hpetiers

indeed, the cut that I made gives some room to show the very back end of the ship with some of the netting and other bits. this is what I have worked on: mounted against the back of the ship this willlook something like this:

it took much more paint and tape than I expected, but by now the deck has been painted. I have now a squeaky clean, new-looking aircraft carrier deck: next step: making it filthy!

in the mean time I have made the frame for catching crew members if they get blown off the deck. On this frame I will apply netting by means of some medical gauze. Also did some pre shading on the deck: I dared to put my Rhino on its feet. It is almost a tail sitter!

Hi Kai, wow. thanks for sharing, particularly on an open platform like this one, takes courage. Good point, when life gets complicated, make sure you have a stable home base. Makes this build just a bit more meaningful and inspirational to me. Thanks for your offer, I will surely reach out!

Hey gentlemen, thanks for your encouragement that really means a lot. And hello mr Wolter! wow, to get this reply from you really means a lot to me! Having actually been multiple times on an aircraft carrier and making such good photo's is really something that I admire, so thanks for your input here. Your website has been a big inspiration for my model aircraft building projects in recent years. Even Jake Melampy published the ultimate super hornet guide with some of your photo's in it if I'm not mistaken. That must make you a real celebrity in the aircraft modeling world! Nice to read that you are also building a Rhino, I wonder if you also keep a blog of it on any of the forums? If there is only this that I would need (and probably the people that use your website as a valuable source of info), is your insight into the question: why have you stopped updating your website? there is such good and useful material on there! Any carrier visits planned for the future? Anyway thanks once again for your support!

hi Chrish, thanks for sticking around this far into the build. I don't know about Canada, but over here they call it social isolation. I call it more time to do model aircraft building. My project is coming along a bit faster than in the last months. I finished the inlets with use of some small plastic parts to imitate the retraction mechanism: then mounted it on my Rhino: Sprayed the burner cans with Vallejo metallic steel and with Tamyia smoke on each edge of each blade: then mounted them, after which I could also glue the ailerons. the carrier deck has been primed with Tamyia primer, the anti-slip coating came out quite well, as did the tie-downs that I had printed by Shapeways:

Hi Chrish, neither can I! I am indeed postponing this build quite a lot my my plan for a piece of carrier deck. But nevertheless making good progress: Put the lines on the deck and pre drilled the tie-down holes. tie downs have been printed by Shapeways in the mean time. The weld seams between deck plates were made with Vallejo putty: Then I used a yoghurt-like primer to glue tiles onto tiles. I had that stuff as left over some years ago, already then I saw how there is very fine sand particles in there and how its structure would make a good anti-slip coating. By combing it with a very fine comb I made the orientation as you see on carriers: structure is accross over the seems, and length wise on the rest of the plates. after a successful test I put the stuff on the piece of deck, half an hour later this was the result: anti-slip coating on the deck!

Hi Mark, I see your point, I selected only a part the size of the aircraft out of the whole print: I just ordered some extra tie down points at shapeways, that will take a few days before I can progress.

Thanks for that! in the mean time I have been thinking about a stand to hold this big beast. I have been looking at phto's of the beginning of the runway of USS George Bush. But it was the USS Theodore Roosevelt, on which the crew had painted 'IF YOU CAN READ THIS ADD POWER' that caught my attention. Good sense of humor of them! I think I would like to go for that too! some very good pictures from Kai Wolter and US navy btw. I made a print of a piece of flight deck, which I had drawn in CAD some years ago: \ Indeed that is my feet in the photo, gives you a sense of the size of this thing. Went to the DYI shop on saturday to get some wood and plastic. My project was just extended by a month!

thanks gentlemen, your encouragement helps really to race towards the finish line! iPainted the Wheel struts and weathered them. Mounting them with all these actuating arms was not easy! then mounted the landing gear doors: now that the Rhino is 95% finished, I am thinking about a base for it to stand on...

the finish line is coming into sight! landing gear in primer tails finished: weapons pilons: flaps: removable armament: just a few more weekends!

yup, the way things have been going so far I tend to build the F too. Revell has announced if for October or so, I will surely be ready by that time. in the mean time I have finished the weathering: this is the underside. Might make that a bit dirtier still under the nose: at the air intakes, including patched up stains: lower wings: upper wing: on the walk ways. the black spine will remain glossy, after polishing I taped it off before the matt coat: then sealed everything with a final cote of gloss varnish. After drying I applied 3 thin layers of matt coat from Ammo MiG, left part are matt, right still glossy: you can easliy see the difference of the gloss with the matt layer weapons are matt now:

Hi Pete, I wanted a big Super Hornet and I did not want to pay 130 Euro's, so this was the only other option. Was I disappointed that the kit had so much more potential that was not realized? Absolutely! I started the kit as a nice challenge to see how these missed chances that I already read about could be easily overcome (I thought: how bad could it really be in this day and age of high tech model making? boy was I wrong). But over time and now seeing the intermediate result, plus now that I know how to fix the most crucial fit issues, I am really having a blast. Needing to do the things that I did might scare some people to attempting this model, so realistically, for the same money you can buy many other models that will give you more satisfaction and less stress. In short: if you want a German Super Hornet in 1:32 for nearly half the price as a Chinese Super Hornet and put up with the consequences, this is the kit for you!

this weekend I have started to apply a panel wash. For the first time I decided not to use artist oil paint. My infrequency of modelling time gave me the risk that after applying I would not have enough time to remove it before having dried completely. So I decided to buy a bottle of Flory Models wash in grey and grime (brown), mixed that 75%-25% and applied it to the whole surface of the aircraft and parts: It dries quite quickly. I have the idea that this is a kind of clay particles dissolved in a watery solution. Indeed I came to the conclusion that it does not matter when you remove the stuff where you do not want it. It does not smell either (unlike using turpentine to remove oil paint): Not knowing the product's behavior yet, I was a bit nervous of how it turned out after having dried, but after removing the layer with a damp cloth, this was the result: the clay dries up a bit lighter than when wet, but this becomes dark again after sealing everything with a thin layer of 10% varnish-thinner. So now I have an aircraft that represents (I guess) a few weeks on a carrier. Next step is to apply some patch up jobs on the paint and add some foot step marks on the wings and some glove marks around panels.

how wonderfully confusing! somehow I have the idea that the colour combinations that you see also depend on the time frame of the picture. But hey, that makes it only easier to pick any colour combination and still be right. the following photo shows btw that there is all-grey guidance kits out there. I hope that Mr Wolter will allow me to show this by one of this outstanding carrier photo's: : Adding some more colours to the different bomb parts could add some visual interest thought...I will give that some thought. thx for that inspiration anyway! indeed I feel like a big enough Superbug fan to do another one, surely now that I know how to successfully tackle the fit issues . I realize that this statement will not convince a large part of the super bug builders out there to build one and that's ok.