Alex

This is not at all modeling related, save that being here in Toronto means I'm away from the bench and not working on any models. But for a very good cause, and IMO very worthy of some jealousy! Here's my stepdaughter with her brand-new (as of 11/24) baby girl Grandma and I are appropriately elated to welcome grandkid #1 to the family... While I'm not building anything right now while staying at their place, I did discover that there's a great LHS (Wings and Wheels) literally walking distance away in the new neighborhood that daughter and son-in-law moved to here in Toronto (near Danforth and Coxwell, for any locals reading). Could not help myself and bought a 1/32 Special Hobby kit there yesterday...;-)

Dang - I gotta stay on task with my Out of Africa model, because I have to do something for this. I probably have 3-4 kits in the stash that would fit.

Oooh but the Phantom just looks amazing...

That’s a unique and very cool project! I’m looking forward to following your build.

This afternoon I free-handed in the first camouflage color - Middle Stone. As an experiment, I ordered Mr Color Aqueous colors for this and the Dark Earth that will go on next. They seem to work quite similarly to the Mr Color lacquers that I'm familiar with. Perhaps a little bit slower to build opacity (not necessarily a bad thing). Don't know if I would use them again versus regular Mr Color or MRP, but it's good to have the reference point. I will use the conventional putty snakes and tape method to mask before shooting the other color. But not today, as I have some priority woodworking projects to do (i.e. my wife realized she didn't have Christmas gifts for a couple of friends and decided that some of my custom cutting boards would be just the thing...). For the curious, here is a photo of a couple of them that I made this summer for our new kitchen...

Nice! I have kits in the stash that will fit all of these (not that I’m promising to do all three…). Curiously I just ordered a kit that would do for two of them together (Aces High and On The Nose) if it wasn’t in 1:48. But that’s for a different project. But at a minimum I can dig out the stuff for the 1:32 Gabby Gabreski Thunderbolt that I was going to do for the Mighty 8th GB until my house remodeling project canceled aircraft modeling for a year… Regardless, thanks Brad for organizing these and to everyone who voted and will participate…

Decided that the best use of underpainting on this one would be to emphasize the nicely-molded rib structure to all of the fabric parts of the plane. Upper wing just resting in place here; not going to attach it until much later: Need a bit of a break before doing the rest of it. Lots of squinting... I also have a couple of shades of green on order from Mr Color and MRP to see if I can get a decent match on the insignia so they can be painted. Or at least I can test to see if I can mask them adequately.

I decided that I ought to try and get the cabane struts attached to the fuselage prior to painting. The idea of trying to juggle all 8 struts simultaneously after all the pieces had been painted was giving me hives. So how to align them properly? The upper wing is much too heavy to use it as a form by taping the struts on (that was try #1). So I made this little jig that could fit around the tops of the struts and hold them at the spacing they need to have to interface with the upper wing. It's just a paper rectangle, as it appears. So I then taped the lower ends of the struts in place on the fuselage, and dropped the jig on top to get the top ends spaced correctly. The other important thing besides spacing is fore-aft position. Looking at the upper wing it's apparent that the tops of the forward interplane struts and the forward cabane struts basically fall along a single line. So I sighted this line on the model before gluing anything to make sure I was placed correctly. After double checking everything about eight times, I glued the forward cabane struts only. I let them firm up for ~30 minutes, then removed the jig and measured their separation and re-checked fore-aft. A tiny bit of pressure tweaked them to darn close. I then glued the rear ones one at a time, carefully measuring to make sure they had the proper rearward separation from the front ones (1-1/32") and were square and level with them. This is what it looks like with all four installed. As you can see, I've also mounted the landing gear legs. Further I've done a bunch of lingering fiddly things like removing the antenna mast from the top of the vertical stab (in the Mark II Gladiator it is on top of the rudder instead), drilling holes for the rigging that attaches to the vertical stab, masking off the cockpit, etc. I *think* that all is in place for me to shoot primer on the thing next. Obviously I also wedged that big piece of 5/8" dowel into the nose so I have a handle to hold it by while painting... One very nice feature of radial-engine prop fighters...

My hope is that by leaving off the rocker covers, the cowl *will* fit. Was your experience different?

Turret is looking great. Please keep up with the updates - very interested to follow your work.

Most of the way there with the engine. The outer collector ring / exhaust is going to get painted separately and probably installed last thing. As you can see, I decided against trying to thin down the rocker arm covers and install them. Too much work for little real benefit, I think. They would be so hard to catch a glimpse of once the full cowl is in place. Even this (back) side of the engine will be nigh invisible once the model is buttoned up.

Fantastic stuff! Congrats on wrapping this one up on a high note.

I've been delinquent on updates here. Plugging away, though. Fuselage and lower wings are joined up and largely cleaned up. I need to do one more pass with filler (using Vallejo acrylic putty and liking it a lot) along the wing root. Everything that was not an acute angle join (all the seams on the undersides) were filled with CA. I am pondering whether I want to install the main landing gear struts before starting painting. One thing that I definitely want to get done before I start painting the fuselage and wings is to finish building the engine, just to get all of the parts consolidated and out of the way. That means I have to get after those plugs/wires now. Here is the cowling section through which the exhausts pass, joined up with the Quickboost exhaust pipes. These will be tricky to paint, as that section of cowling under the bowtie shaped straps is meant to be heat-distressed bare metal, like the exhausts, while the areas to each side are as part of the camo scheme of the aircraft. I think the straps should probably be ~steel in appearance.

Those are some fantastic photos! Thanks for sharing them.

The other thing I'm on the fence about is insignia. I have these decals in part because I thought that I would not be able to cleanly mask the central crescent and stars figure in the roundels (and I still believe that). But I could easily do the rest of it, and I'm kind of allergic now to the way decals look, and how much work it takes to bland them in to a surface finish. So I'm wondering if I should try to trim the central green disks out of those roundels and only use those, painting the rest of it. If I try that, I need to find a green that is a close match so there is not a jarring difference decal : paint. Maybe I should fire up the Silhouette and see if I could do an OK job even on the details if I cut masks in Kabuki tape? Remember when I said this was going to be a quick build?