F`s are my favs

Nice nice!

The cockpit is shaping up... the WSO figure went through some major changes to display it in a kinda more "casual" position. A quick testfit after the main colors: Btw - the video of my Harrier adventure. Hope you like it.

Here is the video. The full build video... Just about a couple of months collected in 1h.

double likes

Nice nice, very very nice!

I got lucky with that angled sunlight... makes some awesome glares in the rear cockpit screens. I again flipped them with the flat side out.

ahhah, thank you guys! I appreciate the appreciation Check out the cockpit. HUD: only the the side IP and the parts for both hoods are glued, almost all other parts are testfited: and one quite overexposed... hm... i`ll take now one with the pilot and the seat...

Thanks mate, I'm really enjoying this big scale. The antennas will probably be the last thing to add and so far I use these two big thick squared antennas as handles. and as stoppers too, to stop the nose section from rolling when put over a flat surfase. One of them is slightly bent already. Yet I'll change them with the beautiful GTR antennas and yeah, first I will have to chech out the correct arrangement.

Rear cockpit. After the main colors - grey/black, and after the highlighting of the buttons and the other small colorful details.... And a basic testfit at nightlight. Check out the manuals in the accessory compartment and the cover. I wonder whether the accessory compartment in the pilot`s cockpit also has a cover? hmm...

It will be quite a thrilling adventure to rivet all without rivet wheels. Btw what you plan about the gluing of the wings and the long seamlines along the fuselage? ... cause the seamlines will probably need filling and sanding, and there are plenty of rivets there too, and they may be deleted easily. Looks beautiful!

I`ll permit myself to comment before Chuck. So, according to me, the best possible choice for the exhausts is the PE Flightpath set - i saw how it looks in the F-15 topics of ghatherly and Zero77, and there is just nothing to compare with the thin straight and crisp metal shapes. I could only imagine how the PE pieces could look like after some gentle annealing and perhaps only a few transparent coats of metalizers...

Hi and Welcome, and thanks for the kind words! Awesome video and actually the F-18 (probably the super hornet more than the hornet) is really one of my weaknesses. I like this plane slightly more than the F-15.

...about the next (middle) door on the starboard - i decided not to open it, cause i can not figure it out how to anchor the hinges when open... that middle door on that side is touching the other two doors and thus there is no space for the hinges... actually there is, but it won`t be stable cause it will be on both hinges. Another plausible choice was to connect that recently made rearmost door with the middle door, and to open together as one giant long door, but probably this will turn even less stable cause the two hinges will be quite away from each other. So, i`m leaving it like that, which on the other hand, brings some differentiation as well. Okey okey, here it is, all is testfited, but the sight is... And closed:

A big update, finally Can`t believe, i was pretty unsure and i hesitated whether to do it or not, but i`m very very happy with the result. The doors are ready. Here is the rearmost starboard door viewed from inside - the edges are sanded for the best fit, and the hinges are added: After that - framing, magnets and a thin Surfacer coat, and it`s pretty much ready for painting: and...

Beautiful! Lovely! The part that i like the most are the nozzles.

I`m only thinking about what happened to the lower lips of the intakes... why they look so thick? Or maybe there will be some attachable edges? I just can`t remember that exact detail on the Tomcat, but the intake edges should be quite sharp.

Good! Nice! I like the wiring.

Exactly!

First 4 small "pins" are glued on the opposite side, precisely adjusted to support the door at the correct depth, float... neutral buoyancy... can`t find the word... just to fit flawlessly by itself. The upper 2 pins, along the piano hinges, will also support the entering of the door`s edge when opened. Then, the filling of the gaps... These are the stretched sprue rods, slightly thicker than the gaps so when they touch the frames, i should sand them nearly to their diameters. Glued with a normal melting glue and with CA glue... ...and with Surfacer. They are already pretty good married to the door, but just to fill the tiny little gaps. Now i let them to dry thoroughly and then a lot of fine sanding and testfitting to adjust the proper fit in the frame. Then hinges, magnets, textures, rivets... quite a lot. I`ll take pictures.

1 of the 4 corners always has the best fit, so in this case this is the optimal corner - the bottom left corner of the door, there the lines touch almost seamlessly. The light enters through the opposite edges (lines), which means that they will have to go through some filling...

Thx! I hope so I`m feeling like i`m doing my first model... this scale is completely different. So, here is the door right after the cutting: It looks pretty clean, but an hour ago... it was quite messy. Cause when the white lines appear on the opposite side of the door - this means that door door is basically barely holding but it`s still in its original place. So i take advantage of that and sanded flush all the four edges, which otherwise look and feel like volcano craters And then just a few light cuts along the light lines on the opposite side, and the door is open. Then i use a small flat piece of sandpaper onto a flat surface where is sand all the four edges of the door, just slightly, to make them perfect, but no changing the shape cause they are cut perfectly. Then a little bit of sanding of the edges of the frame on the starboard. And here is how it looks testfited with a piece of paper tape: I also take advantage of the nighttime, when the light shows where is the best fit:

I'm just cutting the rearmost door on the starboard side and I'll take some more pics of "the filling of the edges". In brief - it's a very thin stretched plastic sprue. But the key is in the cutting of the door... I use just the tip of the knife to follow the panel lines, while where there are no panel lines - just a straight guide for the first few passes to make a deeper groove. Then it's literally hundreds of passes along the same line (around 3 hours of cutting one door) until some white lines start to appear on the other side of the door. And the plastick is so thick... But eventually it works. Probably sawing should save more time, but I don't have so small saw and I'm sure that it would be impossible to cut flawlessly straight lines... A couple of pics in a minute....

Hi Marcel, I just searched the meaning of this phrase... ))) Thanks

Kinda upgraded the dish with long stripes of electrical tape. And the oob piece with the outer grit is quite much thinned from both sides... ... and how they look test fitted on top of each other: The gimbal is installed, while the hinge for the radome went through some major changes since it can`t be glued/screwed to the door: Here is the movement of the hinge when the radome should be closed: and with the radome opened: Have a good day!