Grunticus

The main missile is finished, bar some touch-ups to the panel line accentuation. After that it will be sealed in a coat of MRP matt varnish. The decals reacted quite well to handling, but do not react to Daco medium and strong setting solution. What remains is many sessions of filling, sanding and priming before I can start assembling the erector.

Now comes the extensive and tedious task of assembling the missile erector. I say tedious because 1. There are many parts. 2. many past require cleaning up moulding seams. 3. Fit is fantastic here, not so there. The two main beams need especially extensive work to make them smooth. The upper one less so than the lower one, of which the two mating surfaces do not line up. If I could start again, I would have made a few square bulkheads to fit inside and help alignment. These seams below are numerous, but are easily eliminated with by scraping and sanding wit

After three passes of putty and sanding it now looks acceptable to me. This was after the second pass. The booster section is almost complete. Fit was quite good and I had no problems aligning the parts. The side-plating parts are moulded quite thinly and dry-fitted well. The main missile is complete and painted with LP4 flat white from the new Tamiya laquer paint range, which I bought out of curiosity. I would say it compares well to Xtracolor in terms of handling and feel. Still, I will repaint it with MRP white, whic

Main missile is up. As you can see all wings leave large gaps where they meet the missile body, that should not be there. Some work to do. Masking Filling Sanding I wonder why they engineered it this way. Lots of extra work.

A little bit of progress. For some reason, because this will be a gift, I am taking extra care. I smoothed out the seams in the boosters, they look pretty good for a first pass. Surfacer 1200 revealed a few minor spots that nee a little touch-up. Fit so far has been good. The main missile halves were quite warped, but glueing them with Tamiya extra thin one inch at a time worked out. The seam was given a bit of Surfacer 500, and it needs to dry thoroughly for a round of sanding. The top booster assembly was a many-part affair. Fit was quite goo

I was able to make a start yesterday. Construction Strat with the booster-half of the Nike. I can report the plastic is on the softer side. It reacts strongly to sandpaper, so I use finer grit and take more care than than usual for cleanup. So far part fit is so-so, but not bad. The ten-part connector ring, onto which the missile will be mounted. There are gaps that I need to address: Everything seems to be very flush with little of the panel lines visible:

The build thread is up.

My brother in law served his Dutch Air Force time with these, working in a fire-control bunker in Germany. I decided to build this for him. There are not too many previews of this kit, and I found no build reports. So here goes. Impressions: Decals are very nice, and in register. The Dutch blue might be a tad too light though. Maybe I'll use masks instead. Some ejector pin markings are there, but they all seem to

Excellent and stunning in that scheme! I have the same plan for my F-4D, and an F-14A as well.

Thanks! Will comply and post in Non-LSP for this one.

All right then, I will take my chances. It will arrive end of the month, then I will do a build thread here. Not many reviews out there yet, and I could not find a single build yet (but yes, it's quite new).

I am going to build this for my brother in law, who worked with them in the Dutch Air Force. Is it an appropriate build for the In Progress forum? It's a large scale missile, not a large scale plane. Just checking.

I didn't realise it was out earlier, thanks for clearing that up.

I realise it's becoming a broken record so for the last time: this kit is engineered in the most annoying way, every step takes twice as much effort as it should, aided by the failing instruction format. Anyhoo. I spend small periods of time clearing one bit at a time and that helps to keep interest. Getting this (not yet glued and still to receive the small parts and PE): Is portrayed like this in the instructions (and this is a magnification): The assembled rear gun, before weathering. Gun body and nozzle from Kitty Hawk, rest from Eduar

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