Hello fellow speed-freaks

Well, I haven't been posting or taking pics, but I have been moving along somewhat. I don't understand why family and friends seem to think they can impose themselves on me at this time of the year. I have made it plain that it is NOT appreciated ! I feel a little ashamed about it, because everyone has taken it very nicely, promising to help my energy situation this Christmas, by giving generous amounts of coal in my stocking.

I have made a little progress on this gem of a kit. The major assemblies are in place. The nose in this pic is just tacked in place for the pic...somemore seam work to be done. But, the wells are packed with my favorite masking substance - blu-tack, and ready for a coat of paint. Sorry for the pic quality...unfortunately, my photo skills are even worse then my modeling ones...

I used to be embarased of my photo taking skills Mike, but then I got smart. While all these other fellows spend hours and hours filling, sanding, masking, etc., I just slap my kits together and take blurry pics. Now people think I know how to build nice models.

Seriously, I've had that same kit in my stash for a loooong time and I'm looking forward to seeing yours completed. The Skyray is one of my favorite oldies. Part Saab, part Batman, part Battlestar Galactica, and waaay cool.

Hermon

LOL !! ... As my British friends say, " BRILLIANT !!".

I have to say, Hermon, you are going to love this kit when you decide to go for it. I know Tamiya has a reputation for well engineered kits, but this one builds up just beautifully. It has to be the best fitting kit I have ever worked on.

Cheers,
Mike

Well fellow speed demons, here we go

Carl,..........SWEET! Great bullet you've got sir.

Heres a sneak peak at where my Skystreak is right now. Hope to be done by the weekend.



PS. Can you see all the resin and PE in the cockpit? Yeah, didn't think so. Never understood why kit makers go through the trouble when you're gonna put on a canopy that is 90% metal covered.

Great models so far! This campaign seems to be also promoting different colour schemes to what you normally see as well.

My F104 is taking a bit longer than the one above...my excuse is that i have to do a bit more masking. I have the red on now. Hopefully the black will go on tomorrow then it's straight to decals- no need for an extra gloss coat of course.




Andrew

That's looking beautiful, Andrew. A super job of masking, especially that curve near the tail. Whenever I see the need for a curved mask on one of my projects, I break into a cold sweat !! You seem to have handled it exceedingly well.

Cheers,
Mike

Good progress, Mike.

Excellent and very colourful silver rocket you have there, Carl

Andrew, that starfighter is coming along nicely.

ok...i made my start......very simple cockpit,not much to see after the two halves close...


from some web search i read that is better to build left and right side first and then glue it together,than building front middle and aft sections of the airframe.After dry fitting i saw that this way fits better and has less steps.


I am not very experienced so any advice would be welcomed

You are on the right path. Much easier to align things the way you have them built up than what the instructions call for. Looking good folks. I guess I need to get off my tail and get started. "Q"

Andrew, as awsome as your 104 paint scheme is, I can't help but wonder how great that "tooth brush" scheme would look. Very, very nice so far.

Bjorn, I love that snow globe! What a great idea and cool subject.

Nektarios, nice start on the Concord. That's going to be one monster aircraft!

Hermon

Hi everyone, I just joined this campaign. Im builing a Revell 1/48 scale f-15c eagle. Hope it works out.

Ok, I don't know where I'm supposed to post these pic's but here they are. This is my finished entry for the Speed campaign. 1/48 scale Special Hobby D-558-1 Skystreak. It was a fun kit with a few minor fit problems. The landing gear doors were tiny and fusy with weak attachment points but I think it built into a great little kit. The last pic is of her sitting in my display box surrounded by slow prop jobs.
Thanks for lookin'
Hermon

Hermon, that Skystreak paint job turned out nice! I have a feeling that you build model cars as well...they tend to be the people that know how to get that sort of finish.

My Starfighter is also done. No weathering except inside the wheel wells and speedbrake bay. I'm assuming this one is straight from the paint shop and ready for the airshow that the scheme was done for.

I offered to do the girlfriends car in the same colour scheme whilst i had the paints out, but she declined. Some people are really boring.







Andrew

Hi all!

This is my build for this Campaign, The old Testors SR-71 in 1/48!


This is one of the most facinating and exciting aircrafts ever flown, in my opinion!

I have always been spellbound by the aircraft and the whole story behind, so it was a "must find a kit and build"!
One day I found it cheap while shopping for other kits, and at only $20 it was a steal.

A loong wait followed, but a few weeks later I had it in my hands!
By now it has been waiting and sleeping in my stash for about four years.
When this Campaign was proposed, it was the perfect build!
What better aircraft to build when the theme is speed?
Afterall, this IS the fastest operational aircraft ever built!

This kit comes in what must be the very ugliest box I have ever seen!




Very big, and soooo boring!

What do you get in the box, then?

Not very many parts, but some of these parts are seriously large!
Mucho plastic for the few bucks I payed!
Some flash on the parts, but generally well moulded.
There´s optional parts for the SR-71A and the SR-71B two-seat trainer.
As a bonus you get decals to build the single seat A-12, but you´ll have to modify the (longer) tail yourself.












The decals were surprisingly good, well printed with good density, perfect in register and looks very usuable indeed.
You get decals for four aircrafts, two SR-71s (one of these in two different markings), one SR-71B and a A-12, so you have five options.




