hpetiers

Hi Shawn, indeed it took me long enough to get this far. Time to get the canopy on and start some serious painting!

Hi Peter, thanks for your explanation! My version of the Super Hornet is of the year 2011 so that makes it more likely to have the JHMCS. Now that I have painted the figure after the hottest days of summer, I can say that I will go for this one! This is the figure painted: this is a comparison with the much larger Tamiya figure. I made the overall a bit more pink to match the picture from mr. Melampy's awesome book better: the cockpit has the ejection seat installed and is ready to get the pilot on board: and then finally the pilot is in his seat, time to close up the cockpit! for the fact that he is smaller than the Tamiya one, I think he fist just right.

hi Kev, indeed they are quite expensive, even at a place which is only 3 hours driving away from Revell's head office in Bunde, like 100 euro's. Luckily I received a test shot for free but I felt obligated to build it fast and write a review article.

hello 1:144 fans! for IPMS the Netherlands I have built a test shot of their incredible AN-225, the largest aircraft in the world. And also the largest aircraft I ever built. Complete build report can be found in MIP #3 of IPMS the Netherlands. Enjoy and have a relaxiing vacation.

hi themongoose, indeed when all is in one color you always appreciate the surface detail and smoothness of the surface more! now that I was almost ready to close up the cockpit, I took one last chance to make up my mind about the following. Look at what the postman brought me this week: pilot with JHMCS system. I figured that this is the last moment I have to make up my mind on it. Putting him in the seat looks like this.I think he is a bit better to scale than the Tamiya pilot because hiw helmet does not stick out from above the ejection seat (and with ejecting through the canopy that would not be such a good idea, would it?): Not bad I would think, although the head is considerably narrower that the Tamiya pilot: In all fairness, the Tamiya pilot looks a bit bulky even if you don't compare him to the JP productions one. I think I will paint the JP pilot anyway and see how it turns out. My guess would be that if the Super Hornet went on a combat mission, the logical thing to take for the pilot would be to use this JHMCS helmet. But if anyone knows what the most accurate scenario would be here, I'm open to any comments!

thanks for your support in this one gentlemen! it loos like the most risky work has been done by now. in the mean time the cockpit is as good as ready. pilot and seat got a coat of flat varnish: and a set of resin wheels were delievered to my house. I noticed that the Revell wheels are much too square and have no thread on the tyres: Just finished the primer on the fuselage: surface detail is quite good, no seams visible anymore!

during recent evenings I have been busy with paint! taking a step away from my usual 1:72 projects, I must say that the ejection seat and the pilot are already a project of their own. Here is some pictures. The pre-coloured PE worked quite well even though it was meant for the Trumpeter kit: time for a layer of matt varnish for everything and some gloss for the visor and I can think about closing up the cockpit!

...or so I thought I was almost ready for paint. The plastic HUD as supplied by Revell was quite a thorn in the eye, based on which I decided last week to buy the Eduard cockpit set in photo etch for the Trumpeter model. I really did not want to wait for the Revell one to come out, I wanted to start painting soon. Wanting the HUD most I thought that all extra panels that would fit would be a bonus. Turns out that all parts fit this super bug quite well. So that added another 20 or so parts to my project. Before adding the PE I finished work on the tail surfaces. I already read elsewhere that they do not fit well, I wanted to reduce the gaps before I would mount them to the fuselage. The trick I used was to put some Milliput onto the glue surface of the tails: then cover the surface by a piece of sandwich plastic foil: then press the tail into its gap: when the tail was removed, the imprint of the fuselage was in the putty: after drying I could remove the foil and sand the excess material flush with the tail: The gap between tail and fuselage is much smaller now: I also closed the gap between fuselage and stabilizers by adding PS strip: Next step: The pilot has his arms added and fitted to the position of the stick and throttle. Stick and throttle have been glued to the hands and will not contact the cockpit anymore, but this will be invisible: Pilot nearly ready for paint, except the addition of the PE shoulder and waist straps: The PE set that I bought had some parts I did not expect to find, turns out that the mesh on the turtle deck is also in there. Even nicer is that it fits quite well on the Revell model. Also the cockpit sidewalls fit well, camouflaging the seam between the upper and lower fuselage: And now I am really ready for primer!

Hi Chrish, thanks for your support. Speaking of support I put the aircraft on a temporary stand to see what it looks like, what I have in mind. that is what I am looking for! still need to do more work on the nos wheels as they are standing too far apart. Also the main landing wheels are too square in profile. All in all the landing gear is not bad, but a bit too skinny. You wonder if Revell had the nerve to deliver the parts for the gear in plastic, they might want to have made the parts at least as thick as in real life. I am not so worried for this one, being up in the air. with some final touches on the cockpit, it's almost time to start painting!

