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Showing content with the highest reputation on 05/30/2021 in all areas

  1. One of the advantages to being on vacation is you can go sit at the bench and finish something! This is the 2nd "quick build" Spitfire I had going, and was able to get it done this evening instead of tomorrow. I picked this scheme because I'd never done a "one wing bottom black" BoB scheme before. Tamiya Mk.I Spitfire (old boxing) built OOTB except for substituting metal gun barrels, and in kit markings. I've found that using very warm water with Tamiya decals seems to make them go on better and had no issues with them. Now on to that Skywarrior! Gil
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  2. Being retired and hunkering down for this covid isolation gave me a lot of time to work on figures. Here is an unfortunate 82nd Airborne trooper making a bad landing somewhere in Normandy. The two figures outside the pig pen are Nemrod resin figures. They are very nice figures. The sergeant in the mud is bashed together from the parts box. The pigs are Britain’s soft plastic farm animals. Everything else is scratch built from bass wood, spackle, craft store crushed terra cotta and tissue paper. I’ll post more progress photos at the bottom.
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  3. I'm sure that you've all heard the phrase "my eyes are bigger than my stomach"? Meaning don't bite off more than you can chew. I've always been intrigued by dioramas. The stories that they tell can be awesome. I've always felt that the best aspect of a good diorama is one that each new time that you look at it you find some new hidden detail that you missed the previous time. I finally decided, a few years back, that I was going to build my first diorama. Being a car guy it almost made sense that I would do a garage with vehicles, tools, supplies, etc. I also like nature so I wanted to incorporate some added outdoors scene as well. So, one thing led to another and the next thing you know my design is way out of control and taking up a tremendous amount of space. It was fun but finding somewhere to store it/display it when it was done was no easy task. I also only took this to one contest after it was done because of the size and weight. Here it is. I framed the garage completely out of wood. Removable roof, real shingles, opening garage door and as much detail as I could throw at it without it becoming too busy. It was great learning experience that mainly taught me that if I ever did any more dioramas, (which I have) to keep the size in check.
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  4. Hi all, Like a challenge so I joined a 48 hour group build the other weekend, and decided to go for a Tamiya 1/48 Sherman "Easy Eight". First time ever I built a tank. And first time in a time limited group build. The part count was a little .... high for a 48 hour build. But the kit is just great. See the result here: And the build here: Please hit the like button, and leave your comment.
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  5. After the bottom layer dried up I gave it a coat of thin yellow green paint. I then added the top of the chute. I wet the tissue with thinned white glue and then kept lifting it and gently blowing some canned air to keep the billowing shape. It took a while but the glue dried up pretty quickly. I painted the chute with very thin watered down paint to keep the parachute from looking solid. It was a fun project, thanks for letting me post. Dennis
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  6. I started with a bass wood structure for the walls. I then glued the crushed terra cotta that I found at the craft store to simulate stones. Using one of those inexpensive micro wood choppers I chopped up wood and shingled the roof. The mud is spackle mixed with some fine sand to give it some texture. After all that set up and dried I added the parachute. I cut tissue paper in to triangular panels just as real parachutes are made. After the bottom layer I added the shroud lines using silk thread. Silk thread is expensive, but it’s thin and it doesn’t have all the fibers that cotton thread has. The paratrooper's harness and reserve chute are made of strips of paper and a few photo etched buckles.
