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The He 162 is almost finished, I still have to cut masks for various markings but don't feel like spending time on it right now. The Kingfisher box has been staring at me for well over a year. I had started engine construction and I must say I never had a more disappointing and frustrating start to a kit in my life before. In the box the kit looks to be awesome. And it IS. Detail seems very nice overall. Why did I throw everything back in to the box over a year ago? The plastic: soo brittle that smaller parts just burst in to pieces very easily. The sprue gates: made to withstand a 10 Megaton blast. Just ridiculous in some areas. See above. The instructions: insulting that Kitty Hawk let that sorry excuse for instructions go in to production. It is nearly impossible to see what goes where and how. For a very complex 70-part engine in an expensive kit, I find that highly unsatisfactory. Only a few detail-drawings would have done the trick here, something like an A-A, B-B sort of thing. Kitty Hawk: make an addendum and put it on your website. (Non-) Mating tabs and slots, pins and holes: too many of those. Correctly cut and cleaned up parts should fit and not require extra trimming and re-drilling holes. All of the above okay for a short-run, but not for a € 110 main-stream kit. Corners were cut, major ones me thinks. Then why the resurrection? Well, it's The Scale and it's of a magnificent looking float plane. The greenhouse works like the real thing and in itself the kit has magnificent potential. Soooo, I took a deep breath, sighed, gave it The Finger, and got on with it. I was going to finish her as one of the Dutch East Indies birds that were on their way on a ship when the Dutch called it a day. These airplanes were diverted in their crates to Australia (already painted up Dutch), where they were repainted and used. I had visions of a diorama where a Dutch plane sits in a hangar showing a partial RAAF repaint, but since I lost interest in Dutch subjects I chose t finish as an FAA Kingfisher, in the lovely Slate Gray / EDSG / Sky scheme, or the also lovely and less usual Non specular Sea Gray over Light Gray. I am still researching for photos drawings of the latter (bottom scheme below, the only one I found so far). Can anyone recommend MRP paint equivalents for the lower scheme? On to the engine. The instructions were no help here. The first thing I did was look at everything, thinking about what should go where, dry-fitting various options, and making a plan. I contemplated just glueing the cowling to the fuselage, but this is a no-go because the engine plus cowling 'float' in front of the fuselage firewall, resting on the engine brace rods. I decided to assemble cowling, cowling front ring, engine covers, and cowling flaps first and then figure out how to get the engine in there. This is how the engine mounts are supposed to be assembled. I had to re-drill the holes and do lots of cleanup on the too thick connecting pins. Tamiya thin cement fixed them in place and on the backside I added drops of superglue to make sure they stayed put. First sigh of relief. Here's the bracing glued to the front firewall. Again, the holes had to be widened. But: getting there. A dry-fit finally revealed to daft-me how the enige assembly is meant to be attached to the cowling ring rest (which I already glued to the cowing). Now, that was that, But can the engine assembly be fitted in to an already assembled cowling? I airbrushed the cowling inside interior green just in case I could get it in but not out again (experience ) Well, it fits with minimal effort IF you slide it in sideways. I did not have to exert any forces of significance to get it to slide in past the three tabs. Not sure if this can be done with the exhausts installed. I secured the tab joints with thin cement and left it to dry. I will also add bits of superglue once it dried fully. Phew. I got that out of the way and out of my system. I will add parts of the exhausts later, from the outside in. I just did not have the stamina to battle with that extra feature right now. As you can se I also got some Eduard stuff to enhance the kit here and there. In hindsight, it was me at fault and not Kitty Hawk. I commend them for the engineering of the engine, it makes it possible to build a very detailed engine right out of the box that one can show off through open engine panels. Construction is very sturdy once assembled, and very accurate and delicate. I just lost my patience the first time around. What I did today, I could have done in the first place. Thanks for watching!

Hi guys, Let me present you my recently finished Vought SBU-1 from Lukgraph. You can take a look at WIP thread here Build took me 2 months. It`s really nice and quite easy kit of beautiful plane. No fit issues, nice decals and simple ringing. Wing struts aligment and vacuformed canopy were the biggest challenges for me. Painted with Mr. Color, Mr. Paint and Alclads paints. Filters, Pigments and panel line washes from AMMO. this is already my 3rd resin Navy biplane finished this year so it`s time to start with something different (search and rescue calls my name) thanks for looking and all your comments are welcomed jan

This is brand new resin model from Lukgraph. Was really looking forward for it because it`s not so well known plane, but really nice one. And you can choose from several colorfull schemes. Initially I was thinking that I will start build it after I will finish my current ongoing project. But I could not resist after I have opened box and saw all that resin parts and nice additions. So I will run this build along with my Uhu and Me-262 projects. What is in box? several bags with resin parts instructions PE`s nice additional stuff (personalized card, canopy masks, stickers with unit emblems....) some resin parts details There is almost no evidence of armed SBU`s available (with machine-gun and bombs). So most probably I will build it with flaps closed, with wing bomb racks attached and without machine-gun. Want to build VS-41 or VS-42 plane (assigned to USS Ranger) and want to focus on cockpit area because it will be quite visible when finished. I have started as usual with gluing of upper wing there is no dihedral so quite easy step. I decided to create new cockpit internal frames out of metal tubes, just because it looks better then resin parts thanks for looking jan