Mark Deliduka

I had a little time to get some things done but since most of it was tedious sanding, filling, finding, fixing, and re-checking; this will be a short and sweet update. To start with, I spent a lot of time sanding and re-filling and re-sanding the seams and these sink marks in the body of the rocket. They were particularly bad on the second stage here: After I got tired of that, and my hands had cramped bad enough; I moved on and assembled the legs if the LEM. First off, there were three parts on each leg that needed to be glued a certain way. After gluing them together, I dry-fit them on the lower hull of the LEM to allow them to dry in the right position: After they were dry, I pulled them off to re-shoot some Gold on them to cover the places where I scraped off the paint for gluing, or for repainting where I removed flash. Interestingly enough, I caught myself before I made a serious mistake. The instructions never once told me to use the part of the leg that had a ladder on it on one of the assemblies. I realized this and made sure I used the proper part so that Neil Armstrong would actually be able to climb down the ladder: Later on, after doing some more sanding and smoothing to the body of the rocket, I finished painting the main exhaust nozzle for the LEM's engine and installed it: I also had painted the black to the upper hull of the LEM in preparation for masking and painting the metal color on the upper part. Just for fun, here it is dry-fit to the lower hull to see how it will look: Finally, after I'd smooth enough of the first and third stages, I shot the first layer of flat white on them to get started on the painting. Here you can see them next to the unpainted second stage: It's not too easy to see, but there is a difference in color. I've been misting the white on to see if I can get a smooth even coat. I plan on adding more coats to this later. Then I have to figure out how best to mask this over those freakin' ridges so I can paint the black on it! I had also painted the little Czech plane but it was only a base coat and so I didn't get any pics of it...yet. I had also painted the silver on Annie's barrel to try the turned metal effect. Once it dries, I'll do that effect. No pics of that either... yet. Maybe on my next update. Until then, thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.

Sweet job! And in my scale too! If you hadn't have mentioned it, I would have been convinced it was 1/35th scale. Extremely well done!

Welcome to the Forums Brad and welcome back to this great hobby! I hope to meet you in Columbus this year; look for the guy in the Orange County IPMS shirt with 'the Duke' emblazoned across the front. I'm also a small scale armor as well as aircraft builder so I'll be happy to show you some of my work. It'll be a thrill to meet another small scale armor builder. Feel free to join us at the Braille Scale armor meeting we'll be having.

Thanks Dennis! Yeah, it feels good to finally buy small paint containers again after the five-gallon buckets of grey I needed for Dora! :D

Thanks Chris! Always a pleasure to see your comments. Your compliments keep me motivated to build and finish more.

Excellent! Thanks for that info Chris. I do hope they still have Oily Black. That is one of the best colors out there.

Thanks Joseph! They do have some tiny parts, but they are quite large. The Enterprise is a little more than two feet long.

LOL! At least you now have a larger quota that should last for a good amount of time of posting. With the number of pics I post; I'd finish my account's quota before I even finish one post! :P

A couple days ago I finally was able to finish five more armor models and free up more space on my workbench. All of these are the latest Japanese Ground Self Defense Force vehicles offered by Fujimi and Aoshima. I'm thrilled to be adding to my Japanese Army. The first model, Aoshioma's Type 73 3-ton cargo truck: I dusted it up quite a bit, but it doesn't show well in these pics. Here's some of the weathering in the bed of the truck: Just for fun, I loaded it with some Value Gear cargo to see how well it looks loaded down: Next up is the 3.5-ton Japanese SAM truck: I'm not sure why the window looks so messed up. It didn't look that bad when I removed the masking. She was a toughie, but she's finally done. Next is the 3.5-ton Radar truck that supports the missile truck: I did notice the silvered decals. Those were dealt with accordingly. It may not be completely accurate, but I do like the look of this control panel: Here's a shot of the whole SAM system together: Next up was this little "Japanese Ontos" or "baby Ontos" as others called it. This is one of the Japanese Type 60 106mm Self Propelled Recoilless guns. This one is completed in firing mode, whereas the other will be done in travel mode: I actually completed this with the upper hull and engine covers removable so the interior can be seen. The other one will most likely be cemented shut. Last but not least, this is my Type 10 with Dozer blade mounted. My previous Type 10 was supposed to have a dozer blade on it, but it fell down off the table. A couple vital pieces that were supposed to hold the dozer blade on the tank disappeared so it was built as a regular tank. I bought and built this one to replace it: Just for fun, here's a size comparison of the little Type 60 106mm Self Propelled Recoilless gun and the Type 10 Main Battle Tank: You can see where the upper hull slipped a little when I took this pic, but it is done. Maybe some day I'll glue it down. Okay, that's all my models I've completed so far. This now brings me to 675 completed armor models in 1/72 scale. Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.

