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Hello, everyone! Long time, no post. After completing the "panzer of the river" dio back in February, I've started a few things but struggled to get anything across the finish line. Happy (very) to report that this one is done. It fought me most of the way, but by the time I'd gotten really frustrated with it, I was too far along to pitch it. That said, I'm more or less happy with the result. The decals have me fits and you'll see quite a bit of silvering which is just super frustrating. I opted for decals as I wasn't confident that I would be able to get masks to lay down in the wing corrugations. Turns out the decals didn't feel like doing it either. Oh well. I was really geeked about the Devastator kit when it came out, but in my opinion, Trumpeter managed to put out an aggressively mediocre kit. In that regard, I guess Trumpeter managed to capture not only the form of the real airplane, but it's whole vibe too. So, kudos to them on that front, I guess. (?) Anyway, the fit was okay in general, but I had it in my head to really detail up the interior, only to find that it's really really spartan. The whole bomb aimer's area is just pure fantasy and doesn't line up with any of the reference photos in @Dana Bell's recent book. So, it made it a real challenge to want to try to do any extra detail work on the interior. I suppose in the end absolutely none of it would be seen anyway, especially with the wings folded, but I would have known. That said, I did use @airscale's PE and 3D printed products to add detail where I could. I can't recommend these highly enough and they're almost a requirement in my opinion. Off the top of my head, I used the interior set, the prop, wheels, gunsight, wing fold, and twin .30 mount. All fit pretty well without having to do much fiddling with adjacent parts and the added detail was/is lovely. Thanks @airscale! I ordered the ASK stencil set as the kit-provided stencils are ridiculous. However, I would also suggest that the ASK set is only slightly less ridiculous as they are rife with spelling errors and their instructions seemingly have you placing them randomly around the airplane. Weird. I used the Gold Medal decals for the aircraft markings and, fortunately, they came with stencils and much more plausible placement instructions. Any issues with them laying down on the model are mine, not theirs. Highly recommend the Gold Medal set. Also, if you don't have Dana's recent TBD reference book, just buy it. It's a fascinating walk through a really weird, esoteric, and utterly mid aircraft. I digress. This is my rendition of T-14, George Gay's aircraft from VT-8 on the day he became the sole survivor of his group's attack on the Japanese carrier fleet at Midway. If anyone's not familiar with it, here's a short primer on the whole thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT-8 Enjoy!

I posted a week ago that my father passed away earlier this month. In that thread a mentioned that dad was an avid modeller of sailing ships, as was his father. They built mostly wooden ships and their craftsmanship was very high indeed. When I was 10 I spent several months next to my dad building the 1/96 scale USS Constitution. I have many fond memories of that time and I consider it the real beginning of my own modelling. Shortly before dad passed I bought the same kit from a member of this forum and now it seems right to honor my father by building the same kit that we spent so much time together on many years ago. I plan to show the ship as she looked during the War of 1812; or as close as I can get at least. I also plan to build the ship "At Quarters" and under "Fighting Sail". That way I will be able to show both the cannons run out and most of the running rigging will have a purpose. As you will see, I have already purchased a lot of aftermarket items - and I will be buying several more in the near future. I'll be starting the build in a day or two. So without further ado below are a few photos of the kit and some of the aftermarket items I plan to use building it. The kit dates from 1987 and is basically an updated box from the 1976 version. This is the exact same kit my dad and I built together 35 years ago. Most of the contents of the box. The sails, cannon and carriages will be replaced with AM items. I will also be using the excellent Amati rigging line. I will also be replacing the belaying pins and eyebolts with more robust parts. I purchased a wooden deck to overlay the kit parts for the gun deck and the spar deck. One of the issues with the kits is the deck being several parts which make it really tough to turn out a seamless presentation. The wooden decks come with a couple of their own challenges that I am confident I can master. At any rate they are a nice upgrade. The AM gun carriages and cannons. The kit parts do not show the ships armament as it looked during the War of 1812, or to be more precise, at certain periods during the War of 1812 as different captains modified the Constitution's armament - and a few other things as well during the war. The AM carriages for the carronades are more accurate representations of those the ship carried during the early part of the 19th Century. Below is a complete set of wooded rigging blocks, the Amati rigging set and a few other small items that I will use to rig the kit; in addition to a few more items that will be coming in a couple of weeks. The things in the photo will allow me to do both the standing and the running rigging. I am waiting on the owner of the online store that I bought this AM from to let me know if he is going to be able to make up a special sail set for me that has both sails that I can rig as deployed and ones that I can rig "Brailed Up". This is going to be a many month project, and it is one I am looking forward to. I look forward to conversing with those of you who stop by and I am always open to suggestions or recommendations if you have any. By the way, the research I have done getting ready for this build has shown that there is a lot of difference of opinion about what the Constitution looked like at any one time period - especially during the ship's first 18 or so years of life. Some of the debating on the various ship forums makes us look like we are all singing in harmony while discussing Luftwaffe colors! Ernest

#2 for the week. This is my take on the Tamiya M18 Hellcat. From unprimed to finished in less than 24hrs. The decals are from the spares bin an take a little artistic license. The 814th TD Battalion never fielded M18s. I just didn't care for the kit decal options, so there we go. As a personal preference, I don't much care for piles of stowage, so it's cleaner than most M18s you see. Anyhoo, enjoy!

Hi, all! I'm still working on clearing my backlog before the end of the year and here is build #3. This is a Panzer IV Ausf E in the colors of the Deutsches Afrikakorps. These tanks were shipped from the factory in standard Panzer grey, then hastily painted with desert camo once they arrived at the unit. Thus, the heavy chipping. I used the hairspray method to achieve that, and I recalled why I don't use it very often. It's rare for me to get the consistency just right and I either have to scrub the crap out of model to get the chipping effect, or I put on too much hairspray and the topcoat sloughs off in huge patches. This tended towards the latter, and even spraying a varnish coat activated some of the hairspray and cracked the topcoat. Ah well, it isn't perfect, but I'm happy with it. Now on to the next kit!