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Good day, gents. A little while ago, I decided to participate in the Multi-Engine Group Build. Since my entrant will be the HKM B-17E built to be the Swamp Ghost, I need to clear the bench to make room for the big, four-engine beast. So, I knocked out the Trumpeter F4F-4 last weekend and plan to have the Hasegawa Ki-84 Frank done by this weekend. Being on a major early Pacific war kick right now and, being something of a glutton for punishment, I have decided to tackle the Hasegawa P-40E before the end of the year. Thus, this WIP thread, the speed-build of the Hasegawa P-40E. Here's to hoping I can get it out the door by 12/31/18 because I fully intend to start the group build B-17 thread on 1/1/19. That said, I made some good progress this weekend. The cockpit is done and, if I get any time at the bench tonight, I should be able to close up the fuse halves. The cockpit of the P-40 is complete. Painted with a hodgepodge of Tamiya, Alclad, and Vallejo Model Colors. The interior green is a custom mix of Tamiya paints that I came up with. I believe it is 1:1 flat yellow and flat green. The only aftermarket item here is the seatbelt harness. The shoulder harness is from an Eduard kit in the spares box. The lap belts are Tamiya tape cut to length and painted. The buckles come from the same Eduard set as the shoulder harness. I realize it may not be perfectly historically accurate, but I figure it's close enough. Everything else is straight from the kit. Chipping was accomplished by using Micro Mask as an undercoat before painting base colors. Parts were weathered with oils and Tamiya black panel liner. The seat was washed with Tamiya's brown panel liner. I used a drop of Future on the two gauges to give them a glass lens appearance after picking out the dial face with a silver Prismacolor pencil. The hard-to-see hydraulic fluid leak on the emergency hand pump lever is Abteilun 501 Engine Grease oil paint. The pilots left-side panel. Chipped with a silver Prismacolor pencil and weathered with oils and Tamiya panel liner washes. Pilot's right side panel. Chipped with a silver Prismacolor pencil and weathered with oils and Tamiya panel liner washes. The instrument panel, all straight from the kit and hand painted as I've never had much luck overlaying decals on raised details. The dial faces were picked out with a silver Prismacolor pencil while the rest was painted with various Vallejo paints. The glass effect was achieved with a drop of Future into the molding for each dial. All in all, pretty happy with the final results.

It's been a while since I've posted anything... a long, long while. I'm slowly dipping my foot back into the water, so to speak. I'd like to start with a recently completed kit which has a bit of a backstory. A few years ago, when I was a member of the Austin Scale Modelers Society, one of our members passed away. It happens, although too frequently these days it seems. One of the other members was given a stack of kits to pass out to other members of the club. We all drew straws, and I drew the short straw and picked last. This kit was the last thing in the pile. It didn't look like much, half started, but it did come with a set of BarracudaCals for the P-40K. On it was some markings for a P-40K (Evelyn II/White 171) flown by Maj. Elmer Richardson out of Hengyang, China in late 1943. Maj. Richardson flew with the 75th FS, 23rd FG, and this aircraft had a faded O.D. finish with fresh O.D. over-sprayed to cover some previous markings. What was even more interesting was the DF football behind the canopy and the addition of a second set of droptank/bomb shackles. It was these markings that Pat had set out to build. Well, flash forward seven years, a bit longer than I had hoped, and here is the result. I still have to add antenna wires and the rearview mirror. Sorry for the cellphone pics. And, as always, constructive comments are welcome. Thanks for stopping by... -randy

Admin/Moderators, please move to correct area if this isn't appropriate place. I’m really wondering if I need to clear out some of my stash of older kits. I know most the old Revell 1/32 kits date from the 60s and have been reissued several times AND by and large been eclipsed by far better kits. The only one I’m not sure about is the Revell Hurricane Mk I. IIRC, the molds were modified to produce the cannon equipped version Mk II. Is that right? I have fond memories of building the Corsair, P-40, P-47, Typhoon, Spitfire Mk I, Wildcat, Stuka and Zero and maybe others…and may even build the P-40 as a lark as I remember it being a decent looking model…despite being an E in AVG markings. What about the SBDs? Former Matchbox IIRC. Neither opened, but expect them to be of the same era and lacking as badly as the P-47 and P-51B. Same with the P-38J kit. Having the Trumpeter, I doubt I’ll build one and don’t need two. On the old Hasegawa and Hasegawa/Minicraft kits, they are largely of the early seventies. Are the old M-109E and Fw190s decent kits? I’m not much of a German a/c builder, though thinking these might be good projects to learn on. While improvements over the Revell kits, are they reasonable accurate or do they have major shape/fit issues? I think the 109G14 is a much later and better kit. Is that true? I found a 2002 date on it versus 60/70s on the others. How does the Zero compare to the Revell? What about the Oscar? These were is sealed clear poly bags I didn’t want to open so hard to compare. I certainly have a surplus of Hasegawa P-51Ds and will be shedding some of them. im working my way through Scalemates looking at various boxing’s and original tool dates. At the moment, nothing is for sale or trade, but some soon will be once I get educated a bit more. I acquired many of these from a good friend who was a retired USAF F-106/F-15 pilot and retired FedEx Captain. He died in a small plane crash a couple of years ago and his wife gave me all his kits which accounts for me having multiples. Nothing is up for sale or trade at the moment. I will list it here first when I decide what I'm doing with which kit and gauge if there is any market for these or if postage will be more than they are worth. I am hanging on to my new Hasegawa P-47s (3). I would appreciate your feedback. H-278 and 04781 H-296 and 04722 Both 04711 4749 and H-280 H-283 and H-279 H-295 and H282 (two) H-217 JS-060 and JS-073 JS-070 and JS-060 JS-086 x2 and (not shown 1086 x3) Both JS-060:400 JS-073 and ST18:4200

