chuck540z3

Thank you Gents! It's tricky but very doable, especially with practice. I use a new super sharp #11 blade and try to cut 90 degrees to the face of the tape, using the side of the plastic against the side of the blade as a guide when I cut. Good question. My build threads are usually a step by step chronology of how I create a model, so that when/if a magazine article or eBook is ever written, most of the work is already done. I still need to finish this model (2 more months, a year?) and if it's a success and I'm happy with the end result, documentation of the build may occur in some form. Let's see how things go and if Kevin is even interested, because he's got a lot on his plate already. Cheers, Chuck

Thanks Guys! Thanks Duane, While the wet Kleenex method works just fine, it leaves tiny particulate crap behind that might get into future paint coats and if you have any decals, like I do in the gear bay and cockpit, wet tissue can lift them. Small bits of foam have none of that and they compress nicely under tape. Every time I unpack something with foam I try to keep a few pieces for future projects. As for "gluing" the canopy with liquid mask and painting it with the rest of the model, I never do that because if you have any leaks, you contaminate both the cockpit AND the canopy. On my F-4E and F-15C that both have camo paint jobs, I just painted the fuselage as I saw fit, then placed the canopies in place and noted the demarcation lines and painted them separately. That way you can get a good paint job on the inside and outside with no over-spray, assuming you mask them properly. The canopies are almost always in the upright position anyway, so if the lines are off a bit, nobody will ever notice. HTH. Thanks. I often show things in my builds that are basically "Modeling 101" and not very unique, because we aren't all at the same skill level, so I'm glad this mini "tutorial" was of some help. When I finally get to the digital paint job, I will be showing how I did it, because at this stage I just have some ideas that I hope will work out. One thing I contemplated before I glued the intake to the lower fuselage was to paint the area between them first to reduce paint spray turbulence in a tight area and the negative effects of that. On a grey jet it would have been smart and easy, but on this very complex digital scheme with lots of little squares in this exact same area, I'm better off masking it along with the rest of the fuselage and taking my chances later. One thing that would help reduce turbulence is to spray at very low pressures with extra thinned paint, which I've done before. It takes several light coats, but you don't get that "dusty" look and feel of tiny paint balls drying in the air then sticking to the rest of the paint. We'll see how this works in the future. Cheers, Chuck

Thanks Bevan! March 21/24 Another quick update while a few things are still clear in my old mind. Whether to delete one of the front flap “fingers” has bugged me since I made my post above last night. While I always strive to make my models as accurate as possible, sometimes the effort isn’t worth the reward and in some cases, altering things can look worse, so you wish you hadn’t bothered. One thing that I wanted to do was to leave off the front flaps until after painting, so that I could easily mask off and paint a few small things like the RHAW “beer cans”. If I just glued them on permanently now, however, filling in the gap for the third finger would be fairly easy and I could re-scribe the panel lines. I came very close to doing so…. Before I did that, I thankfully flipped the model over to see what exists for detail underneath. Here there is a lot more detail and none of it would be easy to fill and recreate, because the kit parts are made so that the flaps can be either raised or lowered, leaving a big gap. The real wing doesn’t look like this at all and is almost identical to the top. If it did, I would just fill it, but since it would be a real PITA to modify the kit wing, I’m going to punt and Fuhgeddaboutit! For years I have been a bit intimidated by all the F-16 Block variants and what specific details they should all have, including the reinforcement plates that many of them have. Apparently Block 50 and up variants don’t have them, because they are internal. I have the super thin stick-on set that came with the kit in the upper right, but I also have the thicker Cross Delta set on the left, which thankfully comes with accurate instructions as shown below. This indicates that I should be using the large fuel tank plate which is actually made from 5 parts (1), the “lawnmower blades” around the front of the vertical stabilizer (2), and a fairly big panel around the nose radar blisters (7), which are RAM panels (Radar Absorbant Material). Surprisingly to me, the more modern Block 40/42 Vipers have a lot more reinforcement plates as shown. My subject, 84-1220, nor 86-1229 have the front plates, which are RAM panels, so it looks like I’m good with using just #1 and #2. While digging around for reference photos, I stumbled upon pics of a THIRD F-16 Aggressor painted in the digital Ghost Scheme. It’s another Block 25, 84-1301, and since none of the pics are mine, you can see it here at Jet Photos: F-16 "Ghost" Aggressor, 84-1301 Pretty cool. Cheers, Chuck

