In case anyone's interested...  Just saw this on eBay, has about one day left.

Conversion for the Frog 1/72 meteor into an F.8 version as flown by the Aussies in the conflict. 

http://cgi.ebay.com/AIRMODEL-1-72-GLOSTER-METEOR-F-8-CONVERSION-KIT-/380304014726?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item588be2bd86

Would be a heck of a lot cheaper and more fun (fun = work and skill building) than the CMK kit for the $30-40 that it runs.

Just trying to help!

Yep, you're right!  I made a mistake in my nomenclature and forgot which version was which.  Sorry about that folks!  The Airfix 1/72/HO/76 scale kit is a TLAR unit, and it turns out just dandy, I do have one of the LVT's with the turret, I'm remembering now that when I bought it I needed to change the gun.  *DURP!*

In other news, one of my students broke a blade off of the prop for my F4U-5(N).  I have no idea how to repair it since the kid threw away the part!  I need to probably get another kit and salvage one blade or maybe replace the whole prop.  This is not going to end well.  I've also found out that I MIGHT be out of a job for next year.  But they can't tell me until at least May, but probably July.  I renew my contract on Sept. 8...  Not a lot of time to scramble around for a job!  There's a few openings at one of the places near the post here,  the nice thing about htem is that I'd be a civilian employee of the DoD and would have access to the post and all facilities there.  Would be super sweet...  And the guys are getting up to $20.00(USD)/hr.  Downside is that I'd actually have to WORK 40 hours a week, and no free internet access at work.  We'll see what the future brings.

I'm currently deciding which kit to build next, I want a "big" kit to hang fom the ceiling in my classroom.  I'm kinda looking towards either the C-47, C-46, A/B-26 kits, or the B-29.  The Superfort actually looks fairly easy except for the finishing.  And I HATE building bombs!!!  But I may go with it anyway...

What age range to you teach Draken? You're very brave putting models in your classroom, the only place I ever found that was safe my kindy kids was on top of a very tall bookcase! And even then they tried to climb it...Good look with the big kits - I've on the lookout for one of Academys B-29s with Korean war markings for ages as well as a Williams bros C-46. The last one I saw on Ebay UK went for £46! Does anyone out there know of or have spare any  1/72nd aftermarket decal sheets for a Korean war F-94? I have the Heller kit but lack the correct markings. 

Finished the F9F today. Looks like from votes received that the LA-11 is next onto the desk. Though its going to have to go around my commission work. Here's a couple of phots...

Andy

Draken: Ouch! I've been laid-off twice and it's not fun. Good luck and I'll cross my fingers that things work out for you.

Doc Win: The F9F looks fantastic! Yes I know the modern grey is much better camo but still I love the navy blue on those old warbirds. Very colourful aircraft with the red and white markings and rockets plus the aluminum leading edges. Great job on her!

BTW: Don't have a 1/72nd Korean War B-29 but I have one of the Aeromaster sheets for one. I'm building it for the Natural Metal GB. I won't be using the 'Our Gal' noseart (the one in the middle featuring the nice lady in her birthday suit) so if you want it let me know and I'll cut out the middle section of the sheet and mail it to you (no charge).

http://www.modelingmadness.com/scotts/decals/aero/am72129.htm

That would be absolutely fantastic Gamera if you could? Send me a private message and I'll let you know my address.  Glad you like the Panther - there's a few flaws with her, the parafilm M didnt keep out all of the varnish so a couple of spots on the canopy have fogged. She goes quite well with the Corsair, Skyraider & Banshee.

Draken, Im also struggling on the work front. Things are so bad here in the UK that I haven't worked a full 12 months since the winter of 2008! Bad times for archaeologists over here...

Going back to the subject of markings and decals, does anyone also know of aftermarket sets for Korean war C-46/7 and Privateer.?

Andy

Dr Win: Double ouch! Over a year, sorry to hear that! I'm a biologist but work as a lab tech in a water treatment plant. A massive number of water plant operators over here are retiring over the next decade so the field has a large demand for new people right now. Hopefully it will keep me employed. Cross your fingers.

As an archaeologist what's your field if I may ask? The Celts, Saxons, Normans, or some other group?

Sending you a private message when I finish here. Will photocopy the instructions and run by the post office to find out the postage on Monday and should be able to mail them the same day.   

