chuck540z3

So cool Jay- and I've never heard of that mission before which is surprising, since I have watched just about every documentary on WWII ever made. Splendid work continues on that cockpit Pete. You are very talented. Cheers, Chuck

Great to see this new build started! As you mention, this kit has a lot of challenges, which is why you seldom see a build thread of it here at LSP. If it can be of any help, I did one about 8-9 years ago at the link below. Sadly, all the pics are still watermarked by Photobucket, because I wouldn't pay their ransom demands, but the key pics are still clear enough to probably be of some use. Trumpeter P-38L "Kicked Up A Notch" Cheers, The other Chuck

Fantastic! I can't think of a better modeler to show us the way with this new kit, which I now have in the stash along with Peter's terrific looking cockpit upgrade. Go Guy go! Cheers, Chuck

To echo the others, this cockpit looks real, and there's no better of a compliment than that. Awesome! Cheers, Chuck

It does now, so all good. I happen to know the guy who built and painted that Mig and he was understandably upset by your comments, as was I when reading them. As they say, “something was lost in translation”, so if that’s what happened, my apologies back to you. Cheers, Chuck

Awesome Anthony! I'm not sure if you've done it already, but just in case you haven't, there is a natural weakness at the wing root between the gear bay and front and rear of the wing that supports the upper wing half. Without any additional support, these areas can flex after everything has been glued together, which might leave a crack. This happened on my first Tamiya F-4J, so I added styrene pins on my subsequent F-4E as shown below. Very easy to do. Cheers, Chuck

This comment and critique are so wrong on so many levels. I don't recall seeing your work displayed in these forums to gauge your own skill level, but even if it is very high, to trash another modeler's work in this forum like this shows no manners or class. Unbelievable. Chuck

Beautiful! This model with all the fine details indicates that it was created by a pro, which it was, just like all your other models. Tomcats are overdone IMO (I've made 2 of them) because they are so iconic, but this perfectly applied color scheme, controlled weathering/chipping and execution of assembly really makes it stand out. I sure wouldn't want it parked next to one of my models at a contest! Cheers, Chuck

Great work on the bulkhead, but I'm curious about the one on the right that you are using. Is that a resin replacement like Adriatic, along with some of the details? Cheers, Chuck

Very interesting facts about those inner slats. I always wondered what they were for, since lift didn't seem likely so close to the fuselage. The pic above also shows significant chipping of the front of the engine, so you should have fun with that. Also note that the ventral fin, just to the left of the slat, touches the wing and is not located forward from it, like Trumpeter has located it.. Moving it backward is a bit of a pain, but very doable. Cheers, Chuck

SO good in every way! Cheers, Chuck

January 7/23 Happy New Year everyone! I have a brief update to the cockpit area, and then a bit of a mini announcement. The Aires resin seat looks fantastic like the rest of the cockpit tub, with lots of fine detail that appears to be very accurate, according to the Modern Viper Guide by Jake Melampy that I’m using like a bible for this build. I’ve used Jake’s books for my F-4E, F-15C and A-10C builds and they are invaluable with pics of just about every angle and descriptions of just about all the parts, so if I describe anything technical like the “FLCS recorder” below, consider it from this book. The resin seat slides into a seat rail just like the real deal, which allows you to paint the parts separately and slide the seat into position at the end of the build, should you choose to do it that way. For this build, I plan on installing both the seat and rail as one unit when the model is finished. The problem with doing this, is that there is a valve assembly at the rear of the FLCS recorder which gets in the way, so I was really scratching my head as to what to do with it. As usual, the Aires “instructions” mention or show nothing about this, other than the seat slides onto the rail. After gazing at the parts for about 10 minutes, it finally dawned on me what to do: Cut the valve off! By cutting off the valve, the seat not only slides onto the rail cleanly, but the rail has a valve replacement already molded onto it, which matches pics of the real deal. This idea might have come to me sooner if the original valve was the same size as the rail replacement, but it’s only about half the size. Note that when cutting the seat off its casting block, I left a bit of the block to avoid cutting off some sort of control arm at the bottom of it. More on that below. On the other side of the seat, part of the front of it had broken off and the missing part was completely gone. Kit parts to the rescue again, but this pic also shows how much better the resin seat is than the kit one. I cut off this portion from the kit seat and glued in on. While this part is slightly bigger than the resin part on the other side of the seat, viewed from above you will never notice. Dry fitting the seat into the cockpit tub, it became apparent that it was too high, so the lower control arm and part of the bottom of the seat had to go, which you will never see installed anyway, which begs the question: Why did Aires mold the valve assembly on the side of the seat and the control arm on the bottom, if they are both in the way of a good fit? The answer must be that by molding it that way, it allows the modeler to leave the seat out of the model for whatever reason, keeping detail that would be present on a real seat not installed in the cockpit. If so, it would be nice if Aires let us know that in the instructions, wouldn’t it? By eroding resin off the bottom of the seat, it allows for a clean fit to the cockpit floor at the front, where the seat should touch it, but not be held up by it. Pics of the real deal show that this contact should be slightly forward from the pics below, but this is pretty close while keeping the rear of the seat touching against the rear of the tub as it should. I still have lots of small parts to add to the ACES II seat, like the ejection handle and pitot tube “horns” that are on either side of the head rest, but I’m going to leave them off for a while, hence the mini “announcement”: This build is now on hold for at least 9 months and maybe a year. As mentioned above, my wife and I are renovating our home and we need to move out to a condo fairly soon while the work is done, so rather than play with small pieces of plastic, I really need to start packing, now. Even when we are settled in our condo, it will be spring then summer, when I rarely model as I enjoy the outdoors during our short summers. Further, as I have found out the hard way recently, I had the garage at the condo painted before I move in, and some of the condo residents complained about the odors. These odors were from anemic Acrylic Latex paint! Since I always paint with a paint booth in my garage, I can’t imagine the complaints I’ll receive if I use my usual concoctions of lacquer paint and lacquer thinner to clean my airbrushes! Welcome to condo living and living in close proximity to strangers I guess and no, I’m not interested in giving acrylics a try. I still need to clean my equipment with lacquer thinner and I’m hooked on the paint properties of synthetic lacquers like Tamiya and MRP. This build and modeling in general, will have to take a back seat to "life getting in the way", as they say. I’ll still be hanging around these forums in the meantime of course, especially this forum as I try to model vicariously through you guys and maybe help out now and then when I can. Cheers, Chuck

