Gamera, that lighting is going to be really cool once finished.

Hot-pb, yep, that's a big kit.

Upstate John

Hot-Pb

The rotor head is exquisite!  What techniques do use to get such a realistic look? 

John

Hey John,

let's see...the chrome bits are airbrushed with Alclad chrome over a gloss black (Tamiya). The steel bits I painted flat black but then drybrushed with citadel's boltgun metal. I find that gives a nice metallic sheen that simulates steel and gunmetal pretty well. I touched up nuts and bolts with just a dot of testors silver enamel paint. I added bits of silver solder painted gloss black going in to the rotor head to simulate tubing and wires, but I gave up on trying to be accurate with those...was getting way too complicated. I decided to make the rotor blades tamiya flat black but then I airbrushed the steel edges with alclad steel over the flat black.

Hot-Pb

Thanks for the detailed explanation and taking time to write it. That is a lot work and steps on something so small.  It does make it much clearer how to get the real look I see on models.  I'm looking forward to seeing the build progress.

Best Regards,

John

jmabx, while surfing various forums I stumbled across (2) progress threads for the Italeri Tornado in the Black Panther scheme.  For your use and reference sir.

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=16584&hl=

http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=182367&hl=tornado

Cheers

Wow Great progress guys There are some realy cool builds going on keep up the great work.

Well I started the P-61 This is a realy nice kit.  I like the premium edition kits as it saves me from ordering the pe set as it's included the only extra I'm going to order is the Eduard mask set for this kit as I suck at masking canopy's. 

Here are some progress pics:

The kit:

The flight deck:

Well that's it for now.

Cheers

Bear

ok guys...I will be beginning shortly, as soon as I am finished uploading the 215 photos from my camera from the past two weeks or so...

Justin

I was able to get alot of the assembly done today.  I dont plan on superdetailing the 'rod, although I am kicking around the idea of making a chest plate and front rib cage for Mr. Rommel and his driver...

Now for the pics...

photo.php?pid=30631974&id=1185527603

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photo.php?pid=30717677&id=1185527603

photo.php?pid=30717677&id=1185527603

Thanks Arki, added a fire extinguser to my modeling tools! I'm looking forward to seeing your E-2C. I picked up a couple of Kinetic's F-16s and am impressed by the level of detail on them.

Hot-Pb, If the rest of your chopper looks as good as the rotor head assembly she's be an award winner for sure.

Superbear- looks good so far. I love the P-61. In the book 'Ghost Soldiers', an account of the rescue of allied POWs at the Cabanatuan camp in the Phippines a P-61 buzzed the camp to distract the Japanese guards from seeing the Rangers sneaking up on them. The POWs who'd been the camp three years had never seen anything so advanced. Some described it as 'Buck Rodgers come to life', 'a black barn swallow', and 'a War of the Worlds rocket'. Or my favorite- one soldier called it 'the angel of death'.

Sadly in 'The Great Raid', based on the book, though an excellent film they only plane of that era they had available was a C-47, somewhat less formidable in appearance...

Lots of nice work going on here! I have done a little bit on the schnellboot. The hull halves are together, the bridge interior is almost complete. The deck is just dry fitted at this point.

Everyone is going along well with their builds, which is great to see ;

The Airfix B-1B has a lot of fit issue's with just about every piece and after almost two weeks , It doesn't look like I have done that much despite working on her each evening .

The egine intakes were a bit of a struggle to get together , there are four small inlet vanes which fit inside each engine inlet ; I was carefull to match the part numbers with each corrosponding position inside the engine inlet , however three out of each four were too tall/high and when I tried to fit the top half to the bottom they didn't fit together properly ; not to mention that the top engine inlet section is much wider than the bottom half as well , which has ment there has been lots of sanding , puttying and more sanding .

Dry-fitting the two fuselage halves together is "deja-vu" as the top half is to wide for the bottom section , so I've added some plastic strip to the inside bottom edge of the top fuselage half , in the hope it will help bring the two halves closer together and reduce multiple sanding and puttying sessions.

I finally got the windscreen in place after four glueing and re-glueing attempts and then lots of sanding and puttying yet again .

Next step will be fitting the wings in and then closing the fuselage halves together , hopefully thing's will start to go a lot smoother from here onwards , I dont think I have ever spent so much time on a few pieces to an aircraft model before  ; This kit is a bit of a "dog" but I'm reasonably confident I can get her finished .

                                                                      John .

Hey Guys.

I just wanted to drop a line and ley you know I have started on the Valkyrie. Quite an impressive beast. Looks like I have my work cut out for me.

First problem I have found is that the tip of one of the wings is broken! Augh. Right outta the box! At least I have the snapped of piece, its about 3/4" long and its a clean break so I shoudl be able to reattach it without too much trouble.

I have got half the cockpit done and started into the exhaust cans. Lots of ejector pin marks all over the engine where the cans attach. This is just the tip of the iceberg from what I have been reading online. Everyone, go out and buy stock in Tamiya and Mr Hobby, cause I am going to be using a lot of filler :)

Ogrejohn, how is the fit on that kit?  Fairly easy build?

