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Having shown you each and every model from Max's Aircraft Museum, it's time for my first W.I.P. project. This is a Squadron enhanced kit with several resin and photo etched parts along with a good sale price. I had never considered this as a model for the Museum until checking out the real aircraft at Oshkosh in 2009. Being from Kansas where they were built, I'd seen them fly through the years from the onset of production but always considered them to be just a trainer. Not only was the attack version cool close-up but that thing hauled in it's demo fly-by. A little research revealed quite a history in the Vietnam war with an incredible number of sorties. Actually inspecting one and seeing it fly along with its history made it a great candidate for the Museum. This will be slow but I'll try to do it justice with my somewhat limited skills. I've been somewhat humbled by the class of work on the forum and I'll do the best I can!
Not impressed with the first encounter with the kits resin parts, in that they are crudely oversized and need to fitted. I broke a piece off the cockpit tub while removing a large amount of material off the bottom for fit. All is well and repairable, maybe to much gusto. LOL. Be patient with me, this will probably take a while!
Max
Max, I'll be watching your build closely. I have the kit in my stash but have been putting off working on it. It looks like a lot of work. Good luck and keep the pics coming.
Jim
Main WIP:
On the Bench: Artesania Latina (aka) Artists in the Latrine 1/75 Bluenose II
I keep hitting "escape", but I'm still here.
I really dig this plane!
I've built the Revellogram boxing a couple times. Once as a kid and again upon my 1st return to the hobby. The 1st...long gone. The 2nd...the one and only model my dog ever messed with. As I am mostly into 1/72 these days, I just picked up Academy's kit...and itchin o get crackin on it!
Oh this should be good! I've always loved the look of the Dragonfly all loaded up with napalm. I never understood the poor attempt by Squadron/Encore to enhance these older kits with substand goodies. As they want way too much for them too.
I had thought that the A-37 would have a pretty high loss rate, but only 14 were shot down in 68,000 sorties. But if you did get shot down 80% of the time you did not survive. The A-1 had a much higher loss rate per 1000 sorties, around 6 times higher, but the survival rate was much higher for the crew.
Here is a pdf of the loss rates in Viet Nam:
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/c016682.pdf
John
To see build logs for my models: http://goldeneramodel.com/mymodels/mymodels.html
First silly question: I see my Testors plastic glue doesn't work on resin parts. Any resin specific glue available besides super glue? I'm not liking working with that stuff.
Super glue is your best bet, but otherwise, 2 part epoxy will work.
I'll be looking forward to your Dragonfly WIP. That's a very cool looking aircraft. Thank's for sharing!
Toshi
On The Bench: Revell 1/48 B-25 Mitchell
Married to the most caring, loving, understanding, and beautiful wife in the world. Mrs. Toshi
Here's a couple of shots of the extras supplied with the squadron kit. The instrument panel stacks together giving depth which I like. I'm not to enthused about carving big casting clunks from the resin parts though. I won't be using all the resin parts on this one. The seats look good except for having to carve them off of a block. Maybe I'm just weird but I cannot deal with the lingering smell of Super glue and being old and big handed the glue acts too quick for me. I'll probabably use 2-part epoxy on the pieces I use. Just an on going report!
Well, some of my fears have been put away. A little wet sanding on 220 grit and the seats dressed down nicely! Wet sanding also got away from the resin dust which could be harmful I hear. Yay.
On my bench: Academy 1/35 UH-60L Black Hawk
"Can you fly this plane and land it?...Surely you can't be serious....I am serious, and don't call me Shirley"
lawdog114Your off to a great start on your first WIP. Resin is a pain but sometimes worth it. I look forward to your progress Max.
I'm a bit nervous, lotsa eyes watching me! Yikes! LOL!
Great to see a WIP from you, Max.
Sometimes I like to use CA gel with resin. It is thick and has a longer working/setting time than regular CA. I've had my tube for 2+ yrs and haven't touched it in probably 10 months. Just went down and checked, it's still fine. I use this BSI gel, but the CA gels on the shelves at local stores might be about the same.
Also, you mentioned you already know that resin dust is bad. Glad to see you wet sanding, but I really hope you are wearing a respirator.
I'm no resin expert, these are just a couple things I thought I'd throw out there for your consideration.
Hey Greg, Thanks for the info, I'll see if I can run down some gel and give it a try.
You're welcome. I hope it works for you.
A Tamiya she ain't. There's no easy way to seat the resin (or the standard one for that matter), cockpit tub into the fuselage due to poor instructions and crude fit. Between the side walls not fitting, which fitting is not a bad thing but to what? I'll figure it out by building the standard cockpit first and dry fitting it to get a position for the resin one. It seems like I'm wasting a lot of time to make this work.
