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Mark Deliduka

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Everything posted by Mark Deliduka

  1. This has been a rather wild few weeks. I'm surprised I actually had time to work on my models. Now that I'm fighting a mild flu, I'm taking the time while I'm home to start a new tour showing what I have been able to get done in between fighting this thing and taking care of other things. For those interested: all aboard the trams now for our next tour. As always, we'll start in the Hangar... Quite a bit has been done here, particularly since I've been sick and tired of some of these long term shelf queens. This particular one comes to mind: The A-400 I started six years ago has been fighting me almost constantly. While I was applying the decals for the French Armee del'Air in this first bay, the main landing gear and nose gear constantly broke: Because almost all of that won't be seen, I decided to try some out-of-the-box thinking to make these landing gear stronger. Here's one technique we used, gluing an angled piece to the main gear to support the forked wheels: That's just one example; the rest glued just fine and I was able to finally call this beast done! One Shelf Queen finally off the Shelf of Doom! Moving on to the next bay, we were able to slather a bunch of Mr. Surfacer 500 over the Spitfire Mk. VIII, give the number of crazy gaps and seams we had after gluing it together: After a good amount of sanding, things started looking better on this Mk.VIII: Once I was satisfied with our sanding job, we added the canopy and windscreen to this so we could mask it all later and get ready for paint: I was very pleased with the fit of this. The Spitfire Mk. XIV in the bay next door, did not need nearly as much attention, a good sanding took care of those issues. However, I did lose the little cockpit door so we replaced it with some sheet styrene: Later on that canopy and windscreen went on too: While we were doing canopies and windscreens, we decided to finish off the canopy/windscreen assembly on the Me-110 as well. All six parts fit together nicely: Finally in this last bay, our improved cockpit assembly for the Tu-95 Bear was test fit inside the forward fuselage halves to see how it looks. It's a vast improvement over the kit supplied parts: The forward fuselage halves were taped together and then taped to the rear fuselage assembly to see how this beastie is gonna look. She's a long one indeed as you can see by the Exacto blade next to it: All we have to do is add some 50kg's of nose weight to this before we can close it up. Shouldn't be too long if I can recover quickly enough. That's all that's happening in the Hangar for now. We'll bypass the Shipyards as they've been dormant for a bit and move on to the Motor Pool... Here in the Motor Pool, we started a little Ford Model A car in 1/72 scale from Zebrano. It's a cool little car that started well: I can't wait to start the little Stakebed truck I got and place it next to this! Moving on, we found another Shelf Queen languishing in this back bay since 2015. It had been started for a "Modern Armor Group Build" on a Forum I left long ago, and while cleaning out the Motor Pool, we found it back here. Wheels were missing from it, and idler had broken off, but it was overall intact. It was time to start moving forward on this. First of all, this is my Swedish Leopard 2A6, and here is what it looked like once the wheels were all glued back on. It is a Revell kit and was quite brittle after all this time. So, to preserve the wheels as much as possible, we took the one run of track and glued it to the bottom of the main roadwheels and then to the idler and drive sprockets to hold everything together: The tracks don't wrap up far enough on either side, but it is enough to at least keep everything together. We can add more tracks later to close things up. You can also see we started the second of the three color splinter camouflage. Later, the third color got applied. It was a mix with a gloss green to try and get the closest match to a field green I could so once I gloss this, decal it, and then flat coat it; everything should blend: Another couple steps and another long term Shelf Queen will be off the Shelf of Doom.... Finally, I decided we should tackle the Armory ZSU-23-4 Shilka. Now you'll see why I am reluctant to get more Armory Shilka variants. First, the four lower hull parts were glued together. Looks simple right? There was an interesting amount of shaving that was needed to make these parts fit this way, as the flash was so misleading: And now for the craziness to begin. I shot all the first four steps of the lower hull assembly so you can see how much was needed to do even before adding the torsion bars for the roadwheels! The hull should show you how tiny these parts were too: That pic above shows steps one, two and three for the lower hull. Next I thought we could start on the upper hull. Again, six parts to build this before getting to the hatches and engine deck details. It's obvious Armory does not have slide mold tech. I understand it is expensive for many smaller companies, but it shouldn't be too hard to simplify things a bit to make this fun. I don't mind detail parts but to break things down for the sake of adding to the parts count, is not cool. It did go together a bit better than the lower hull: I decided to test fit the upper and lower hulls; as you can see from the inside, they will need a bit of finagling to sit right: One other critique on this kit: there are no numbers and letters stamped on the sprue. One has to follow the sprue map on the instruction sheet: That makes thing tough when you have to keep flipping back and fourth to find where the part is on what sprue. Once more larger parts start getting used, finding parts like this will be even more difficult to find, thus complicating this build even more. I've dealt with worse, so yes, this will get finished. Well, that completes this short tour of Maddog Manufacturing again. Thank you to all who have joined this latest tour. Comments are always welcome.