I don't actually have a 'field' per se. Working in British commercial archaeology you have to be prepared to tackle anything that comes your way, the last dig I was on last year (before a trapped sciatic nerve put me spectacularly out of action) was on the site of the British Museums new building where we found part the the 1640s civil war defences of Northern London. But I have over the years dug from Paleolithic right up to recording 19th century Victorian industrial structures! Not that much archaeology is taking place at the moment - we are so tied into the construction industry that when they went down the tubes so did we and its yet to recover. Our profession has lost about a third of its staff in the last couple of years and it doesn't look like getting better...  

Pretty cool, nice that you do get to work on a wide variety of subjects. Sorry to hear things are so bad, things seem to be tough all over

Ok Andy, your F9F has been added to the opening page line up. And a fine addition she is! I'm looking forward to your next work!

Well, work has started on the B-29 Superfortress.  The cockpit, rear gunner area, and tail gunner areas have been assembled and installed.  Miscellaneous ZnCrO3 areas have been painted, and I'm now at the point wher I have to assemble the bombs prior to installing the other fuselage half.   The interior is _VERY_ tricky!  You have to line up the two sections with the tunnel between them.  The instructions don't tell you that the locator tabs for the sections are on the port half of the fuselage.  Another minor beef is that the decals for the cockpit controls are too large and hang over the sides of the instrument panels.  And there's none for some of the other panels in the aircraft...  Only the pilot, copilot and engineer.  The engines aren't too bad, but they could definitely have stood from having BOTH sections instead of the front section only with the back section mmolded into the plastic.

The fit is generally good, but placement of a lot of the interior parts is kinda wonky due to the locator tabs for the instrument panels being on the outsides of them, not the insides as is normally the case.  The beds are included in the aft crew area (as is the molded in toilet!  Be sure to paint it gloss white for the porcelain coating.) despite them being entirely invisible after assembly.   The tail gunner's position is incredibly spartan, and there's no interior panel to stop you seeing the rest of the inside from the opening for the tail bumper when it's left deployed. 

No WIP pics at the moment, I'm waiting to get a few more before posting them to Photobucket.  I'm going to be building the bombs next (I HATE building bombs and doing wheels on armour!) and the nice thing about the Academy kit is that it includes the striping and markings for all 32 bombs!  So not only do I get to do an incredibly repetitive hateful job, i get to do the decals for it as well.  Had I mentioned that I hate doing decals? 

Anyway, on the home front, possible good news!  I already have an interview for a DoD school teacher position just up the road at Camp Casey in Dongducheon.  Keep good thoughts for me!

Dr Win , nice job on the F9F Panther

Draken , sounds like you have made a great start on your B-29 , good luck with the rest of the build .

I have made some progress on my armor builds .

I added to the bench , Italeri's 'fast assembly' M3A1 and 4x4 along with Academy's 2.5 ton cargo truck ;

The DUKW is airbrushed and ready for final assembly as well as the M3A1 and 4x4 ;

Starting to assemble Academy's 2.5 ton cargo truck ;

The churchill bridge layer is coming along okay ;

Italeri's M-20 Armored Car goes together quite well ;

Next I'll start glueing the M-16 chassie and cabin parts together .

                                  John .

Hey Helo!

Awesome work!  I simply can't keep the parts straight on so any models at once, or I'd build more at a time.  I did the fast assembly suspension for the M-8 and M-20, but did everything else as originally intended on them.  If you haven't gotten a chance, check out my Academy 2.5t truck build on my web page. 

http://sites.google.com/site/modelingthekoreanwarin172scale/home/ground-vehicles-of-the-korean-war/allied-armour/us-support-vehicles-includes-towed-artillery/academy-cckw-353-gmc-truck 

I detailed the engine with upper and lower radiator hoses, ignition wires, coil, battery, battery cables, fuel lines and painted the engine Studebaker blue.  Should've just gone with a light grey, but wanted it to look nice.  I'm also impressed with the AVRE, I've got that kit back in my stash in the states and had looked at it many times only to consider it a difficult build and put it back on the shelf.  I'm gonna have to delve into one here in Korea soon, so I'm happy to see it's not that hard.  :)

Ditto on the Panther Dr Win, looks great!

Thanks for sharing some of the assembly points on the B-29, Andrew.  And good luck on the job!

