1/48 Hasegawa Arado 234 Blitz-After 3 years..Finally Completed

Thanks Joe and Mike.

Mike: It doesn't take very long with steady model building but I'm better than when I started anyways. There's alot of things / boo-boo's that I've learned (as most any modeler) to hide behind weathering or additional detail items. That being said, I'm far from being an expert.

For what this is worth I've got the top riveted but I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I feel good about the overall riveting and on the other I don't get that warm and fuzzy feeling.

I'm following along with interest in accumulating some modeling techniques. You guys are so talented it's scary. 

I would like to know how you would place that swaztika on the tail - it seems to have all three colors of the camo inside it. I know this is probably a dumb question but hey, at 73 I'm still trying to learn.

That is one cool scheme. I know you can do it Joe. I have complete faith in you.

I think I'm at a place now to where I can actually pull that one off........I think.

Thanks alot fellas. Still filling and sanding and drilling out replacement rivets and am contemplating drilling out the rest of the riveting detail as to make all the rivets uniform in appearance. As to what scheme I'll be going with.......I think I'm going for the top one on this sheet. Call me a glutton for punishment .....I just can't help myself. Gotta go for the "cool" and different looking one.

moving along nicely between the NFL and this 82deg.  cold front it's just to hard to get back in to the shop lol 

Excellent progress Joe. The filling and sanding work you have done has done the trick as far as I can tell. And great rivet/panel line recovery. Looks straight and sharp.

Nice technique in scribe and rivets!

Toshi

Looks really great thus far. Can't wait to see further progress on this one. 

Sounds good Nathan. I'll let you know.

mustang1989

Still thinking on that one there Nathan. I've got a really cool scheme I'd like to go with but I'm worried about skill level interfering. We'll see.

BTW.....go for it's all I've gotta say.

 

Let me know which one, I'm sure I might have some good refs for when I was researching mine.

That's looking awesome. Am excited to see the camo come together.

-J

Still thinking on that one there Nathan. I've got a really cool scheme I'd like to go with but I'm worried about skill level interfering. We'll see.

BTW.....go for it's all I've gotta say.

Jeez, you might just force me into it yet! I have been dying to unmask my canopy finally, but I have to finish painting and weathering. What colors are you going to use on yours? I remember finding out that some were still painted in RLM 70/71, and some were in the later light green-81 and brown violet 82.

Thanks Nathan. Speaking of 234's................you gonna grab yours down from that shelf and give 'er a go?

Nice work Joe. Keep at it. You'll be painting in no time. 

I broke out the pin vise this morning to restore all of the rivet detail that got sanded away at the front part of the fuselage. I've still got the section behind and on the sides of the fuselage at the wing root to go and that's not to mention re-applying the panel lines that are gone as well. Here's 45 minutes worth of sanding and re-riveting:

Thanks Toshi, Joe , Joe(Lawdog) and Johnny!

got the fuselage together and the camera upper and lower fuselage clear panels glued into place as of last week. This weeks progress so far has seen the installation of the wings. The body work is immense but nothing compared to what I'm going through with my VW Bus at this point. Posted below is the progress so far with the problematic seams noted in red. Lots of filling and sanding in all four areas.......

Nice legs.

 It looks absolutely fantastic despite your misgivings. 

Your landing gear sub-assembly housing looks exceptional.

Toshi

Thanks Gary. This kit is by far the better kit than the Hobby Craft one. Can't wait to see you build yours.

You are doing some seriously beautiful work here Joe!   I have both the Hobbycraft version and this kit in the stash.   This is an inspiring project for sure.  Thanks for taking us along!

Gary

Thanks John.

If you ask anybody closely associated with me in the modeling realm about my thoughts on landing gear, they'll tell you that I cannot stand this part of an aircraft build. To me it's the one thing that can absolutely make or break an aircraft build outside of a really obvious flaw or wing dihedral especially when it comes to shows. I judged aircraft at the last show I went to back in February and it was the one area of the build that was the deciding factor in a lot of the aircraft that were candidates for an award. Outside of the show and award realm, it's really irritating to spend a lot of time and put all kinds of work into a build only to see it either lean because the gear wasn't set up right or to see two landing gear legs that are waaay off in angles. I've got an Fw190 A8 build that I had such an experience with. It still sits in my display cabinet but has the flaw of incorrectly angled gear. I put all that time into the build and neglected to get the angles right and it really shows when it sits right next to my Fw190 D-9. So I get really nervous during this part of construction. This build is no exception to that rule and is IMO a lot harder to get the angles right because the gear has to be assembled in separate pods and then inserted into the fuselage as the halves are joined which is one aspect of this kit that REALLY sucks. I think I've got it though after a lot of time aligning and making sure everything was just "so-so". I didn't care for the RLM 02 that turned to more of a 66 after my shadowing attempts though, I can tell ya that!!
Here's this (and last) weeks progress so far:

Incredible level of detail!  Nicely done!  Can't wait to see more! 

John

Thanks fellas. Will be back on this one tomorrow. I'm building a VW Bus in the automotive section during the weekend and working on this one here through the week.

You're cookin' there, Joe.