Lemonstein

Nice work on the surgery Chuck! Resin wrangling is something I think nearly every modeler has experienced but with 3D printing becoming increasingly common for companies and for individuals, it might be a thing of the past! Reckon you'll miss it? Looking forward to more updates on this now that you're back!

I was reading through your F-15C build earlier this week as inspiration/reference for a 1/48 build of a Lakenheath jet, and I was wondering when you'd be back with another amazing project to wow us all, and....here you are! So I should go out and buy lottery tickets as well right? The progress so far already looks good and can't wait to see more progress Chuck! Cheers Anirudh

Thanks Bob - there were some really dirty Prowlers out there, so I went to town! Why do we do this to ourselves? Hope the Lancaster turns out well! Thanks John! Yeah it's a tough kit (and the instructions are somehow worse...)

Thanks Alex - I imagine it's especially bad in the back where you can't even see anything in front of you other than buttons, dials and screens. Thanks Neo - if you've got the 1/48 Kinetic ones, then good luck! Thanks! It's a shame since they make kits of some really cool subjects. As Tom said above, they seem to getting better though,

Thanks Tom! Glad you like it. I admit I was quite nervous about making a mess of the canopy since the Aires cockpit changed the shape of the kit somewhat and because each canopy comes in two parts and Tamiya extra thin near clear parts is never fun. I actually ordered a second as a spare in case the tinting experiments failed on the first The Su-33 looks nice enough to tempt me into another Kinetic kit, though maybe not just yet.

Hi All! Didn't get round to posting this when I finished it, but after almost 3 months of messing around, I have finally finished Kinetics 1/48 EA-6B Prowler. I had read that this was a decent kit, but I had a lot of trouble with basically everything. But, anyway, here's the finished project: I used a decent amount of AM stuff on this one: Aires cockpit Quickboost small intakes Eduard pods Eduard wheels Superscale decals The Ares cockpit required a lot of cutting & sanding to fit, and even with all that done it changed the shape of the front fuselage section which led to a lot sanding to fit the front canopy, which was a little nerve-wracking! After a lot of very clean builds, I wanted to build a really dirty, weathered bird, and the Prowler was the perfect choice - so many of my references showed that not only do these things get really dirty (especially where the wings fold), but they also have a lot panel fading & variation, which I tried to replicate here. The decals were interesting.... Even though they were Cartograf printings, they behaved very differently to other decals from the same company. They had a long working time which I was not used to, but after realising this, I left them for ~1 hour and they had settled into the panels really well. Lots of weathering & dirt! The kit lights were undersized (somehow?!) so I replaced them with clear sprue, sanded to shape and polished - much better! Given all the cockpit details, canopies up was the only option Although it's subtle, the orange/gold/metallic tinting is present on the canopies - this was a difficult thing to get right and I kept spraying the canopies and removing the coating as I wasn't happy with it. I eventually settled on a light coat of Tamiya XF-6 Copper. I think I didn't use enough but at this point I didn't want to risk damaging the canopies so I left them as is. Overall, I am happy with how this one turned out, but it was a lot of work, and the kit was a disappointment (not sure I'd build another any time soon). That said, it builds into a decent Prowler so, can't complain too much! Some WIP photos - these were on my phone so not as nice: Here you can see all the tape and rubber bands needed to get the fuselage to conform to the resin cockpit - even still, I needed a lot of filler/superglue to get a decent finish. The kit was just not that good - the lighter grey parts had a weird, rough texture and very soft detail, so not sure what happened there? A lot of filler was also needed between the wing roots and the fuselage. After a lot of work, the kit was ready for paint! I used the black basing method to simulate the uneven fading - this was accentuated with more fading work once the camo colours had been sprayed. I used MRP lacquers for nearly everything on this build - no complaints, and highly recommended! Thanks for looking! Anirudh

Very sorry about that John! I was looking at a few different builds and got a little confused - clearly the weekend needs to get here sooner for me! The "surgery" on the engine/cowling is really paying off! Cockpit details look good too

Lovely work Chuck John! The IP looks excellent. Maybe I missed it but how are you planning to display the engine? Covers off or in place with magnets? It would be a shame to hide it completely otherwise. Edit: So sorry about the name mix up - I was looking at a few different tabs at the same time!

That lone Corsair is going to have it's work cut out against 4 Axis planes Joking aside your builds are fantastic John! It's been awesome watching you build all of them.

Wow this sounds like it's going to be massive! - Any ideas how big the final piece will be? Great work on the first Flanker as well!

Lovely work Chuck - I'm always amazed by how clean your builds & photos are - no scuffs or dried glue or dust....You must've found the cleanest place in the world to work Can't wait to see the next update!

Thanks Albert! Sure, I used a mix of Vallejo and AK Interactive acrylics: White: Vallejo Model Air 71.119 Blue: Vallejo Model Air 71.111 - this is their version of FS35109 which is apparently the colour the USAF actually uses (At least according to the TwoBobs decal sheet which is the only place I found that info) Grey: AK Interactive FS36251 Aggressor Grey (it's misspelled "Agressor grey" on the bottle in case you try to search for it Nose cone: AK Interactive FS36270 Medium Grey I think there were some other colours here and there for the cockpit and wheel bays, but those above are the main ones. Cheers

Thanks Tom - yeah it's a great scheme, up there with the Arctic Aggressor schemes, but this one's easier to paint! Thanks for the welcome Cheers Kevin!

Hi All First post here, and it's not Large Scale so already not a great start Here are some photos of my Tamiya 1/48 F-16 built up as an Aggressor aircraft based at Nellis AFB. The Tamiya F-16 is about as nice a kit as you can get in 1/48 (certainly better than the GWH F-15E I just finished), but I added some additional details, which if I'm honest probably weren't worth it: Aires F-16C/N Cockpit - although the detail is amazing, the fit of the resin cockpit in the kit was pretty poor. I had to thin down the kit parts so much to get it to fit, so I suspect it wasn't designed for the Tamiya kit despite being sold as such. Also since so little of the cockpit is actually visible I'm not sure all that work was necessary Aires F-16C Wheel bays - again I'm not sure they were meant for this kit despite what the packaging says and since they aren't that visible from most angles I should've probably skipped them and stuck with the kit parts Aires F-16 exhaust nozzle - this was a drop in replacement for the kit parts and is so much more detailed that I think it was worth it! Aside from the Aires resin pieces I also used a mask kit from DN models (excellent) and TwoBobs decals (also excellent). I chose this scheme partly because I found a lot of good photos of this aircraft (85-418) and partly because it doesn't have multi-colour walkway lines so I didn't have to worry about lining up the camo colours with the decals The ordinance under the wings is from Meng, specifically from their recent US Air-to-Air missile sets. These are really nicely moulded one piece missiles, and the decals are also very good. The only changes I made were the blue inert missile stripes which were painted on since the Meng set comes with the yellow/brown live missile decals. The ACMI pod is from the Tamiya kit. The TwoBobs decals were excellent - perfect colour, minimal film and they settled down very well with some decal solution. They were also tough enough to withstand some poking to get them to go into the panel lines. Even the tiny name decals on the canopy are easily legible. They even included the tiny star decal for the HUD surround. Thanks for looking!