Liking the Luftwaffe markings!

Future applied on my end, so begins the decaling effort for me.

Marathon decaling session today! These newer Italeri kits have some of the nicest decals I've worked with.

Weathering will be next.

Bish

jmabx ... Great looking Tornado, which marking afre you useing on this again.

Sorry for the late reply Bish, the Tornado will be in Luftwaffe markings. I was originally going to do the Italian Black Panther scheme but with all the fit issues I had with this kit, I don't think I was going to clean it up enough for a silver finish.

Jeremy and Arki: Great work guys! I love how pre-shading adds variation and interest to 'plain jane' grey aircraft. Though I keep thinking about doing a RAF Tornado in the old early '80s wrap-around grey and green scheme. Someday.....

Bish: Glad to see you back, frankly I wouldn't worry too much about the interior colour since buttoned up you won't be able to see much anyway. In fact the lighter yellow will probably show off the detail better than the darker green would anyway.

Cheers. And its amazing what you can learn when you actaully read the intructions. I found the feature you mentioned, so going to try again when i get back to camp tomorrow.

Thanks, folding wing option comes with the kit.  Good start on the B-24, and keep playing around with the camera.  Most things in life are trial and error.

jmabx Thanks, i have always like the B-24, and i will be building quite a few in the future. Great looking Tornado, which marking afre you useing on this again.

arki30 I am glad you noticed that on the photo, cause i hadn't. I really need toget the manual out again. Very nice E-2, are the folded wings a part of the kit or are they AM goodies.

Bish

 

Now, i really must work on my photo's. Any one have any suggestions. I can never seem to get decent pics of the cockpit.

Bish, if you look at your picture above you'll notice the newspaper print is in perfect focus.  Your camera is focusing on a point behind the object you want to photograph.  Using the macro function can certainly help.  Many digital cameras also have the ability to adjust the depth of field manually if all else fails.  I read up in the camera manual to see if you can and how to do this.

Finally have the major painting on my end complete.  And landing gear is installed so it is sitting on it's own feet, minus tires.  The lead weight added is keeping the nose planted, although once the radar dome and folded wings go on we'll see.  Tires and gear doors are next to be installed.

Flaps are installed on wings and de-icer boots painted.

The sharp-eyed and Hawkeye knowledgeable will notice I did not paint the inside surfaces of the flaps red as is typical.  And I've just noticed I carried the de-icer boot too far to the wing root. @#$%!

I found one picture of this exact aircraft here that clearly showed the outboard flaps were not painted red on the inside surfaces.  More research did not turn up any additional photos of the inboard flaps, but lacking any definitive information that would suggest the inboards were different than the outboards I kept them the same.  Which meant I didn't have to mask and paint them.

I'm very close to putting a Future coat down to start the decaling process.  Whew!

NIce start on my all time favorite plane Bish!   I wouldn't worry about the interior color, looks fine by me. I goofed up painting my kit as you'll see. The PE set adds some nice detail. I don't know much about cameras other than to use the macro function when taking close up pictures. Hopefully someone else can chime in to help you out.

Finally slapped some paint on the Tornado!   The underside is light ghost grey and I mixed the other two topside colors. As you can see, I got a little crazy with the blue in the grey-blue color! Definitely not correct but I like the way it looks so I'm going with it.

Still a ton of work to do on this beast!

Finally, got started on my B-24 at the start of the Sept. After 4 months away from the bench, i thought i would be rearing to go. But it took me a while to get motivated and it was a slow start. So between that and work progress wasn't very good at first, but now it's coming along nicely. This is the kit i am useing, along with an Eduard Big ED set. It will be back dated to a B-24 H and i will be adding  decals from Xtradecal buidling the Queen of earts from the 466th BG based at Attelbridge.

After about 3 weeks, i had enough done to take some pics. Afraid i wasn't able to put them up at the time. Here are some pics of the interior just before i closed it up. I can't seem to get decent close up pics, so sorry for the blurred images of the cockpit.

As you can see i painted the interiour Zinc Chromate yellow. I have a funny feeling i have made the wrong choice. I have seen some colour pics of this being used, but it always seems to be on the inside of wings and other areas not seen from the outside. Worst thing is i even have the correct interiour green. I have left this one yellow and marked it down as a lesson learnt.

Heres a close up of the right waiste position.

By Thurs i had close up the fuselage and added the cockpit. So this is how it stands now.

Now, i really must work on my photo's. Any one have any suggestions. I can never seem to get decent pics of the cockpit.

Thanks for looking, and now i will catch up on what everyone else has been upto.

Thanks Gamera and Arki!

That big fin sure does look cool! I always thought the Tornado was a big plane but after putting this kit together, I realize that it's not that big at all, especially compared to the F-14.

Here's another quick update. Preshading is done. This will be my second attempt at preshading so I hope it comes out good. My first attempt was a Revell A-10 and the preshade was a little too subtle for my liking so I'm trying again.

I just love the lines of the Tornado.  That gigantic shark fin is so sinister!  Well done, Jeremy.

Jeremy: thanks and great work on the Tornado! She's coming along quite nicely.

Arki: Looking forward to pics, what you've done so far looks sharp.

Okay... I did get my butt in gear!

The Tornado is all together and the gazillion panel lines that I sanded into oblivion have been rescribed. Canopy was dipped in Future, masked and attached. Here she is before and after a quick coat of primer just to get rid of the red putty and darker primer. Next update should be the preshading.

