Hey all,
I've been struggling with a cranky DSL modem and haven't been able to keep current. Thanks for keeping the GB lively in my short absence.
eatthis: the F-14 looks fine to me; a nice weathered gray. Keep on going; you're off to a great start and may be the first to claim the F-14 badge who actually built an F-14.
oddmanrush: Well, now that Bish has shown you the secret handshake, you're part of our crew. I would have shown it to you personally, but then I would have had to kill you... Top secret, you know... but you catch on quickly.. mums the word.
macattack: Looks like you and I are tacking the same components of the B1. Nice painting of the SRAMs, although I wonder why the fins were painted orange. Can't see any purpose and its not like someone on the receiving end would notice or care... The 0,020 card looks fine for the vortex generators from your photos but I'm sure that the 0.010 would be fine also. Whether it's accurate??? The 0.02 in 1/50 scale (well almost) would be 1" on the 1:1 aircraft. From my photos, that may be a bit generous but certainly not something that warrants a re-do. Your call.
And thanks for the advice on mounting the bays. I've made some progress there as well.
I've gotten the rear landing gear bay and aft bomb bay assembled and glued into the fuselage. The landing bay required some sanding of the support posts in the fuselage to fit but overall it was a relatively minor issue. The aft gear bay fit with some small seams that were filled with thick CA. I then painted all of the joints black to highlight any areas that still needed work. From the inside, here's what it looks like:
The fit of the bays was impressive; I guess that I was expecting to deal with gaps betwen the side walls and the fuselage, but nope... Some pics from the outside showing the gear bay and aft bomb bay with an empty TMD mounted. It will stay that way. Another TMD in the center bomb bay will carry a full cohort of ten CBUs.
... and a closer shot of each of the bays showing some of the plumbing and scratch work that was added:
The other two bomb bays are still works in progress. At the start, I purchased a set of 4 resin CBUs from shull24.com. After receiving them, I made the decision to fill one bay completely with 10 CBUs and leave the other empty. However, the resin bombs were a bit on the expensive side so I purchased the Hasegawa IDF weapons kit which supplies 6 CBUs. Perfect eh? Wrong!! The Hasegawa CBUs are about 0.25" longer and greater in diameter than the shull24 resin bombs. They wouldn't fit in the bomb bays... So I bit the bullet and bought another 2 sets of the resin CBUs. So that bay is on hold until they arrive and get painted. The fore bomb bay will carry 4 2000 lb JDAMS mounted on a rotary dispenser. I started modifying the kit rotary last night..
... to look a bit like the real thing...
Here's what I've gotten so far:
left side:
right side:
bottom:
The front end of the 1:1 rotary doesn't bevel like the kit part, so a short piece of 0.5" plastic tube was filed to fit over the kit rotary and glued into place. The large circular end piece was scribed from plastic sheet usign a quarter as a template. Two pieces were glued together, a center hole drilled out by successively larger drill bits until it fit over the flange in the kit part. The edges of this were beveled by filing and "bolts" were added by punching holes with a sharp pointed dissecting tool. Boxes and plates were constructed from rectangular plastic tubing or sheet, respectively. The holes represent anchoring points for the spaghetti wiring that is present on the real thing. We'll see how that goes.
Overall, it's been a productive week; things have gone together and I felt like I moved towards completion of this beast, although clearly there's still alot to go. BTW, the fit of the center fuselage to the fore cockpit looks horrendous. I anticipate some real fun when these parts get joined. Hint: buy stock in anyone who manufactures sand paper....
Don