Ok, I finally made some progress on my build and have something to show.

I am doing a NASA T-38 from the Sword 1/48 scale kit. I'll be doing it in the late 70s NASA "worm" scheme, mainly because my father used to fly in them back then. I have fond memories in him taking me out to Ellington Air Force base and letting me sit in the cockpit with his flight helmet on, so this is really a build I have been wanting to do for something like 30 years now.

in the end, it'll hopefully look about like this (taken at Ellington actually - this is the flight line I remember from childhood!)

So, as to my actually build, here are some pics:

fuselage together. Had to wrestle with a few parts as must be done with any limited run kit, but generally it went together satisfactorily, and really i kind of like the challenge of this compared to ease of Tamiya/Hasagawa kits - makes me feel more like a craftsman!



The tailpipes involved the most wrestling, and I managed to break off some fragile resin that connects the two tailpipes on the upper side. I'll replace that with thin plastic later:



Two views of the cockpit. Some more cleaning up needs to be done I see - dust from initial sanding of the fuselage seams is prevalent in these photos. I still need to add seat belts, control sticks, instrument panel shades, and some other small items tot his area:

Eetu, I painted the cockpit frames in RLM 66 instead of the exterior colours. I have seen this on some aircraft - especially if the cockpit glazing was updated. I assumed that it could happen on this one as well as the A-12s were rebuild examples for the most part. However, the RLM 66 is a little on the light side.

Vance very nice job on the cockpit. This is going to be an interesting build to follow. Especially with your personal memories added on top of the "normal" build.

Hi all!

Wow, many nice and cool builds going on here!

Keep up the good work, Mates!


Time to get some Yellow paint on the Magister!





When dry, I got the decals on.









These decals worked like a charm, as always is the case with Cartograph!

Then I masked the engine cowling so I could airbrush it black first and then Alclad Polished Aluminium.



The few remaining parts were glued on and the model was done!





















Thanks for a very, very fun and well run Campaign!

Cheers!

Stefan E

Hi All.

Finally finished my 1/32 Trumpeter Mig-21UM after some 'interesting' setbacks... Including stomping on it at one stage and destroying the fuselage.. but I digress..

Here are some piccies of the finished product. Please click on the pictures for larger images.









It is in the appropriately named markings of the 'Stress Team' of the Czech Air Force. This actual aircraft was destroyed after creating a smoking hole somewhere.

I have learned many lessons from this build, especialy about thin CA glue! And the way that Future self-levels never ceases to amaze me! The final clear coat looked terrible at first, but a few hours later it was lovely and smooth.

I also had trouble with painting the elevators as I painted them both the same way by accident. I then had to strip the paint off one of them. I tried the cheats way and quickly dipped it in laquer thinner and removed the paint. Problem is I forgot that laquer thinner is quite hot and it tarted to melt the plastic. I quickly removed the part and washed it thoroughly and stopped the melting. I then had to sand the part smooth again and then re-scribed the lines. Luckily the tail plane is covered by a huge decal, and that and the future have fixed the slight score marks I left in the soft plastic. PHEW!!

@ stefen: wow! that yellow and polished aluminum paint job is quite an eye catcher. beautiful work with the alclad!

@ Warren: really nice scheme choice. those big decals must have been a real chore. How did you manage to recover the stomped-on fuselage?

Well.. you see you take all the useable bits out first BEFORE stomping, then you have to buy another kit to source the new fuselage bits.. I will be trying to save the fuselage at a later date and building one in the Finnish colour scheme.

Oh, and I forgot, the Trumpeter colour call outs are not good. Hard to tell one colour from the other in the diagrams as the greys are too close. Maybe they should use cross-hatching or something like the old Airfix colour schemes were shown..

Excellent build, Stefan. I love the shiny cowling. It will not be difficult to find in the dark

Warren, that is a very funny scheme. It must have been interesting painting and decalling the beast.

Great entries in this campaign

'Interesting' is a nice way of putting it mate! Nah, it really wasn't that hard, just very fiddly, and the decals covering the wings were not too bad. The one place that was bad were the decals for the insides of the landing gear well doors.. ARGH!! Impossible to fit so I decided to make this an interim scheme before the doofus who thought up the brick wall patterns on them got a chance to apply them..

Hi all,

Long time no posts from me. Lots of things going on in my life, and very little time to build models right now. Hopefully, I will find more time soon.

Great work in this campaign, btw!

Well, at least I've started on my Saab SK 37 Viggen, and rescribed all the panellines on the old 1/72 Heller kit. The seats are from Maestro Models. I hope to finish this bird in time!


Cheers! // PolarBear

Really nice progress and finished entries everyone!

Somewhat surpringly, I've been making some progress lately.

