WildBill50

Nice job, Ron. Gotta LOVE IT. Bill

OK, I'll bite! Whose kit is that, how old is it and is it a space station? Give us all the gory details. I like it. WB

Great job ,Gil. A question for you... When did Braniff lose the "BI" on the tail? Is it with this scheme. The color scheme really is eye catching. Bill

NIIICE!!!

That is a really cool ship. The lines are sleek. For what it's worth take a look at your Kingfisher on the turret, it looks a little off kilter... pitching up, maybe it's just the photo. You did the build a great job. Bill

Nice boat Chris! The figures really give it some scale. Congrats on the awards also. I like the presentation on the sides of the base...unique. Bill

Looking good, Gil. What color you going to do it in? Bill

Thanks guys. Fun to build, cool subject. Four colors to paint, with no crazy masking. What's not to like on this build? The local Nike site near my house is now the village civil defense office. All underground where the missile battery was.

Chris, Your water looks great. Did you just dry brush it to get the white foam look? BTW the ship looks good too! I like the figures on it as they give a nice scale to the build. Bill

Too cool, Gil. Great job. Love those markings! Bill

Thanks everyone. Cool airplane but what a woof. If most of the early jets met their stated design goals, just think how that could have changed history? Underperforming engines was the biggest technological hurdle it seems. All sorts of designs but no engines to move them forward to their design limits. Bill

Gil, How was the overall fit of the nose to the kit? It looks respectable, but did any extreme measures apply to getting it faired on to the kit parts? Are Falcon's directions pretty self explanatory? Just wondering. Bill

Here is one of the planes that oozes modern jet fighter in the 1950's. This is the Chance Vought F7U-3 Cutlass. This was the most radical fighter design ever to achieve fleet service. It was the first tail-less airplane to go into production in the US and it was the first plane designed at the beginning with afterburners. Visibility problems on landing on an aircraft carrier were a problem and neverfully resolved. Inadequate performing engines contributed to the list of things wrong. When firing it's guns, gases and unburnt powder were sucked into the engines and caused flameouts. The long nosewheel strut could collapse and be driven into the cockpit, ejecting the pilot from the plane. The Blue Angels flew them one year (1953). One of these aircraft was the first plane to land at what is now O'Hare airport. Due to an engine malfunction, the Blue's Cutlass made an emergency landing there before the airport was opened officially. First flight July 1951. Retired March 1959. Not a long or distinguished career. Here is my 1/72 Fujimi Cutlass. Nice model to build. No putty was used on the build. I painted it with SNJ Aluminum and then used buffing powder and some Bare Metal Foil here and there. I added some seat belts to the seat and that was about it. It still looks cool. Hope you like it. Comments always welcome.

Gil, cool conversion project. Talk about a needle nose. Don't forget to take off the raceway on the spine from the front of the tail to where the V meets the top of the spine also. That was added to the top of aircraft after the plane lost hydraulics after taking some hits in the lower section of the fuselage. Faichild moved the hydraulics to the top of the fuselage in that fairing raceway. Looks great so far. Nat metal finish? They had some great markings Bill

Hello all, Summer is over and one more model is on the shelf. I had to get the Ajax since it was re-issued. I've always liked this SAM as a kid. There was one by the VFW in my hometown growing up and I always thought it was cool to see out in front of the building. No one really took care of it though and it finally fell over one night due to it rusting away. Now there is a Hercules near where I live at the Post office. The kit overall is pretty nice, but there are ejector pin marks on a lot of pieces and also mold separation lines to clean up on all of the pieces. A couple of sink marks here and there to be filled with some putty. Once you get all of this cleaned up there is a nice little model in there. Not being a fan of working parts, everything on the missile is glued on its "no-show glue areas". This means no working fins (darn). The launcher was built in sections and painted in those same sections. I added some wiring to the machinery and klaxon horn and then put it all together and painted the resulting seam lines. A light weathering with some aluminum paint and colored pencils and the launcher was done. Decals were nice with no problems encountered. I painted the missile with flat white Krylon spray paint, overcoated with Dutch Boy Gloss White spray paint. The launcher was painted with MM Olive Drab Acryl paint with Testor's Rubber for the launcher pads feet. The Hercules was built some time ago. I wish they were the same scale. The Herc is 1/40th scale, so you can see that it would be quite a bit larger in the same scale as the Ajax. Hope you like it, and as always comments welcome.

I'm in. Don't know what yet, but I'm in. Something airy probably. Bill

See what happens when you post a lowly model for viewing...a possible SAM site with all the trimmings. Mark, you had better be thinking of getting this all together now. You can take a picture of the site from your garage roof if you make it in your yard :gray-plane: Watch for the weasels again! Bill

Really coming along nicely Chris. Very cool looking Ship. Bill

Sweet build, Gil. A question on the Stars...why no blue border? Has it something to do with the markings? Love the weathering also. Bill

STUNNING! Great job Mark. You've got to take a picture in its resting spot at your house, just to really see how much space it takes up. I think you need the "BOOM' flag still. Bill

BOOOM!!! That Dora is BIIGGG...and it looks great. Quit your YAK'n and get that one done too. Nice job all around Mark. Bill

Duke, That picture of your Dora looks like a post war junk pile. Throw in a couple of bulldozers and you'd have a ready made dio. LOL. Looking good so far, should be a crowd pleaser when all completed. Keep up the good work. Bill

Well, after some 1 to 1 scale gardening and house painting, I finally started onthis Gator. So far, the fit of parts is really great. I almost pulled the trigger on the photoetch but not yet. I was looking at the PE set from WEM and a set from KA models. They both offer pros and cons. KA is about $30.00 to $40.00 cheaper if on sale. WEM has some things that I like that is not on the KA set, such as the UREP and the overhead crane track for the wet deck. I haven't heard good or bad about the KA set. I know what I'd get with the WEM set having used their products before. Having said this, I started on some things that won't need PE to address a major part of the build yet. I started on the LCAC just to see how it goes together before paining. I also started on the island. This is going together really well. A clamp here and there to make sure parts set properly were the only thing that needed to be done. So far,so good! I put the sonar bulge on to the bow of the ship and got that puttied and sanded. I put in the hangar deck and the wet deck just to see if lighting them would be worth the trouble. After dry fitting the pieces and playing around with some green grain of wheat bulbs, this is something that will be done. Pic's of the aft end of the ship show the green bulbs glowing. They look really great with the lights off. I'll need about six of them on the wet deck and probably the same amount for the hangar bay. I may try to drill out the windows on the island and even light those, we'll see how ambiscious I feel. Comments welcome. Bill

WOW!!! Love it...Fantastic job. Bill

Nice job, Ron. What is the silver of choice on it? Airfix's new kits are great (at least the one's I've built). Very cool. Bill