MikeA

What an absolutely gorgeous build of my favourite aircraft type. The painting is sublime. The attention to detail in getting the parts to fit perfectly with just the right surface detail is amazing and very inspiring. Great stuff! cheers Mike

Beautiful work on the mottling!

Really shows off that curious mix of old school and cutting edge of the design. Almost like a Leonardo da Vinci project. The contrasts are great! Beautiful work throughout!

Wow! Beautiful work. All looks so real, but the mesh is particularly striking. I imagine it’s fairly difficult to shape and cut to such a high level of accuracy.

That is seriously beautiful work! Even before the painting.

Beautiful! Those lights are stunning!

Thank you for the feedback and likes! Much appreciated. Back to working on my first ship now, but may take a break for another LSP in between endless decks. cheers, Mike

Beautiful finish on a very graceful looking airframe. Love it!

Well that is gorgeous! Very sharp scheme.

This is all kinds of amazing. I cannot believe what you are doing with this toy - the very exacting detail you’re adding. Great stuff! cheers Mike

After over two years, this one is finally done! The kit does build into an impressive model pretty much out of the box, if the fuselage panel lines are sharpened up a tad. I chose a longer route and foiled the beast, after an overall sand and polish, to deal with those pesky panel lines. There is a fair amount of scratch building in the cockpit, using the kit pieces with any semblance of detail removed as a basis, and also some of the Eduard panels. Many of the Eduard pieces were chopped and rearranged to get what I wanted. The flying instrument panel and instrument shroud/gunsight were scratch built as neither the kit nor the Eduard parts present the Canadian version. The build can be found here. Overall, no problems. Glue the front and rear fuselage sections together before joining the fuselage halves and use internal fillets for the wing/fuselage joints are the only essential tricks on this one. Extras used were: Eduard interior Airscale instruments and bezels Aires control columns Eduard electronic boxes (chopped up and added to) Eduard exterior (only a couple of pieces in the end - I should have saved my money and used whiskey bottle foil instead) Eduard seat with fabric belts(very very nice - essential really) Eduard wheels (the kit ones are incorrect for the Cf 104) Eduard burner can Aires wheel bays (the main bay is especially good and for the most part is visible despite the gear doors) Master pitot tube (metal and essential for durability alone) Videoaviation wing and central pylons (also beautiful pieces) CMK rocket pod (chopped and modified - I only needed it for the end pieces which I had trouble scratch building) Canuck Symmetrical Markings (amongst the best decals I've come across) Wessex Transfers (to print the decals for the Aete "X" markings and the tail flash) Mike Grant decals (various placards and a couple of instruments) It was my first attempt at foiling and I am extremely grateful to members of this forum for their helpful posts on achieving that. It was suprisingly relaxing and certainly way more spouse-friendly than Alcad. For the record, I went through just over 400 cotton buds, 500ml of alcohol, over 40 blades, and somewhere around a metre of foil to do the job. The foil was common kitchen foil with heavy duty foil only used when I was treating it with bleach and egg shells. The Microscale foil glue was cut 50/50 with alcohol and sprayed onto the foil in two misted coats. And the airbrush survived without coming to a sticky end. I used a limited amount of chrome Bare Metal Foil for the canopy framing and the leading edge of the vertical stab. No polish was used as i wanted to retain the natural variation in the panels. Hard to photograph as it is quite subtle across the bulk of the fuselage. There's only very light weathering using oils and Flory washes. It was also my first foray into attempting my own decals. The artwork was easy using a free download of Illustrator, but the successful printing on our Canon inkjet was not something I was able to conquer. I managed to get them printed and coated without colour bleeding, but the final product was just too flimsy and transparent to work with. The first couple of photos were taken outside, but the sun is a tad harsh. The model is surprisingly long and a beggar to photograph. Many thanks for the encouragement along the way! Any comments, suggestions etc on the finished model are welcome. I'm certainly happy with it overall - I've almost forgotten the couple of errors already! Hope you like it. Cheers, Mike

Very well done! In the amount of beauty in the final product versus the initial cost, this will be very impressive I’m sure. Certainly shows off those curves. Cheers Mike

Pretty much all finished now - at long last. Doing the last of the decals was a bit of a trial. I tried various ways of printing them on the Canon Pixma. They looked great on the decal sheet and after the second trial I managed to get them coated with a spray fixer without having any colour bleed, but there was no way I could get them onto the plane. They either collapsed or were almost transparent or both. Maybe printing on white decal sheet may have helped. In the end I surrendered and sent the art work off to Wessex Transfers in Tasmania to get them printed. Rob did a fine job - and gave me four sets of spares. If anyone wants one, send me a message. I'll give them away if you're keen on doing an Aete Cf 104. Anyway, the markings on the vertical stab went on like a dream. There are some annoying inaccuracies, but only minor in the scheme of things. I've yet to get one perfect and I invariably forget the errors after a few months! The overall look is pretty much what I was after. I'll take some more photos after a final check over the bits of weathering that are on the model. In the meantime, a photo of the decals and a couple of the finished airframe. And finally a couple of photos of the other project at the moment - a target with a couple of very small aircraft involved. Thank you all so much for the encouragement and help along the way. I am sorry it took such a long time, but at least I got my moneys worth out of the kit! Cheers, Mike

That is one absolutely amazing looking finish! I don’t believe I have seen anything better in regard to that plane. Almost unbelievable. More pics please! What did you do to the foil to get it looking like that? Cheers Mike

Pleased to hear those masks are great. I had a set arrive for the nightfighter and they look rather daunting! Really looking forward to seeing how these storm birds turn out. Cheers, Mike