red Dog

Excellent, love it

I recommend to have a look at this book, It's full of heavily weathered greek camo and a great ressource for a HAF corsair I used it for my own A-7E project and even for that it's been proven quite useful

the trumpeter boxes are blue ... Does that count ?

in flight plain and simple

I love the originality of your models. The cockpits are awesome indeed Splendid !!

Nice venture love the preparation of what's going to be done with the gauges. If i had to redo this, i'd convert this to a more modern block, like a 50/52 or a MLU i destroyed mine i build 25 years ago when i built a 1:1 scale of the thing

As said above is that when you replace a few, you never have the same rivets. it creates spacing, widths and all kind of issues which to my eyes are very visible. With a smooth surface you have to do a lot of research and tracing to draw them right. With filled recessed ones, you still see them (putty vs plastic) and you can use that as a template to place the archer's rivets for instance Or if you're lazy, just wash the recessed rivets with a oil paint and call it done So in the end you get more flexibility with the way KH chosed to proceed. To me it is not a step backward. It's a good compromise

Wow !! Nice choice and well executed. Inspirational - i didn't even know Poland had SeaSprites Lovely dragon

Thank you all for the comments, I built the 32 revell one and still got a couple in the stash. IMHO they build easier than the 1/48 one. The 1/48 is far from an easy kit, especially around the intakes the 1/32 is not shake and bake either but I had less issues with it.

rivets would get most probably sanded away as you build the thing I hardly ever succeeded to protect them whenever sanding was required For that reason I personaly prefer engraved rivets because it gives me more flexibility I can leave them or fill them and use their location to replace them with transfer Raised rivets once sanded are gone, their location is gone as well, and much harder to redo On the little bird, I agree they need to be raised but I'd rather place them myself with archer rivets. That way I can ensure their line are not broken I'm glad to see a little bird. What we'll really need now is a crew and a good load of delta guys on the benches I have been thinking of that dio for ages

thank you guys I guess that's exactly my point in this topic and i was wondering if any of you guys already went that route and which paint was suitable for the effect. I have a few ideas i need to try this coming weekend

Maxim, that makes perfect sense and i was kind of expecting this to be the case. Your picture is proof enough it's the case, thanks. I'll just need to adapt my painting to get an effect closer to the second picture. My paint matches well the first image you posted, the effect i'm after is on your second image Starfighter, I can't deny I found conflicting sources. Most seems to say that the flat ghost grey scheme is one grey only. Cam pro says so. Victory says so, Airdoc says so as well. All the book references i've checked have illustrations with a single colours. I don't trust illustartions, but still... All of them conflicts with the TPS scheme official source you posted. VA-72 definitely has the two tone grey: I could not find the same evidence for the clansmen. do you see it in these pictures? I can't. And none of these picture reflects the colour of my model posted above. It may be the colour conditions over the desert, i agree. But then my model is represented flying over the same desert too That said, the problem is that the lighter grey is under the wings and most of the time in the shadow. the contrasts between the two colours is very subtle and weathering makes it disappear even more. So it's a mistake easily done, IF it's a mistake. But does it matter in the end? If it's barely visible on the real aircraft and sometime even invisible to the naked eye, then it should be so as well on the model. Hence the problem here is not using one or two grey tone that is the issue, rather the colour difference of the main grey due to light conditions. I'm not saying FS36320 is wrong - and maxim's picture above proves it's right. They all use it and TPS tech doc says so as well. But if the colour is prone to change hue with white balance, then basically we have a lot of flexibility in choosing our colours. I'm concerned with an academic paint value that doesn't reflect what i see in real life photographic evidences of the same aircraft. I think it's important that I trust my eyes and not only a reference, although correct. After all that H307 paint does a poor job of changing colour per light condition as the real paint it seems

Hello gents, I need a bit of help regarding the all grey matt scheme of the USN A-7E The earlier white grey scheme is pretty obvious. Most of the all grey kits i have seen don't seem right to my eyes and most of them had decals contrast issues. Especially with the light grey decals which often are almost invisible on the documented grey. The reason for that is that most of the instructions call for a paint reference FS36320 - in my case that translates to H307 in the gunze range. Most usn grey scheme are reported in the gunze range as H308 and H307 Well these two colours are not quite contrasted when painted alongside. the difference is really subtle and most of the time disappear with weathering The hornet is a perfect example of that. Now i perfectly understand that weathering plays a huge role with USN models. Corrosion controls really can impact the looks of an aircrfat colour, but yet if your base colour is not right, it is even harder to get it right during weathering. Getting back to the modern corsair. I'm building an A-7E from desert storm. It's going to be either a VA-46 clansmen or a VA-72 from USS JFK during Desert Storm. I'm not at my first Desert storm A-7E and the previous ones i built suffered from the same problem as I painted them according to the given references: FS36320= H307 that's what i did with the current build and comparing eye to eye with pictures of the real thing, the tone of the colour is just not right. H307 (FS36320) has a blue hue which is not right imho, the real pictures seems to me more like a neutral grey, without that blue hue. Sometimes it looks even darker. Here are two pictures to illustrate what i am trying to illustrate: this is one of the real picture Here's the current model painted with documented paint reference (FS36320) as you can see the match of colour isn't satisfactory I had great hope with the new MRP range and tried their FS36320 but the result is about the same hue and create the very same problem. So at this time, i'm not satisfied and need to make a repaint with a more neutral grey or something darker and at least without the blue tint to it. So gents, what would be a more suitable color reference for USN colours in general and for the corsair scheme in particular? thanks for your input