Thanks Guys! Thanks Mike, it's great to see you follow along again. Sorry to hear about your friend. That's brutal. Thankfully after lots of CT Scans and the like, I don't have anything sinister going on, but without going into too much detail, I do have lots of scar tissue due to multiple stomach surgeries after an ordinary appendix removal 3 years ago. Just bad luck I guess, so we'll see what the future holds for more trips. I liked your "work smarter, not harder" comment, which I used again at the end of this update. March 21/24 First a little housekeeping. I showed above that there are 3 blue hydraulic lines that stick out a bit at the front of the main landing gear, so I tried to create something that was close. It turns out I have a pic of them, so here they are below. Duane (chaos07) pointed out above some slight depressions near the canopy hinge, so here’s a pic of the one on the left. It has since been filled, along with the one on the right. Thanks Duane! The kit parts share many with the Block 50 kit, so some of them need to be modified. Although the blister removal on the wing roots is in the instructions, here they are again, since they are easily missed. Here’s a tip that helped me a lot. The instructions have you join the upper fuselage Part B28 to the rear upper fuselage Part A1 in Step 19 first, then glue the entire upper assembly to the lower fuselage in Step 20. While this kit is generally excellent, gluing such large mating surfaces all at once is asking for trouble in my mind. Instead, I glued the rear Part A1 to the lower fuselage first, got things sorted out, allowing the glue to dry and cleaned up, then glued the front Part B-28 to the rest later. This procedure allowed me to glue all the complicated fitments in a reasonable amount of time without being rushed. Gluing one big upper assembly to the lower assembly as instructed, would have been very hard to do cleanly. I find masking off cockpits and landing gear to be a real PITA, partly because its hard to do cleanly, but also because it must be done right if you want a successful outcome. There are no real shortcuts, but I have developed a procedure that I’m sure a lot of you guys use as well. Note that this model is now sitting on the same cardboard box I’ve used for at least 6 different models, using pipe insulation as a soft platform. The yellow paint is from my Harvard/Texan build 4 years ago, followed by my Special Hobby Tempest Mk V, Italeri CF-104 and my last build of the big 1/24 Airfix F6F-5 Hellcat, which all sat on this same box for much of their assembly and painting. More on that in a bit. I used a small block of foam to fill the cockpit cavity, then ordinary masking tape for the rest, followed by a liberal coat of liquid mask. The mask holds everything together strongly and covers small edges that tape won’t adhere to. When the liquid mask has dried, I apply a few pieces of masking tape, since the liquid mask is tacky and you don’t want it to stick to anything and come off. The landing gear bays were a lot harder to do, but I did have the advantage of having a central beam to attach masking materials to, since Part C27 will not be installed until the end of the build, right after the landing gear is installed. Again, the voids were filled with custom cut little pieces of foam, followed by masking tape. Everything was then toughened up with liquid mask, in this case “Mr Masking Sol neo”, made by Mr. Hobby in Japan. This is the very best liquid mask I have found, because it’s easy to apply but more importantly, easy to remove as well. You can’t say that about Micro Mask, which can be almost impossible to remove from small cavities after it dries. Again, cover tape to keep the gear bays from sticking to stuff, like my fingers, arms and elbows as I handle the model. As much as my cardboard modeling box has served me well for a long time, it was time to “upgrade to a new model”. This was created with a small acrylic storage container that was 6 ½” X 12”, cut down to 2 ½” high, then foam pipe insulation was added to the top, for a total cost of about $3. While I see that many of you use all sorts of contraptions to hold your models, I like this simple box a lot better. There are no pressure points to rub paint, I don’t have to adjust anything and I can carry my model around safely to and from my paint booth without fear of it falling off something. I just cover the box with a microfiber towel and paint away. You can flip the model around from top to bottom with ease, because there’s always a position somewhere that fits. One thing I’ve noticed in my pics above is that the leading edge flaps are usually up a bit when parked. According to Jake’s book, this is normal for parked Vipers, which are up about 2 degrees, so I will be gluing the flaps accordingly. Right now they are just dry fit. The other thing I found in Jake’s book and pointed out by Pete Fleischmann earlier, is that Block 25/30/32 jets have only 2 “fingers” that connect the flaps to the wing at the most inboard position. This kit has 3 fingers, just like the Block 50 kit, so it’s obviously a holdover not easily cut off like the blisters. If I filled the outboard finger it would be more accurate, but I’m not sure if this is “working smarter or harder”, since I kind of like the look of it, even if it’s wrong. I’ll think about it. Any thoughts? One thing that I did add was the so-called “ECS Exhaust”, which was basically missing from this kit. What prompted me to look for it, was because there was a small depression at this location, that I thought might be a flaw of the plastic. Checking my Block 50 kit, it’s much more pronounced, although quite small. There’s a great picture of it on Page 65 of Jake’s book with a half shroud forward from the hole in the fuselage, so I fashioned something similar out of styrene. So that’s about it for now. I still have lots to do and then there’s that super complicated paint job! I sure hope it turns out OK. Cheers, Chuck

