red Dog

Yeah, I know those edges drinks paint quite a lot. I have built my share of cabinets and dressing with MDF, and my 1:1 F-16 cockpit too The only trick is paint, sand, paint sand paint sand - rince & repeat. you can really get a very nice finish though. Haven't decided which color yet, but I usually end up with black.

Thanks for the reminder Chuck. that's an advice I was indeed planning to follow. The pylons actually need a lot more work as you found out before me. The sway brace location are wrong, bolts for attachment are wrong, the panel lines are wrong, rivets need adding, distinctive fairings are missing on 2, 4, 8 and 10 and let's not even start about some being underscaled and others overscaled. Most of it is a PITA to correct but I will go over my modification soon - although I have been working on that on and off for quite a bit of time. Having such a big model on my bench now made me first work on the custom display stand prototype. It's massive and by far the largest display stand I ever built. The idea is to have 3 positions for the airplane 15° up, horizontal and -10° The A-10 also need to rotate freely so I can decide to display it inverted, in a turn or level. This is only the first prototype and a lot of work are still required

Great scene Peter. Love the dynamics. I have the exact same project with a 1/24 stuka. So I took notes, especially about the way you dealt with the support rod. Really awesome

The decals I designes accounted for all three options. And one more for Champs 1 after being converted to an airshow bird but now I am committed to 976

Thank you all for your comments. One year after starting this project I have now finally decided which specific A-10C I'll model. The 354th Bulldog squadron during their 2017 OIR Incirlik deployment was picked up quite a while ago but I was still hesitating between two (actually three) specific aircraft. 81-976 Ditzy Daisy 81-983 Champs 1 80-275 The Dirty Pearl my requirement were: - dirty airframe not yet cleaned from the gun soot - the bulldog nametage under the left windscreen - live weapons, so during deployment - bomb tally if possible During deployment, the aircraft had bomb tally on either left or right side but no names Just before returning to the states names were added to the airframes on the left side under the fuselage Some sported bomb tally on their right side fuselage Once back in the US, the aircrfat were cleaned, names deleted and most of the bomb tallies removed as well, Some were kept for demo aircraft (Like Champs1) Pictures of specific armed aircraft with bomb tally, nicknames and dirty with gunpowder are quite rare. Although Dirty pearl (976) appeal was obvious with my weathering plans; I wasn't able to find a lot of info about her. All I can see is that she didn't have the DM code and was almost free of any markings. So I discarded that option. Even the serial on her nose were absent. Champs 1 (983) has a lot of picture available both during and after deployment. During deployment or at least during the return ferry trip, she had all my requirements and even more with Linda Lee being printed on her left side and an impressive bomb tally on her right side But my final choice is Ditzy Daisy (976) There are a few pictures of her at Incirlik exactly like I wanted my model to be. The only thing I never was able to find was her bomb tally. I recently found a picture where the right front fuselage has been cleaned where exactly bomb tally would have been. So I guess she sported tallies and I could add them - even though I don't know how much. The above picture was probably taken at Incirlik, just before the squadron came home.

Finished mating the two fuselage parts together. Quick splash of paint in the usual two greys and I started adding stencils with eduard PE masks made for the F-16 in 1/32 I could not resist dry fitting the wings to the fuselage as you can see. But before that I added stencils on the wings as well. Data is eduard PE and the star and bars is from my silhouette Once fitted with the tails and wings this thing becomes massive and harder to take pictures of. Please meet my floor because the cutting matt is now officially useless More touch ups and more masks for this weekend. I'd love to secure the wings as well but I'm concerned about handling such a big piece on my small bench But I'm getting to the point where I wanted: I'll soon start heavy weathering. But there's one final thing to address: the 11 pylons Thanks for following

No weathering has been done yet. So yes, I plan to address that later on . She will be filthy as a desert hog.

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