chuck540z3

Slightly weathered it is guys! Thanks for your input. Cheers, Chuck

Thanks again guys! I have most of the cockpit painted and have added many placard and gauge decals from both Airscale and the kit. I am very impressed with the kit decals so far (2 kits in a row!) and the Airscale ones add a bunch more missing from the kit. On a combined basis with the Airscale PE and Adriatic resin, I think this is going to look killer when finished. Fingers crossed. Next will be the addition and replacement of many handles and switches, but I'm now at a bit of a crossroads. Do I build a well used fighter that was seeing lots of action in WWII, or

I'm really digging all the tiny details you are adding or correcting Anthony. I realize that it's a ton of work and I bet you question why you do it at times, but it WILL be worth it all when you are finished! It's already the best Brit Phantom ever made, so it's up to you to establish how high the bar will be, which is a pretty cool situation to be in. Cheers, Chuck

Hi Iain, There's no real "technique" other than I started using Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color (PLAC) in Black years ago when I was checking for flaws after adding rivets, closing up seams and adding panel lines, where I use clear CA glue extensively. By adding this wash to areas you have modified, small errors in the plastic or CA glue will pop out that you wouldn't see normally, allowing you to fix them while it's easy, rather than after a first coat of paint. I don't want to clutter this thread with pics of my own work, but here's a link to my recent Tempest build where you ca

Hey guys, in order to keep this thread on track with the Airfix Hellcat kit, please direct all inquiries about Adriatic resin for this kit here, while all non-Hellcat inquiries should be directed here: Vendors Forum: Adriatic Models Thanks, Chuck

Thank you everyone! Another thing I should have mentioned is that the Airscale IP also comes with the side panels, which I think will really look great once I've painted everything and added several placard and instrument decals. Hi Tim and thanks. I bought a set of lead wires from 0.2mm all the way up to 1.0mm from UMM USA, once of my favorite hobby stores. They can be a bit expensive this way, but I use so little of the wire each model that they last a long time. However, I understand that fly fishing shops sell this wire a lot cheaper, so you might give that "angle

If anybody has questions about the Adriatic resin for this Hellcat kit, please feel free to ask them here and maybe Giovanni can help us out. May 3/21 A little wiring and added detail to the Port side now. Although there are lots of wires going all over the place, you can’t see much of it from above with the shelf-like console covering most of it. With all the new Adriatic resin and kit parts, I think it’s busy enough and painting all this is going to be a real challenge as it is. Everything is dry fitted, using liquid mask as a glue when required.

I really wish I could "Like" this last post at least 55 times. So good, wow, and thank you again Peter for posting your work here. You really make this hobby of ours so much more fun than our individual contributions. Cheers, Chuck

April 28/21 Short Update, but I think an important one- and I’m feeling a little pressure. I got a hold of Giovanni and he will be contributing to this thread a bit later, maybe on the weekend, and I want to complete a few things before he does. With all this free resin I want to do a good job with it before "the boss" shows up! He is working on their new website and like everyone else, has a real job, so he is tight for time right now. With most of the new resin parts figured out, it was time to re-wire the back bulkhead. The kit bulkhead has wiring

Thanks Guys. As for Adriatic Models Resin, I can't really say what is in store once they get a website going, other than to say again that the quality is outstanding. Being one of the first to use their products, they don't have any real instructions yet, other than screen shots of the Hellcat F6F Erection and Maintenance Manual, which I use as a guide and then try and find the right part in the large selection of resin they sent me. Some parts were fairly straight forward, some were a little tricky to figure out, while I still have lots of parts where I can't find a home for the

Very nice 104 and I particularly like the cockpit. Those seat emergency pull handles are superb! Cheers, Chuck

Thank you Peter for the tip. I also had trouble with that part, so shaved down the sides of the handle and it fits great now. I'm actually close to Step 42 where you close up the fuselage halves in terms of parts, having skipped the many steps that puts stuff behind the seat that will never be seen again*. Next will be wiring, paint, then detailing the cockpit, which I think will be fun. * Skipped Steps: 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 40, and 41 so far..... Cheers, Chuck

Thank you everyone for your kind words of encouragement. I'll try not to disappoint! April 26/21 A little progress today, which was a little bit confusing and also rewarding. The focus was on all the Adriatic resin I was sent from Italy and where the heck it all went in the cockpit. Giovanni has sent me several pics of the cockpit and where some of this stuff goes, but not all of it by a long shot, which is understandable since it isn’t readily on the market yet- and they don’t even have a website yet! I am very lucky to have this stuff at all and with

Very nice progress Anthony and you have way, way more patience and determination than I will ever have. Again, I chuckle that I thought a Brit F-4 was nothing more than the American version with Rolls Royce engines and maybe a Union Jack sticker in the cockpit. It's a tad more than that, don't you agree?! Lol Cheers, Chuck

After building my Italeri CF-104 Starfighter, I took a break from modeling for a few weeks, to recharge my Modeling Mojo and also allow the parts for this new build to come in from all over Europe and the US, while researching all I could about the Hellcat. While I usually build a prop after a jet, I wanted to try something a bit different from my prior prop builds and I also wanted to build a kit a bit better made than the last 4 kits I made, of the 1/32 Kitty Hawk F-5E, Kitty Hawk T-6/Harvard, Special Hobby Tempest Mk V and the Italeri Zipper. While none of these kits were horrible (F-5E c