Thanks fellas Yep, agreed. But the least one of them. They can really do ugly ones .... and yes the ugly ones are more blasphemous than doing a 48th model

Here's the latest infidelity to our beloved scale. 1/48 Revell tornado in a landing roll out with thrust reversers engaged And a special scheme seen at european airshows between 2010 and 2012 Full build report is on my blog

Thanks Jari, most useful references as always I studied the Mk-82s on TER and found out that if I used the forward locating hole on the bomb to the forward locating pin on the TER, the bomb was sitting nicely and properly aligned with real life pictures. In that case, i will have to fill the rear locating hole on the bomb and punch a new hole a bit further back to accomodate the rear pin of the TER I'll post pictures later on. In the meantime, i need all the faith i can get the corsair basecoat was lightened with a lighter shade of MRP97 Then sprayed with water and salted Base color was then sprayed in a mist and heavier spots of MRP smoke have been applied according to photo references. I know it's way too contrasted at this time, hence why i need to keep the faith in my abilities to solve that issue with a further mist of basecoat The issue is the density of the MRP smoke, it's darker than the tamiya smoke and the first time i used it. I'll need to work on having a lighter hand We'll see once the salt is rinced...

Thanks Mario and Peter, I'll add more soon while the paint dries In the meantime, the Corsair has been preshaded I am usually very rough when it comes to preshading and I don't do it subtely as you can see above Then I applied a base coat of Mr Paint MRP-97 (=H307 aka FS36320) Looking at the colour of the model I remember that I never quite was convinced with FS36320 for late scheme Navy Corsair. IMHO it's too blue, and not dark grey enough. I looked at using FS35237 but after some tests decided against it. The weathering stages will undoubtfully darken the grey to something more appropriate, I hope.

Thanks. I agree, they are really nice. Definitely getting into my usual supplier list. And Maurizio service is great.

The Mk82s I'll be using are from VideoAviation. They were released not so long ago and looking at the type of weapons in the kit and in my stash, I knew I had to buy them. First they have the typical fire retardant coating but the Hi drag tail are much more detailled than the usual kit's weapon. Resin is videoaviation, Light grey is trumpeter and dark grey is academy (F/A-18) Both academy and trumpeter are too skinny. The tail is different, the Trumpeter and academy sport the Mk15 tails while video aviation has the BSU-86 tail Still, even the Mk-15 tails are underdetailled They come in three pieces: BSU-86 tail unit, bomb body and fuze (not pictured) Attaching the body to the tail requires precision and careful sanding of the resin support to ensure a well aligned bomb unit. The difference of detail when looking from behind is quite important. Eventhough the tail units are not the same, the trumpeter and academy Mk15 lack details The only negative point about the resin bombs is the fact that the attachment point are already predrilled. Since they could be installed on many different pylons, the predrilled holes will hardly match anything and will need to be filled and redrilled at the relevant location according to the used pylon. For the rest they are gorgeous and I'm sure the fire retardant coating will greatly help giving depth to the weathering of the weapons.

What ? 4 pages and not even one build picture !!! Really? Get to work mate, we're impatient. I'll follow tight with my in flight and let you open the road and find all the problems. Looking forward to follow yours

Thanks Rich, nice tricks in there. I tried as best as i could to minimize the gaps and fill them first with putty colored with black pigment (in case the putty was visible from the inside as I didn't want to have it grey or white) and finished the last layer of putty with non fogging cyoano. I didn't want to use cyano straight as i didn't want to take chance about the fog issue and i couldn't use straight putty as i needed to engrave canopy lines afterwards and putty doesn't stand engraving very well. Apart from that , I have nothing much to report. The last few days, weeks have been spent on sanding, puttying, rescribing, priming, fixing the small errors with glue, sanding again and priming again the usual aircraft model ordeal but i'm getting close whenever i needed a break from sanding, i compared some TERs to use with this build. The excellent LSP modification list advise to swap the trumpeter TER with the ones from the Tamiya F-4. Here they are side by side: No kidding, the tamiyas ones looks way better. That said, I hesitated to order the new ones from Eduard (brassin) perfectly knowing i will need the TER for my F-4J when the time comes. I decided to use the tamiyas ones for this build and i'll buy the Brassins whenever i build the Phantom. I'll post the same report for the Mk82 i plan on using

I'll be in South West of France in a couple weeks, and a few places i get kits from in the area, that's what i planned to check Merci

Thank you guys for the enlightment about the blue outline. Does anyone know the reason of having painted the red with blue in the field?

Saw this one during an impromptu visit at the LHS. 125€ had to fight myself to resist (and I won) I was a little taken aback by the blue outline of the US stars... Big fan of Romain Hugault comics so I might return to buy it but price is a bit steep. I gues that comes with the territory with the added goodies

Thanks Steve, That confirms what i've been detecting on pictures indeed not sure i have the alclad, but I do have some transparent blue