Wow Marcel, you really hit this one out of the park- again! I love all the subject specific details and paint "flaws" that match the real deal. Congrats! Cheers, Chuck

Fantastic result with a very difficult kit. Congratulations, Miloslav, this P-38 is a beauty! Cheers, Chuck

Thank you Gents! Thanks Duane. I saw that on one side but didn't check the other. Consider them fixed! This white plastic makes it really hard to see flaws, much less photograph. It doesn't change color much after painting it white either, so I'm going to make sure I spray a thin coat of Mr. Surfacer 1200 to check for flaws before I commit to the very complex paint job on these digital jets. Cheers, Chuck

March 14/24 This build marches on with quite a few updates. With the main landing gear bay pretty much finished, it was time to finish the front landing gear bay. While a lot smaller with less parts, there are still some important things you need to do in order to get the Aires resin to fit properly. Here’s a few pics of where I was about a year ago. The surface detail on the bottom of the intake needs to be sanded down, but so does the top of the resin part. The Aires resin doesn’t have a notch for the gear leg to fit into, which tilts it slightly forward like the kit parts. The fix is to cut a small notch and glue in a styrene block for the front paddle to slide into. The bottom of the metal leg or the diagonal struts need to be trimmed as well. This provides the correct angle and the ability to remove the gear leg until final assembly, much as I did with the main landing gear. Although the Aires “instructions” don’t mention it (no big surprise there), the actuator and control arms Part F2 and F3 must be trimmed and cut as shown. After painting and assembly with the other intake parts in Step 8, here’s how it looks with a little bit of grime added for contrast. Here’s how F2 and F3 should fit the resin gear bay. Much like the main landing gear, there are a lot of hydraulic and electrical lines that are attached to the front gear leg. I only added the front 2 hydraulic lines, because they are the most visible from the front. Again, I used blue lines like pics I have of the real deal. Before gluing the front intake assembly to the rear intake assembly above the main landing gear bay, I painted and glued the front fan Parts P1 and P24 to the rear of kit part B31, because it doesn’t fit the Aires resin at all. As shown earlier, I had to trim down the Aires resin quite a bit in order for this fan to fit at all. Here is the front intake glued to the rear intake and rear air duct. The big air duct ring Part C34 is not used or needed, but to close up the sides of the rear intake, I used strips of white styrene to close the gap and make it less obvious. You can’t really see this gap from the front unless you use a flashlight and peek inside, so I took the easy route for once and focused on what you can actually see, instead of trying to make this deep assembly seamless. On the bottom, I needed to sand down the central rib of the Aires gear bay a bit more…… …. so that Part C27 is a drop-in fit at the end of the build, after I install the main landing gear and other bits. This part was a bit too short for some reason, so I added a white styrene spacer to make it fit better. Aires supplies a resin replacement, but it's even shorter, so I don't know why they bothered. I finally got the Aires cockpit to fit the upper fuselage pretty good, so a revisit of what is involved is shown again below. The back of the kit cockpit wall needs to be cut out, which was a bit crude on my part, so I filled in my mistakes with CA glue and sanded them smooth. The fit is much better now. The front area around the coaming/glare shield is another matter, because the Aires parts