red Dog

Thanks guys, Jari, I'll make good use of that picture which leads me to one particular question i kept for the future, but looking at the picture jari posted, i can see it's the same thing: does anyone know why the desert storm A-7E had most of the time asymmetrical loadouts? Most of the pictures i have seen have weapons loaded on station 1&3 (with a ter on 1) and 7&8 (with a ter on #8) Basically the TER are symmetricals (STA1 & STA8), but why are the single stations not (STA3 & STA7)? it's hard to see but the single bomb on the left wing is not on the same pylon as on the right wing. that's the exact loadout i'll use but my curiosity is aroused some more without the TERs left side right side even better, bombs have been dropped but the pylon remain:

First coat of Mr Surfacer (wing assy is not glued) I'll now further work on sanding, correcting panel lines with superglue and I'll probably need to engrave a few panel lines as well. Some are very shallow

got a horse trailer available ? I do a few modelshows, but mostly in Belgium as I don't travel quite far with my models.

I can understand that. In my case, square is not dynamic enough. It strikes me (stupidly) as non aerodynamic Go figure. That's the reason why I always exclusively use round supports.

I usually source the support materials in art stores. The kind of stores for the student in architecture. They have all kind of different diameter rods, hollow, plain, in acrylic or metal or plastic. I also am always on the lookout for parts that could be suitable for the inflight displays. That's the reason I have a box full of various material such as fower supports, weird design compositions, tubes etc etc. With the internal support validated, I closed the fuselage. Cokcpit and intake didn't give much trouble. It was a bit hard to get the correct placement for the cockpit sidewall as I didn't glue them on the cockpit and elected to insert them after the resin pit was sandwiched in the fuselage. The nose and intake lipe were then quickly added and adjusted One of the main fitting issue of the kit is to close the airbrake. Many builders decided to leave it slighly open to avoid the problem - which is a valid option on the ground. Unfortunately not for air to air refuel. On top of it I have the added challenge of the support rod going through the airbrake. So first thing was to drill through it at the right place and angle The fitting issue can be easily solved by adding plastic strips under the airbrake parts. By elevating them a bit the fitting is much better on top and on the side fuselage. Tha actual airbrake is a bit too long and need to be shortened at the arrows for a better fit. The inges are a potential issue and care must be taken not to sink them. To avoid it I placed some plasticard support inside. Putty was required mainly on the bump and at the end of the airbrake. The side part extending from the airbrake are sinking below the fuselage level. Once again, something that can be easily solved with bits of plastic strips palced accordingly as seen on the above. Closed airbrake. The assembly has been puttied and engraving was redone. The nose gear doors were closed shut with the usual issues. I realised too late that the launch bar is supposed to remain visible in the front opening as there is no doors for that part. I'll have to find a way to place it afterward.

Looks like guys waiting for the cod to deliver the mail

Time to address the internal support structure: The A-7 will be very low to the base, because the higher the corsair is the higher the intruder will be. And that will be a stability issue. So the intruder needs to be as low as possible. Usually I tend to use 10mm tranparent plain support rod that I insert into a 10mm hollow aluminium tube (which is 12mm in diameter) So the first step is to place that tube inside the A-7 fuselage. I hate vertical stands, IMHO they break the dynamic of the scene, but it's harder to work with oblique stands. This one will be 40° down and forward from the model (the intruder will have it down 60° something and backward The A-7 is really easy because I can mess with the lower fuselage at no risk of damaging anything because i'm inside the airbrake bay. The top fuselage is great too because I'm inside the wing. So there is zero risk of damaging anything and the two holes are providing a stable structure for the aluminium tube. The fuselages are closed and the pose is tested for being level with the horizon. The mockup base hole is not perfectly 50° but 52° so I have too much of a nose down attitude IMHO. That will be corrected on the final base. It's not very visible on the picture above but with all the resin and weight in the nose, it becomes a factor. The added bonus is that the support stand enters the lower fuselage very close to the centre of gravity of the model (with the nose resin goodies) The model is also too high on its support stand but I don't want to cut it yet. The bottom will need to be worked out further by cutting correctly the tube and fitting the closed airbrake. I planned it to be just behing the forward airbrake bulge. The top is really nice; I can adjust all I want and then by gluing the wings I will provide a stop for the support stand. Not far from an ideal situation, I struggle much more with other models. I can smell paint. Soon

Progress is slower than I want but I need to ensure that all is carefully planned before closing the fuselage. The tail end of the corsair could use some love but I don't want to spend ages detailling something that will be hard to see. Yet a bit of easy extra detail won't hurt. So I went looking in the stash parts and found some fitting parts that won't be fully realistic but good enough for what I have in mind: The rear bulkhead was also given a bit of depth with small plasticard square section before painting in interior yellow green The original part is on the right, the spares are on the left incidentally the spare fan goes perfectly on the original part and fits perfectly inside the exhaust. The other part also perfectly fits the fan part painted and varnsihed Dry fit with too much light (sorry) Not quite a perfect 100% realistic A-7 exhaust but you need to put your nose deep inside to notice - and you also need to be a specialist of the A-7 engine too. So good enough for me.