Gamera - I can't believe those shuttles have legible writing on them! Even if you can't finish, keep us updated.

Arki - Coming along I presume? Looking forward to more.

Now, I need to get my butt in gear!

Ah, now that's clever.  And easy.

On my end, I have finished masking and painting the de-icer boots and turbine exhausts.  Now I have to repair all of the areas where the masks pulled up paint.  Aggravating, but fixable.

Thanks Arki, they were actually pretty simple. Each shuttle was just three pieces of resin, the main hull and the two out-rigger engine pods on each side. The decals were four solid sheets of mostly clear decal film for the nose, stern, port, and starboard. Thankfully I didn't have to position every tiny little decal or they'd be everywhere.

How in the world did you get the decals on?    The shuttlecraft are tiny, the decals are even tinier!  I would have completely messed those up.  Nice work.

Ok, here are the shuttlecraft as promised, one sitting on an American nickel the other on a Canadian one:

I noticed they still need a coat of matte varnish and if you look really close the decals say 'U.S.S. Enterprise' on their sides. It's tiny enough that I'm not going to try to correct it.

I'm afraid I probably won't be finishing this GB on time. I've been having to force myself to work on the Reliant which I hate to do since it's supposed to be a 'fun' hobby. We'll see how it goes.

Arki, Jeremy- great work guys!

I finished up the two aftermarket shuttles. In 1/537 (aka box scale) they're slightly longer than a fingernail. I've started work on the starboard shuttle bay which I'm going to show open. Since the inside of a Miranda's shuttle bay has never been shown on any Trek episode or movie I'm going to make up something and wing it with parts from an old mouse (computer not the animal!) and my junk drawer.

Will post photos when I get a computer that actually works again.

You're moving along now Arki!   The preshading came out perfectly. Hopefully I can get similar results with my Tornado. If you didn't point out the panel lines, I never would have noticed.

I'm still trucking along too. No progress pics but here's where she sits now.

This kit has major fit problems and I still have a ways to go before I'm ready for paint. Many panel lines need to be rescribed too.

Another quick update (am I the only one still working on this GB?).  Managed to get paint down, underside white and topside Light Gull Gray.  This is an older Desert Storm scheme, hence the two-tone paint.

Some of the rescribing didn't quite come out as planned, and I had some paint peel-up upon removing masks, but I'm fairly satisfied with the current status.





Props are also painted and assembled.



Next is to mask off the numerous de-icer boots.  Ugh.

Cheers

After a planned vacation and unplanned emergency appendectomy, I haven't had much progress on the Hawkeye.

But I'm back at it and have something to show.  Wings are assembled and preshading is complete.  I'm finally ready to start throwing paint down!







Cheers

very nice work everyone

Long overdue for progress pics.

First up is the nose cone.  Kinetic molded the nose cone as clear glass since there is a small window on the bottom for the landing lights (I think), as seen here on the real deal.



So, before the nose cone can be installed the landing lights have to be installed first.  However, I realized I had a slight step in the front caused by the fuselage halves not lining up perfectly (likely my fault) that would cause a gap when the nose cone was installed.  So I cut some styrene shims and closed the gap.





Then the landing lights and such were painted and installed.



Next I assemble the main canopy pieces.  Kinetic for whatever reason molded the main canopy in 5 parts, the main piece with two top small windows and two side windows.  I can somewhat see having the small top pieces separate if you wanted to display them open, but there was no reason for the side windows to be separate.  I also installed the overhead instrument panel.  I lightly detailed it since there is no way to see it was closed up.

Next nose cone and main canopy were installed, and I filled and sanded the seams around them.





Little bit more sanding required, but the seams are decent enough to mask the canopies.



Next step was a milestone.  Getting the engine nacelles on the wings.  Every build review I've perused states the nacelle fit is mediocre.  While I wouldn't say mediocre is the right word, I wouldn't call the fit great either.  The locating pins on the wing and locating holes on the nacelles don't quite line up, so I had to open up the holes a little to massage the fit.  Even then there is a still a step at the top of wing joint with the nacelle.  Filler is required to smooth out the step.

Since these photos, I've rescribed panel lines that were lost in the seam work.  I'm really close to throwing down some more primer to check the seams again, and then start on the assembly of the wings and flaps.

Slow and steady.

Cheers

Thanks Gamera!

I decided to model the speed brakes in the closed position. I figured that would cause problems on a kit like this where they are made to be open and it has fit problems to begin with. The port side fit well enough for me to leave it alone but the starboard side left a step that had to be corrected.

I glued some styrene strip on the inside edge to push it out to meet the side of the fuselage. I also added some styrene in a few other places where it had some gaps. Once the glue dried overnight, I sanded down the styrene strip and kept test fitting until I had an acceptable (for me) fit.

Not perfect but much, much better. Once it's glued in and painted over, it will look great. An easy fix for what would have looked pretty bad if left alone.

Arki and Jeremy: great work guys!\

For some reason I can't get the friggin' portholes on the sides of the Reliant to come out straight. And stripes around the sides of the hull are just going to bring more attention to them being kitty-cornered. I'll figure out something grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....................  

Thanks Arki! I know it's not even close to accurate but you're right, it adds depth and keeps it busy in there.

Finally got the seats painted and in the cockpit. I'm glad I can start putting her together now.

It always surprises me how much simple extra pieces of styrene can add to the depth and three-dimensionality of a build.

Nice work.