Thunnus

Thanks Brian! Appreciate it! You're welcome Ernest! I'm glad that I was able to get the drop tanks a little closer to what I was seeing in the photos. Not going for an exact representation but I hoped to capture a number of the little details that can be discerned on the real Red 10. Thank you Michael! I hope my build process helps you out when you decide to tackle this kit! Thank you so much Wolf! Hopefully we'll see more of your lovely Corsair soon??? Thanks Jan! Thanks Kirk! I appreciate the kind words!

Very nice presentation and cool contrast with the Ohka. I've got the pilot-less version and plan on building it as a companion to the Tempest.

Thanks Tom! I'm most likely sticking to the marking options included with the kit but haven't made any decisions yet except it won't be a Clostermann Tempest. After the Super Bowl, I replaced the molded ignition lines on the resin engine with lead wiring.

Thanks guys! Appreciate the feedback! Thank you Chuck! Very encouraging to see that others have used the Barracuda nose and the Special Hobby engine. Most of my build research was confined to Works in Progress and I forgot to check the RFI board! I'm not going to get much deeper into this build until I figure out what I want to do with the surface details. My options range from (a) do-nothing all the way to (b) sand everything away and rescribe-rivet it all over. I want to make improvements but I don't have the desire or resolve to do (b). I've tested the rivet dot pitch pattern against my riveting tools (RB Productions, Galaxy Tools, Trumpeter) and they don't match so fixing the kit rivets will have to be one at a time. I am toying with the idea of filling all of the rivets with black CA glue and punching new rivets with one of my tools. The black CA would give me the visual pattern of the rivet lines without having to re-draw them. But I don't know how the filled rivets would respond to having a rivet tool run directly over them and I'm afraid of creating a mess. And there are a TON of rivets... lots of filling and sanding. I did some preliminary dry-fitting with the major fuselage and wing components. Fit is not especially great but not horrible either. Checking the wing geometry to make sure that center section is flat. Will have to pay attention to this area as internal components are added to make sure that the fuselage doesn't push the wings out, causing an anhedral condition. Got a new tool in the mail today to deal with the big casting block. Tamiya Thin Blade Craft Saw #74024 About the size as a big kitchen knife! Plenty of blade clearance to cut through this piece. Life is so much easier with the right tools. Thank you Damian for this excellent recommendation. Make sure you wear a mask when cutting resin! One of the things I noticed after taking my first photos of the resin block (meaning it wasn't caused by the sawing process), was a broken ignition wire. That got me to thinking... what if I replaced all of the ignition wires? Very do-able!

Thanks Antonio! That Dora has seen better days! Is that the wreck from Lake Schwerin? Here's the seat with the HGW harnesses attached to it. The seat is then slid into place along the seat rails. I added an oxygen tube per the Eagle Editions instructions. Here we go with the cockpit disappearing act. The starboard sidewall, the forward roof and the rear deck are attached the box-like cockpit is complete. We dry-fit the cockpit tub into the fuselage to make sure that it sits properly. As you can see, the view into cockpit is VERY limited and the addition of the canopy parts will make it even more so. With the cockpit complete, we can now focus some more attention on the rear engine area.

Thanks Brian! Some work on the cockpit before I start putting the components together. Here is the Revi 16B gun sight that came with the Eagle Editions resin set. I highlighted one of the glass pieces with clear blue/green around the edges and tinted the other one with Tamiya Smoke. The port sidewall has been glued onto the cockpit tub. After this, the throttle and the and lower instrument panel were glued into place. The foot pedals have been painted and mounted. The roof piece that the foot pedals hang down from has not been painted at all since it will be completely obscured. The seat will receive its harnesses after I've completed assembling them.

Thanks guys! Appreciate the encouragement on a new build, especially since this is my first 1/32 RAF effort. Much like my F4U-1a build, I am going into this one without much knowledge of the Tempest except that it's a cool looking aircraft! Thanks for that link Mike! Good reference for using the Barracuda nose parts whole but am I missing the part where he uses the CMK resin engine top with it? RB Productions. Check it out... https://www.largescaleplanes.com/reviews/review.php?rid=888 My first inclination was NO. Most resin improvements that are incorporated within the fuselage halves commonly require considerable thinning of the fuselage sides to accommodate the resin. And the Special Hobby instructions do indicate some sort of thinning after cutting the top off. But the CMK engine plug seems to fit between the kit fuselage halves without much thinning at all. So there may enough wriggle room in the Barracuda nose, with its narrower width at the spinner, to fit the CMK engine plug without too much issue. Possibly. Heck, if the man that designed the Barracuda nose says go for it, how can I NOT at least give it a try? Ok... I'm game. I'll give it a shot.