Helo, kudos to beating the canopy issue.  That which doesn't kill us....

deeve, pics, man!  We want to see the beast.

arki30

Ogrejohn, how is the fit on that kit?  Fairly easy build?

Helo, kudos to beating the canopy issue.  That which doesn't kill us....

deeve, pics, man!  We want to see the beast.

The fit is really good so far. Looks to be a fairly easy build right out of the box, just need to really plan ahead for painting. If and when I do this kit again I'm going to try and get the Griffon PE set for it. That set is really nice, pricey too!

Great progress on all the builds.  The P61 has always been on of my favorites so I'm looking forward to seeing the progress.  The B-1 sure looks like a lot of work but the result is looking good.

I'm almost done with the F4D Skyray and PBY-5a so here are photos of the F7U Cutlass kit sprue's that  I should be starting in the next week or two.

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I can't figure out how to get pictures with the click to enlarge option.  I hope these are OK.

Hi,

a small update on the ACH-47A. Progress is slow due to time constraints

The first problem is that the interior of this kit is not really an ACH-47A. I am pretty certain it is based on the Italian CH-47C. Anyways, the heater had to go and some of the wall detail had to be replaced. This is what we started with - the arrow points to the heater.

Here's what it looks like now. The heater has gone, a representation of wiring behind it added and 2 black panels onto the wall. Not much of this will be seen unless you peer in from the open back ramp so this will do I think. I might add a bit more wiring to the empty heater compartment though.

Next up is starting on the cabin floor. Going to use the salt technique to chip the floor. I'll write more about it once I have it done.

Paul

Hey Guys

I just wanted to drop another line with an update. Again no pictures (I am really bad with the picture updates).

I have put together the front part of the fuselage, sanded out the seams and rescribed the detail on that part. I have also put together the intakes and repaired the seams and stuff around there. A lot of filling and sanding work done so far. I have also rescribed one of the lower wing panels. Holy moley is this bird big.

Anyways, I am following the walk through from here http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=32764  This is pretty much what I am going through. Yes, the intakes are that bad......

Had some problems with the painting and had to strip it down and start over. Can't say I'm a big fan of MM Acryl paint. Finish is too sand paper like, not smooth at all. Thinned it, added a retarder and shot at about 15PSI and still dried bad. Oh well, I'm not going to strip it down again. Here is how it sits right now, pics are kind of crappy but they make it actually look better.

Looks good, John.  I've never had much issue with MM Acryl paint.  Tamiya acrylics on the other hand....

Like most things in life, your mileage may vary.

Here are some in progress pics of the Italeri XB70 Valkyrie. She is a big bird for certain.

I am rescribing the panel lines. here is some of the progress on the wing.

6 afterburners. i am going to dry brush and weather them once they are glued in place.

http://i697.photobucket.com/albums/vv334/stabmaster13/100_6201.jpg

Just a shot for reference. This thing is gigantic. I have laid it out approximately how long it will be.

Here are some nasty fitment issues. Big seams, large gaps, huge steps. Hours of sanding, all condensed into a couple of snapshots......

This is a piece that broke off. The top of this part snapped off sometime in transit. It is the engine ducts. Went back on without too much difficulty.

 Hope you enjoy my misfortune :) This is a beast of a kit. I dunno what I was thinking when I started rescribing the fuselage. I just hate raised detail I guess, especially when it gets partially sanded off. There is so much sanding involved with this kit that a ton of detail will end up being removed.

Nice work Deeve! Looks like its going to take up a lot of room!

Not much progress for me, just added a few things to the foredeck and bridge area.

Deeve, I completely forgot how many exhaust cans the XB-70 had!  Yikes.  Nice progress on a difficult kit.

John, that's looking sweet.

Thanks Arki!

Got a bit more done today.

So, here's the next instalment on the slow build I always seem to do. It did say we had to take the full year, right?

I didn't like what I had put in the heater compartment, so I removed it and did it again. I can only find a couple of partial shots of the heater compartment in ACH-47As, but what I have put in there is reasonably close.



You can see the centre console is in - Eduard PE.

The bulkhead is compete, but not glued in place yet. Next will be getting all the cockpit together. The Eduard set replaces most of the armoured seats and all the usual stuff. Going to be a bit tricky to get it all lined up right, but we'll get there.



Paul

Very nice looking work Paul!

Getting there. Still a bit more to add then a touch of weathering.

Ogre,

the E-Boat  is really looking nice.

Paul

Paul, looks good with all the equipment racks.  Kudos for going the extra mile on the heater.  Frankly I wouldn't have known the difference if you hadn't pointed it out.

Ogrejohn, that just keeps getting better and better.

Thanks Arki! Well, I'm calling this one done. Nice kit with good fit. There are some accuracy issues but it still builds up fairly nice.

Paul and Deeve- looking good!

OgreJohn- WOW- I suppose she's the first model finished here? And she's a beauty!

I sliced my finger open on the Reliant again the other week, bled all over the place, got mad, and stuffed her back in the closet. Seriously I will get her done by the end of the year.

Honest.

Trust me.

Schnellboot!  And a fine one at that. Well done!

Funny thing, but what I like most about it is the way the flag looks like it's flying.  Very realistic.