don’t fit the kit parts at all. To be fair, not even the kit parts fit very well, which leave a very noticeable gap at the front that must somehow be filled. This is a shame, because on the F-16, there is no front windshield to hide all these flaws, so many modifications to this area need to be made if you want something that looks close to accurate. I closed the gap at the front with some strip styrene, but the sides are still a bit of a mess. More strip styrene to the rescue, among other tweaks here and there. Here is the end result after painting from a variety of angles. The black areas are not “weathered” yet, because I want to mask all of this off for painting, and weathering agents like pastels will reduce the adhesion of the tape. Even the back area looks pretty good, at least to my eyes. So how did I fill all those gaps without making a big mess with putty and paint? I finally gave a bottle of black CA glue a try, but it was very risky. I thought that if I applied the glue from the back, it would ooze into the gaps to close them and already be “painted” black, while gluing the cockpit into place solidly. What really made this work was the viscosity of the glue I had on hand, pictured below. It was a bit thick, maybe a touch more than medium viscosity, which allowed me to apply it with a micro-brush from below, working it into the gaps one small segment at a time, then flipping the fuselage over so that gravity wouldn’t let the glue move down too far. After it dried a bit and became relatively solid, maybe 3-4 minutes, I flipped it over and applied more glue to the gaps on either side in a sequential fashion, never letting wet glue move to the surface of the cockpit for very long- maybe less than 5 seconds. If this glue was super thin like the CA glues I usually use, it would have made a big mess and ruined everything. If it was too thick, it wouldn’t have filled the gaps very well and would have been lumpy when it dried. For once one of my little experiments worked, and I will always glue resin cockpits this way from now on. Since I’m using the Thunderbirds kit which is primarily a Block 32, it doesn’t come with a gun like the Block 50 kit. It even has a plug, Part Q5, which is supposed to be painted white. Since all Viper Aggressors have a gun and are battle ready, I just painted the inside of the gun area flat black, so that all you can see is something dark and maybe not notice the lack of gun barrels. Gun panels glued into place, since they will never come off. This kit calls for a side vent, Part C4 in Step 19, like this Block 32 Ghost scheme Viper, 86-299. All pics are mine at Nellis AFB. My subject, however, is 84-220, a Block 25 Viper with no vent on this side, amongst other small differences. I’m not really sure, but it looks like the rear window is clear and not tinted? Tinting variability of Viper canopy glass is all over the place and there are few hard and fast rules, which is why the kit comes with both clear and tinted glass parts. Still, I'd rather make my subject as "correct" as possible, so does anybody have a good pic of what this rear glass should look like? The front canopy is tinted for sure. As a result, I’m not drilling a hole or installing the vent as instructed. When I get to the rear vertical stabilizer, I won’t be added any vents either, as Pete Fleischmann so kindly guided me way back in December 2022, a few months after I started this build. 86-299 again (Block 32) 84-220 (Block 25) So that’s about it for now. With all the heavy lifting over, the rest of this build should go fairly smoothly from now on, right? Famous Last Words for sure! Cheers, Chuck

That Spit looks fantastic! Painting, weathering, figures, base and the bullet holes all look very realistic. Congrats! Cheers, Chuck

