chuck540z3

I've read in a few places that they were painted so that the flash of a nuclear bomb, once dropped and detonated, wouldn't reflect off the wings and blind the pilot. Sounds far fetched to me, but maybe true? If true, it seems that if you were that close to a nuclear bomb going off that the flash that goes with it was a consideration, the flash off the wings would be the least of your worries as you shriveled like a marshmallow over a fire. Cheers, Chuck

John, Really enjoying watching you deal with the fit issues of the Barracuda nose AND the engine at the same time. If anybody can do this cleanly, you can for sure. Without all this extra effort, it''s just another Tempest. With it, it's going to be another "Thunnus" masterpiece, I am certain! Cheers, Chuck

Thank you very much everyone! I'm glad you like it- so far. I forgot to mention a few advantages of using a clear coat like X-22, despite the disadvantages of it knocking down the metallic look and changing the color: Changing the color isn't a bad thing if you start off too bright- hence the Chrome instead of Airframe Aluminum, etc. Despite my many attempts to eliminate surface flaws and bits of crap on the paint, they are always there as you can see in some pics. Removal of them by using abrasives of any kind leaves a dull mark that further Alclad won't cover. With a

Pretty sweet Jay! The colors, the cables and the clutter (3 C's?) look like the real thing, which of course is the whole point! Cheers, Chuck

March 4/21 Well at long last, I’ve finally finished adding the entire second HGW decal rivets sheet, which combined with the first sheet is 9,460 rivets. With a few throwaways during my second decaling session, there’s at least 9,300 of them, which isn’t all that impressive considering how tiny they are. What is impressive- and a TON of work!- is that I estimate that I cut out and added over 600 tiny decal pieces. The math here is that each strand is 172mm and there are 22 strands per sheet, for a total of 3,784mm per sheet, X 2 sheets = 7,568mm. Most of the decals I added rang

Sweet cockpit Marcel! Very, very nice. Cheers, Chuck

Really nice model and that camo paint job is very unique and striking! I just love it. Cheers, Chuck

Hey guys, as I continue to add a few more thousand decal rivets, LSP Kevin has just sent me the a copy of his new eBook of my Tempest Mk V build. He did a fantastic job of sifting through my cluttered WIP thread to make it nice and clear and added a lot of new information on both the kit and aftermarket items that are available for it. It also has a few of my tutorials on how to apply a gloss black finish like this build, apply a camo paint job, decant paint from a spray can, use paint masks, apply HGW wet transfer decals and do salt weathering. The book can be found at Kevin's website here

Thanks you Gents for your kind comments! Minor update, but I'm a bit pumped. I've started to add rivets to the Starboard side, and with my new found knowledge of how to apply these little suckers, not only am I now relatively fast, I'm actually enjoying it! Rivet lines are straighter, film comes off early, no rivets are lost, decals strings are not sticking too soon and the added detail looks terrific. I am now certain that this bird will be a stunner with several shades of Alclad, especially the High Shine ones. That is all.... Cheers, Chuck

Excellent modeling in every way! Your photography is great as well. Cheers, Chuck

Thanks Alex! In a bit of a surprising way, now that I know I can remove the decal film sooner than later (on rivets at least), I now actually prefer to remove the film sooner than later. Once totally dry, the film tends to shrink into small hard tight spots in panel lines and rivets and is sometimes very difficult to remove. Partially dry, like less than 2 hours, the film is elastic and still flexible enough that it allows me to pull it out of these tight spots with ease. As long as the rivets remain in place, I'm happy! Cheers, Chuck

February 26/21 I’ve applied HGW wet transfer decals 3 times now, on my Spitfire, Tempest, and now this CF-104. The Spit and Tempest worked perfectly with no issues or lifting, so I was certain that I found the magic formula, which is to let the decals dry for a long time before even attempting to lift off the film. Otherwise, I generally followed the instructions fairly well, other than to use Microset rather than the recommended decal solution of Mr. Mark Softener by Gunze. I started on the front of the fuselage and things went fairly well as shown earlier, although I could tel

All, Several years ago I bought CD's from "Flying Zone Direct" for both the Spitfire Mk V and Lancaster, for details of each aircraft for future modeling projects. When I tried to load the Spitfire on my PC a few years ago, I found that it didn't work, so I contacted the vendor, Bryan Atkinson. It turns out that Windows technology had advanced a lot faster than Bryan's CD and unfortunately, there was no immediate solution. Too bad, but I wasn't that choked about it since I found other references. I just got an email from Bryan today, with news that much of his Spitfi

Nice subject and great beginning William! If you haven't noticed, Photobucket has changed their terms of service for the 20th time, and now you need the "Beginner" plan to host images at $6/mth or $72/year. Even then, you are limited to 2,500 images, the platform is terrible, it's very slow and there are ads all over the place. Time to migrate to ImageShack or a similar hosting site, where the price is half of that and everything works seamlessly without hassle. Cheers, Chuck

Absolutely! If you look at a pic of the real deal, many panels are different colors/shades of aluminum and I want that complex look. However, the panels with significant decals that will likely get the clear coat aren't necessarily the ones I want to be different, so it's a compromise between accuracy and being able to leave some panels bright Chrome without a clear-coat. I also won't be using a matt-clear coat on hardly any of the model as well, which really changes the color of the aluminum panels a lot. Of course these are all changing ideas as I plow through this build and t