Thanks Damian! Found that saw at Amazon and ordered it! Will have it by Sunday!

I'm quicker than some, slower than most... I think. And I like having two projects going. It allows me to have something to work on when I'm in the paint drying or otherwise waiting phase. I can also shut down one build to concentrate on the other when I get to certain phases or moods. Gonna jump right into the deep end with this one! The engine! I have some thoughts and preliminary ideas about the engine but I think the most critical thing is how the engine fits into the fuselage. And there is no way to do that until we make the necessary cuts. So... With the nose halves taped together, I've drawn the cut line just above where it should be to give me room to trim neatly down to the actual line of demarcation. Razor saw made pretty quick work of the required surgery. You can see the panel line just below my cut line that I'll eventually have to get to. The ironing board-shaped casting block extends along the entire bottom. I don't have the necessary cutting tools to deal with such a large block but cutting the tip off the ironing board was enough for preliminary testing. With the front tip of the casting block removed, and some minor shaving of the fuselage interior right at the front, the engine block seems to slip into position pretty well. I've not attempted fitting the radiator intake parts but I'm going to assume that removal of the engine casting block will be necessary for those parts to fit. I performed this surgery right away to help answer a question that I have in the back of my mind: Do I consider using the Barracuda corrected cowling and spinner? How will the reduced diameter of the spinner and fuselage section at the forward end impact the placement of resin engine? Is it worth an attempt? At this point, my mind is saying no, don't bother but I'm going to sleep on it.

Okay, I'm gonna spin up another build. I purchased this one quite a while ago but after admiring the contents of the box after receipt, it went up on my shelf and has stayed there ever since. It is not a subject that I am very familiar with but I started to think that, as a counterpart and worthy adversary to the Dora, it would be good for me to stick my toe on the other side of the fence. It will be tough following the bar set by Chuck540z3 so please notch down your expectations accordingly. I will be referring to Chuck's build along with others that have come before and hopefully add my own things here and there. The Hawker Tempest, like the Typhoon before it, was a brute of an aircraft, which is befitting of its immensely powerful 24-cylinder liquid cooled Napier Sabre powerplant. It is this powerplant that sets the Hi Tech version apart from the standard release. Although I took the photos for it, I don't think I'll do a full sprue tour of this kit. There are plenty of online reviews that highlight the kit contents better than I so I'll simply you to Iain's wonderful review posted here at LSP if you are interested in a walk through. https://www.largescaleplanes.com/reviews/review.php?rid=1928 A few notes about the kit plastic... the exterior of the Tempest is fully riveted. I don't know if I'm happy about that or not. Although I like my builds to be riveted, I don't necessarily like it when the rivets come as part of the molding. The rivets made manually using a circular rivet tool produce very fine holes and result in an effect that is subtle and not distracting. Molded rivets are commonly too large and only a few companies can produce rivet detail that I think is great right out of the box (Tamiya and Eduard for example). Based on my initial observations, the riveting is good in some areas and inconsistent in others. The dot pitch of the rivets does not align with either the RB Productions Rivet-R nor the Galaxy Tools rivet tool so any repair option is going to be manually intensive. Outside of the rivets, the molding quality on this kit looks very good. One of the places that manufacturers commonly sacrifice on mold definition is the interior side of the fuselage, wings and landing gear covers. Special Hobby has done an excellent job of not skimping in these areas. I like how Special Hobby treated the fabric-covered control surfaces.. the stitching detail isn't overly exaggerated. Given the amount of included resin and photoetch, it is somewhat surprising that Special Hobby does not give the modeler a choice when it comes to the instrument panel. But, it looks like a good result can be obtained by using the plastic instrument panels with the instrument faces represented by decals. The clear parts exhibit some scratching (maybe not the manufacturer's fault since I bought this kit secondhand) and some distortion as well. I can fix the scratches but not the distortion, unfortunately. Back to that Napier Sabre engine... the highlight of the kit for me is the beautiful representation of the Napier Sabre engine in resin. The resin components come in their own little box. Inside the box, I found four separate baggies of resin parts, including this bad boy... It is not a complete engine but nevertheless an impressive representation of the upper half of the Napier Sabre from the exhaust stacks on up. I don't normally like to model my aircraft with open panels but I'm going to make an exception for this one. This resin is just too beautiful to ignore. Here are the contents of the next baggie full of resin. I'm not familiar with all of the parts yet but I think this bag contains mostly engine components including impressively long and complex lengths of hydraulic tubing. I believe the small block in the front are the four gun barrel tips. This next bag contains some exterior components like the engine cover panels and resin versions of the wheels and pilot seat. Although the cover panels are very thin, I don't think they are meant to placed over the engine, which is actually fine by me. The last baggy holds mostly cockpit components, by the look of it. I see foot pedals, a couple of different gun sights, the handle for the control stick, among other things. There has been breakage of a few delicate parts but nothing that will be noticeable or significant, I don't think.