March 6/24 A little more progress on the Main Landing Gear (MLG). The last time I played around with fitting the MLG and other aftermarket parts to the kit parts was way back in December/22, so if you want to see how I got to this stage before paint, there’s quite a bit there which is roughly on Page 4. I hate metal landing gear of any kind, because it’s usually rough to begin with, you can’t screw holes into it for wiring and plumbing and paint doesn’t stick to it very well, making masking a risky procedure. On a few of my prior builds I used Mr. Metal Primer-R as a base with mixed results. It was better than no special primer, but not by much. Something that seems to work a bit better for me is to use ordinary Tamiya X-22 instead. It’s not perfect either, but I find it better than the other stuff and it’s a lot cheaper. Here are the results of lots of picky, picky work which is quite frankly on the top end of my abilities. I’m not sure if it’s my declining dexterity and eyesight, or I just don’t give a crap about some details that you’ll rarely see anymore. In any case, despite my struggles, I’m generally happy with the end result. Here’s some pics with labels of the highlights: Wheels are only dry fit and I will likely add a few more lines from the wheel to the leg when they are cemented in. I used ANYZ line connectors (AN016) to hold the wires, which required drilling them out using a #80 drill bit. My success in doing so was only about 1 in 3, so I used a lot of them! For reference pics I used mostly Jake’s Viper Guide and a few pics I’ve taken over the years at Nellis AFB. There are two main white hydraulic lines that go along the top of the main leg and one black electrical one that goes halfway down on the back. For some reason the hydraulic lines cross halfway down the leg. I used a thin wash to dirty up the MLG a bit to make them a bit more realistic and also hide the odd boo-boo. Scuffed paint is usually due to dry fitting in the gear well, which you won't see later. Here’s how everything now looks parked into the very crowded MLG Bay. I’m fairly proud of this assembly I’ve created, because now everything fits fairly well and can easily be cemented in at the very end of the build. As a matter of fact, the MLG just slides into place with a firm click and I won’t need any glue at all. A look from the rear showing that prominent black line. All of the new wires tuck into the middle of the MLG where they belong. Even the landing gear doors are now plug and play and just slide into place. Remember those 3 holes I drilled earlier? They hold 3 hydraulic lines that loop into the top of the main door actuator at the front. Although they don’t connect to the actuator in this exact way, it’s all I could do with such a fine detail at 1/32 scale. BTW, they are usually dark blue, so I used dark blue wire I had on hand. I'm leaving the doors clean for now, because I'll be painting the outside of them blue later, so I don't want masking tape to remove anything. When the gear doors are open, they hang down a bit and are exposed. I also added 2 small wires to the front control arms. I’m calling this MLG Bay Done! On to the front gear bay, which is much simpler, but still has a few things you need to be careful of. Cheers, Chuck

Thanks guys. I'm not really looking for sympathy other than understanding why I'm still around. We all have friends and relatives with life threatening situations that make my situation a tiny bump in the road, so I still feel very lucky. Having said that, you have to take intestinal blockages very seriously, because in certain situations they can kill you. Thanks and I do!- but I have a twist on that idea that works even better: A small plastic microbrush with the head pulled off. With the tapered end that they all have, you can cut the "paintbrush" to whatever thickness you want. I used this method to paint the tiny switches on the cockpit. Cheers, Chuck

Fantastic! The whole mud staining thing is so realistic and well done. Cheers Chuck

This Spit really looks terrific Guy! I really like the chipping on the wings, which looks like a lot pics of the real deal for intensity and pattern. The gun covers look very realistic as well- and a lot better than decals or thick tape. This model will be my next build, so I’ll be sure to archive your detailed efforts as a great reference. Cheers, Chuck

Thanks Guys! March 3/24 Well, I’m back already, mostly because I didn’t really go anywhere. To make a very long and painful story short, I experienced an intestinal blockage almost a month ago and spent 4 days in the hospital. When we left for our big trip I was feeling OK, but on the first leg of our flight all of the symptoms of a blockage came back, so we had to cancel the 16 hour flight to New Zealand and the 6 week cruise we had planned for 2 years to celebrate my new retirement. Huge bummer, but there are much worse things that could have happened I know, so my wife and I have re-booked a similar trip in a year and we soldier on. After a week of feeling sorry for myself and moping around, I finally picked up this model and got after the Aires main landing gear bay. Modeling is great therapy when you want to forget about things and I soon became totally engrossed in painting all the tiny details. This was fairly difficult to do, because I suck at brush painting and with all the tiny details hard to get at, it took a long time with lots of mistakes. After fixing most of them, here is where I am today. With the gear bay already cemented into the lower fuselage, I found it easier to handle than it might be otherwise. I tried to replicate many reference pics I found on the ‘net, and some great detailed pics in Jake’s Modern Viper Guide. The Aires resin is super detailed already, but I did add a few hoses and pipes here and there into holes I had pre-drilled earlier before paint. The 3 holes on either side at the top will be used for the hydraulic lines that will go into the gear doors when they are attached. The battery frame isn’t accurate for modern Vipers, but it looks so nicely detailed I retained it, partly because the kit has the perfect yellow decals that fit perfectly around the frame. I also added some decals to that silver Halon bottle to match a few pics, although the red band should be a bit darker. The central wall looks a bit rough because I had to sand it down, but it will eventually be covered by Part C27. Some of the hoses are only dry fit for now, because they will be in the way when I install the main landing gear. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of some of my plumbing, but I think it looks pretty close and makes the gear bay look a bit more busy. As always with these close-up pics, you can see a lot more mistakes than you can with your bare eyes! With the Aires cockpit and main gear bay now painted and detailed, the most difficult part of this build is now complete. Next steps will be to detail the front gear bay and landing gear. Thanks for looking in. Cheers, Chuck