Fitting the wheel spats was quite a chore: I had to sand the mating surface of the resin spats to a slight angle while trying to both keep the sanding straight, avoid sanding too much, sanding approximately the same amount from both pieces AND trying to work as fast as possible (as this is a thing I think should have been done to the masters by the manufacturer and not the modeler...). After getting the sanding done, I glued the spats in with superglue and blended them in to the wing with milliput and mr. surfacer, and some more sanding.


Although I first had in mind to detail the engine a litte by adding ignition wires, I abandoned that idea due to the strange inclusion push rods which shouldn't be in the front on the Wright R-975. So, I just painted it up along with the inside of the cowling (medium sea grey, IIRC).
As the engine was a bit loose fit to the cowling after my trimming and sanding, I had planned to put the cowling on a flat surface, drop in the cowling so it sat perpenicular on it's reduction gear housing, then attach it from behind with drops of glue.
But the several layers of paint in the cowling resulted in a nice and tight friction fit, so gluing the engine in place was even easier. I first ran a bead of superglue around the engine, and after that was set with acceletator, I mixed up some milliput and secured the engine in place for good.

Next was attaching the engine cowling to the rest of the plane. The instructions inaccurately called for the rather thick-walled cowling to be blued directly to the fuselage. No way.
As I had modified both the front of the fuselage and the cowling for a more realistic appareance, I had to think of another way to mount the cowling. The first thing that popped in my mind was metal wire, copper would be both robust and still allow some tweaking after gluing. To make a more robust join in the fuselage, I glued a piece of styrene there. That got me thinking: why not go all the way and build an engine mount from pieces of styrene sheet, with the copper wire inside. It worked nicely! Before attaching the cowling I painted the inside black to disguise the empty space.


With the cowling in place, I glued in the two tubes (venturi pipes?) that go behind the notch in the cowling. Missing from the kit nor mentioned in the instructions, I made them from stretched sprue. Not 100% accurate, as the real things are flared, but close enough for me in this scale.


Here's an overall shot of the kit at this point. The kit lacked the navigation lights near the front edge of the wing tips, so I drilled holes there and glued in pieces of brass tube, then blended them in with mr. surfacer and putty. The hole for the left one (upper right corner in photo) didn't go exactly center, the tube ending up a bit high, but I chose to live with it. Some sanding and putty should blend it in just fine.


Next I made and glued in the stabiliser support struts. Although the kit lacks these, the instructions point the modeler to make them from scratch, along with measurements. What they missed though, is that originally the planes had a single strut. In May 1942 the V-shaped struts were ordered to be fitted to all Pyrys.
Even though my choice of markings could be built with either strut configuration, I went for the earlier type as the kit's marking guide stated it's a Pyry stationed in Kauhava 1941. (and they were less of a hazzle to make! )
To make the strut, I cut to length some hypodermic needles and flattened them a bit with a hammer and pliers, then glued in place with superglue.


Next: some more scratchbuilding, in the form of the roll cage that goes between the cockpits.

That's it for this time.
:-H

Roll cage done. It wasn't that hard to do afterall when I just sat down and started working on it.

Painting it when already glued in place was tricky, but I only needed to touch up only a couple of tiny slips of the interior grey.

Today I dipped the vacu-formed canopy in Future and measured and cut a piece to stretched sprue to make a crossbar to be fitted inside the canopy behind the rear cockpit.
Hey, I'm getting closer and closer to painting stage. This must be the thing called progress I've been hearing about...

Hi all!

Here is another one I just finished and it fits into this campaign just right!

Click on the piccy for a larger view.





This is the 1/32 Trumpeter Republic F-105G Wild Weasel with aftermarket metal landing gear.

There are a few faults with the kit and decals, one being all but impossible to fix, but it looks like an F-105G and that is what is important to me as I am not a rivet counter!

quick update on my Sword 1/48 scale T-38 Talon:



I have a couple/few more hours of light sanding, adding finer details, polishing and masking clear parts, and whatnot before I hit it with its white paint job.

Some progress again.


Canopy glued on, masking done, ready for priming, save for masking the cowling opening (the tape shown in the pic was just to protect the finished engine).


Primer on, preshading done.

At this point I've done yellow fuselage & wintip undersides and painted the undersides light grey. I might even get the green and black camo done this weekend.

Camo painted and one coat of future applied:

Yep, I goofed while masking for painting the black on the fuselage side, but that will be covered by the national marking so correcting it won't be necessary.
Well, if you can count is a goof as I made up a plausible camo pattern for the left side as the instructions showed only the right side for this marking option...

Next I'll brush a coat or two of future where the decals will go, then put on the markings.
m:-)

Nice birdie as always Eetu!

What colours did you use for the camouflage? I might do something from your side of the Baltic in the future!



