JoeHegedus

Yes, they have a nice 1/32 Stearman. Unfortunately, I believe it is being discontinued. If you want one, better act soon.

At $60 for a Skyraider, I'll pass. That's far too much coin for that kit, regardless of whether or not it's the best available.

Looks good, Gil. Just wondering; did you do anything to reinforce the landing gear legs? I built that kit many years ago, and the weight required to get it to balance caused the MLG struts to start to bow outboard after a couple months. The easy fix was to use pieces of sprue between the bottom wing surface in the well and the unattached end of what is supposed to be the retraction pivot axle, to give a load path from there to the wing to counteract the bending moment that comes from the wheels being outboard of the struts.

Invisible thread may be purchased at your local fabric store (JoAnn's, for example). Uschi thread is available online; do a google search for it. See my previous post, I described installation there.

Uschi thread is something I've heard good things about; just haven't managed to get my act together enough to buy some yet!

Same here. I usually order it from Tower Hobbies 5 or 6 cans at a time.

People use various things to make the antenna wire. Some like to use stretched sprue, others like to use fine nylon monofilament line, others prefer to use fine elastic thread, and some like to use actual wire. The choice somewhat depends on the scale as well as personal preference. Stretched sprue is just what it says - take a piece of the parts tree from the kit about 3 inches or so in length, and hold it so that the center is a couple inches above a candle flame. Keep rotating the sprue like a roast on a spit until it starts to sag where it's being heated, then remove it from the heat source and smoothly pull the ends of the sprue apart. The soft center section will stretch out into a long, thin strand. It takes a bit of practice to get the feel, but one can vary the speed of pull to get different thickness of the strand. Nylon monofilament is fishing line, essentially. The finer the better, usually. Fly-fishing leader material is often suggested, but if you go to your local fabric store you can get "invisible thread" that is really a fine nylon monofilament line. It comes in clear or smoke coloring; I prefer the smoke when I use it. For 1/72 (my usual scale of choice), I normally prefer to use fine elastic thread. This one is a bit harder to obtain - it takes a bit of effort as my source is a section cut from an old pair of black nylon stockings (pantyhose). The idea is to pull thread strands out of the weave and use those. Tedious, and sometimes difficult to get a piece that is a consistent number of threads for the whole length, but very fine and quite forgiving when installed (it has a lot of stretch). For larger scales, actual wire can be used. Fine copper wire can be obtained from the armature windings of an old toy electric motor. As to how to install, that varies somewhat depending on how the wire is routed. If one end is anchored in the fuselage itself, drill a small hole and use CA glue to secure one end in that hole. When that has set, pull the wire material you've selected to the point where the other end is to be secured and use a small drop of CA to hold it in place. When that has set, use a razor blade or similar to trim the excess. If both ends are secured to a mast or similar, then just do like the second end of what I just described twice. Nylon thread and stretched sprue can both be tightened a bit once installed with heat; light a match, blow it out and hold the just-extinguished end under the line you want to tighten. The residual heat from the match will cause the line to shrink a bit and tighten up. Don't get the match head too close, though, as too much heat will cause the line to break.

My 2 cents about Alclad. It does not NEED a primer over bare plastic for most of the shades in the line, if one is misting the coats on. I've used it on several projects without primer with good results. The solvent doesn't have enough time to react with the plastic before it evaporates unless one sprays it on in heavy, wet coats. However, if one has done any "body work" on the kit and used putty or other filler that is a different color from the plastic, a primer is a good idea so that one has a uniform base coat for the finish. The place where you NEED the primer is if the desired finish is a chrome or 'mirror' finish; in that case a dark (black), gloss undercoat is required. Alclad is good stuff, though - a good looking finish that is tough and durable. That said, Tamiya AS-12 "airframe aluminum" spray paint is awesome stuff as well. It's a lacquer, so one has to a bit careful not to apply it too heavily, but it has good coverage, and isVERY durable and tough - one can mask over it with no worries about paint pulling up. It is more of a dull aluminum shade, but works quite well for a used, in-service finish and it's very easy to mask panels and paint them with different shades if desired.

I've used reversed clamps like this for several years, and have found that having the sides converge when the clamp is empty is advantageous, as the jaws are more close to parallel when in use. This makes it less likely that jaws will slide off the part being clamped. Plus, if the jaws of the reversed clamp are parallel when closed, there isn't any movement available to open the jaws.

Nothing to add the Pete's post, but I must say that I love the Senator Bedfellow avatar, Pete!

http://www.boxartden.com/gallery/index.php Go down to "Model References" and follow that link.

