chuck540z3

Gorgeous! Your paint work is superb. Cheers, Chuck

Another Viper masterpiece Niels. Just beautiful in every way! Cheers, Chuck

Thank you everyone for your very kind words of encouragement! I WILL finish this model eventually, so until then as shown earlier, this is where it's at today, Cheers, Chuck

Hi Mike! Thanks for the words of encouragement, but I'm afraid my slow recovery was for a very good reason. After 8 weeks of a lot of pain, my shoulder was/is badly infected and I had to have a second surgery to remove the 4 screws that held my Subscapularis and Supraspinatus to the humorous- and all the other bits they installed to make my shoulder work properly, which will never be installed again. Now I'm on 6 weeks of IV antibiotics via portable pump and my right arm doesn't really work at all. I tried to model again today and gave up, which is very frustrating. All that I have left to do, is to install several tiny bits in the cockpit and other areas which requires fine motor skills and precision, which I have none of right now, so I'll just make a mess. Through time and physiotherapy, I hope to get most of that back, but until I do, this build is on indefinite hold. I don't give this update to look for sympathy, but to explain why it may take me a much longer time to finish this model. I was in the hospital for 6 days and when I walked around the corridors and saw all the other patients, I felt lucky rather than sorry for myself. There are a lot of people with much more significant and life changing medical problems than mine, which puts everything into perspective. Cheers, Chuck

Absolutely beautiful! I bet you kiss those pylons and rails goodnight, because I sure would. Cheers, Chuck

Confirmed! All I did was accentuate what was already there and recovered some of the detail that was barely visible. From what I can see, you've done a terrific job already! Cheers, Chuck

Very nice Neo! You can't beat real metal to look like real metal and you can see a lot attention to detail everywhere. Decals look great as well! Cheers, Chuck

Looking forward to seeing what you can do with this kit! I highly recommend the Barracuda nose correction, since the kit one just doesn’t look right. Cheers, Chuck

Thanks a lot guys! This birthday is the big 7-0, so I'm kind of torn about celebrating official Geezerdom. On the one hand I don't want to get old like everybody else, but on the other hand, every day above the dirt is a good one! Cheers, Chuck

Unfreakingbelievable! The plumbing and paint work of the gear bays is off-scale perfection. In awe, Chuck

Beautiful! Your painting is outstanding. Cheers, Chuck

Thank you Niels! Very much appreciated. There's a couple more YouTube videos of essentially the same thing, which I used a few times for details that are hard to photograph. F-16 Ghost Video 1 F-16 Ghost Video 2 My shoulder surgery went as planned for my doctor, but not for me. After over 3 weeks the pain is still significant and my right arm is in a sling for another 3 weeks, so I can't do much, including modeling. I can't drive either, so I have to depend on my wife for that and I'm not sure which is more painful. Yes, I'm a dead man if she reads this. Lol. This model keeps calling me, because I'm so close to finished and it sits right beside my computer where I waste too much time, with not much to do. I have, however, discovered how to handle some of the Aires cockpit parts behind the seat for the canopy and a missing decal, so I'm glad I had the time to research that. I hope to provide an update in a few weeks, so stay tuned. Cheers, Chuck

That's now a great looking model and certainly better than it was before! Good story as well, which makes it all that more valuable. Congrat's! Cheers, Chuck

As indicated above, great job! My only critique, since it can still be done, is that it should have soot staining sweeping back from the exhausts to under the cockpit. All Mustangs have it. There's lots of reference pics out there to give you a good idea of location, color and intensity. Here's a pic I took a few years ago: P51-D Exhaust Stain A good explanation of this staining: Mustang Exhaust Cheers, Chuck

Hi Guys! With my F-16 build on hold as I recover from shoulder surgery, Kevin Futter and I have worked in the background to create a new eBook at KLP Publishing of this build and another one that Kevin did a few years earlier. Of course Kevin did 95% of the work as he pulled together all of the key build steps and changes I made to this model in the previous 20 pages, so that you don't have to if you want a step by step guide of how to attack this kit. The book is now ready today at KLP Publishing! Building the Kitty Hawk T6/ Harvard in 1/32 Scale While Kitty Hawk closed its doors in 2021, this and other Kitty Hawk models are still available through Zimi Models for some reason, so you can still buy the kit if you search around, including Sprue Bros. for only $60! ZIMKH32002 1:32 Zimi Model Kitty Hawk T-6 Texan / Harvard Cheers, Chuck