Very inspiring !! i always debated to do a grey or a green one. seeing how good yours turned out in grey, i know where i'm leaning now Great hog, very well done

Congratulation on a very well done and attractive model she's gorgeous

Thank you Simon

Thanks for the vid Jari. Yep, with a bit or artistic licence

Glad it helped

luckily he didn't complain I'm a bit stranded with the pilot trying to figure out if i should put patches on the flight suit or if they actually removed the unit ID before going to war? By the wayhow come there is no decal sheets for these items. I mean subduded american flags for shoulder patch would be great any one know if these are available from somewhere or do we have to revert to homemade decals? (it's small and not easy to do, hence my question ) While i debate the above I addressed one of the minor challenge of the kit: gluing the wings in the flying condition. Although the instructions offer both ways it is well known that the folded wing is the one giving less hassle. Unfortunately i can't make an in flight with folded wings To avoid a thickness difference between the inner wing and the outer wings one has to deviate from the instructions and glue the top inner wing to the top outer wing and do the same operation for the inner wing. Joining both top and bottom full wing together is much easier. both top wings and bottom wings have been assembled using plasticard and superglue as strenghtener dry fit of the wing assy - that one won't require much putty. I think i'll use that design to easily secure my supporting stand. i can easily place the stand through the whole fuselage and adjust it before placing the wings into position. That should be a very stable way to support the aircraft in flight. the thickness difference can clearly be seen in the left and right wing viewed from the front. This is much easier to correct with a bit of putty rather than sanding a large part of the outer wing thickness A coat of mr surfacer allowed me to smoothen all the closed doors and access panels before gluing mode details on the fuselage

I think i recall an extra 300 from lcaerodesign

I remember having long hesitation about the choice of PE for the bombbay. and the radio compartment. Eduards deals only with the internals of the Bombbay. Profimod deals with the internal sides and the outside of the bomb bay, read inside the fuselage. Which is great. Bonus point for profimod on that one. As I was getting the larger set for the fuselage interior from Eduard, I discarded the small PE form Profimodeller for the radio compartment (well that was an easy decision for me as the support turret was removed in my maid in the shade build. And most PE goes there) What I really liked in the smaller Profimod kits were the gun wire support lines system. It's a very attractive detail in the waist gun position and the nose comprtment. I wanted to have them in my build. Problem is apart these tiny details, I had already most of the PE from the eduard interior kit (which obviously doen't have the gun support lines) In the end I decided not to buy the profimodeller kit and stick with eduard's and I scratched the gun support lines. The same was done for the rear compartment, the only real part I was interested from the profimod kit was the rear bulkhead. All the rest was to me rudundant. Eduard doesn't provide the rear bulkhead. So I scratched it. Eduards has also the benefit of the Big Ed set, which kind of lock down all your options. The bigEd can sometimes be bought at very good price when the novelty is over. You get a good deal on price but lots of redondant PE I often compare my real needs from the individual sheets and the price advantage of the big Ed and most of the time the big Ed wins. Having so many PE, then you are tempted to discard the other PE options. I think I can say that's what happened with the B-25 build. and hence why I ended up with so few Profimod and so many eduard's PE By the way I do have MANY left over PE for the B-25 I didn't use most of the exterior kit (engine mostly) and many various PE I didn't use

Weird Simon, links works for me. Anyway, the full WIp is on this board as well

I faced the same dilemna when I planned my Maid in the shade build. I considered both Eduard and Profimodeller and in the end I went with a mix of the two depending on what would be visible in the final build. In many cases, Eduard and Profimodeler are redundant, but in some cases, they complement each other. To use both is possible but IMHO overkill. Be aware that Eduards have some real nasty mistakes on their instruction sheet, they have the fuselage doors all mixed-up I'd say in the end I used about 90% eduard and 10% profimodeller with careful planning to avoid overbuying redundant AM stuff - which is almost impossible Regarding brass guns, I discarded fully PE. I can't cope with them and I went Masters. I'm glad I did Of course that means the modeller has to spend extra time in planning Buy hey guys, isn't that part of the modelling hobby.? We spend ages criticizing nex projects from the manufacturers, we spend hours voicing our so called frustration because kits are not perfect and not up to tamiya standards. Isn't the research, the planning, the search for the best method according to what we want to reach for a finished model, part of the concept ob building models to LSP standards? Otherwise we wouldn't even be here on the forum would we? Sure enough the HKM B-25 has some minor issues but comon, it's a great kit. Minimum mastic required. Just a bit of careful planning for obvious issues (like the waist gun pivot point position indeed) but the kit is very simple to build and very well engineered IMHO. It's no shake and bake but hell I'm glad it isn't, because I personally feel that tamiya builds are just boring. They are boring in their 'popular choice which almost all builders do in the same configuration and we end up with seeing always the same models. And they are boring because of the way they build. Anyway, that's a personnal opinion. I am sure not spoiled by them. My personal point of view is that I have more respect for companies who have the guts to try less popular products but do mistakes rather than companies who never do mistakes but design only kits that will sell to the general public. I understand the mechanics, but I know where my gratitude (and my money) goes

Wow, 21 in 4 years !! I think I have seen a few of yours on contest tables as well. And I'm sure we share the same LHS Congrats

Looking good Jan

Probably because it's not finished I wanted to get the pilot seated in first and make sure I prep the pit for the next step. For instance I have a feeling that the rear of the pit will conflict with the closed zacto canopy. So I'll probably need to sand details away. Because of this the painting isn't finished and weathering didn't even start. I painted the pilot and worked some more on the seat but I wanted to do something else so I started gluing the wings together. Hence why there's not a lot of progress to show this weekend

Wow is an understatement This is going to be a great dio. I love it when the attention is not only on a model but on a full scene.

Love it. I never realised the Ferris was like that. Your tonal variations are just striking. Eye catcher model !!

me too I just scored an old revell on evilbay for half the usual price, but That's going to be a Kfir project. I'm not interested in a Mirage 3 but if this renaissance kit becomes available, I will be

Yep, there are some how to in some books if i remember right. My problem with that is the vac form canopy, which i'm not tooled to make - get me a canopy and i'll do one as well ... one day