Twin Engine Fighters GB

Well I guess this will be my first GB!

 Count me in. I have The Pro Modeler F-4 that I want to take a crack at.

I've started and almost finished my he219, and ill be airbrushing tomorrow.  ill have pics up then.

this gb is a really nice break from the corsair I've spent the last month on...

here's my painted 219:

next, Ill be doing a clear coat and doing some weathering.

please comment!(this is my first airbrushed mottled camo so go easy on me)

The 'cat is starting to look like an aircraft now.  The wings are glued in place and faired in.  The nacelles are attached with a few gaps to fill.  Attached the horizontal stabilizers and they move the cg aft and now I have to add more weight.  The cockpit is just about full, so I'm hoping the fronts of the nacelles are far enough forward so that when I add weight to them she'll sit proper.  If not, I'll take John's suggestion and prop her up with a 55 gal drum and a crate.

http://public.fotki.com/lewbud/aoshima-f7f/

Got the gaps filled and sanded on the nacelles.  Mocked up the landing gear, added a few more BB's to the nose and the inside of the nacelles.  She's sitting on all wheels for now, will see what happens when I add the tubes and wire for the wing folds and the wing tips.

http://public.fotki.com/lewbud/aoshima-f7f/

Hey Everyone,

I've made some progress on the P-38J, painted the twin booms & wing area interior green (near the wheel wells & cockpit), also finished painting & assembling the 'pit.  Nothing fancy, just straight out of the box Revell cockpit.

air superiority fighter  :)   Your F15 with it's twin jet-holes (lol) will be most welcome

Finally started on the fuselage pod of the Widow, and with a little putty, it's goin' ok...

Hans,

The Widow's looking good.  Made a little progress on the Tigercat.  Got the landing gear, bays and wheels painted gloss white.  Was getting ready to shoot another model and discovered that my airbrush was kaput.  Gotta go to the LHS and pick up a rattle can of Dark Sea Blue.  Will post pics when the paint is dry.

Thanks, man.. I finished up the nacelles today, I cut off the "display" engine nacelle on the left boom just forward of the cowl flaps and vacuformed another cowl from the right-side cowling... Can't stand the "one open, one closed" configuration of the kit as is...  I ground down the cowl-flaps to a taper more or less the same as the right boom's as well, to make the new cowling fit.

I also cut out the carb and oil cooler intakes from the wing's leadin'-edges and installed some individual intake vanes, six in the outboard, three in the inboard intake and painted them green zinc-chromate... Speakin' of which, I was lookin' over the Black Widow Group build, I noticed that most everyone had the interiors in overall green zinc-chromate, but I didn't have a warm-fuzzy about that, so I checked my reference (Wings of Fame, volume 15) and it showed several birds with the green primer in the wheel-wells and such, but a mix of black sidewalls and green zinc-chromate floors & seats in the cockpits of the black-painted Widows... I felt this was more accurate, since US nightfighter crews usually had the cockpits re-painted in black or dark gray after they reached operational units, to cut down on reflections on the interior of the canopy and windscreen.

I also considered cutting out the screens on the bottom of the nacelles and replacing them with mesh, but decided against it, since I didn't have a good look at them on the real bird..

Anyway, here it is with the sub-assemblies put in place (not glued) and I'll start adding wieght to get it to sit on it's nose-gear tonight.  It should be ready for paint by Saturday if I get all the sanding and filling done, although I'll likely hold off for a bit longer.  Once it's ready for paint, I'll start construction on the diorama base... I haven't yet decided on ETO or PTO though, nor if I'll do a historical P-61 or make "me" the "pilot" and do a custom nose-art of some kind (I do this a LOT).  There's just something about seeing MY name on the canopy rail of a bird I like, LOL...  If I win the Powerball, I'll do it on a real Warbird, for sure, lol...

I also have an idea about the P-61's nose... There's one photograph of a Widow in which the nose plexiglass isn't painted or frosted and the radar is quite visible in it...  I'm seriously considering modeling that bird, after vac-forming the nose out of clear...  There's also another in which the setting sun is behind the nose and the radar's visible through the nose in that one as well, even though the nose is frosted... I'm thinking that the "short-nosed" -61's weren't frosted over very heavily, it just looks that way in the photos... Standing up in front of it, one might be able to see much of the radar..

