red Dog

What's best to do on a Sunday than adjusting a thousand rivets Most of the rivets are Quinta's this time You really need a lot of different sized and spaced rivets. Single, double, double offset, and even triple lines for the Hog. Each rivet lines received at least 3 separate dips with Daco Strong decal solution And before painting I always seal the rivets with a coat of gloss (X-22)

The A-10 maintainers really await the KC-46 with its fly by wire boom I read it should decrease the A-10 bumps

Finally some paint Usual combination of MRP-038 (FS36375) and MRP-097 (FS36320) I left the light grey paint under the removed pave penny pylon. The false canopy has been masked with a paper template kindly printed on Eagle Strike 32027 decal sheet and painted MRP-241 (FS36081) I had some fun on the nose using AK Heavy Chipping. I first painted MRP-148 exhaust metal and MRP-030 Steel. The airbrushed the heavy chipping fluid before painting the greys and then the AAR black marks and then started chipping using water to activate the AK fluid. The extensive macro make it very rough in the picture but the effect is pretty convincing tot he naked eye I initially wanted to keep the 4 parts separate (nose, tail, left wing and right wing) but there's a lot of rivet work necessary around the junction of the forward and aft fuselage. So I decided to glue them together and have a rivet Sunday. Fit is pretty good - surprinsingly !! But a little bit of sanding makes it better. Quick coat of the 2 greys to check surface and let's start detailing that pig's back. From now on it will be much harder to take pictures of. That fuselage is quite long for my small bench. Thanks for looking

Could we try to convince you to address one of the important feature of the F-16 MLU in 1/32? The PIDS pylons These were done before (by PWMP) but as far as I know are long OOP I used these before for my Orange jumper conversion starting from the F-16 Sufa: Doing a MLU nowadays is really hard but can be done with a lot of aftermarkets, yet the above pylons are missing in the aftermarket inventory. I thought it would be something ideal for Kopecky scale models to do https://www.airforce-technology.com/news/terma-modify-belgian-defences-f-16-pylons/?cf-view There are also a lot of variation for these pylons with Terma sensors and many airforces around the world use variations of these pylons. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/32521/air-force-f-16s-are-getting-pylons-with-built-in-missile-warning-sensors-and-countermeasures Many thanks for your consideration.

funny, I have been eying the 1/18 harrier and considering what's available as aftermarket. This might be the spark to convince me... I'm not there yet but it's coming I guess

Yes. Quite well actually. Both from models and flightsims - and he introduced me to you a few years ago

Yes they changed location. Can't go the two days, but will be there Saturday morning by a friend's table who usually displays a lot of small scale civilians

Thanks gents Adjusting the vac canopy closed to the fuselage proved more time consuming than anticipated. Lots of putty was needed in an area where it's dangerous to work. I already know that one of the inner part came unglued as I can hear it moving around in the pit but I don't know what it is yet. Probably a mirror or one of the 2 instrument on the windscreen frame. I secretly hope it is the small switch box I added on the left low side of the canopy because that's going to be the least visible problem... No way I can see before I remove the masks. and certainly no way to fix this as I'm not ready to reopen that canopy after all the work to close it. On the positive side, I had fun adding Archer rivets again They do add something critically missing to that area. Can't wait to start spraying some paint now...

2 year hiatus ? I was there last year...

Great original display. it's awesome

feel your pain... This one: fell off the shelf one month after being built ... One of the grandkid of the guy I built it for slide it just a bit too much. Total loss and redoing the chute wires was not something I was ready to do 3 times (I had it twice already) I'm usually not attached to model once built, but hearing it made me sad.

I read about it but I doubt it because if you see that particular stance with the MF, you actually never see it with the ML or MLD loaded or not. So I think it's rather something on the main gear leg of the MF version but as I said initially I never was able to pinpoint the real reason

showstopper (for me) is the vertical tail. MF and ML have quite a different one The MF is longer and has a definitive angle change while the ML is shorter in length and has a small angle change. It is quite striking visually. I'm sure there are other differences but that's the most striking one preventing you to build a MF out of a ML unless you want to make a new tail MF: ML: Standing on the ground is also quite different but reasons elude me. The MF points high nose and the later migs are more level.

Crazy stuff here

I made extensive testing with these colours and honestly it does not thin well with any of the usual thinners. Mr Color levelling thinner works best BUT their own brand thinner works better - especially if you need to do fine work. Gross work will work fine with Mr levelling thinner, but IMHO it thins much better with their own thinner. I usually never do that, but with the real colours range, I do use the brand thinner (AK real colour High compatibility thinner) It saves me a lot of hassle

She's a beauty !!

Final steps to close the canopies were done last weekend: I gently applied desert dust on the large surface inside the cockpit. Added scratched instruments on the windshield Then glued the front windshield to the fuselage Added the rear-view mirrors and the canopy handles. These are supposed to be on the canopy but since I made a guide to mate the canopy to the windshield, I decided to put them there which is easier, stronger and won't make any difference in the end And FINALLY ... Fit is not too bad, I will just have a bit more work at the rear end: having been stuck for so long at this stage I can't wait to make substancial progress now Thanks for looking.