  2. First off, this is a gift from a friend of mine who invested in the kickstarter that got this tool made. He knew it would be a fantastic tool for modelers and so he got it for me: Some time back I made a large (at least to me) paycheck. After poaying for certain things that I needed and couldn't afford before (such as a new bench seat for my truck) I decided to give myself an early anniversary present with some of that cash while stashing away everything else. These are my chosen presents that just came in: Zvezda Soviet Motorcycle and Sidecar with crew: I have American, British and German motorcycles, now I have a Soviet one. Military Wheels Soviet Field Kitchen: Roden Pigeon Bus: Once this is done, I'll have all the Roden buses completed in my scale......until they release more. ACE AMX self propelled gun. This one will be Israeli, although I have plans to get another for my French Army: ACE AMX-13 DCA twin AA mount. This will be French: ACE Soviet gun Br-2: ACE Soviet Gun Br-5: ACE Eland-90 Armored Car: Interestingly enough, there's no South African decals for this car according to the instructions. I'll have to cobble some together.... ACE Ford V-8 Stakebed truck: Finally, two each of the ACE Centuron Sho't Kal Gimmel/Dalet: I'll be making one the Gimmel and one the Dalet; there are parts for each in the kit. I'm actually excited to be digging into these. That's all for now, I'll see you on the next tour....
  3. Carlos beat me to it. What an awesome story too. The ASAT reference simply confirmed the book for me too. Way to go, this is so beautiful!
  4. Keith, those are magnificent! I also built one of those Letov's way back in my distant youth. What a sensational model you made from such a basic kit! Love the PBY as well; so incredible!
  5. Wow! Sensational! I am overwhelmed at how close you came to those reference pics!
  6. That is unbelievably magnificent! I'm going to try out that technique you used for the varying panel shades once I start my RB-50 in 1/72 scale.
  7. Congrats Carlos! It was great to see you too! That was a well deserved win, especially given how difficult that short run kit was.
  8. Man, that is beautiful, and the display is fantastic! Too bad you can't go, but maybe some miracle will happen to allow it. I won't be there either, so I guess we'll have to wait till Milwaukee....
  9. Unbelievable! Man, I gotta quit! This is so incredibly awesome!
  10. LOL! Actually I don't have that much patience Gil! That's why I left about half of them off! 😜 Thank you for the compliments!
  11. Finally after finding some more time, I got one more model over the finish line. Not sure if it will be the last, but here is the latest. Trumpeter 1/72 scale Russian SA-4 Ganef: My apologies for the poor pics; I'm still trying to get used to my Iphone camera. Thanks for looking in.
  12. And finally, the last of my backordered kits came in. This is the Armory 1/72 scale Shilka: Looking through the instructions; I'm not looking forward to starting this. Stay tuned, I expect I will anyway since I've been needing one of these in my collection.