Here's my latest. I've been wanting these: 1/700 scale Soviet carrier Baku to go with my Kiev and Minsk: Now all I need is the Novorossisk. 1/500 scale USS Enterprise: Been wanting this for decades. Finally got it. Watch for the Maddog Manufacturing Shipyards to start production again soon.

Thanks Joseph. Yes, Testor's bought out Polly Scale just so they could shut down the line. Apparently that is there way of competing in the marketplace. Oh well. I'm gonna keep on building anyway. Just finished some; feel free to check them out in the Armor Forums.

I agree, Pactra was one of the best companies out there. I also loved Polly Scale paints; they really went on smooth. I still have several of the Pactra Big Bottle paints that are still good. I'm trying to preserve them as long as I can. More progress has been done. Pics forthcoming...

I know how that feels. Sometimes I feel the same way with the Saturn V I'm building.

About two weeks ago, my Orange County IPMS club held a Make-n-Take at the Fullerton Airport "Airport Days" event. The event itself ran from 9AM until 5PM and offered helicopter rides, warbird exhibits and flybys of various aircraft; as well as opportunities to fly Air Combat USA which is based on Fullerton Airport. For those not familiar with Air Combat USA, you have the chance to literally fly an aircraft with an experienced ex-military pilot in your copilot seat and engage in actual dogfights in these aircraft. For more info, here's their website: http://aircombat.com/ This year, as Sean and I walked around; we saw that they were featuring a flyable DC-3 which was converted from a C-47 that had 40 combat missions over Europe in WWI. It had also carried the Queen of England and Winston Churchill as well. The Commemorative Air Force was there as well with a An-2 Colt and (to our surprise!) a Bf-108 Taifun, both of which had been flown in. Sean and I got to sit inside the Taifun and afterward; when they'd been asked to shift it to a new position, we got to help push it into place! This is the second year that we were invited back due to the popularity of our exhibit. This year, we had even more attention from attendees. We had brought 150 model kits for the kids to build and we had ten volunteers to assist them as they built their models. Our first model builders arrived at about 9:10 that morning and soon the word got around. By 9:40 we had a line of kids waiting for their turn. This line consisted of anywhere between 7 and 15 kids (and their parents) and lasted for the entire rest of the day. We ran out of model kits at 2:30PM and had to turn away about 40 kids or so before the end of the event. Discussing this event later; we figured we'd need at least 250 kits to get through an entire event next year. The Fullerton Airport people told us that of all the attractions featured at this event, ours was ranked in the top three by all attendees. They are thrilled to have us there and have already invited us back next year. Here is a link to my Photobucket account showing some of the pics that I took that day, including the DC-3, the Colt and the Taifun; as well as a low level flyby of the Goodyear Blimp: http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Duke_Maddog/library/Air%20Shows%20and%20Museums/IPMS%20Make-n-Take%20Fullerton?sort=4&page=1 I hope you enjoyed this post. Thanks for looking in.

Congrats Dennis! It looks like all that 'punishment' paid off! Looking forward to your next 'punishing' effort.

Welcome aboard Dennis; you've posted some excellent 'calling cards'! Those houses look fantastic. Good luck on building your father's plane. You've come to the right place to learn the most.

Thanks Ed! Actually, mine is the large round bottle and it is still nearly full. I will hopefully get the rest of the engines done soon so I can get them mounted on this rocket. I really hope to have this ready for the Nationals.

