chuck540z3

Thanks for the tip! I found a pic and there are actually two holes and further, they are open on the 1/32 Tamiya kit which I built a few years ago. Very easy fix at this stage. Cheers, Chuck

Since it's been a couple of months since my last post, I thought I'd give an "update" of sorts if anybody cares, to confirm that this build is still alive, but with warm weather finally here, my modeling has ground to a halt like it always does during our short Canadian summers. When I model I want to be totally focused on the task at hand, which probably won't happen until at least October when indoor activities are more attractive than chilly outdoor ones. 🥶 In the meantime, thanks for your continued interest as I plod along. Cheers, Chuck

So many details, so many parts to create, so many challenges to face and then overcome, so long to build and so very much WORTH IT! Congrat's Jay! This is the epitome of what LSP is all about and you are truly one of the very top masters of this website. We are all very proud of you. Cheers, Chuck

My bad, and after looking at a multitude of pics, it's likely that the AIM-54 was never mounted with a TARPS pod. I would think that even if you could find one, your model would be the subject of criticism from the usual peanut gallery that thinks they know everything about Tomcats. Not worth the hassle IMO. Cheers, Chuck

Hi Marcel, You mean like this? I've seen lots of other examples as well. Cheers, Chuck

For some reason they are now back to normal. If anybody did anything, thanks! Cheers, Chuck

Yup! Funny, I was 3 minutes behind you. 🙂 Cheers, Chuck

Today I'm finding that clicking on any subject, page or other LSP item takes forever, in the 25-35 second range (timed), while other websites are as quick as usual. Is it just me and my browser? Thanks, Chuck

Beautiful Spitfire Guy! I bet this second Spit went a lot faster than the first one, as I found with my rebuild. As I'm painting the exhausts, I note that yours are perfect with just the right amount- and location- of exhaust staining. Really cool paint scheme as well! Cheers, Chuck

Since I'm not a Goblin fan I didn't really pay any attention to your build, but the result as others have said already is STUNNING! What a beautiful finish and the panel line and fastener detail really makes this model "pop". Great job John. Cheers, Chuck

Just found this Carsten and I think you are doing an excellent job. This kit is easy to make if you don't care about accuracy, but correcting many things that are wrong as you are doing takes a lot of extra work. I sure wish I had those beautiful ResKit exhausts when I built my model! Your detail plumbing in the gear bays is awesome, which will still be visible with the gear doors open when parked. One thing I vaguely recall, is that there really isn't any attachment points for the gear doors to attach them to the fuselage, so gluing them on was a real pain without making a mess. You might want to add a strip of styrene as a hinge to the inner lip as an anchor point? Cheers, Chuck

Thanks Kev! To others, the key benefit of having your model build published by KLP, is that all your work is documented for others to see. With magazine articles, you might get 60-70 pics published if you're lucky (sometimes 2 issues), instead of ~200+ pics of every single step in KLP which is focused on only your build for a very reasonable price with much more detail and information. I highly recommend that others contact Kev with their builds if you are interested, and for the record, I receive no compensation for saying so. 🙂 Kev does a fantastic job of everything. Cheers, Chuck

Thanks. As for the straight band lines, I cheat with decal hose clamps from ANYZ! ANYZ Decal Hose Clamps These decals come off the backing paper easily and react really well to Microsol. I use them on almost everything now. Cheers, Chuck

Thank you Gents! Hi Mike! Thanks for the kind words and yes, lately I am trying to "work smarter and not harder", which is a fine line of doing what you can easily see when the model is finished and avoiding detail that is buried and hard if not impossible to see later. The cockpit is a good example where there's a lot to see if you peek around inside the fuselage in front of the seat, but anything behind the seat is a blur, especially when the rear canopy glass is installed. As a result, I didn't bother with all the control cables that reside on the floor. That's my official excuse, but I must admit that I'm also getting a bit lazy in my old age and fine motor skills are getting a bit thick, so I do what I can and as pointed out above, try to have fun. Cheers, Chuck