Think I'll have to study those pics a bit more...

*EDIT* Upon further review, it appears the noses were mostly painted.

I've run into a major snag on the Widow now... I gave it three coats of paint on the upper surfaces and STILL have these goofy "color swirls" in the plastic showing through the paint.  I used Tamiya OD for the uppers, and everywhere the plastic is showing some kind of color variation, it comes through the paint.. It did NOT happen to the undersides, which was sprayed in a custom mix of small bottles of Testor's greys...

I'll be stripping the OD off in the next few days and doing a sand and rescribe-job, then shoot it with enamels.. I've never seen this behavior before in the Widow kit, although this is the first one I've done in Tamiya OD... This particular one is the Revell release, BTW... It may boil down to it becoming a "hangar queen" and I'll be starting over with the '91 Monogram kit I have in the closet... I've got another Revell Widow in the closet as well, so I'm not particularly concerned.. YET...

Hans,

Did you use primer before painting?  I had the same thing happen on the underside of race car that I didn't use primer on. 

Serious bummer!  Wonder if it had some kind of very stubborn relase oils on it ?

might try wiping it down with Laquer thinner or even acetone, carefully!

Did you use primer before painting?

No, but upon reflection, I wish I had... I've had many, many kits with those "swirls" in the plastic before, but they were never an issue, since I painted with enamels exclusively.  This was the first time I used Tamiya through an airbrush on a kit with that stuff... As a said earlier, I didn't have the problem on the underside, it had the same swirls as the top, but I painted the underside with Testor's enamel... I won't make that mistake again.

Wonder if it had some kind of very stubborn relase oils on it ?

No, this defect was "in" the plastic, not on it...  I've since added the white for the invasion stripes, just outta curiosity, and the enamel covered them in that area of the wings, so I may just shoot the whole thing in enamel after I strip it today... 

bspeed,

 I saw your post in the thread for my A-10, and would be very interested in joining the group build.  Since you asked me, I assume it's not too late to join, and I just started my newest model yesterday.  So if ok, I'd like to add my 1/48 Revell F-15E Strike Eagle to the list!

Awesome, we will all be looking forward to your contribution!

thanks for joining in!

tempestjohnny wrote:

OK finally started my Mossie.  nacelles and wings almost finished starting cockpit soon. WIll try and get some WIP pics shortly  JOHN

  John, what scale are you building? And any AM in it........Harv

P61 Black Widow diorama progress shots...

Slowly but surely, it's coming together.  I did what I could with the stupid paint, I think that I'll be able to hide it pretty well under the weathering... The model is at 80% complete, the rest of the dio at 50%, the figures have only been posed and initial paint laid on...  Thought it would go a bit faster, but I didn't realize just how LONG it takes to build 1/48th scale step-ladders...  The base is 2 plastic photo box frames glued together (my preferred base material), with static grass, sheetrock mud for the concrete hardstand, and un-thinned (makes it "stand up" for a 3-D effect) black acryilic paint applied with a syringe for the tar caulking on the expansion joints.    The tug came from the Pro Modeler ground support equipment set, the figures are kit-bashed Monogram ground crewmen from the various kits out there.  I'll have a complete list of construction notes when I finish...

Anyhow, that's where I'm at with it, gonna take a couple days off from it as well... I've been modeling 40-50 hours a week since about the middle of June and all but one of my (14) dioramas are unfinished... The only one that's finished is the "Thanks" diorama I showed WIP shots of in the Diorama Forum (Bill Mauldin WIP), so I have to get busy on some armor, both for the Desert Storm GB, and the USAAF GB... Not to mention the "Hollywood at War" diorama GB I started is about to begin (D-day minus 20, still time to sign up if you haven't already done so, hint, hint..)

If you think you see something that needs attention that I may not be aware of, feel free to sound off about it (don't sweat the stripes though. I'm doing that sloppily on purpose, same with the drainage ditch... It's not done either...)... When you stare at a diorama for a while, trying to think about what's missing, what's there, what's wrong, and what has to happen, it's easy to overlook the obvious...