Yes but the D-13 was a special one right? Ignoring the two D-13 conversion sets that were used more as reference than parts, the AM count on this one is pretty standard, I think.

Thanks guys! The seat has been redone it using a base coat of Alclald Steel on the armored backrest and the Tamiya AS-12 silver for the frame of the bucket. Yes, I've chipped it again but there is very low contrast between the dark steel and the dark grey RLM 66.

Looking forward to seeing the re-start of this G-14/AS build!

Hey guys! I need a saw recommendation for removing big resin casting blocks. The biggest one I have right now is the RB Productions saw with the Medium sized teeth. Using an offset mount, it has an effective cutting depth of about 1/2 of an inch. It does fine for casting blocks that are less than 1 inch wide as long as I can attack it from opposite sides. But bigger areas present a big stumbling block for me. Any recommendations on a larger saw?

What do you do when Mr. Jerry Crandall says the seat back should have not silver-colored wear because it is armored? (a) Come up with a dismissive retort like, "Yeah right! Like you know what a real Focke-Wulf 190 seat looks like. Psssh!"? (b) Continue the build, pretending like you never saw the comment? Or (c) Wipe it and start over? Of course, with all due respect to Mr. Crandall's undeniable expertise in the matter, I chose (c). After I sprayed the seat with some appropriate shades, I thought I'd delve into the engine compartment and try to get the MG151 fitted. Here is that "cover" that I was talking about in the previous post. It has a hole drilled into it to accept the MG151. The stub of the MG151 barrel can be wedged into the hole. Since the gun protrudes past the resin bulkhead supplied in the Grey Matter resin set, I cut out a hole in it. In reality, the gun body goes all the way back into the front of the cockpit but since there is no visibility to that area, I am not going to cut a corresponding hole in the cockpit tub bulkhead. I'm just going to trim the gun body to allow the cockpit tub to fit. As you can see, the gun is visible but obscured. It will be even more obscured once I had additional pipes and wiring. I'll also have to add a chute for the expended ammo. If possible, I'll try and incorporate the resin ammo container as part of the chute. The real ammo containers in the D-13 were located above in the space where the D-9 cowl guns were.

Thanks Bevan! I've built a few of these Hasegawa Dora kits and have used the Eagle Editions cockpit before. I would rank it as the best cockpit upgrade for the Dora, compared to the Aires and out of production MDC sets, which I've also used. The Aires set is more simplistic but the casting is finer and more uniform. But in the end, the cockpit gets engulfed within the fuselage with limited visibility into the area and the differences between the Aires and EE cockpits start to fade. Aires Eagle Editions Thanks Mark! The RLM66 is Mr Hobby Aqueous. For the other primary colors used for the detail painting, I use my stash of Tamiya paints. Thanks Brian! Pretty straightforward stuff and I tried to not spend too much time on things that will go unseen. Most of these cockpit details will eventually get boxed in like this...

You're welcome Andy! Not affiliated with SOW... just a big fan of Damian's stuff!