Rick, that Flycatcher sounds interesting. What do you want for it? Joe Joe, will sell for $10 + shipping and shipped by any means you choose. Sounds good to me. If you can shoot me an email to hegedus(at)md(dot)metrocast(dot)net we can work out the details. Thanks! Joe

Rick, that Flycatcher sounds interesting. What do you want for it? Joe

It's a recent issue (last couple years) so it should be readily available. Sprue Brothers is showing it in stock ( http://store.spruebrothers.com/product_p/rmx855264.htm ) as does Tower Hobbies ( http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXDYXU&P=W ).

I"m interested if you have an Esoteric Vought SBU scout bomber and/or 1/72 Esoteric Vought O3U Corsair, both in the "Naval Aircraft Factory/NAF" line.

When Hasegawa started making 1/48 Phantoms back in the 80s, the first ones were the F-4J, B, and C/D (the ones that had raised panel lines). When they tooled up the F-4E kit, there were changes in the dimensions of the wing and fuselage in the kits around the area of the intakes - the F-4E kit was wider in the area than the previous kits. I know this because I used an original F-4J and an F-4E to build an F-4S before Hasegawa released that version, and the Sparrow wells on the F-4E wing did not line up with the wells in the J fuselage (when Hasegawa released the S, they retooled the fuselage to match up with the F-4E wings and add recessed panel lines). So, it's possible that the different intakes reflect the different fuselage toolings from the original kits maybe? Does one set of intakes have raised panel lines?

I checked my F7F-3N conversion set from Cobra - the forward cockpit is a full cockpit, including the floor, bulkheads, instrument panel, sidewalls, seat, stick, and I believe a gunsight as well. Hope this helps you out.

I don't recall offhand, but I think I have another conversion set at home so I can look this evening.

I used the Cobra set on the Monogram Tigercat a while back. I don't recall having any problems with it; the end result can be seen here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2699092693210&l=a611620eeb I also used the QB engines and cowls on another kit, which can be seen here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2271713689002&l=1cf06d3db7

The brand name is, I think, just "Quickboost". Sprue Brothers carries them I know; that's where I got my set. Here's a link to a set on ebay so you can see what they look like: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Quickboost-72133-1-72-F7F-Cowlings-Engines-for-Revell-Monogram-/111646847988 Aside from some care required removing the cowls from the pour blocks to avoid messing up the leading edges, the set is pretty much a direct replacement for the kit cowls - no surgery is required to use them from what I recall.

TIgercats used the R-2800 C-series with the cylindrical, bolted crankcase, like the F4U-4, F8F, and P-47M/N. Quickboost does a set of engines and cowls designed for the Monogram Tigercat that are easy to use and look good.

Yes, the labels are printed in very small letters. But don't the vast majority of us now routinely carry a cellphone, mostly with a camera attached? It's a bit of an inconvenience, but why not use said camera to either look at the label through a zoom function (if yours is capable), or snap a photo of the label and then view that enlarged? I've done this and it works.

The Revell kit in the black/white scheme (NATC, not VX-4, by the way) from back then was Revell's own tooling, and is NOT the same kit as boxed by Revell today. The current kit began as the Monogram tooling back in the 80s, and is quite different from the Revell tooling so downloading the instructions won't really help you much. Monogram's kit was much more detailed overall than Revell's. Having said that, since the only single-seat Hornets around when that kit was tooled were the FSD prototypes and the F-18A models, the kit is one of those. The major differences between the FSD and the production versions are the lack of a dogtooth on the wing leading edge and lack of the long LEX slots between the LEX and fuselage under the cockpit on the production airplanes. The FSD airplanes originally had a dogtooth on the wing leading edge at the fold joint (like one sees on the current FA-18E/F Super Hornets), a dogtooth on the stabilizer leading edge that was filled in early on in the program, and slots between the LEX and the forward fuselage that ran most of the length of the LEX. Production versions have a much smaller LEX slot, just above and slightly forward of the intake.

Gil, the -4 was just coming on line in 1945. The majority of Corsair Ops in WWII were the -1 and its subvariants. In 1945, the F4U-1D/FG-1D (along with the F6F) were carrying the lion's share of the workload through most of the Okinawa campaign. The F4U-4 showed up toward the tail end of that operation. The F4U-1D was fitted early on with the zero-length rocket stubs. The firing lead ("pigtail") connected the back of the rocket to a receptacle in the wing behind the rear stub, and would not be connected until just before takeoff for safety. There is also an arming lanyard for the warhead fuze that would connect to the area of the forward stub, and run along the upper surface of the rocket/warhead to the fuze.

A few years back, someone displayed at the Old Dominion Open in Richmond, VA, a collection of 18 Accurate Miniatures F3F models; one complete squadron of airplanes appropriately marked.