Stik, thanks for the LVT info.  I'm glad you mentioned silly putty.  I had used that before, but didn't think about how it could be rolled into smaller "worms".  That is really going to come in handy for some German camo jobs I have coming up.  I can't seem to find a small scale LVT right now.  I don't want to get into 35th as of yet.  The IPMS's "Model Fiesta" is next month, so I will probably have a good chance of finding it, or anything else for that matter!

John, you have quite the mechanized army going on there.  That DUKW is cool.  I've always liked those.  I'm going to try and fix/finish the exhaust streaks on the F-82 today.  Thanks for the decal help with that John.  At some point, I would really like to build another Twin Mustang.  If somebody (eduard) ever makes a photo etch set for it, I definetely will.

To those of you having/had health and job problems, lets hope 2011 is a great year for you, and all of us.

Cheers,

Greg

Two more attempts, and botched them both on the F-82.  I am going to use my old airbrush next try.  Oh yeah, the new issues of Military Aircraft Monthly and Scale Aviation Modeller International both have articles on the Skynight.  Haven't read them yet.

Cheers,

Greg

Greg, off the top of my head, the only LVT kit I know of in any"Braille Scale" is the Airfix LVT-4. Which is a shame if that is the only kit out there. Considering the importance of those things to amphibious warfare. I am a big fan of Amtracks and am working on a 35th scale collection of them.

Draken: good luck with your job interview. And with the Academy B-29. It's a fine kit, mine went together really well. Only problem is adding a pile of lead fishing sinkers to the nose to keep her from being a tail-sitter. There's not a lot of area to stuff them and I picked up a set of aftermarket white metal landing gear for fear that the combined weight would be too much for the plastic ones. 

Hopefully I'll get her done soon, I've been concentrating on my Ho-229 for that GB, my DH trainer Vampire for the Early Jets GB, and getting the figures and diorama done for my K1A1 here. Wish I could build at Helo's rate! And BTW congrads Helo on some more great looking stuff.

Greg: Good luck with the airbrush, I think they're the third most difficult thing I've ever tried to figure out.

Women are number one. Computers are number two...

Greg , sorry to hear about the issue's with finishing off the Twin Mustang , I'll keep an eye out for those two magazine's you mentioned with the article's on the SkyKnight , thanks for the tip .

Gamera , I'll pick up some of those white metal landing gear for B-29 , thank's also for the tip .

Andy , your 2.5 ton truck build is excellent , I'm going to pick up another one and have a go at cutting open the cabin doors and bonnet , awesome work on detailing the engine . I'll see if I can also pick up the Airfix/Heller 2.5 ton cargo truck as well .

While I'm in the mood for vehicles , I added these two to the bench ;

I like how Academy include clear pieces for the windows , nice touch .

                                     John .

Helo H-34

Gamera , I'll pick up some of those white metal landing gear for B-29 , thank's also for the tip .

                                     John .

I used the white metal landing gear set on the F-84F I did for this build ... don't know if they helped keep the nose down, but they are certainly strong enough to support the extra weight caused by filling the nose full of BB's to avoid the  'tailsitdownism' malady ...

pepper

Helo;

I did the same thing to the Dodge ambulance as I did with the deuce and a half!  It turned out great!  I even added a mechanic and had the doors on the back open so that you could see the stretcher and poles that I added.  Looks great with a pair of medics hauling a NKPA patient over to my ambulance jeep.  I'm going to make a diorama (eventually) of an aid station with lots of wounded, surgeon, operating table, orderlies, and the two ambulances. 

Other planned dioramas for this build:  Aircraft being serviced (will be a prop aircraft and I have the Verlinden base), Artillery unit firing (Either the Longtom and M-5 with gun crew or the M-40 and M-30 and crew), and a unit moving across a pontoon Treadway bridge (probably the Airfix M3 and 2.5 ton truck with the Verlinden bridge).