Magnus

Thanks!
Here's the paints I used:
Yellow - RLM04, Xtracrylics
Light grey - deck tan (986), Vallejo
Green - US dark green (016), Vallejo model air
Black - 1 part RLM66, 5 parts night black, both Xtracrylics

Vallejo's reflective green (890) is also good, but I like subtle olive tint of the US dark green. Btw, looking at the manufacturer's paint charts, they appear to have the same US dark green in their model color paint range as well. I think I'll have to get some, as I don't like hazzling with the model air. The FS number for the Finnish olive green should be 34096, but the few matching paints I've tried look quite dark, at least for smaller scales.
The dark grey was added to the black just to make a scale black shade.

Finally some progress in my Sk 37 Project, after a long hiatus from modelling;

Rivets!
Since I had to rescribe all the panel lines, I decided to try and make some rivets as well. First try for me! I must say that it was rather easy (the Heller plastic is perfectly soft). And rivets look so cool on NMF aircraft!!!



A closeup of the office(s) - The seats are from Maestro models and the rest of the interior from Eduards:


METAL!
One of the main reasons for choosing this project was that I wanted to practise on NMF finishes, trying to make it as realistic as possible. I used several nuances of Alclad II. The base is white aluminium, and then certain panels were sprayed with regular aluminium, duraluminium and semi matt aluminium. My intention was that the differences should show, but not become too strong (à la "checker board").

I used a soft pencil (6B) for the panel lines. Everything was softened with q-tips.

Here's my silverback! I kind of like the effect!

Here's her current status. Many details left to take care of, but hopefully I'll have a shiny new SAAB Sk 37 ready by this weekend! :-)

Comments and advice are welcome!

Cheers! // PolarBear

Great metal finishes on the models for this campaign- the Sk 37 looks great Björn, and the nose of Magister- wow!

I just signed up. I am doing a quick build of Airfix's 1/72 DH Tiger Moth. The web log is here .









As you can see, I've had some issues with the masking and paint peeling... hopefully fix this and get the decals on fairly quickly. I'll spend a bit of time painting the figures, as they are quite detailed. I'll be scratch building some little windscreens too.

Nice progress here everyone. That Viggen looks realyl nice. Great work on the natural metal surfaces!


Funny, this is something I haven't been able to accomplish in quite a while. That's actually finishing a kit, as an entry to a campaign, and within the deadline to boot!

The decals performed nicely. As I somehow didn't realise the small size of the markings, my masking goof didn't get covered even halfway through, so I needed to touch it up with a brush, as applying any kind of masking material over decals (even ones coated with a clear coat, ask how I know...) basically equals asking for trouble.

After getting the decals in place, I brushed a coat of future over them, then airbrushed the whole model with flat varnish. With flat coat dry, I painted some subtle chipping with metallics on the forward portion of the fuselage, as the plane only had metal outer skin there. I left the fabric areas untouched as I didn't care for guessing the exact color for chipping and scuffing from wartime b/w photos. And I also got the excuse that it's from 1941, so it should be relatively new.
With the metallic chippings dry, I applied pastel ground to dust to panel lines and other exterior details, nooks & crannies with a brush. Next I went over the whole model with q-tips and water, making a kind of a wash. With that dry, I did the exhaust staining with more pastels. When I was done and certain that there were no blotches or other flaws, I applied the final coat of 1:10 mixture of Tamiya flat base and future.

On the final stretch!
After the final flattish/semigloss coat drying overnight, I removed the masking tape from the canopy, which didn't come out as neat as I would have liked, with somewhat scuffed edges here and there (even though I used a new knife blade for cutting along the edges) showing light grey primer underneath, but it actually looks like scuffing and wear from use.
To finish it off, I glued the tailwheel in place, brushed some pigments to all the wheels to suggest dust and dirt, painted the tip of the pitot tube with silver, glued in the landing light, installed the navigation lights (resin parts from CMK) and put the propeller in place.

Enough with the rambling already, on with the photos!



























PS. I would have posted these yesterday, but when I was editing the pics, I noticed I apparently hadn't paid enough attention when attaching the navigation lights, as they were reversed. ("hey, isn't that wing with the green light the left one ... D'OH!") So it took a little while to fix and I took a new set of photos today. Fortunately I didn't glue the lights on with superglue, only a dab of Gator so they came out of the brass tubes easily.

There, my entry's done. This was a nice campaign, I had a good time. I'm also glad that I managed to finish sometime on time. It's been a while.

Very nice Eetu. The final matt coat came out really well. Looks like FUture and the Tamiya Flat Base go well together.

Eetu! Don't be so harsh on yourself, that is one very nice model you have there! I am really tempted to get one for myself, I really like the look of it.

When it comes to the mishaps on the way: Solving them is what makes the difference between the average clot and the excellent modeller !



Magnus

Thanks for the compliments, much obliged.
At first I was a bit disappointed with the slightly scuffed apparenace of the canopy frames, but it really doesn't look that bad now. I'm actually quite happy how it turned out.

Eetu- a very, very nice plane! I especially like the lights- they looks very realistic, especially considering the scale. And the weathering on the underside is very nice- I will have to try using pastel dust.