EricF

Hi, I worked a lot during the last week The main reason is that do not build one but, two Crusader. The second one is a F-8E (FN) from the french navy in the seventies. I will open a new thread later. All the work done so far is similar to this one Both aircraft are at the same stage of build on the work bench for now. They are fully re-scribed and ready for detailing. Here below, the new nose corrected in diameter (23 mm) The air intake with styrene to enlarge it to avoid the step at the front with the fuselage Both are ready to be attached to they respective fuselage A dry fit of the exhaust following Aires recomendations. As for the wheel bays, it fits very well to the fuselage Cheers Eric

Hi Sean, I've been following this built closely since the beginning. I like the way you grasped the Trumpeter issues and the remedies you made. I will for sure use your modifications on mine Great skills indeed, Cheers Eric

Still checking the fitting of the different aftermarket kits Here is the beautiful Avionics cockpit. I just had to sand the base on the left side otherwise the tub is banking to the right inside the fuselage. The sides of the rear bulkhead need to be a little bit adjusted to make the tub flush with the fuselage behind the seat.

Today, coming with the air intake adjustment, I worked on the auxiliary wheel well. The building sequence will be the following: - first attaching the wheel well on a half fuselage. This why the dry fit must be initially perfect - attaching the air intake Fortunately, the depth of styrene of the air intake is enough for milling a print in. I created a small gap to be able to attach separately the air intake and the wheel well on one half fuselage. The pic here below is self explanatory after milling the cast and the styrene After having cautiously removed the cast carrot from the wheel well with a milling cutter, I made print on the air intake After some adjustments on each half fuselage, the dry fitting reveals that the Aires kit excellent Eric

I'm impressed !!! Outstanding job Barry Eric

I performed a dry fitting of the air intake inside the fuselage to assess the situation There is a gap on the left side which is bigger in the middle than in front... And there is another one on the right hand side which is smaller but constant ... And now both sides on the same pic Many sanding and dry fit checks to come

I started to work on the nose It is the main correction to be done on the model. From the E version, the radar cone section is circular, thing that Trumpeter did not re presented correctly. As shown here below, the nose is flat on each side and at the bottom. To correct this issue, I added first Evergreen to recovered the circular section To ease the sanding, I preferred using putty than sterene. I'm in favor of putty used for body car. The advantage compared to The Tamiya one is that it does not retract after drying. I let it dry for nigth long now The air intake..... hum A lot of work again. Fortunately, Barry already studied the issue in his built In fact, the front part is too shallow and to avoid having a step by 1 mm just behind the radar cone, we have to insert sterene in between the two pieces But before another sanding session ..... See you soon and happy modelling Eric

Hi Barry, Thanks a lot ! To be honest, your built is helpful for summarizing the corrections to be done on the model. I'm working on the nose now Cheers Eric

Thanks for the comments, Today I'm still working on the surface detail. I've glued in place the different access doors on the fuselage. I'm finally satisfied of the adjustment before sanding. After sanding I will scribe the doors after the primer coat at the end of the build The stabilazor is on the bench. I applied the same process for the scribing A death il very important for a scale model to look real, is to obtain thin trailing edges still by sanding the surfaces Here is here below the result on the left compared to the kit stabilizer not yet sanded on the right More updates to come this week end. Eric

Hi everyone, A little update I'm still improving the surface details, so nothing very impressive to show for now. But a friend of mine sent me this scan of the particular aircraft I'm building. It is confirmed buy the missions score that we also find on the decal sheet and the tip of the number 4 on the bottom right of the pic. An interesting detail is located on the far left of the picture where we can see that the radar cone is not white ... but beige. The whole fuselage is done now I worked on the central wings where I decided to remove the stiffeners that we don't find on the real thing At least as far as I can see on my doc. I remove the rivets as well, using cyano. It did not find them realistics for the scale. To do so, I prefer using the cyano instead of putty because there is no risk to have a retraction effect during sanding then after. Still using the same technique, we only have the main structure with the spoilers..... and a beautiful skin. Happy modeling! Thanks for watching. Eric

All my congratulations !!!! Amazing build! Absolutely stunning !! Eric

Hi, Before listing the correction to be made on the model, I started today on the scribing to make thinner. The skin of a Crusader is quite clean. This is how I proceed To do so, I start first by using the Trumperter's one as a guide with a dry point Then after I sand the surface to reduce the width of the original scribing The here below pics show the result. I used panel liner to hilight it for the picture. Stay tuned I come back soon Eric

Hey interesting I will take a look on your build Following you closer Eric

One of the first things I wanted to check was how does the Aires Wheel well fit. We know all of us that it could be surprise. Honestly, I am positively surprised Only a minor adjustment is needed on the front. I will check later the front wheel well fit with the intake. Any feed back from people having built this kit is warmly welcome Cheers Eric

Thanks Kev Working good now