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  7. Ralph, I am well aware that Testors is extinct, eliminated, done, fried, hanged, shot, strangled, drowned, suffocated, executed, done for, bought the farm, vanished, gone away, been permanently reduced, listened while the fat lady sang and involuntarily welcomed the grim reaper. The entire point of my post was that RPM et al should have had the decency to kill the testors.com website so that inexperienced and/or beginning modelers won't stumble over the testors website and waste time trying to find some shop such as Hobby Lobby (Don't say it. I know they're not a hobby shop.) that carries Model Master or Testors paints. All that remains is for me to post a photo of Testors' current employer with whom they have permanently merged:
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  8. It is worth remembering that while we, as craftsmen, historians and even artists may have a very high bar for what is “not acceptable,” our shows and displays are often viewed by the, as it were, uninitiated. This includes women and, especially, children. A beautifully, skillfully, even sensitively rendered depiction of a concentration camp or a firing squad or the Crucifixion, even when it meets the acceptability requirements of I. 5. A. and B., might still leave the average viewer with a most unfavourable impression of IPMS and modeling. Better to err on the side of discretion and the ordinary rules of good taste. Nick Filippone, Senior National Judge
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  9. After building the Monogram Crusader I still had a TON of F-8 aftermarket stuff as well as the Hasagawa kit on the shelf, so I decided to throw it together. This build has an Aires cockpit and Seamless Suckers intake added, as well as a Cobra Co. resin wing that allowed it to be raised and folded. I originally was going to do one of the Has. kit decal options, but they were troublesome. So, I found this scheme on an old Microscale sheet (#168) in my stash and switched to it. They worked perfectly despite their age. 3rd build of the year! Only 12 more to go to match 2017! Comments, critiques, and questions welcome! GIL
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  10. My latest effort is the old, but solid, Monogram 1/48 F-8E Crusader. This classic from Monogram features average fit, with (mostly) accurate outlines and shapes. It has raised panel lines, which also appear accurate compared to drawings and photos in my references. There is one glaring mistake: the entire nose, from aft of the canopy to the end of the nose, is one quarter inch (or one scale foot) too wide. This gives the windscreen and canopy a flattened appearance compared to the actual aircraft. Monogram made this same mistake on their 1/48 A-4 E/F Skyhawk kit. Another flaw, though one more easily remedied, is an incorrect seat. The kit seat looks more like one from a Tomcat or Intruder, rather than the correct Martin-Baker Mk F5 or F7 seat. The sit of the landing gear, especially the mains, is too low, and needs to be corrected. Inaccuracies aside, the kit can still be built into a fine and relatively accurate model with a little work, and some help from the spares box and aftermarket parts. But why bother, when the far superior Hasegawa Crusader is readily available? First, I’m a Crusader nut, and I bought several Monogram Crusaders before the Hasegawa kit was released. I had it in the stash, and every once and a while, I enjoy the challenge of updating and improving older kits. Second is cost, but not by much – you can get two or three Monogram/Revell Crusaders for the price of one Hasegawa kit. However, you must factor in the cost of a resin replacement seat, and if you raise the wing, the underwing bay (unless you scratchbuild it yourself) and replacement landing gear (again, unless you modify the kit gear yourself), and decals (the kit decals may be useable, but are old and very thick). By the time you purchase update sets, you may still be under the cost of a Hasegawa kit, but just barely. And you still have a kit with a nose that’s a scale foot too wide. Another reason I chose to build it is that I had already purchased the excellent Furball Aero Design sheet of MiG-killing Crusaders, and wanted to add another F-8 MiG-killer to my collection, so this was a slightly less expensive way to do so. Here’s a list of additions and modifications I made to the kit to bring it up to snuff: The kit cockpit needs replacement seat, but has a good insturment panel and side consoles. The area behind the seat, though, is void of any detail at all, so I used a resin cockpit from Black Box, which can be had for around $10 these days. But use the kit instrument panel, as it is more accurate for the F-8E. The bulkhead at the rear of the canopy was replaced – the kit piece is too thick and has raised lines, but the actual bulkhead was thin sheet metal with stamped indentations. I cut a thin piece of sheet plastic to shape, and carved in the grooves. The front windscreen was detailed with a grab handle, and a stand-by compass. I added rearview mirrors and a restraint strap to the canopy. Monogram didn’t provide an afterburner nozzle, so I created one from an old F-18 exhaust cone from the spares box. Before closing up the fuselage, I cut out the boarding steps. The afterburner cooling scoops were hollowed out for a more realistic appearance before attachment to the tail. I drilled out the small navigation lights on either side of the upper fin, painted them silver, and filled them with Krystal Klear. I also drilled out a hole for the refueling probe light on the left side just under the windscreen, filled it with a drop of Krystal Clear, and