Thanks, and good point! I didn't need to paint most of the hydraulic lines because they were already a dark bronze/brass color. All I did was dirty them up a bit and knock down the shine with flat coat. Yes, we were cruising down in Melbourne when Cyclone Alfred was hitting Brisbane to the north, so we avoided the real rough stuff. When we arrived in Brisbane 3 days later, the bad weather had dissipated and the damage wasn't as bad as some had feared, so mostly all good! Cheers, Chuck

April 21/25 April 21/25 I’m back from my long trip to New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Singapore. I’ve always wanted to travel to this corner of our planet, so now I can check that big one off my bucket list! Beautiful scenery everywhere and I was very pleased to see lots of military aircraft in New Zealand and Australia, although my wife was, shall we say, less than impressed with non-stop military stuff. 😉 Lol. One highlight was the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre in Southern New Zealand, which housed many of Peter Jackson’s WWI aircraft in Hollywood-like settings, like this one below. There were dozens of them all over the “Knights of the Sky” museum, although I didn’t get a chance to see the WWII museum next door, “Dangerous Skies”. Next time! Back to this Spitfire build and in particular the Merlin engine, which will be totally exposed. Trying to get the engine looking accurate and realistic looking is a real challenge as I indicated earlier, because: 1. Detailed pics of all the hydraulic lines and wiring of wartime Spitfires are almost impossible to find, so you are left with mostly pics of restored Spitfires online and a few books. 2. Many of these pics are low resolution, so zooming in on details doesn’t help much. 3. Restored Spitfires have replaced and changed many of the engine area parts, plumbing and location, no doubt to improve reliability and safety, so direct references to wartime configurations is unreliable. 4. Firewall detail is obscured by the engine, so you’re just guessing sometimes. 5. No two restored Spitfires are the same, so what is “correct”? 6. Using other builds of this kit as a reference is risky, because the detail locations are all over the place and sometimes wrong. 7. There’s no way to get all of the hydraulic and electrical lines installed, because there’s just too many of them- and where do they all go? I found myself to be almost catatonic with detailing this engine due to the above, as I just stared at engine photographs off and on for over a week, without doing anything. Where to begin? After lots of new research, I finally made the plunge with the following philosophy: 1. It’s just a model airplane and the engine will never be perfectly accurate, so just do the best you can. 2. Focus on the main hydraulic and electrical lines that are obvious and don’t worry about the small stuff that you can’t see very well anyway, like all the complex linkages at the rear on the supercharger. 3. As we modelers always say, make the engine look “busy” and interesting to look at. 4. Try to apply as many pipe clamps and hangers as possible, to make it look realistic. A pipe with no support always looks incomplete. 5. Build the entire engine assembly attached to the firewall for ease of handling off the fuselage. If the firewall can be attached later, so can the whole engine. With the above in mind, I finally got around to adding several hydraulic lines using Antique Bronze colored hobby wire in 14, 18, 20 and 22 gauge, to help replicate weathered brass piping and avoid the need to paint. Clamps and hose fittings were created with small bits of wire insulation, electrical tape and ANYZ decal hose clamps, in 0.5 to 1.0 mm in width. While a lot of these items are not totally to scale, they were “good enough” in my opinion and added a lot of interest. I also added a few hydraulic lines that are often missed that I think are important, as shown below. The left Port side, showing the usual piping detail, but also an upper coolant line that comes from the top of the glycol tank to the rear of the engine. This line appears to be present on war time Spitfires and modern restored ones, but the location of how it is routed to the rear is all over the place. I used an 18 gauge brass wire and hollow brass fitting at the top and went with a “buried look” within the engine mount, as I found in a few pics. The two mounting holes between the front and rear exhausts were also drilled out a bit on both sides, so that the “cowling cage” tabs would fit properly, flush to the exhausts. This engine has quite a bit of a weathering wash on it, but under the strong lighting it fades away. Oh well, to the naked eye it looks well used and I’ll add a bit more at the end of the build, like oil drips I don’t want to handle with my hands right now. One thing to be careful of, is to make sure the new upper pipe fits in front of the cowling cage so that it doesn’t interfere with the exhaust. Here it is dry fit. The top The right Starboard side, with most of the new hydraulic line detail. Figuring out where all the lines came and go was very tricky and I think I got most of it right, but certainly not all of them. That little junction fitting from the oil line going into the lower oil tank to the smaller line going into the bottom of the square box at the rear of the engine is technically a bit inaccurate, but it serves the purpose of joining the two lines about where they should be. A few of the junction fittings are a bit clunky, but overall, I think it turned out looking pretty good. The front plate in front of the glycol tank on the right is only dry fit at this stage to hold the lower wires in place. The next build stage will be to assemble and detail the cowling cage, which will probably be installed near the end of the build after the engine is attached to the fuselage. I still need to figure out how to create all the fastener receptacle detail that’s missing at the front and the back, as I showed earlier below. Thanks for looking. Cheers, Chuck

