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Dear modeller friends, This morning Santa disguised as a Belgian postman deposited this parcel at my door. Keep in touch with the next episode for the unwrapping of the sprues and the usual stages of styrene fondling, surgical blade sharpening, etc. etc… Stay tuned, Cheers, Quang

So I had been waiting on the kit and soon as it came in I have began working on it. All was going well with the build until I saw the work Pete had done to the ceiling and I was inspired. So I started butting mine and began cutting and filing away. Ceiling is about to the point of primer coat, just a little more sanding left. Originally I was breezing through the kit and it just wasn’t feeling “right” to me and while to cabin door area was nice, it wasn’t as grand in the flight engineer seat area. Debating how to recreate current Pave Hawk seats.(last image)

Helloo, Here's the beginnings of said model. I've built one of these before and I think it is a great kit, especially when considering its venerable years. This time I plan to pull out all the stops and add a bunch of additional detail. Conversion work is new to me, so I'm gonna plow on and not let the good be the enemy of nearly acceptable, otherwise I'll never finish this beast. The really ambitious thing I plan, is to skin the model with thin plastic to get an uneven, oil canned effect as well as the raised rivets that cover the real aircraft. I've done a bunch of tests, and it works well, but is slow and tricky. As to where the wheel well is at now, its painted and weathered but still at the WIP stage in some respects. Lots of home-made rivets have been added and if you are familiar with the kit, you will notice quite a few small additions here and there. My approach to painting is not do any pre-shading and try to weather it as layers over the top mimicking the real-life process as best I can. Lots of sanding, washes, scratching varnishing in many layers. Cheers, Kels.

Ralph "Kidd" Hofer's P-51B. (This build is a data gathering exercise for future rebuild of 1/32 21st C. P-51B. If the HK kit comes out before then information will be applied to it.) Yahu I.P. Airscale Placards Aires PE seat belts. Aires Cockpit(modified): The a/c didn't have the fuselage fuel tank and therefore had a different radio installation than those so equipped. Added s/b SCR-695 IFF and sliding shelf; battery box. Moved SCR-522 and accumulator. Scratched pilots armor as a/c didn't have first-aid pack behind pilot's head. Added SS seat rails. First Cockpit shot: More photos to follow. All comments welcome. Cheers, D.B. PS: Don't have a digital SLR w/ micro lens so detail shots are the best I can get out of my point and shoot. Maybe one day......

Well ladies and gents, I'm back once again to start my next project. Some of you may remember my mildly feeble attempt at some humor HERE with a little guessing game about a next build of mine. It didn't work out so well, as I got a bit irked at the fact that I had ordered the EP pit a LONG time ago and it still wasn't in by the time I was ready to start the build, so I moved on. The Eagle Parts cockpit has been here for a while now, and now that Im completely finished with teh XF5U-1, I'm ready to actually commence this build! With all of these 1/32nd B-17 builds going on, I figured they needed something to shoot at them so this is my next project, a Focke Wolf Fw-190 A-8 R/2 “Sturmbachâ€. In this case, I will be building Willi Ungers mount “Yellow 17†of JG 3 based in Barth Germany, as she was in the spring of 1944 – Yellow 17 had the unusual "Krebs-Gerat" mounted center line, replacing the center fuel tank/bomb. The Krebs-Gerat, was a (fairly UN-successful) 21 cm rocket that was carried under the belly of the Fw 190s, and fired rearward, into a bomber stream. This was not very effective, but was unusual since not many Fw 190s carried them. This will all be scratch built. I will be basing the model off of the venerable Hasegawa Fw-190 A-8 kit, with a PLETHORA of AM thrown at this thing, including a Black Dog A-8 R/2 conversion. I REALLY had to do some “between builds cleaning†so spent a few days really going through the man-cave. This included completely revamping my spray booth, by taking it completely apart, cleaning it (and the man-cave overall) from top to bottom, and replacing the 3 filters, along with the work-top screen I use. The took quite a while, but the spray booth has not been SO clean in years – Ready to go for some painting action! I couldn't stand having such a clean bench, so lets get started! First up, the proverbial opening shot I personally like to show that gives you an overall idea of what all I will be starting with. First up, is the basis for the whole build, the 1/32nd Hasegawa Fw 190 A-8 – Next up, an overall shot of the quite substantial pile of AM I have accumulated for this build – This includes but is not limited to: - Eagle Parts amazing late Fw 190 A-8 cockpit - Master Models Mk 108 brass canon barrels - G-Factor white brass gear - Black Dog Models A-8 R/2 Sturmbach conversion - Custom 40mm brass Werfer tube from LSP Mebo (Thanks again Mikkel!) - Lion Roar 21cm Werfer rocket - Master Details resin tail surfaces - Aires Fw 190 A-8 resin wheel wells - Eagle parts resin Fw 190A tail wheel - MDC resin Fw 190 smooth tread main wheels and ribbed tail wheel - Eagle Parts resin Fw-190 boss, and common prop blades - Eagle Parts resin Mk 108 canon fairings - Eduard color PE interior - Mike Grant late Fw 190 stencils - Montex Masks Fw 190 JG 3 “Yellow 17†paint masks - Quick Boost resin Fw 190 Anton exhausts Finally, the last piece of AM I have for this build is one of the coolest IMHO. I decided to display the Fw 190 in a vignette type setting, so I purchased a base to non-permanently display it on. I picked up the Just Plane Stuff 1/32nd Luftwaffe plank hard stand – MORE…………………………….

Since i have not got all the goodies yet for my IAF F-16A Netz, I have settled for one of my stalled kits, a Ki-84 from Hasegawa - where i got inspired by the numerous builds here on LSP - and then daunted from carrying on. As for most builds, I started off with the pit, coating in Alclad aluminium, before applying the dull brown cockpit colour that Hasegawa recommends. This kit really is a joy to build, and I can see a second one on the horizon.