jenshb

The Grand Models cockpit looks great. Following with interest.

Thank you for the good explanation pvanroy.

I'm having this variation of a song by The Police in my head..."every little thing he does is magic..."

That doesn't prove that Spitfire radiators were painted. The customer and usage for a truck is a bit different than from a military aircraft. Cars are expected to last years or decades (in spite of warranties being in single digits), and a coat of paint can help with keeping any corrosion at bay and keep it looking nice for longer. Any reduction in heat transfer can be compensated by increasing the surface area of the radiator with little detrimental effect. Do that with an aircraft, and you produce more drag.

That describes painting of the radiator housings, not the radiator cores though. Any layer of paint acts as a layer of insulation that makes heat transfer less efficient, so I don't see what would be gained by painting the radiator cores... On my models of SPitfires I have painted the radiator cores/matrices matt aluminium and used a dark grey wash to highlight the detail. Except for the Tamiya 1:32 Spitfire where I just applied flat varnish to Radu Brinzan's excellent etched items.

Why would they paint radiator cores? Any layer of paint would result in poorer convection rates between the air and the ribs?

Wow...

That black finish looks good enough for a bare metal finish... Looks like the wing roundel hasn't quite settled into the panel lines though...? Maybe more MicroSol or even run a scalpel along it followed by some decal solvent?

Cool! Was hoping to see something other than plain grey though.

Stunning...

VF-111 with the suburst on the tail is one that definitely needs to be matched to a specific kit. Not only does the leading edge and rudder trailing edge need to match, but the chord and span of the rudders too as many Carrier Air Wing codes are either on the rudder or following the slope of the rudder. Examples are VF-1 and VF-33 and VF-142 rudder stripes. 1:48 decals sized for the Hasegawa kit won't fit the Tamiya kit - I've tried using scans of the decals. Then there is the added consideration of the ventral fins that will probably be different in outline and are often decorated with pinstripes.

Personally, I prefer the Tamiya kit. It's got it's faults, but at least it won't require extensive modifications to fix those horrible intakes of the Trumpeter kit.

I only have the FSD boxing of the Hasegawa kit, so can't comment on what the later releases - including the C-model containts. Juggernut's comment above indicates it only has the NSI, so the Academy kit would be your best choice if your budget can't stretch to the Tamiya kit. Which is indeed superb and can be a very presentable model straight from the box. Jens

The Academy F-16C may still be available which would be your second best choice. Third would be Hasegawa's older kit that has been updated to C-standard, but still retains panel lines from the first release back in the late 70s (originally released as the FSD aircraft). Fourth choice would be Revell which is about as old as the Hasegawa kit, and also originally released as an A model.

I don't think that would make much difference in 1:72nd scale:) Jens

That was my thinking as well! Terriffic work on this project.

Good point. Yellow wheel chockps would make sense - or could there be a chance they would be painted gold to mark they belong to the unit?

Just received mine, and it does look like a very impressive kit. The surface detail is so fine that a coat of primer followed by paint is likely to render it invisible. The paint instructions call for overall matt black, but looking at this photo, I'd say that a satin/semigloss finish would be more appropriate. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/2d_FAWS_North_American_F-82F_Twin_Mustang_46-414.jpg As an additional observation, the stars and stripes on the fin and fuselage (and possibly the spinners) appear to be gold, whereas the kit decals are yellow. Anyone able to confirm or deny?

One of the local clubs I attend (IPMS Rivenhall) did zoom chats on our scheduled meeting night (last Tuessday of the month), although there was no modelling as such - just catching up and chatting. Five of my friends and myself sometimes have a virtual get togehter via Messenger on Facebook, and sometimes we're chatting as well as modelling for a few hours. All good fun.

Very nice model, and the presentation looks really professional. That's a gift to be treasured.

Yes, that would make sense.

You will need the "flat" main gear doors to go with the lightweight main undercarriage legs though...

It looks a bit like the pylon used on Norwegian Starfighters... There is a photo of it in the Daco book on Starfighters.

Yes, it is a part of the moulding process, but what Airfix didn't want to admit (either through ignorance or embarassment) is that it stems from poor tool design. You need a single gate per part to avoid these "knitlines". They are caused by the "cold front" of the plastic merging and not "fusing" because of the slightly lower temperature on that "cold" front. By filling the cavity of a clear part from a single gate, you won't have that problem. Airfix' product designers define the shapes and geometry of the kit, but may not have influence on the layout of the gates - that part should be down to the tool designer. Do Airfix have in-house tool designers? I'd have thought that they would be near the toolmakers that I believe are based in China. Even so, this problem should have been highlighted to the designers at the test shot stage, and rectified then, so Airfix are partly to blame for this. Incidentally, the same problem existed with Kinetic's F-5A kit. I emailed Raymond about the problem as well as the solution, and he replied he was aware of it. Wouldn't want to claim that I fixed it for them, Kinetic did later change the gate to a single one per part, and the problem went away. Still had to pay for new (and faultless) transparencies though...

Been catching up on the episodes now, and find this little more than a promotion of Hornby trains and the model railway hobby with the other brands thrown in as alibi to attract scale modellers, collectors of die-casts and slot-car fans to view it. The latter must surely have given up hope of seeing any of the stuff they're interested in, and so far two of the four Airfix themes are being designed for children to play with, a third (the P-51) being a prop for wargaming (i.e. playing with), only the decent build of the Mosquito portrays it as something to be displayed. I really think this series doesn't show Airfix customers in a very serious light. And somehow they are turning every railway sleeper in the country to find railway modellers playing with their trains... If they could get a really good modeller to build the 1:24 Typhoon or Hellcat from start to finish - say five or ten minutes snips per episode, throwing in some helpful practical tips along the way, and then finally showcasing the finished product, it really would show people what you can do with an Airfix kit. And show them the time and dedication it takes to build a high quality model. That would raise the esteem of scale modellers as well as people's perception of builders of Airfix kits in my opinion.