After taking a short break following the finish of the Me262B Nightfighter build, I've been trying to work up enough mojo to start this build back up. It's slow going but I've managed to make a little progress. First off, I've received the Aires 190D gun bay resin set. I think it must be one of Aires older products based on the color of the resin and visible yellowing of the packaging. I have no intention of using these in the wing root gun bays as designed but I thought it would be helpful to at least assemble one of the wing root stations to get a better understanding of how the MG151 is mounted. Surprisingly, the front end of gun body butts up against a solid wall. Although the gun barrels are provided, the set makes no provisions for their use. I guess they expect the modeler to drill the necessary holes. The back of the Jumo 213 has a cover, which I THINK is the location of the hollow space where a gun barrel would fit. D-9's had no gun in this location hence the cover, which is the black object above the large trunk of the supercharger. The Hasegawa kit depicts this cover and therefore gives me a point of reference as to where the MG151 can be mounted. As previously shown, the instrument panels have been painted and it was time to paint the rest of the cockpit. Pretty understated and, dare I say, boring? The Eagle Editions cockpit represents much more than will be visible from the cockpit opening. Everything behind and in front of the raised side panels will be obscured from sight. Here is the frontal hood with the upper instrument panel in place. The Revi 16B gun sight still needs to be painted and added. The upper areas of the sidewalls have been chipped. Really not much else will be see due to the raised side panels. None of the painted wiring runs will be visible as they will be blocked by the instrument panel and the seat. The starboard side panel is grafted from the Zoukei Mura Ta152H-1 kit to reflect the difference between the D-13 and D-9. One of the things I've been doing after the cockpit has been painted and given a flat coat is to go back with a fine brush and touch up the black areas with Future. The glossy Future will darken the black and provide more contrast and also give some surfaces a variance in sheen. Just something to break up the monotony of a sparse cockpit. The seat hasn't been given a flat coat yet. I'll do that after the HGW harnesses have been added. On the rear deck, I've pre-installed loops for the attachment of the shoulder harnesses. The top of loops have been left open so, in theory, I can just slip the shoulder straps onto the loops and close them with CA glue.

Man, I got excited there for a second thinking, "A NEW Hasegawa Dora release?????" Yes, I've noticed the scarcity of some Hasegawa 1/32 offerings too including the D-9. I hope it is temporary and suppliers get more copies to drive that price down. I've still got a couple in the stash to work on so I can wait it out.

The two "6" examples I posted are identical except the one on the left was designed to not have the hole "free-floating" and part of the mask. The one on the right will have the hole as a separate piece that you would have to place manually. If you are willing to wait a few days before spraying that "6", I could mail you a set of adhesive masks tomorrow based on the dimensions that you've given me. Are you sure that the hole is square? I'm not an expert on SBD's or #2106 but based on this photo from the internet, it appears that the hole may have bevels. It's easy enough to send multiple versions of this mask so I can include them all. All I would need is for you to message me your mailing address and I can put the masks in a greeting card to be mailed tomorrow.

If you give the dimensions of the "6", an adhesive mask could be easily produced. Has it been painted already? Are you in the US?

Looks very nice Mike! Painting rings on a spinner can be especially tough but yours looks nice and neat!

And yes, SOW does offer replacement legs for the Revell 190A kits... SOW has its own sub-forum so you can go there to see the complete catalog and how to order. https://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?/forum/103-synthetic-ordnance-works/

I recommend Synthetic Ordnance Works composite legs. Easier to work with than metal but has strength of metal core. Also has shiny oleo part built in.

Turbine! I like that term! Thank you very much for checking in to this build! Thanks Larry! I appreciate you following and will see you at the next one! Thanks Miloslav! Thanks Mike! As modelers I think we gravitate towards a light-color-first approach but it seemed to make more sense with these field-applied nightfighter schemes that the underlying dark colors would be utilized to save time/paint. I wanted to try that approach with this build. Thank you Ernest! Yes, a careful but random application of the light blue RLM 76 over the dark green to achieve the mottle. The wear on the drop tanks was done with the reference photos in mind... Red 10 had tanks that exhibited considerable paint wear. The first attempt was a standard hairspray chipping application that just didn't capture the right look. So I scrubbed that and starting with a base of RLM 76, I used hairspray but also modulated the application of the black so that it was much lighter at the front of the tanks. This allowed the black there to be more easily and completely eradicated. Not exactly like the reference photos but much closer I think.