Thanks for the tip Pete. The template with tamiya tape worked very well and gave me the below result on the test piece. Much better than the original decal test where the film remained visible So the dots were applied inside the final canopy using the same technique: Thanks @Pete Fleischmann & @themongoose and all of you having contributed to this result. I honestly was lost about how to do it and thanks to your advices a solution came out and I'm happy with the results Way to go LSP

Excellent idea. I was already leaning towards using paper, masking tape should make it even better Thank you

Thanks to Pete I'm trying to learn a new technique using JB weld Product is great and I'm glad I have sourced it as I can see using it a lot in the future But trying to represent the trackers on the vac canopy is not easy due to lack of such experience. Since I'll have only one shot at this, it has to be perfect, so I started doing test with different techniques 1. I did as Pete suggested and applied JB weld from a tip straight on the canopy, using a paper template glued on the other side of the transparency: As you can see, the lack of experience makes it complicated to always deposit the same amount of product each time. The curve of the canopy doesn't help and this was my first messy shot. Next ones were barely better I'm concerned with regularity and I am not sure I can pull this off. I then tried to bore holes through thin styrene (0.5, then 0.3mm) using the paper template with the dot location as a guide. I first used the punch and die (4 holes bottom right) but quickly realized it wasn't convenient and my smaller punch was too big. So I reverted to the usual drill. It's a draft so I didn't focus too much on being regular when drilling The idea with that is to stick the styrene template to the model part and fill it with JB Weld, scrape the surface and remove the template leaving dots on the canopy. I first tested on a flat surface: 2 and 3 were done as explained above. 3 was pretty good except for the 4 larger holes obviously. For 4 and 5 I applied JB weld to a paper template on a dummy flat surface then placed the filled paper template where I wanted and scraped one pass only before removing the paper. 2 and 3 did not work on the canopy very well because the plastic template was too thick and would not bend enough to rest perfectly against the canopy Product goes through too much and create a mess. I then tried the 4 and 5 method with the drilled paper template only on the top inner part of the canopy We're getting close. Don't mind the top right dots, it's the ones from the too large holes. Middle part wasn't resting perfectly on plastic so I guess that's the reason the dots are bigger Some more regularity testing required but I'm getting more confident I can try that "one shot ruin the whole model" operation I'll work some more with the 3 (0.3mm styrene template) and the 4 paper template technique Any advice, shoot.

cool, I told my hellcat it can't get out of the stash until Aerocraft cooking's done

Thanks , it's a tiny detail barely visible but it was fun to convert that helmet to Scorpion. I hope that in the future we start to see more of these modern gear in our models Thanks Steve. Thanks Derek Thanks Jake, It is one of the gem from Reedoak. I initially asked Reedoak and PJProduction to consider doing a 1/32 pilot for the A-10 with the Scorpion gear. I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea considering the new A-10 models in 1/48 (I understand scaling is no issue with 3D modelling). PJ kindly declined and Reedoak didn't bother to answer. So I looked for a donor pilot model to be converted. The best I could think of was Reedoak pilot with the regular HMCS but the open visor kinda looked ok for a Scorpion helmet. The default pilot pose is great for a ramp start where the guy is talking into his mike. I converted this to an in-flight pose by placing his hands on the controls and moving the O2 mask back on his face and making him look up searching for target. The scorpions helmet stuff was all added with scratch bits That's great Peter thanks. It was exactly my intention with his pose so I'm very glad you mention this. Thanks Matt

While I practice the delicate JBWeld operation, I further converted the pilot and IP. The oxygen mask had to be cut from the original left hand and the insides were hollowed to allow the mask to fit the pilot face. The oxygen hose was also remade. Maps and datacards were glued on the two big kneeboards and the flight stick was glued in his right hand. The flight stick base is glued in the cockpit floor and these two will match as the pilot seat slides into the pit Also noticeable is the right eye lens necessary to convert the helmet to scorpion. On top of the helmet, the sensor for head tracker was added as well as the big cable running from inside the visor to the side panels. Here's a unforgiving closeup of the pilot's helmet converted to Scorpion. I usually print my own flight suit patches and HUD decals as unfortunately very few decal sheets provide these important details. I know most combat missions are done without them but call that artistic licence as I prefer my pilots to wear these. I usually design these by scaling down the aircrfat decals I design. Small detail that I actually never see on commercial decals are the mirrored US flaf to allow wearing it on the right arm. I heard the stars have always to point forward The super thick Trumpeter HUD glass was replaced with a thin sheet of acetate on which the HUD decal was applied The top plate HUD is missing and was added with a small plastic plate. I kinda hesitated to make the special glareshield pouch the A-10 pilots all have and place in front of them. All pieces together in the pit. I just need to add the scratched DTU box and repair the two seat rails that I broke previously.

do you brush paint or airbrush your masked canopy?

I tried and I failed Mozart. If you have a few advices or more specifics about using that blade, i'd love to try myself. It makes no point to do this with the standard blade if there's a better way I tried with the orange 2mm blade, so maybe that wasn't the best one?