The instructions not only gives the drawings of the build, painting schemes and decal placement, but also notes during the build, interesting facts scattered troughout, and some very useful pictures.




As this a quite old kit, there´s not much from the aftermarket for the Blackbird.
Only things i´m aware of is a resin cockpit and wheels from Aires, seats from Pavla and the burner cans from Cutting Edge (made by old, now gone and sadly missed, Meteor)

As I want to show the sleek lines of the aircraft, I´ll do the canopies closed, so I´ll get some new seats only and use the (quite incorrect) kit supplied cockpit.
I was lucky to get a set of the burner cans from CE before Meteor went down, and these are simply stunning!





I have lots of reading stuff and references about the Blackbird and the Lockheed Skunkworks.



Soon I´ll be cutting plastic :lol:

Cheers!

Stefan E

Wow! Love to see so flashy paintjobs on planes that retain national markings.

Hermon, even if I think the Skystreak is an ugly aircraft you made it look good. Nice shine to it.

Andrew, your Starfighter is great too. I'd like to see the wheel wells better though, because a polished outside together with rough interior really rocks in my book. By the way, how many layers of yellow is it? Yellow is hard to do, and I guess I have some yellow coming in the future.

Magnus, the box seems boring for the one that hasn't seen REALLY boring stuff. There are more model companies in China than Trumpeter, and some of the local ones have so plain boxes that you have to know chinese, or cut them up, to know what's in them. I never bought any, not even for scientific reasons, and I don't regret it.

Some nice looking builds so far. I'm not knockig anybody's builds here just passing on some info I found while building my fleet of 104's. The gear doors should sit outside the wheels. I attribute this to Hasegawas poor instructions. Its hard to figure out from the drawings how they should be mounted. That, and they are extremely fiddly.. If you look at the difference between these, you can see what I mean. Again, not bashing anybody's work, just some FYI for future builds. I corrected two of mine, and left the others alone. Anyway, here is what I was refering to...
How I initially built mine per what I gathered from the the poor instructions...

And here is how they should be, as per looking as some pics of real ones in a musuem and in a few books...

and one more from online that shows it really well..

Hope this helps. Again, great looking builds guys. "Q"

WOW !! Hermon and Andrew, you are as fast as your planes !! Great job both of you. I've made little progress since my last post - guess I better hit the afterburner

Cheers,
Mike

Hermon and Andrew, great work and eye-catching paint schemes! Just a quick view on the progress of the office end of the F/A-18F.

Tom

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

Tony, you're not the only one who thinks the Skystreak is ugly. The whole time I was building mine I kept wondering why I didn't choose another subject. If it weren't for the bright red paint this one would have become a permenant member of the stash.

Andrew your 104 is awsome! I don't have a 104 in my collection yet but that one has given me the bug. Great job.

Hermon

Tony, the yellow is 2 layers of Tamiya TS47. I've found the trick for yellow is to start with a solid even base layer of white primer. Also the Tamiya TS paints are laquer and cover far better than acrylics and even enamels. Even though they come in spray cans, i just use that as a storage container, decanting them through a straw into the airbrush jar for use just like any other paint- no thinning required. Many years of automotive model making taught me the benifits of the TS paints, and for the F104 it was more like painting a car model anyway- so i went back to my old methods.

Also i used Tamiyas new Semi Gloss TS79 clear as i felt it was just slightly too shiny!

Andrew

Great builds, Hermon and Andrew. These birds look fast!

Stefan, great to see you are building the ultimate speed bird! We definitely need one of these in the campaign. Looking forward to follow your build.

The Speed Campaign is proud to announce we officially have 4 Speed Demons. The current statistics are as follows.

alpha_tango
amegan building a BAe Lightning F6
betheyn
Blueheeler
* CaptainA building a F 104C
* CMOT70 building a F-104G
CrewChief16 building a Concorde
eMan
endrju007 building a F-15
FalkeEins
Greenhornet2 building a F-15 E
HeyLoad building a F/A-18F Super Hornet
jaypee building a Maachi MC-72
Jupiterblitz
LinkinPark building a F-15c
Littorio building a Hawker Hunter
Merlin building a Skystreak
mj building a F4D-1 Skyray
Phantom2 building a SR-71 Blackbird
* PolarBear building a Saab J 29B Tunnan
Red4
SGTJKJ building a SU-7BKL
Tomcat31 building a B-58 Hustler
vanize
* VonCuda building a D-558-1

Long Knife Not yet enlisted, building a Fiat CR42B

* denotes a completed campaign

I used to use TS paints but they appear to have been withdrawn here and we are struggling to find a replacement. Any suggestions would be welcome. Current favourite is Vallejo Air paints but I haven't quite got the hang of them yet. Mean time work on the F-100 has stopped with the cockpit about 80% done (80% to do ) Also waiting for a Touch-n-Flow to be delivered so I can try to ensure the best possible finish on the rest of the model.

Hi everyone.

Ive had a little change in my build. Instead I had gotten a 1/72 scale Tamiya Bell x-1 mach buster for christmas and I believe that would be the best way to go.
I think it would be better suited for the job of breaking the sound barrier.