  13. Despite having almost no time, I was able to get a bit more progress done, and even finished a few models. Some of those models have already been posted so these pics will show them on the way to the dispersal yard or dock. Okay, lets start this tour by boarding the trams and heading out to the Hangar. There's been some good progress in the Hangar here, starting with the two Spitfires we've been working on. First, the Mk XIV got the decals in the cockpit which was also glued to the right fuselage half: Meanwhile, the Mk VIII got the fuselage assembled and the wings and tails installed: In this next bay, the German Me-110 got the final details added to the interior and sides of the fuselage halves: This enabled us to then close it all up inside the fuselage: Progress was quickly made as the wings and tail were then added: Later the nose and exhaust were installed. The nose sub assembly had four parts to assemble before they could be mounted on the front of this plane: That completes the tour of the Hangar, lets move on to the Motor Pool as my Shipyard crews are taking a much needed break after completing three boats. Here in the Motor Pool, we have in this first bay the Russian FROG-7 Luna. First, the tires were dusted and weathered. This meant adding Tamiya weathering powders to the tire treads and then wiping them carefully off the raised surfaces after it dried: Next the missile itself was painted and decaled. I tried to eliminate the silvering but no matter how many times I poked holes with a brand new Exacto blade and added Solvaset; they stubbornly remained silvered: Finally, the decals were added to the main truck and then it was weathered: Later on, the wheels and tires were added, the missile was loaded and she was sent to the dispersal yard for delivery to my Russian Army. You might have already seen those pics. Moving on to the next bay, we got the base coat of green on the Sa-4 Ganef: The missiles were then painted and the decals added. Once again, as with the FROG-7, these decals resisted all efforts to remove the silvering. Here's one of them. There were something like 30+ decals to add to each missile, I decided we'd only use about half of them: This was then taken for a test drive sans missiles and brought back very dirty. Here it is before a loot of that dust and debris came off: This one has since been cleaned up and the missiles loaded and final details added. She has now been sent to the dispersal yard for delivery to my Russian Army. In this next bay we have the British Scimitar Mk.2. Almost all the assembly has been done and so the photo etch was then added: All that was left, with the exception of breakable details was the base coat of green: And that completes this short tour of Maddog Manufacturing again. Thank you all who stopped in to see this latest tour.
  14. Thank you Carlos; yeah, I hope to get shopping soon. I might even make this next Zoom meeting, but we'll see. I never expect anything anymore, except that the unexpected will always jump in the way.
  15. Thank you EJ! Thank you Ron. The other three I have going are the 1/72 scale Revell PT-109, the 1/72 scale Tamiya Vospers Perkasa, and the 1/72 scale Tamiya Japanese PT-15. All these can be followed in my manufacturing thread.
  16. That rocks Carlos! Yeah, I missed too many meetings for the 12-hour challenge so I'm just gonna finish mine as and when I can. This is indeed most impressive. I am now motivated to go look for the ACE kit in 1/72 scale now that I got paid.
  17. Yes, I do have some time. I just have to make sure I actually earn some money; at least enough to put aside enough to come. I'm working on it!
  18. Having found a bit more time, I managed to finally get these two over the finish line. First is the ancient Airfix kit if the Vospers 73' Motor Torpedo Boat: Yes, the rigging is a bit over scale, but it's the finest styrene rod I could find I was breaking things too much trying to use thread. It's done so.... On to the second one, the Revell S-100 Schnellboot. This is a more modern kit but it still gave me issues. It is finally done too: That's the latest two I have finished. Just for fun, here's my entire 1/72 scale motor boat collection to date. I have at least three more in progress: Thanks for looking in, I hope you enjoy them.
  19. This is excellent! Congrats on getting this started, I wish you great success as you help out the modeling community.
  20. Ron, thank you for that great information. This was an ancient kit that I just decided to throw together; I never knew about those details. However, this is fantastic that the Soviets used it; I don't have any kind of national insignia so I could call it a Soviet boat along side my British Vospers, American PT boat, Japanese PT-15 and German Schnellboot. Hey, that's a collection in IPMS contests! Sweet!
  21. What a great launch of your newest project! This is gonna rock! Looking at that engine interior pic makes me glad I only build in 1/72 scale....with closed hatches!! LOLOL!!
  22. This month I finally found time to work on some models and bring some over the finish line since they were so close. This is one of four, the other three are vehicles. This is my ancient Revell British 71-foot Vospers Motor Torpedo Boat, built strictly out of the box. Yes, I need to add window glass to the bridge windows: I used stretched sprue for the rear cables going to the jackstaff at the back as actual thread wasn't working. This isn't the best; nor a decent contest model; but it is another step in the goal to finish as many motor-type boats as are easily available. Thank you all for looking in.
  23. I finally found some time this month to bring a few projects over the finish line. Three are here. The first one is my Orange Hobby US Army D-7 Dozer: The next one is a simple model I finally finished after painting the missile. This is my Hobby Boss SA-2 Guideline on the launcher; the fifth of my six I need for my SA-2 battery: Yes, it is a bit shiny. I need to knock that down a bit, but for all practical purposes, this is done. The third one is one of my recent acquisitions; this is the Trumpeter Russian Luna M FROG-7 missile launcher. I'd been wanting this in my collection ever since I first saw the ancient kit that was in a larger scale. Now that it is in my scale, I finally have it in the collection: These pics actually suck, these look far better in person. Man I miss my camera! Thank you all for looking in, comment are welcome.
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