Wow, this is some phenomenal work here Joseph! I am stunned at all the outstanding detail you're adding to this. Brilliant work! Looking forward to seeing more.

Wow, that engine is detailed! It looks like you can just fire it right up! Beautiful job!

Well, after a good long weekend, and a Build Night at my Orange County IPMS meeting; I was able to make a lot of progress. To start with, I added the wing to the C-46, gluing on the bottom side first: There were some gaps at the wing roots on top, so I lifted the wings a bit to close the gaps and added Tamiya Extra Thin to glue them solid. Now to get this filled and sanded to be sure the seams are all taken care of: Next up; it was time to do some painting. I pulled out all the models waiting for paint, fired up the compressor and got to work. The first one, and one of the easiest was the Japanese Three-ton truck. After painting it, I added the wheels as well: Next I pulled out the Japanese radar and missile trucks. I had tried to mask these off, but there were too many nooks, crannies, and protrusions that made it almost impossible so I just hand painted the pattern on these trucks. Here's the radar truck after I painted it and added the wheels and other details: The missile truck gave me some issues while I was trying to put the rear platform on the back of the chassis, but I finally managed to get it on the truck. Later on I got it all painted up and added the wheels and the rest of the detail parts to it: Since I was already working on the Japanese vehicles, I pulled out the Japanese Type 10 tank and re-shot some green on it to cover some spots that got sanded off. Then I masked it with the Silly Putty to shoot on the second camouflage color: A little later, I shot the brown color on this: Since my Type 60 Self Propelled Gun vehicle was already masked, I shot the brown color coat over this one too: A little later; after I'd finished painting the Atomic Annie, I came back and removed the Silly Putty masking from both these vehicles: Now I just need to apply a clearcoat, then decals and then the final detail parts before I weather all these Japanese vehicles and call them all done. Yes, I did mention that I painted Annie. Here's a shot of all the parts with the Olive Drab color shot onto them: Later on I painted the chassis and engine parts with Floquil Oily Black dry brushed with steel color. After that was dry, I shot some Panzer Dunklegelb over the flat parts of the model to modulate the color. It was a bit too stark and bright so I re-shot a mist of Olive Drab over it again to tone it down. I'm pretty pleased with the current results: The part of the barrel that is not painted will be done with a steel color. Then I'll do the same trick I did on the Dora to get the turned metal effect. Moving right along, I decided to shoot flat black over the ends of the rocket stages and the rocket engines. Here's the bottom of the second stage where five nozzles will be installed: Next is the bottom of the third stage: And the bottom of the command module: And finally, the engines themselves: Later on, at our first ever Build Night at IPMS Orange County, I spent the evening applying gold leaf to the bottom of the LEM. This took most of the night and was tough to keep burnished down sometimes, but here is the result so far: The next day at home I test-fit the lunar module's upper stage to it since I'd forgotten to take it to the meeting: While waiting for some of the above models to dry between coats, I found this old bottle of Pactra Navy Metallic Grey that was still viable after all these years. So, I decided to try it out on the engines to see how it would look. I took one of the main engines and painted it up. Here it is beside one still unpainted: It is a bit darker than in these pics. The brightness is a bit high in these pics, but you can see it looks pretty good. I was about to put the color away when I thought, 'wait, lets dry-brush this color on the undersides of the rest of the bases of the stages' so I went to work. It's a bit hard to see the difference in these pics, but they do look good: Of course, after all of this work; I'll be finding out that these should be painted a totally different color! Naturally! Anyway, that's all I have done for now. I hope you enjoyed the Factory tour. Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.

Nice job!! I love the finish on this. I wish I could get something as good on my work.

Right on Gil! They sound like great birthday presents. Happy Birthday to you!

Wow, just saw this. Another amazing masterpiece! Chris, you are one spectacular ship modeler!

Thanks Joseph. We had our first Build Night at my IPMS chapter meeting so I managed to get a little bit more done. I hope to have pics up in a day or so.

Sweet. I'll check it out when you get started on it. Meanwhile, it's raining here so I'm gonna try to get some work done before the wife gets home. Stay tuned.