I know this is what modeling is all about but in hindsight I should have just bought a better grade model at least for my purposes for the museum. Actually the exterior of the model looks fairly good in detail and fit but the interior reminds me of models from the 1950s.
One reason for my not-to-serious complaints as this was to be a quick practice model before I build the stash Academy 1/48 F-4 Phantom to improve my painting procedures. I've been away from modeling for over two years working on a 1/1 vintage racing motorcycle (A 50 year-old Hodaka of course) and the A-37 has a complicated camo paint which I personally wanted to improve on before tackling an expensive model. Now I'm seemingly trapped (lol) in a time consuming project just to make things fit. I'll get over it but I had to complain to someone.(lol again.) That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Humor me.
Nice subject. Resin cockpit parts quite often need thinning down, as well as thinning of the plastic.
Nice to see they include an Eduard PE set as well.
I am a Norfolk man and i glory in being so
On the bench: Airfix 1/72nd Harrier GR.3/Fujimi 1/72nd Ju 87D-3
I must say that the seats and interior are quite the improvement over the poor redition of the stock model. Hopefully my vigilance will prevail! LOL!
You know, having been away from model building for a couple of years, I've kinda been fighting this thing from the beginning but today somewhat of a revelation occurred after spending a several hours on the project. I'm a problem solver but incredibly slow in my action. I think, measure and contemplate a lot. I sometimes forget that model building is a series of challenges that are good for our way of thinking. I decided today that it was time to paint detail things. A little time on the internet looking at cockpit pictures and I was off doing the first cockpit paint. What fun! I was so immersed in the project that I lost track of time and was late for a dinner date with friends. I had forgotten what modeling was about at least for me. So much for the philosophy of model building but today was a good day.
Now that, is awesome. Not that you were late for your dinner date, but that you have found your joy in model building. :)
- Mike Brindos "Lost Boy"
Max, I was at Maraudercon Saturday with our club and we talked to a vendor that makes this "Crazy Glue" type glue that glues almost everything to anything. Low odor too. We bought some and it seems to work very well. If you want to check it out here's the site. www.DrMikesGlue.com
Hey thanks Jim, I checked it out and it sounds promising. I did buy some Super Glue Gel to also try. In reality I don't have too many resin glue joints and even though I hate the smell, I'm sure I can get through it.
A bit of painting on the seats today has re-energized me on the project and the fit problem is finally working out once I got the right attitude! Much more to do on the interior but it's a start.
BTW, I see the mold says Revell-Monogram 1992.
Wow! What a test of manual dexterity for us old people. Not perfect when magnified but passes the visual naked eye test at least for me. Trouble began when I glued the small strip of instruments at the top to my finger almost instantly. The instrument panel is only about 1'' long and being composed of six pieces with bends adds to the complexity of the task. All is well but this is why I don't do 1/72. LOL!
Back to the A-37 now that the Stuka is finally on display. This seemingly simple model has a whole list of time consuming problems with the cockpit tub fit being one of them. The resin tub and its two sides all have to be fit into the right fuselage half along with the front wheel well before assembling the two sides. All possible but it's fought me for a couple of hours. Also 3/4 ounce of total weight needs to be fitted on both sides of the wheel well. I've shaped the weights from fishing sinkers to try to fill all the space avialable to reach the desired weight. Really close. That's the report for now.
Nice work so far! Hope you can fit all the weight in. If you're short on space maybe you could hammer out some lead shot to hide elsewhere.
I thought about buying one of these but I don't know much about the Dragonfly. Is this your first use of resin parts? The first time I used resin was a P-51A that Squadron boxed up with a resin cockpit and wheels.
I think I'm OK on the weight. It called for .75 oz. or 2 grams none of which works out since there are 28.3495 grams in one ounce x .75 = 21.2621 grams. This is kinda typical of the whole instruction sheet, so double check everything before glueing things together. Depending how you read it I may have 10x too much weight. Goofy.
And yes, first serious resin experience and even though it has more detail it certainly is crude as in making things fit at least in my opinion.
The A-37's best feature was its straight wings. At low altitude and subsonic speeds they enabled the Dragonfly to be very effective at light attack. My source flew them in the 1970s and very early 1980s.
Chasing the ultimate build.
One reason that I built this kit was I saw one at Oshkosh in 2009. Not only was it a fine example but it was impressive in its flying demo. Here's a shot of it all loaded with ordnance.
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