I made my first IPMS model club meeting in a long time Thursday.  I took both my night fighters from this GB for the monthly contest.  The Bf 110 G-4 won first place and the Hellcat F6F-3N won third!  A true testament to the lack of competition!

Do yo every make those meetings Greg?

Satch

Thanks Trey, and you are very welcome.  You have done a tremendous job.  We have a lot of watchers, just to see what you do next!  I am looking forward to your 190.  That is a cool plane.  I have that kit in my stash, along with two in 72nd scale (Hase and RoG).  If I can ever get some painting done, I can get some progress on the Meteor, and even clear my bench of a couple of others.  I am still itching to get to my Skyknight and Skyraider!

Heavens Eagle, I am jealous!  My wife might go out of town for a couple of days, so I might sneak my paint booth into the laundry room!

Cheers,

Greg

TREYZX10R The kit looks like the photos of the original. Good job!

Gregbbear Keep up the faith! Those small a/c units have to run for a while to make a dent and a fan does help get the air moved around enough to make it work more efficiently.  The best way is to have the fan across the room pushing the hot air to the a/c (not oscillating).

Am lucky here, no wife to be hen pecked from but have a paint booth ducting system with a brush-less motor fan pushing the paint fumes out the window.  Works great and better than most purchased ones.  Use dryer ducting and an insert to put in the window to get the stuff out.  Am going to have to build a new one though as the original has disappeared over the last number of years. The original moved enough air that a paint mask wasn't needed in the worst of cases.  So I paint in the house.

Bish thank you very much

Greg wow the badge is awesome! I'm flattered that you took the time to hook me up with that and thanks for the compliments!!! I had a similiar issue with my a/c not cooling the shop down enough and a small floor fan blowing crossways in the shop helped a lot. Please put me down for a Fw 190A-8/R11 1/48 nDragon kit nextt and thanks again for hosting such a great G/B

Fantastic job Trey!  I hope people take the time to see your work-in-progress, so they can realize what it took for you to get it done.  You are a true craftsman.

This is the badge I have completed.  I had some better ideas, but lacked the computer savvy to pull it off.  You are definetely an ace!

I bought an air conditioner for the garage.  I hooked it up last night, and it doesn't blow very cold.  Sad face.  I was really hoping to be painting today.  No such luck. 

Cheers,

Greg

Certainly was worth the wait. Gret job TREY

I ca'nt believe its finally finished!  Hope it was worth the wait!

NFN,Bish thanks. I decided to spray this build with automotive urethane clear. Using high solids ms clear reduced 20% with base reducer to thin it. Without thinning it would be way too thick and flood away all the recessed details. The plus side to using urethane is once it cures its almost bullet proof to solvents so a pin wash with oil base pigment wo'nt even bother it. This has the added bonus of making mistakes a quick wipe away without fouling whats underneath.

TREY, looking sweet. Getting the decals is always my favorite part, as it finally start to look like the real thing.

That plane looks really cool.   Sorry I haven't been around for awhile.  Lots going on around the home front..  With any luck I'll be able to finish that Fiat CR 42 CN.    :)  Looking to get back to work in a couple of weeks.

John thanks!

Greg thats great news on the promotion congrats!!! So no more excuses lets see some progress on the Meteor;)j/k I know some people say that silly putty is'nt tacky enough to stick well but it worked fine for me .

I'm drinking a celebratory Beer as the Bird is on its own feet for the first time!

The next thing is going to be a wash to bring out the panel lines then some weathering,man there is some light at the end of this long tunnel after all!

The camo paint job looks great Trey!  The silly putty is a great idea.  I've used it for other things, but not quite like that.  I will definetly add that to my kit.

John, great minds think alike.  That is the same Meteor I am building.  No worries on duplication.  I know you need that one for your Israeli collection.  It is a neat plane too.

As for my test, I am number 19 on the promotion list!  As soon as the civil service commision certifies the list, I will be promoted to Fire Engineer.  Needless to say, I am pretty excited.

Cheers,

Greg

Excellent work Trey , especially the camouflage finish

I have always used Bostik "Blu-Tack"  for my camouflage schemes ; I roll it into thin strips of spaghetti like lengths and place it on the model and then mask the area I wish leave the existing color .

I may end up stealling a bit of Greg's thunder and throw a 1/72 Xtrakit NF-13 Meteor together.....

I was tidying the 1/72 Israeli stash of models and with everything stack evenly , I'm left with a NF-11/12/14 Meteor in my hands , I have some airwaves PE for the Night Fighter Meteor and a couple of Palva resin seats . The interior cockpit color is mostly black and I need to airbrush some satin black to touch up a P-38M , so I may as well do the meteor interior while I'm in the spraybooth .