Wolf Pack used to make a WAR HUD, Set WP32023, which I have. It looks like it comes with 3 HUDS, so I'll gladly send you one if you want it. Only caveat is that I can't mail it until early April, since I'll be out of the country. Cheers, Chuck

The short-comings of macro-photography that I know all too well! My rule is that if I can't see it with my regular (corrected) vision, I just leave it as is. It's nice to see a couple of other F-16 builds going on at the same time as mine to give me some tips. This particular build is very unique and challenging, so your extraordinary efforts will be well worth it when finished. Cheers, Chuck

While nobody can argue your points, I think it all boils down to this: What else is there? Right now the US has the B-2 and soon the B-21 bombers, but at over $700M each, you can't build that many without significant diversion of other military spending, which isn't likely to happen. For the most part, current foes in the Middle East aren't in a position to shoot them down, especially with fighter/attack air support, so as old as the B-52 is, is still does the job when called upon. Anyway, what do I know? I'm Canadian and we don't even have a dedicated bomber. Cheers, Chuck

Thanks guys! As I review my pics above I see lots of tiny flaws, but when I look at the cockpit, I can't see any of them with my glasses on, so I guess I'll leave them as is. I'm pretty tired of the cockpit anyway and it's time to move on. Next up will be the landing gear bays which are mini-models all on their own as well. Cheers, Chuck

February 16/24 Not a lot of modeling progress, mostly because the ejection seat is a model on its own and takes a long time if you want it to look right. With that in mind, I bought another Aires seat because the cockpit kit seat was broken and my repair of one of the corners just didn’t look right. This is the so-called Type A seat and as you can see, other than different colored resin, it’s identical to the cockpit set seat. Before I show anything new, its best that I review what you need to do to the seat in order for it to fit on the Aires cockpit set seat rail properly. This is what you get with no instructions as to how to get the rail past that valve-like feature at the back. After scratching my head for a bit, I realized that you cut off the valve, because the seat rail has a replacement valve, albeit bigger. Further, in order for the seat to fit low enough, the bottom needs to be sanded down, completely eroding off the lower control as shown. None of this in in the instructions. The correct position of the seat rail has the valve assembly attach to the middle-rear of the Flight Control System Recorder, while the back plate lines up with the triangular seat supports. This pic also shows that I used the kit air sensor pitots or “horns”, because they look good for scale and are much stronger than the photo-etch Aires version, which require the addition of a small rod for the pitot tubes. These parts were cut off kit Part G9 and glued in place. Modern Viper seats have black sheepskin seat cushions that replace the original olive drab version, so we modelers typically create this rough surface by various methods. Thinned putty roughed up with a microbrush is a common way of doing this, but I find it looks a bit too chunky for scale, so I tried some True-Earth anti-skid acrylic paint instead. I think this method nails the look. Besides being used for actual anti-skid surfaces, it would look great for Navy ablative coating on bombs as well. A close-up. The paint dries very quickly and is ready for flat black paint in no time. As mentioned above, I was dreading the seatbelts which are photo etch, which makes them stiff and hard to paint. Further, how do you not paint all the tiny buckles? A few of you above suggested assembling the seat belts, painting them, then scraping off the paint on the buckles with a knife. That turned out to work very well, so here’s what I did overall: 1) Paint the seats like I did the cockpit, using gloss black followed by grey enamel, then a sealing coat of X-22 2) Add painted detail and decals according to references. 3) Spray with dull coat to knock down the shine, especially the seat cushions 4) Anneal the seat belts with a flame for about 30-40 seconds to soften them 5) Assemble the belts according to instructions, which is very hard to do and makes the assembly of HGW cloth seat belts seem like child’s play. Since the Aires instructions are useless, I used mostly photo references to figure out what they should look like. Since they are metal and will scratch the paint on the seat, I assembled them and shaped them to my spare kit seat. If I did this again, I’d shape the seat belts before painting the seat 6) Paint the shaped belts with enamel paint, which can be removed with solvent as required. To hold the belts for painting and retain their new shape, I stuck them to poster putty rather than masking tape which would force them to be flat 7) Scrape the paint off the buckles with a #11 knife. Be careful to not dig down too hard, or you will reveal the brass underneath 8) Glue the belts to the seat. I used extra thin CA glue which is very tricky to do cleanly, but holds the belts rock solid immediately 9) Re-spray the seats with dull coat, to knock down the shine of CA glue residue The finished seat, at a magnification much more than can be seen with the naked eye, so please excuse the bits of crap here and there..... All of my reference pics show that the forward belts are a darker color than the rear belts and shoulder belts, so I painted them accordingly. I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to Airscale and their fantastic 1/32 Modern Jet Cockpit Warnings and Labels decal set (AS32), which I’ve used on my last 3-4 jets. Every warning label you can think of is on this sheet, including some seat labels. They come off the backing paper readily in hot water and react very well to Microsol to soften them over curved edges, but you have to be careful to not overdo it. Take your time and you can position them on almost every complex surface imaginable. If you like to build modern jets, they are a must have. When the seat is placed into the cockpit, it really makes everything come together with additional detail and color. So that’s it for awhile Gents. As mentioned earlier, I’ll be vacationing in the southern hemisphere for the next 6 weeks, so modeling is on hold once again. No worries, because I always finish my models and have yet to have a model hit the proverbial SOD! Cheers, Chuck