Beautiful Niels! Your paint work is always outstanding, both in application and interesting patterns. I could stare at these all day. Yes the engine could be better, so let's hope the 3D aftermarket gives us something equal to the rest of the kit. Cheers, Chuck

Guy, This is still the benchmark for all F-15E's! Beautiful. Cheers, Chuck

Cool thread! Although I have many favorites, my 1/32 Trumpeter A10A I converted to an A10C is probably my "finest" model, if for no other reason than this kit is really, really bad and it turned out looking pretty good, if I do say so myself. It fought me every step of the way over the course of 2 full years and it has done really well at 3 model contests, so I must have done something right! Cheers, Chuck

February 18/25 A bit of an update before I take off for a big trip until the beginning of April. As some of you who followed my F-16 Aggressor build might recall, my wife and I had to cancel a 6-week cruise to New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia last February, due to an intestinal blockage I had a year ago. We had actually left on the trip but had to turn around in Vancouver, which was a real bummer to say the least! In any case, I re-booked roughly the same trip and we’re going to go in a few days, so modeling must come to a halt for a while. I’ve been able to complete most of Steps 170 to 187 recently which focuses on the engine frame and firewall. Due to the fine nature of the parts and the fact that many of them are cylindrical, the removal of seam lines was a big job taking many hours of trimming and sanding. In any case, the parts look great when finished and the engine sits perfectly on the 4 engine mounts. The coolant pipes fit the frame nicely as well, but the port side pipe (K74) is almost impossible to fit outside of the vertical cross brace, without a lot of bending and scratching of the parts. What was Airfix thinking? Checking my 1/32 Tamiya Spitfire, this coolant pipe is located inside of the crossbar, which according to my reference pics, appears to be wrong? A dry fit shows that the pipes also fit the glycol tank at the front nicely as well. All the parts were then painted according to references and sealed with a clear coat of X-22, to protect the fragile Alclad brass finish and all of the parts from further weathering washes, which may have solvents in them. There was no way to get the port side coolant pipe around the vertical cross brace without scratching off the delicate brass finish, so I used a tip I found in Craig’s build, which is to just cut the top of the brace, feed the pipe through, then re-glue it. Easy! If Airfix had made this cross brace a separate part, none of this would be a problem. The starboard pipe fits easily since there is no cross brace on this side, but make sure you install part K57 first, which is a fairly complex assembly of a small reservoir and lines to the oil tank at the bottom of the engine. I started a bit of the plumbing and wiring on the firewall, which is much easier to do with the firewall off of the fuselage. After a great deal of research studying references, I have come up with the following conclusions: 1. Detailed pics of all the hydraulic lines and wiring of wartime Spitfires are almost impossible to find, so you are left with mostly pics of restored Spitfires. 2. Restored Spitfires have replaced and changed many of the engine area parts and location, no doubt to improve reliability and safety, so direct references to wartime configurations is unreliable. 3. No two restored Spitfires are the same, or even close to it! 4. Using other builds of this kit as a reference is risky, because many of them are wrong IMO. That’s not to say that what I’ve done is correct, but I have several pics to back up my decisions. 5. There’s no way to get all of the hydraulic and electrical lines installed, but if you can get the main ones, the engine area should look busy enough. In this pic I found that both parts K67 and K14 can be flipped upside down, depending on the reference pic. While I installed K67 as indicated in the instructions, I flipped K14 upside down to allow for two line connections at the top, rather than just one. For the hydraulic lines I used brass coated copper wire which is obviously way too bright. Everything will get toned down later when I weather all the parts. The fuel cap, that slides under the front of the fuselage, was painted with Alclad Stainless Steel, which is a bit lighter than Alclad Steel. A dry fit of the engine onto the frame. When glued permanently, all of the small gaps will close. Again, none of this is weathered properly, which I’ll do once all of the other lines and pipe clamps are installed. The other side. This pic shows Part K57 assembly installed, missing from previous pics. One big omission from this kit is the fastener holes, which the cowlings fit into at the front (Part K17) and the back of the engine. While the cowling frames provide many of these holes for the sides, these ones are missing. If one of the kit options is to leave the cowlings off like I’m going to do, these should be present, like the Tamiya kit has done. Pretty big miss of Airfix in my opinion, so I’ll have to figure something out to create new ones. So that’s it for a couple of months before my next update, but I’ll always be available for any questions you may have in the meantime. Thanks for checking in! Cheers, Chuck