Absolutely awesome! This diorama is eye candy with so many interesting things to see, which are expertly presented. Bravo! Cheers, Chuck

If I can be of any help with the Pave Penny pod and pylon, I have the excellent A-10 Thunderbolt II book by Neil Dunridge (also Reid Air Publications like Jake Melampy's Modern Hog Guide) and almost all of the photographs were taken in 2010 and 2011- and they all have the pylon still attached, with the pod attached to it only about half of the time. At the Nellis AFB airshow, I took the following pics of an A-10C in 2014 and many after that time, where the support and pod were removed like this one. Note the lighter color is the same as the rear of the jet and the belly. A closer look shows that the lighter color is due solely to the pod pylon removal and not a remaining plate of any kind, leaving just the 4 attachment anchors and a circular port on the lower left where the electronics were likely fed through. So if your subject is around 2011 or earlier, you can keep the pylon, but 2014 and after, it likely didn't exist. Most A-10C's today have this area painted over the same as the rest of the darker side color, but those 4 anchor points remain. Also while I'm at it, your Aces II seat needs those two "horns" on either side of the headrest, which are pitot tubes needed for the ejection recovery. You are doing a great job and this build brings back many challenging memories! Cheers, Chuck

Thanks and yup, check out the first pic in this thread. Of course, thanks Pete. I just wish that all the parts were grey, since this white plastic is hard to check for flaws and even harder to photograph. Cheers, Chuck

Back at ya Oliver! That Sikorsky H34 is a work of art. Cheers, Chuck

No I don't have the DACO book, but I do have the Modern Viper Guide by Jake Melampy. Plenty of cockpit pics in this one. Cheers, Chuck