painted it with Tamiya Clear Red. The wingtip lights received the same treatment, with the starboard lights painted Tamiya Clear Green and the port lights Clear red. I removed the over-scale pitot probe and replaced it with a more accurate resin piece from Quickboost. The landing gear needs a lot of work. The nose gear strut is too thin – it should be almost twice as thick in diameter. I used the replacement metal gear from the old Cobra Company backdate set. But the nose gear strut is just a copy of the kit piece – I left it as is. I added a 1/4 inch thick spacer of scrap plastic to the top of the nose gear strut to give the model the characteristic nose up stance seen in most photos. I drilled out the lightening holes in the kit nose gear drag link, and added an actuating cylinder in the nose gear well. The main gear were replaced by the Cobra Company set as well, which does correct the squat stance of the kit gear. The wheel bays are pretty bare, so I busied them up with wire, styrene rod and bits of plastic scrap, including the prominent main fuel line in the starboard well. I wanted to build this jet with the distinctive variable incidence wing raised, which means the flaps and leading edge droops must be lowered. The kit makes no provision for raising the wing, so the underwing bay must be either scratchbuilt or an aftermarket set used. I used an old Cobra Company F-8 backdating set for the underwing bay and the separate flaps and droops, which must be cut away from the kit wing. The plastic used in the Monogram kit is soft, so this makes all the surgery a little easier. I used to think the under-wing bay was painted white, but Tom Weinel, a former F-8 pilot, informed me that this area was painted interior green. I painted the bay Tamiya NATO Green. The large diameter pipe that runs along the right side of the well, the heat exchanger cooling line, was painted Tamiya Flat Aluminum, and the the fuel filter red. Folding the wings presents a challenge. The kit has seperate wing tips, but there is zero detail at the fold joints, so all of it has to be scratch built. I used sections of styrene rod and wire for the fold joints, and photo-etched tie-down rings.. The Squadron/SignaI F-8 Crusader Walk Around book was an invaluable reference for this project, with a wealth of detail photos. The kit has the option to display the in-flight refueling probe extended, but again there is no detail in the probe well, and the probe itself has incorrect and missing details. I wanted to display the IFR probe extended, so virtually everything was replaced or scratchbuilt, using plastic strip and rod styrene, wire, scrap plastic pieces, and photo-etched pieces from an Eduard detail set. The tip of the probe is inaccurate, so I robbed a tip from an extra A-4 refueling probe in my spares box. The probe bay door was replaced with metal pieces from the Eduard set. The only kit piece I used was the forward half of the probe arm. A small data plate at the rear of the probe well was replicated with a small landing gear data plate decal from an F-18 sheet. The IFR probe and well were then painted Tamiya Yellow Green, which appears to be a good match for the yellow protective primer Vought used. F-8E’s often carried underwing pylons, so I decided to include them on the model. The Monogram pylons are simplified with soft details, so I used a pair left over from a Hasegawa F-8. The paint scheme was the standard Navy gull grey over white. I pre-shaded the model with Tamiya rubber black, then used Model Master acrylic Gull Grey for the topside color. The underside, the UHT’s (unit horizontal tail) and the upper and lower surfaces of the flaps and ailerons were sprayed Tamiya acrylic gloss white. To represent the Coroguard applied to all leading edges, I masked them off and sprayed them Tamiya Flat Aluminum, darkened a bit with Gunmetal. The raised panel lines were accentuated with a mechanical pencil. The markings presented another challenge. I wanted to portray F-8E BuNo 150926, the jet flown by LCDR John Nichols when he shot down a MiG-17 on July 9, 1968, when deployed aboard USS Ticonderoga with VF-191. Originally I intended to use leftover kit decals from a previously-built Hasegawa F-8, but when Furball Aero Design released their sheet of F-8 MiG-killers, I bought it and assumed it would have more accurate markings than the kit decals. My research indicates otherwise. The Furball sheet appears to be in error in two cases for this jet. I couldn’t find photos of this jet during the timeframe of the MiG-kill, but photos in the ’68 Ticonderoga cruise book show that other jets in the squadron during the time of the shootdown carried large black blast panels around the canons on each side of the nose, and also carried the Satan’s Kittens squadron insignia just behind the blast panels. The Hasegawa kit decals have these markings, but the Furball sheet doesn’t. Two emails to Furball inquiring about the discrepancy went unanswered, so I went with the best available evidence and included the markings. In addition, a cruise book photo showed the red bulkhead visible when the wing was raised carried the squadron number inside three white diamonds, rather than the ‘Satan’s Kittens’ logo that both sheets provide. I recreated this with small numbers and white diamond shapes raided from my decal catalog. Whew….it was a lot of work, but I enjoyed improving and modifying the Monogram Crusader. It will always be a favorite kit of mine, even though it has been outclassed by the newer and far superior Hasegawa kit. But with patience, research and some work, it can be used to build a fine model of this attractive and historic MiG-killing jet.
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