Cheetah11

Hi Ray
My sons gave me a Dragon 1/35 Panther with the two option boxing a while ago. Instead of wasting an entire hull and turret I bought an old Tamiya Panther to use the parts on the extra hull in the Dragon kit. And guess what. The Tamiya parts are visibly larger. After a quick measurement they are closer to 1/32 than 1/35. Actually 1/33 in length. 
I also have a wreck of a 1/25 Tamiya Panther which I hope to rebuild sometime in the future. After the observation with the 1/35th models I decided to measure the 1/25 Panther. And same story. The hull is closer to 1/24 and the turret is 6 mm wide. A bit of cutting and pasting will be required to get the proportions right.
Cheers
Nick

Hi Alain
wow another magnificent build. Well done
Cheers
Nick

Hi Alain
wow another magnificent build. Well done
Cheers
Nick

I have to admit that the air intake assembly has taken me a bit by surprise.
 
It is a lovely bit of moulding, but it has an inherent design problem. Come to think of it, real intake ducting for full size jets must pose some engineering challenges too. The snag is that it has to slide into two grooves on the side of the fuselage, and in order to do that it has to be flexible since the grooves taper toward the front. 
 
The instructions don't really solve this puzzle, unless I have missed something? The first step indicates that the parts should be glued together, but held together with tape. I understood this as: tape will be required to hold the parts together while the glue dries. Notice also that the assembly is 'upside down' at this point.
 

 
Tape will definitely be necessary to squeeze these shell halves together!
 

 
I cut auxiliary bypass slots into the trunking, after going to school on all the information that Art Murray gleaned on his Swiss Hunter build.
 

 
And painted the inside a creamy white to look like the flexible intake paint used in the later marks of Hunter.
 

 
Then I glued the intake halves together, not thinking about all the warnings not to in previous posts, and not attempting to slide them onto the fuselage first. Dry fitting is just so boring! Now it was a simple case of following the instructions, flipping the assembly over and popping it onto the nose section...
 
Even though it says to use glue (in the corner of the instruction box), even I could clearly see Mr Revell didn't really recommend glue for this step.
 

 
But of course, the intake doesn't slide into position, no matter how good you are at twisted metal puzzles or Rubik's cubes. So I resorted to the next best thing - force!
 
In this photograph, I make it look as if I planned a solution, but of course I didn't. The intake broke. It does however now slide into the slots with a bit of scraping sounds, and If you are intending to build one of these in the future, you might want to just leave the glue off one side of the splitter plates. Then it's flexible enough to squeeze into position...
 

 
Right, now that that is out of the way, I wanted to lightly rivet the aircraft as the basis for some later weathering that reveals where some rivet lines run. Rivet a Hunter??? Yes, I know that seems wrong, but just look at what I did to the intakes. 
 
I have a plan. Most of the rivets are going to disappear under paint, but I couldn't think of a way of only doing some sections. Let's see how it works out.
 

 

 
I accentuated the rivets on the 'shoulder' of the aircraft, since that's where the most of the weathering happens.
 

 
Then I got a bit carried away with the top of the wings. The patterns are really intriguing...
 

 
At least I left most of the underside unblemished by the wheel of holiness. I am really impressed with the flaps. Despite requiring a bit of attention on the ejector pin marks, they are a lovely subtle bit of detail. Mr Revell clearly put his best team on flaps, and the rest were left to work out the intakes, and instruction drawings.
 

 
Apparently the tail assembly and mini-jet pipe have some issues. Maybe I'll actually contemplate that section before reaching for the glue.
 
Until then, Cheers!
 
Sean

I'm back....  been a long grind adding rivets to this thing.    For the aft fuselage and tailboom, I transitioned to Archer's decal rivets (still using those solder balls for a few areas that don't lend themselves to decals).  Also had to spend a great deal of time sanding off incorrect details on the fuselage.   This includes some stiffener plates that were on the tailboom and a large cargo hatch on the aft starboard fuselage which wasn't present on Army UH-60's.    After that, it was full speed ahead on the decals.    These went down extremely easy and after a coat of Micro Sol / Set the look very nice.   
 

Sharp eyed viewers may note that I haven't applied decals to the area aft of the cabin door.   That's because I'm going to have the cargo doors in the open position, and you won't be able to see the fuselage.    No sense making extra work for yourself. 
 

 
My approach to finishing this kit is to decal and paint the tailboom but hold off on the vertical stabilizer.   That way I can use the tail to hold the model while finishing up the detail bits on the fuselage, painting, decals, etc.    I wanted to minimize handling of the surfaces with the decals on them.    In retrospect, that probably wasn't necessary since the Archer decals are impressively strong once they are fully cured.    
 
That's it for now, thanks for checking in. 