December 28/22 With the Aires landing gear bays mostly figured out, it was time to turn my attention to the other “heavy lifting” of this build, which is the Aires resin cockpit set. As usual and like the gear bay set, the instructions are terrible, so I searched around the ‘net to see how others tackled this beast, since it certainly isn’t straight forward. Although I’m sure that there are examples of this kit installed in the Tamiya kit somewhere, I couldn’t find one In Progress thread that gave me some direction. As such, I was totally on my own, so here’s what I did. First a pic of the parts, which are extensive and very nicely detailed. Typical Aires. Among a few other diagrams that are for the small parts of the instrument panel and seat, this is all you get for instructions of how to install the big resin cockpit tub, Part 16. Further, there’s 2 wires behind the seat that should be installed to resin parts RP 6, but there’s no other diagram telling you where the heck the other ends of the wire should go and they don’t seem to even exist in The Modern Viper Guide. Also typical Aires! So as I always do when installing resin replacement parts, I check and see what the fit of the kit parts are, to give me some idea where everything should go unaltered. Here’s the main kit cockpit part F 51, which fits on a big nose weight supplied with the kit. This part is secured with two screws at the front and the back. And the top fuselage part B 28 fits over it. Pretty straight forward. With the resin block cut off the Aires cockpit tub at the right, the profile is similar, but also quite different. Somehow, that big chunk of resin needs to fit in there somehow. So as vaguely indicated by the instructions and common sense, I need to cut out the kit back sill in generally the same shape as the resin sill, which is hard to do without some kind of template. Before I do that, a check of the resin glare shield shows that is not only much more detailed that the kit part, it has integrated canopy latches on the side, rather than just a cut out that goes over the kit latches on the fuselage part B 28. This difference needs to be addressed. The resin tub also has highly detailed side wall, that have integrated canopy latches already molded into them. This means that the kit latches should be removed, since they are a bit too big for scale anyway, and the side sills sanded down, to accommodate the resin side wall replacements. Nurse, we’re going in! There’s no easy or risk-free way of cutting plastic like this, and the fact that this kit is currently discontinued makes it even more stressful since I can’t buy replacement parts, but as the saying goes, “No Guts, No Glory”! On a tricky number of angular cuts like this, I like to use the tried and true drilled hole method, since you can control cutting with a #11 knife a lot more than with a Dremel tool cutter of some kind. After LOTS of trimming and dry fitting, I managed to get everything to more or less fit. Whew! As expected, however, I got a little carried away with some of my cuts as I struggled to get the sucker into the fuselage in a hit and miss fashion, making a bit of a mess here and there. The fix for that later. With the resin tub now fitting the upper fuselage, I then checked the fit to the lower fuselage, which required a few changes. First, the little depression at the front that fits over the screw hole needed to be extended a few millimeters forward, then the middle screw receptacle needed to be cut off since there is no hole for it in the resin that wouldn’t show later. Last, the rear receptacle needs to be cleaned out and opened up. It fits pretty good now and with lots of CA glue when installed permanently, it should be pretty strong, even without any screws. That rear screw receptacle not only fits the resin, but it appears to be the perfect height as well, left unaltered. Back to kit plastic repairs. Since I will be painting and detailing this cockpit before installation into the fuselage, I want it to be as good of a drop-in fit as possible when that time comes. I could install the cockpit after painting and then use putty and other fillers to fill the ragged gaps, but they will leave a mess and be difficult to paint and touch-up cleanly. My solution that I’ve done many times before, is to use CA glue in an iterative fashion with CA glue accelerator. I check the fit of the resin to plastic, then remove the resin and apply a thin bead of CA glue to the gap, followed by accelerator to make it harden immediately, then check the fit again. By doing this over and over with lots of sanding and trimming each time, I build up the gaps to mostly eliminate them, make the mating surfaces nice and smooth and also strengthen the plastic from behind, which has been weakened by all my drilling and cuts. This takes a long time to do, but I think the extra work is worth it. Very tough to photograph since the glue is clear on a snow-white background, but I think I’ve got the majority of the gaps now filled cleanly. Dry fit with the other parts, the tub fits the kit plastic much cleaner now. When the cockpit is installed permanently, the remaining gaps should be easy to fill with minimal putty. Unfortunately, there’s still a bit of a gap at the front of the glare shield that will need to be filled. Having said that, the kit plastic parts also leave a gap at this location, so it’s too bad the Aires resin didn’t correct this minor kit flaw. The glare shield is pushed forward as far as it will go within the recess of the tub. This leaves a bit of a small “shelf” on either side which are not totally accurate for scale, but are real nonetheless with the square “box” on the right housing a gauge at the front of it. A closer look at the rear fit of the tub against the plastic. Again hard to see with clear CA glue, but the gaps are mostly eliminated. Since the resin raised lip replaces the kit one, the kit one will be sanded off while I add some styrene to fill the inside of the front, to eliminate the gap. There, the heavy lifting of the installation of the Aires landing gear bay and cockpit (with no instructions!) is now officially over with no casualties. The rest of this build should be much easier and straight forward from now on, fingers crossed. Cheers, Chuck

You are doing a great job with the fat nose correction and I would agree to stop while you're ahead. Nobody will notice the last 0.5 to 1.0 mm and you might regret it if you did. As for rivets, I found that a few sets of the Archer decal rivets worked really well and they are much higher profile than any HGW offerings that I know of. While now OOP, I bet you can still find some somewhere, maybe even from Woody himself? Cheers, Chuck

Beautiful Viper and well worth retrieving from the SOD! Cheers, Chuck

That! For comparison, here's the ResKit P&W flameholder assembly. Cutting this off the resin block without breaking anything should be interesting! Cheers, Chuck

It depends on which exhaust you're cutting. Is it for the F-104? If so, then cut it the way I described above. I know the F-16 one I have will need to be cut much differently, so it "depends". Any pics of what you're facing? Cheers, Chuck

Awesome work on the cockpit John! Everything looks so real and natural. Cheers, Chuck

Good question which I've done once on a F-104 build, and will have to do on an F-16 build, which will be even more difficult. I use the ultra-thin CMK razor saw on the left below, by making small cuts concentrically around the rings, making them a bit deeper each time. At some point, you should be able to cut straight through, maybe by using a deeper saw like the ones on the right for the final cut. Despite how difficult this can be to do, you have the following in your favor: 1) The cuts are on the back side that you'll never see 2) If you break a small part, it can easily be re-glued using CA glue 3) ResKit resin is pretty tough/flexible and doesn't break as easily as some harder resins 4) The whole contraption will likely never be seen again, which will take eagle eyes with a flashlight once installed at the back of the flame tube. HTH, Chuck

Happy Birthday Sir! May your Sig Pic continue to offer you inspiration for the rest of your days. Cheers, Chuck