Hi DonH and 1to1scale, defeat is not what I am risking anymore I think. After having completed the assembly of the fuselage I think that most other things will be easier. Especially now that I have a solution for the landing gear see below. First I still had to mount the foldable wings. I already knew that I would have to cut the lip on the outside wing part of the hinge, but after glueing the wing halves together I concluded that the lip is also too thick to fit inside the outer wing: not so nice Revell.... after having sanded the lip thinner, it fit into the slot: having glued the parts together, top and bottom seam are very ok: both wings attached, on with the moving surfaces! the hinge cover, slats and flap covers fit quite well looking from above: but the slats will make far too large an angle if you mount them without gaps. So I had to leave a rather large gap to make the angle work. this will need to be filled: though I will mount the flaps after painting, I clamped them temporarily to see how it goes together. at least this fits! Another possible headache was resolved with the modification of the landing gear. Below to the right the original pieces, they require a lot of cleaning up. However the hinge mechanism could be separated quite easily in order to put them in the fully extended position, assembled to the left bottom. Also the nose landing gear can be easily extended:

got some work done on the seams, all of them on the assembly so far have been dealt with: [ and on the bottom side of the fuselage, not too bad: and I have also assembled all the moving surfaces of the wings: then continued dry fitting some cockpit parts. the seat was just assembled to compare with the resin version from Aires: and as others have already found out, the canopy does not fit due to the seat sitting 2 mm too high: with the new seat I also need to do something, but the conflict is smaller: the new seat itself fits without any further adjustments: I added a Tamiya F-16 pilot in the seat, everything fits almost without any cutting or sanding:

hi gents, indeed I am making good use of the fora so far, the trick here really is dry fitting to make sure that you are not going to be surprised when parts are glued. After all had dried I could finally mount the fuselage top and nose, this time with no stress in the plastic: around I just need to fill small gaps: the elevator connection is really sticking out from the fuselage too much, need to sand that down still: also at the cockpit things align pretty much ok: I read some things about the nose, it should have a constant radius in the side view, Revell has made a bit of a kink in it. With sanding sticks I have tried to make the radius more constant: before glueing the wings together I decided to add the outer wings an see how things fit: Also here is seems that the hinge mechanism is 2 mm too long, causing a gap: also the lid on the hinge does not fit without taking away material, the manual does not mention it: so out comes the cutters: now it starts to fit better, I need to take 2 mm off of the outside hinge lip:

hi Chris, that is why I think a forum like this is so useful: no need to go through the same learning curve if you can share tips. thanks for your encouragenemt! hi Don, I am not sure but like you (i think) I have the Afterburner Decals set for the Tomcatters and the Gunslingers. the Tomcatters were a nobrainer until I realized that there is no decals for the lining on the fuel tank. Luckily I can still go on for a while until I need to make up my mind. I am quite sure you also experienced some fit issues for the forward and upper fuselage. If you fit the upper part on the lower one, and try to align 1 wing root... ...then you end up with an upper fuselage around 2 mm too narrow: of course you can pull the upper part outward, but then the part gets quite a bit distorted. On top of that you will note that between the forward fuselage and the LERX extensions there will be quite a gap. I came to the conclusion that the lower fuselage is 2 mm too wide...Now what? You guessed it: out comes the saw again! basically cut the whole inner structure in half to make the assembly flexible enough to push inward. then after pushing the top inwards, I strengthened the whole with a styrene strip: after which I decided to mount the forward fuselage. see here no gap! no gap between the inlets anymore: also strengthened the rest and added a hole for my stand: after a considerable amount of sanding the lower LERX part to make it fit: now the upper and lower parts fit without stress: and can be glued together make sure that the LERX lower surface lines up with the upper surface of the lower fuselage: now the upper fuselage can be mounted....thought for some time I might not get away with this, but it looks like I did!

today I completed a bit of a milestone: finished the intakes so that the fuselage can be built up further. I have no idea how one would be able to paint the intakes after they have been assembled. all seams filled! after the paint has dried, I masked the intakes and the wheel bays: like dmthamade already posted, also here I had to scrape the lower wing gutters wider with a chisel: so these are the parts that need to go together, I have primed the surfaces that will be closed in later: mounted the splitter plates of the LERX separately from the lower wing, this eases cleanup considerably: and then, with sweaty hands, mounted the lower wings to the fuselage: also here the parts need to lign up where the wings and the intakes meet:

Hi dmthamade, so i found your build, thanks for sharing your experiences on this build. I can relatie to all of your fit challenges. Funny to see how you succeeded in fitting the inner intakes, there is more ways that lead to Rome! How do you plan on painting the insides of the intakes gray in wonder? Note that revell does not give you any indication here. if you have not mounted the upper wings yet, I advise to remove the splitters of the small exhausts of the LERX from the bottom wings and glue them under the top wings first. It's much easier to clean up the seem this way. For what it is worth...