Hi Denis
That should work perfectly. Sometimes the best solution is a combination of mask and decal.
Cheers
Nick

Hi Denis
To get the mask and decal concentric you need to duplicate the image for the mask. Then increase the line width in red for a decal on the duplicate. Paint with the mask and print a decal in red with the thicker line. 
Cheers
Nick

Thanks Kev and Nick.
I don't know if I understood what you wrote Nick, but I think this is the solution I'm going to use too:
I duplicated my "60" and varied the line thickness from 0 to 1.5.
I'm going to print this series of "60" on a sheet of transparent decal and then I'll see if the "60" decal covers the white "60" perfectly.
And I'll also choose the border thickness that suits me best from these 6 "60" decals.
 

Hi all
Here my last built: a Trumpeter Skyrader built as a n AD-4 from GC 1/21 in Algeria in 1960 - 1961
Hope you lie it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only two types of flame dampers that I’m aware of Nick. The “standard” ones had three curved dampers fitted going up over the wing leading edge, the fourth one going under the wing surface alongside the nacelle. The later type, that I’ve specifically known as Eberspacher, were all straight and running under the wings as shown in your photograph.
 

 



 
 
 

Trying to finalize my Me 110 G-4 I recently came upon this photo of the well known G9+AA. The puzzling thing on the photo is the Eberspacher flame damper which does not appear to be the same as ones fitted later. The exhaust manifolds in the photo appear to be straight and angled at roughly 45 deg. The tubes themselves are also proud of the engine nacelle by about the diameter of the tube.  Was this an interim design or were more than one design fielded. I would appreciate any info, dimensions or drawings. Plan B is to go with as much  as I can see on the photo and print ones from that.  

 
 
The later ones (presumably factory fitted ) slope forward and have more curved exhaust manifolds. Eduard went with these on their 1/48 kit.
 

 
Cheers
Nick

Never mind a new kit as welcome as it would be. I would be happy if they just scaled these up to 1/32. (And correctly size them for the Tamiya kit)
 

 
 
 

 
Nick

Never mind a new kit as welcome as it would be. I would be happy if they just scaled these up to 1/32. (And correctly size them for the Tamiya kit)
 

 
 
 

 
Nick

Never mind a new kit as welcome as it would be. I would be happy if they just scaled these up to 1/32. (And correctly size them for the Tamiya kit)
 

 
 
 

 
Nick

Lovely diorama Gary. Well done. I hope the repairs are not too serious. To my old eyes the photos look just fine.
Cheers
Nick
 

Wow Sean,
this is turning out to be a super build. 
You must have been a hydraulic engineer in your previous life. 
Cheers
Nick

As Promised...
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Thank you for looking.
 
 

Hi Everyone!  These are the final photos taken of my recent completion from the Aces High group build hosted by LSP.  The kit itself was sold to me by a fellow LSP'er and I'm glad to get it done.  Yet these aren't the pictures I wanted.  These are pictures saved from the recycle bin.  I wanted pics with perfect lighting taken perfectly.  Alas, the perfect lighting didn't present itself, and the model itself suffered a gravity related catastrophe and awaits repair.  There are a lot of pics.   I hope you like them.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
More to come...

Good morning to all
 
I would like to share with you my super detailed cutaway of the old Airfix 1:24 scale Ju87B.
I just love this kit and decided that I wanted to do something a little different.  I wanted to make a cutaway of the Starboard side plus the wing. After searching dear old Google for hours to get some sort of info I started.
I built this many years ago and sold it on, so the photos are from way back! ....so apologies for the quality of them!
 
I haven't been active on here for a long time as I have moved back to the UK from Bulgaria.. so I do hope I remember how to load the photos! 
 
Cheers......................
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Thanks a lot for taking a look!
 
Cheers
 
Fozzy
 
 

VEry well done!

Finished, and just in time!!!! One of the most frustrating builds in a long time.
 
 

 

 
 

 
 
Cheers
Nick

Thx Nick. See loadout combo pics below.


 


count the bombs… note some with single, some with two yellow bands…
 

 
They could even carry four Sidewinders with six LAU-10, there are pics of VF102 and VF33 flying that pretty wild loadout operationally (not a VF-111 loadout though).

Cheers,
Marcel
 
 
 

Fantastic build Marcel. The weathering really looks good.
I just have a small point. I am not sure a bomb and AIM-9 could be carried on the same side until the extension for the LAU-7 was introduced.
The photos I have seen of the earlier F-4B's shows one AIM-9 end two bombs on each TER. I might be mistaken but just check it.
Cheers
Nick
 

A nice view from the other cockpit:
 

 
Jari

Upper deck is getting there.  Still need to add all the small bits and do some touchups but it's progress.   Anti skid areas were first coated with Mr. Surfacer and before it dried, stippled with a cut off paint brush to replicate the texture of the real thing.