Just completed this Airfix kit. First OOB build I've done in years. Overall, a nice kit, but a couple of fiddly parts - the landing gear knuckles and fitting the wing to the fuse. Anyway, I like how it came out. Thanks for looking.

Well, it's time to stop lurking and get to work on my stash. Life gets in the way but maybe posting my build here will help with my "mojo" and keep me motivated. As for true LSP, I have a ZM Mustang and a Tamiya Corsair to do. Also there's a T-6 Texan. However, those have a lot of parts and I need a simpler build to get my juices flowing again. I really should do "out of the box" but.... Nah! This Mauve kit is really nice. The True Details cockpit is sweet in it, I can tell.

Hi, I postponed for a long time an order of Phoenix decals and finally decided to have a go. As they are very rarely mentioned on LSP, I thought you would be interested in having a feedback. I ordered them via Hobbyeasy and got them in less than two weeks as the letter went under the customs radar. First important thing: if you know Tiger Wings, you will not be surprised as they are the producer hidden behind this more recent name! To decrease the P&P and because the cost was quite reasonable, I ordered six decal sets from Taiwan: The three USMC AV-8B/B+ sets, the AVG P-40 set, the Tomcat VF-1 set and the 2013 TAC meet F-15J set. Result: I cannot tell you how they behave when you use them but at least I had a close look at the sheets and instructions. In fact, the value for money is even better than I thought as each set gives A LOT of schemes in a single set! Moreover, as Tiger Wings used to do, they also give very extensive stenciling for a minimum or two or three planes! To give you some specific examples: - The F-15J set gives four schemes on the equivalent of... FIVE A4 pages of decals with stenciling including individual panel number and the grey background for at least three Eagles! Each scheme has full tail art. - AV-8B VMA-231 & 311 sets cover at least a dozen of full schemes with stencils for a minimum of at least two planes (including all panel numbers). VMA-223 has "only" seven schemes but gives a better mix of color schemes as the other sets mainly focus on the late, darker Harrier colors. A very large majority are AV-8B+ ones. There is a nice mix of grey birds and colored ones including various sharkmouth & anniversary schemes. - The P-40 B/E set includes... 17 different sharkmouth schemes covering all AVG squadrons (15B & 2E)! - The Tomcat is a more standard set as it only gives two VF-1 early block planes. Topics are interesting and most of them have not been covered by other decal companies. I did not make a thorough assessment of all of them but they look quite good with regard to accuracy. Each paper sheet is crammed with decals.The printing quality is very good and comparable to the one of western producers. The instruction sheets are also quite good. They are printed in color on A4 gloss paper and give a clear view of the position of each element. Except for the smaller Tomcat set, each set has six full pages of instructions. Minimum information is given per scheme (location/year) but they could be more exhaustive. Some pictures of the actual plane are generally included but unfortunately, they are often too small to be very useful. However, on some sheets such as the Harrier ones, web links used as reference are given. Last, color references are Gunze ones. By default, I would have preferred Federal Standard references. Final conclusion: It is a pity Asian decals producers such as Phoenix or Siam decals are not better known and distributed as most of their large scale productions have an excellent quality level. If one aspect may be improved a little bit, it is the instruction sheets in spite of the fact they are already very good. Globally, they offer an excellent price/number of schemes and quality ratio. I highly recommend them. Thierry

Finally got my 2nd RNZAF P-40 "quick build" finished, this one is the Hasegawa -N kit in 32nd scale, with Ventura decals for the 1944 sea blue grey scheme often associated with the home-based training squadrons. Quick Build is in quotes as i put little effort into filling seams and detail painting, the thing has been sitting half built on my shelf for 6 months so it's not really quick! Maybe "lazy build" is more appropriate There's conflicting information on whether or not the -N's served in this scheme or if this particular plane was a standard operational foliage green / grey scheme but hey, how often do you get to see a P-40 in a scheme that isn't green or brown? Paint is all tamiya, the topside color is a mix of XF-8 Flat Blue, XF-18 Medium Blue, and XF-2 Flat White Hope you like it! Mike