Forget "second level" of modeling, because this is at least third level into the stratosphere. As Guy has mentioned a few times, I always find myself smiling when I see your updates, because they are pure entertainment of ingenuity and skill of execution. Cheers, Chuck

Hi again, You are doing a great job as usual, but at the risk of "self-promotion", I highly recommend the KLP Publishing e-Book of the CF104 that I built a few years ago, to give you some good tips: Building the Italeri CF-104 Starfighter in 1/32 Scale It's only $18 Australian dollars or less than $12 US for 326 pages of almost everything you can think of about this very kit you are working on, and for the record, I receive nothing from sales so I have no financial interest in promoting it. A few tips I can think of already, since I also used the ResKit exhaust as well, is that you need to cut the kit engine before attaching the ResKit flameholder, otherwise the exhaust petals will stick out too far from the fuselage. The total length of the kit and ResKit assembly should be about 161 mm, so your Nighthawk engine replacement likely needs to be cut a little bit as well. The only way to tell is to dry fit the entire KesKit assembly to the end of the engine, then attach the rear fuselage parts to see how far the petals stick out. The other thing you want to do is to be able to slip on the exhaust at final assembly to avoid breakage and make painting easier. To do this you need to trim the interior fuselage parts a bit, so that they are still snug enough to hold the exhaust firmly without glue. Also, I have the DACO book mentioned above and I agree that it's a must have if you want to identify any kit or jet part. For instance, your red circle above is the Ammunition Link Ejector Guide, which are present on A/H versions to prevent ingestion of spent shell belt links into the intake when they are ejected overboard. On other versions the shell links remain within the jet with the spent cartridge shells. The pink circle is two muzzle gas exhaust ducts that are deep and real. You can drill them out or if you're lazy like me, just black them out after painting. The blue circle can be just about anything, depending on version and nationality of Starfighter. The kit part is a TACAN (Tactical Air Navigation) system blade, while the white antenna that you show is a mystery to me and not in the DACO book, so I bet it's a late modification or upgrade to whatever jet is photographed. HTH Cheers, Chuck

Incredible work at the next level, well beyond what most of us here can achieve- or even understand. I’ve got this kit targeted for my next build, so I’ll be checking your work often for tips. Cheers Chuck

Alternatively, I ordered some small items from Hannants on January 23 and received them here in Calgary on January 31- only 8 days! I was shocked. Regular mail as well, so it must be hit and miss.

Thanks everyone! Now that sounds like a great plan. Thanks, I’ll give it a try! Cheers, Chuck

Excellent modeling in every way my friend! As mentioned by others above, your painting is exceptional and I'm jealous of your oil vent stain on the starboard side. I tried to replicate that on my Mustang and it doesn't look half as good, or as convincing, as yours. Cheers, Chuck