cbk57

It is sidetracked but as far as I am concerned I have tried to point out why other things are relevant to Tamiya Planes and why we don't get Tamiya Planes every year. I have been trying to drive the point home that Tamiya is a diverse company that is not wedded to doing LSP subjects on any particular time frame or consistency. However also the point that you don't get the great things Tamiya does without them doing other things. So the path to a 109G may run through a Motorcycle kit. The path to the F-14 started with Motorcycle and Formula 1 cars that were 1/6 and 1/12 scale. What came af

I used Gunze Mr. lacquer clear, I did not get enough thinner in it and it crystalized as it hit the model. I have had great results with it but this time went wrong.

Had not really occurred to me, I was thinking of motorcycles more and you see more of that look in various parts of the pipe. I am sure you are right that further down pipe you would not see it probably anywhere behind the cat. I spent a ton of time getting a perfectly smooth white finish, added my decals, botched my gloss coat so the whole model now has the texture of sandpaper. I tried to polish it down but the clear coat was just too hard and I risked ruining the decals. I will throw this on a shelf and chalk it up to lesson learned. It is done in reality, here it was missing wing and

Trying to simulate heating effects, by your comment I am afraid maybe I did not nail that effort. Please don't think I take offense though. You cannot even see the worst of my efforts on this car. It went together beautifully but the finish is actually a complete disaster. I am assuming these are Titanium or stainless pipes on the real car, although I have no idea what IMSA rules are in that regard. My guess if legal to save weight they are thin wall titanium.

More update on the Big Falcon. I continued with subassemblies and started working on some weathering, panel lining that sort of thing. The first photo is showing the rear deck area as I finished all the small part assembly. This next series shows some not so well done Night Shift style chipping. The idea was I was going to practice on these as the owner was going to wall mount it. However, I think you will see that when I pull together washes pigments and oil staines they actually came out really nice. Again we are going to revisit these a bit later and I think y

If praise of Tamiya Motorcycles, they require perfection, the frame, the engine, the suspension, wheels and fairings, they all have to fit around super precise tolerances and be perfect or the whole look of the thing falls apart. There is no hiding by covering something up as even if the bike has fairings they almost never cover everything. A successful bike kit has to have it all perfect fit, exceptional detail, accuracy in detail and correct shapes and it all has to integrate perfectly into a cohesive whole. If anything does not lign up or fit it just won't go together right and the wheel

Wasn’t the Africa Twin another new big scale kit from A year or two ago also? Tamiya in my opinion is quite prolific in high end large high detail kits they just do a lot of variety and our membership expects too much from them related to airplanes. Like I said I am not into bikes but to me you don’t get Tamiya without the bike kits. I believe they are foundational to the quality of the other kits they do.

RADU on Tamiya Big Box models. I wholly agree with his comment. I kind of think what Tamiya does is they have one or two big plastic model projects per year. However it could be in any of several areas, a big car, a big plane, a big tank, a big motorcycle or a big ship. I think last year they did a new 1/6 Honda Monkey Motorcycle. It is just Tamiya’s thing. Now in my opinion, although I am not a Motorcycle enthusiast, the most important thing Tamiya does is their 1/12 and larger Motorcycles of which they have a new Honda out this year. I consider these the most important be

Someone above asked for a tweeks list for the Operation Bolo F-4c, this is kind of LSP selfish but I would suggest a thread of that nature on how to and what is needed to tweak the F-4c. Jennings has a lot on his plate doing what he is doing. Maybe we could get some of our f-4 experts to help us out with the mods to make a nice external C. If we were lucky we could get photos as well to back up the details of what a period correct C would look like. Then we can dial it in to Operation bolo. I know we have an old F-4c tweeps list from Thierry on the site. Personally I need some photos as

Don't tell me you own a beer distributorship also. Do you just want me to hand over my credit card number or what?

This looks like nothing that cannot be resolved with the help of a Guiness or two.

Hi All As you know Jennings has a new decal sheet for Operation Bolo in route for late this year or early next. Well one of the better reference sources, The Modern Phantom Guide is long out of publication and resellers are asking outrageous prices on Amazon. I emailed Reid Air and asked for help and they said they had a 2nd Edition hopefully ready this winter. So with luck we will have the new edition to align on time with the new decal sheet. I particularly needed a copy because I know nothing about Jets. I have been almost exclusively a WWII builder. I have been thinking t

Here are some more updates. I built up the various bay inserts. I then added various pigments to give them some of the filth and weathering that seems apparent in the movie. I also put together the cockpit cone, however it is just snapped in as I intend to add a couple figures still. This is a insert painted up no weathering.

I usually replace them, I have used them but I usually go AM just because I tend to not want to do the options in the kit as that is what a lot of people do. I have found that they can be conformed into panel lines etc with solvent. I have used them with no major complaint. Sometimes I like the thicker nature. For example if I am doing U.S. insignia decals I might want a thicker decal so nothing shows through from behind. On a positive note airplane wise I remember when I built their P-51D the first time, I did build Petie 2nd with decals out of the box, one of my all time favorite p-51’s

Photo documentation and historic importance. Operation Bolo was interesting, it seems important in hindsight, but was it really important in the big sense? We are not talking operation overlord here. This did not change the course of the Vietnam war or have any significant impact? If I am understanding correctly this was an operation targeting approximately 15 MiG 23 planes that had shot down one or two American planes that had formed a habit(I guess by orders) of flying the same route more or less at the same altitude every day. In scope and scale to me it seems like a clever plan to kno