My favorite paint that I use all the time is MRP, so you're good to go with that one for sure. Again, the key is to get the clear surface wet, but not pooling. Cheers, Chuck

This answer will vary a lot because we all have our paint favorites. John's recommendations above are all good and I'm sure you will receive some more good paint choices (mine is MRP), so I would check out what your availability is for any of them you are interested in. There's no point picking a paint line that is hard to buy, which MRP is for me in Canada. If you live in the US, MRP is readily available from Sprue Bros. Cheers, Chuck

Looks really nice Richie. To smooth out the X-22 a bit more, spray a coat of 100% Tamiya Lacquer Thinner (yellow cap) on top of the X-22. You want it wet, but not pooling, then move the airbrush on to the next section. The thinner "melts" the X-22 a bit, letting it settle down a bit more, which I do every time I spray X-22 as a "flash coat". One caution though: Make sure your airbrush is really clean, because the thinner will dissolve contaminants within the brush and blow them all over your model. Don't ask me how I know! 😒 Make sure everything you spray has a coat of X-22 on it. I notice that the exhaust nozzles are on and if they aren't sealed, I would avoid them. Cheers, Chuck

Jay, Right now it's about 35-40 degrees F. in my garage and I'm still painting in there today, with excellent results. Get a space heater that directs heat in your paint booth (without a fan that can blow dust) and paint away, especially if you're using acrylic lacquer paints. A ceramic heater works best with no open flame that could ignite solvents. Since 90% of my modeling is done during the winter, most of my painting is done in a very cold garage. The space heater also provides almost immediate curing of the paint when I hold painted parts up to it, so I use a heater in the summer as well, depending on how hot it is. Cheers, Chuck

Sorry to hear Jay, but as Kevin mentioned above, lacquer over enamel is always an unhappy ending. Having had a few disasters myself recently, FWIW, here are my suggestions: Take a break from this project for at least a few days, if not a week. During this time you will come up with all sorts of ideas and fixes, although if you're like me, they will likely come up at 3 o-clock in the morning! 😏 Let this setback be an opportunity to make the model even better than it was before. I'm sure there was lots of small things that bugged you about the paint and other items already, so now you get to fix them all. Move on from Model Master enamels and go with an acrylic lacquer paint, like MRP. They don't make MM paints anymore- at least not in all of the colors they used to- so you'll need to switch paints sooner or later anyway. You can spray any clear coat on MRP paint it won't crinkle up like you have experienced. These paints are also a lot thinner, so you won't get raised edges to the insignias like you do with enamels. As Peter mentioned, why not paint the whole thing at the end, rather than in portions? I have to believe that paint on sub assemblies is subject to extra scratch marks and damage as you pick them up and move them around. Model on sir! You've got a killer project well underway here and this setback will be a distant memory in no time. Cheers, Chuck