuselage side, although the fuselage weathering could have been done without the scratching effect the Hairspray technique (made easier with the mig products - at least to me) is the perfect candidate to simulate the crew cleaning local parts of the airplane while maintaining the bird. I's not Something i can do with the finest airbrush needle i own (.15) it also perfectly simulates the mark crew boots would leave in the intake or close to the walkways. If you do that with airbrush only, it's too cloudy. the so called Hairspray technique provide much harder edges and smaller marks like very fine line. Beside, this technique is pretty safe to use because: 1. you remove paint rather than adding paint, so ultimately if you remove too much you end up as if you didn't change anything 2. by varying coats between enamels and acrylics your previous work is very safe 3. if overdone, you can tame it down with a mist of base colour. 4. it is safe to use on decals (considered you applied a good varnish coat obviously) there are some "issues" with this technique : 1. the longer you wait to remove your paint, the harder it is to remove 2. if you wait not long enough you remove it completely and directly (you lose your time) 3. the smoke paint that you use may look very subtle when initially airbrushed but will gain in contrast as your scratch it Basically, it was the best technique to try according to the results to achieve but above all, i need the training for that:

Last run before the finish line The top surfaces were not as weathered as the under fuselage white and getting some grey paint for corrosion control on the top fuselage was way too subtle to my liking, so I needed some more smoke paint. Out came again the scratching effect and the tamiya smoke colour, but not before a safeguard alclad gloss coat The tamiya smoke was scratched with the old brush or various sponges to vary the effects. it's very visible on the picture , more sublte on the model (due to contrast at post production) Then the base grey was applied again as corrosion control The inner intakes were weathered by the same technique, and I destroyed the homemade decal red corner doing so ! And the fuselage behing the cockpit as well, albeit with more corrosion control subtle touch ups All 4 wing bags are attached and the heavy D-704 as well. That extra weight really doesn't help the supporting pole. The model ended up very heavy Final shot for today is the canopy. It's always a great achievment when the masking tape are removed from the canopy and you discover the crew inside. It's one of these special moment, usually marking the end of the project ... But before calling it done, I have to do some engineering on the stand for the 2 models - and get my distances right And of course scratching that drogue ...

I thought you can't fire the gun with WoW Wow Master arm (Safe or Sim) Gun loaded in maintenance safety pin Gun is on the second trigger detend ... Geez That's a lot of things that went bad,

I was there Saturday and brought back some shiny tools I never saw before Reviewed on my blog

unless you produce it …. but start with the prowler - and let me be your first customer ...

Yep, we're getting there That thing isd massive !! takes all my bench space

Thank you guys, much appreciated. Excellent advice Ziggy. I overlooked that obvious bit - it's now corrected thanks to you. Many thanks I spent the whole weekend working towards the goal of closing the canopy So first thing was finishing painting the pilots in their desert storm suits and mating them to the seats Looks like VA-35 pilots had these chocolate chips flight suits Worked a bit more on their office, And step them inside: Then tidying up some wires, gluing Hud glass, handles, mirrors and correcting a few touch of paint here and there and I'll be ready to close 524 up

Flabbergasting. i'm still gathering bits of my jaws on the floor I'm Always in awe and to be honest jaleous for such fully scratchbuild projects. Can't wait to see it in the flesh soon

Decals are on ... the AOA decals are not reacting much to Microsol, I had to switch to Daco strong solution which works better. Unfortunately one of the big star on the top wing reacted badly and gave a weird result. Not much of a big deal and probably my fault soaking that decal with daco product. All the rest went pretty well with excellent Quality decals The homemade decals were coated with superclear from MRP and reacted fine to a slight coat of microsol (i didn't dare using stronger decal solution on these.) that red homemade intake decal helped a great deal and i noticed AOA added that as well to the revision of the intruder stencil sheet, well done Ziggy. You might also consider maybe adding the fuel tank fin attachment holes in decals as illutsrated below in a next revision the Navy decal was cut after being positioned, it's homemade decals and suffered a bit during the treatment, Nothing a touch of black paint can't fix though the hook isn't glued hence why it dropped and the picture made me realise that the warning hook decal is messed up the D704 drogue was replaced with the steelbeach one. It's much better and i'll have to scratch an opened drogue anyway the Ram is feathered The wing bags are decalled as well with a bit of artistic licence on the squadron ID. The rear end received homemade decals to simulate the holes in the skin for fitting other types of fins configuration, a feature missing on the trumpeter parts although very visible. Not perfect, but i'm happy with the end result

interested as well

Daco currently has an anniversary sale - up to tomorrow So if you want to buy the book anyway, might as well profit from their extra rebates I have it. it's a gold mine, just like any book they publish reference wise, it's a mix of German, dutch and belgian starfighters

Well it can be done, so there is hope. Here's what I did with Maid in the shade. No commercial decal available but good side shots of the real nose art were sufficient to recreate the decals. Of course these shots were colors and from the side with minimal perspective deformation issues: Like this Decals can be created with any image edition software and printed on clear decal paper. Nowadays we get excellent inkjet clear decal paper that suits any home printer you certainly have: The problem obviously is white. White can't be printed by our printer. That's the reason why you see an outline on the decal above. That outline was used to cut a mask that was then used to paint a white background for the decal on the nose of the model: To be honest, that's the trickiest part - curring that mask to ensure it matches the decal correctly Then all it takes is apply the decal on the white background So it sounds complicated but basically if you have a bit of experience with the software it's pretty possible to do on your own. obviously the B-24 noseart can be much more complicated than the simple one above, so it really comes down to the complexity of your noseart and obviously the quality of the details you have available. Recopying a perfect side shot is easy, recreating a full nose art requires artistic talent which we don't all have (i don't have it) I'm in no way a professionnal, but i do a lot of my own decals and although I can't say anything about the feasibility of your project, I don't mind trying to steer you in the right direction if I can - that is if you haven't found a professionnal to do it for you. Again no promise as it clearly depends on that nose art complexity, reference picture.

Great work an that old model