Check out the Ambulance build on my Photobucket page: 

http://s1193.photobucket.com/albums/aa345/the_tunnan/?action=view&current=PICT1058.jpg#!oZZ43QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs1193.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Faa345%2Fthe_tunnan%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPICT0979.jpg

http://s1193.photobucket.com/albums/aa345/the_tunnan/?action=view&current=PICT1058.jpg#!oZZ43QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs1193.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Faa345%2Fthe_tunnan%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPICT0979.jpg

It's in two parts of the page, the first link is where I start, and the second link is where I continue.  Just keep hitting the "previous" button.  One thing that's incredibly easy to add to this kit is the steering system.  I added the shaft and gear box, and then the typical Dodge link and length steering.  The pitman arm is fairly short on them and can be ignored.  You can only adjust total toe and steer ahead on these vehicles. (I was a brake and front end mechanic for ten years, I get into these details!)  Dang, you know, another really cool diorama would be a motor pool with vehicles being worked on!  Brakes, engine, radiators, etc. being replaced!  Would be excellent!  And have a jeep or two for 'hangar queens'...  Wonder if I can buy or if I'd have to scratchbuild a wrecker...  ?  ?  ?

Also easy to add is the back end and stretchers; just use lengths of stretched sprue or rod and for the stretcher fabric I use TP or kleenex that I paint khaki or olive drab.  Rolled stretchers are the easiest to produce, but the 'in use' stretcher is also not too difficult.

I probably should look at getting some white metal landing gear struts for the Academy C-97 Stratofreighter as well , maybe the C-121 Constellation also .

Andy thank's for the link on the ambulance build , I'll have a try at making some stretchers .

I would really like to find a wrecker in 1/72,76 scale too .

Anyway I thought I would share some sprue pic's of the 1/72 UM Model T-34 and T-34 Recovery Tanks .

First here's the T-34/85 with S-53 Gun ...

Here's the T-34 Recovery Tractor ...

I won't be starting these two just yet , there is no more room on or under the bench until I finish the current armor builds . I'm not sure of the color scheme for both T-34's in use with the North Korean Army ???

                       John .

Stik, my next build is going to be the 1/72nd Voko-Grad LA-11. Though looking at it build may be something of a misnomer. It looks just nasty. I did their F-80 last year, its more filler than plastic and def up for replacement with a sword F-80 when the pennies allow it! 

Helo, my T34-85 and SU-76 are both in Russian colours. From what I can figure out from the limited info out there is that the North Korean kept them in the Soviet greens they were delivered in. That and its a good bet that all the spares and paint also came from the USSR. The Red Army preferred its armour painted olive green which is easy enough to find or as an alternative, you can use olive drab which looks very similar. 

Andy

For those interested, the SAMI article is about building and enhancing and the Matchbox F3D-2.  Perfect timing for me, as I will probably start mine next month!

Cheers,

Greg

Gregbbear

For those interested, the SAMI article is about building and enhancing and the Matchbox F3D-2.  Perfect timing for me, as I will probably start mine next month!

Cheers,

Greg

I'll start checking the LHS for both Magazines .

What Volume Number or Issue Number are each magazine , sometimes the Hobby stores aren't always up to date with the latest issue's .

                                     John .

Well the Mig15 is pretty much done. Only problem is that when I tried putting the decals on they shattered before coming off the paper backing. I'm going to email Tamiya to see if they have any replacements. Does anyone know of any other decals for the Mig15?

Sorry to hear about those decals not working out ww2psycho , I hope you can get a replacement set .

I had some issue's with the covers that fit over the tracks on the Churchill bridge layer

It was difficult to get the pieces to fit nicely , I'm left with some minor gaps in a few places as the inside edge of the top cover piece doesn't fit tightly up against the side of the bottom hull section .

Other than that , everything else seems to fit together okay .

I was looking at the Airfix Churchill tank and it has the chassie side and top cover piece molded as one which I think is a better idea than the Revell kit ;

Anyway the Revell M-16 goes together really well ;

                                         John .

Tamiya has replied and said if I send them what remains of the decals I have now they will send me another set,

Well I started on the LA-11 this weekend and it is a pig of a kit. But after much scraping, sanding and voluminous swearing here are some progress shots...

Still have to get the wings to fit to the fuselage properly, the engine to to fit to both and the cockpit canopy to fit the cockpit. NOTHING FITS!!! I need rum, lots of rum....

Btw...how do I get one of those Korean War GB things at the bottom of my posts?

You Doc Win!

I've got the MPM La-9/11 kit, it's more bare bones than yours, by far!  And it doesn't look to be any easier of a build.  Just so that you know, you probably came out on top of the two kits for this build/cram/scratch job.