My Meteor will be finished in the Blue / Brown camouflage with Dark Gray (FS.36081) underserface for the Israeli 1956 Suez campaign . Only three had been delivered by the time the war broke out , my build will be Meteor NF-13 , No.52 , which fired the opening shots of the campaign , shooting down a Egyptian IL-14 Transport on the 18th October 1956 .

I hope this is okay Greg , I have a few other Israeli aircraft from the same period which are about 50% complete , some are ready for airbrushing , I thought this might be a good opportunity to finish off some stalled builds  and add a couple of new ones in to complete the 1956 IAF collection .

I'll get everything laid out on the bench and post a Meteor sprue pic shortly  .

                                         John

Looking nice so far Trey! Can't wait to see it all finished up

Nice paint job, like the cammo pattern. I haven't tried silly putty yet, hard to get hold of over here. But deffinatly right for that pattern.

Greg thanks,looking forward to seeing what you come up with for the ace badge ! How did you do on your exam?

John waaaay too many hours to even venture a geuss and thanks for the kind words

p38j thanks and yea thats Flo the caveman is back there too

NFN thanks!

I used silly putty for the first time and it worked well

aside for some clean up and fine tuning with the details it came out okay I think

That's a sweet looking plane dude.  :)

Trey.. looking sweet !!

ps.. is the Flo in the background ?? 

Awesome work Trey and the WIP pic's are really great as well .

I would hesitate to guess how many hours you have put into the build so far ???

I'm in the same boat as cliff and greg , as my B-57G Canberra is still sitting in the spraybooth with a base coat of tan on her , I need to get cracking and finish off the camouflage scheme and get onto the Candle trio (C-123K , B-57B and 0-2)

John .

Looks great Trey!  I better get that ace badge done too!

I've gotten some done on the Meteor.  It is just so small that my camera wouldn't be able to capture the detail.  It is a cool little plane, nontheless.

Cheers,

Greg

Greg thanks really appreciate the props! I must confess that my work area has a/c its too hot and humid without cold blow here and I'm getting wimpy in my old age.

Gamera thanks looking forward to seeing the widow get build'n already;)

I did some preshading and got the first color on ,starting to come together!

Trey: Great stuff! She's really coming together.

I've missed a bit here since I've been sorta avoiding the thread to guilt about not getting anything done on my Widow. Really I will get back to her after finishing off a few other things- promise!!!

Gregbbear

Dang Trey!  That is one of the reasons I am scared to try a conversion like that.  Is the PE+AW using standard letters?  If so, I can look through my 1/48 Luft stuff and see if I have those letters.

As for the hole in the canopy, I did something similar to fix a broken canopy.  It is a pita, but if it is a relatively flat spot this works.  File the hole out to the nearest frame edges.  Make a template of the hole, and use it cut out a piece of clear stock.  File to exact shape and glue in place.  I am no master modeller, so somebody will probably have a better solution, but it worked for me.

By the way, your interior pieces look like real a/c parts!  You build to a quality that I can only hope to attain someday.   You have made this GB really pop.  Thanks.

Greentracker, the Cat looks good!  The jeep really does put into perspective how big they are!  Thanks for posting the new pictures.  You are on the front page now.

As for my Meteor...  The little Matchbox kit has seen better days.  I have had to repair some cracked parts right off the bat.  Those stupid end opening boxes the European manufacturers insist on, allow more damaged, and lost parts than even my butterfingers do!  That aside, I have mainly sorted the pieces needed for my version, and started test fitting of the pieces and photo etch.  It appears to be a really cool little kit.  The new release by Xtrakit is very reasonably priced, and I would recommend that, to sourcing an original Matchbox.  This way, you will have single color plastic, and much better decals for about the same as a used Matchbox.  I also recommend the Airwaves pe set.  The seats don't look accurate, so I am modifying them.  I will try and take some pictures when I am home tomorrow.  I have no guarantees on that though.  The parts are so small, I'm not sure my camera is up to the challenge. 

Helo (John), I haven't got to look at my Mk20 Canberra yet.  It is in my locker at work, and I have been working at every station but mine lately.  I did pick up Osprey's Canberra Units of the Vietnam War finally.  That is a hot seller at my LHS.  Your Vietnam builds fill a gap here.  So far, we have some modern, but mostly WWII.  Caspar's Sea Venom I think is the only completed post war build.

Sorry to be so long winded, I am working at a station without my modeling stuff!

Cheers,

Greg

Thanks Greg,

BTW, I started a diorama tonight, oops i mean last night. it's 2 am right now lol I'll get some more pics aas I go along.

Oh BTW again. my handle i greentracker ""98"" minus the """ of course my Tracker is a Chevy. OK, its a geo with chevy markings. lol That was the year GM bought Geo. After that, they redesigned it.

Thanks again,

Ken

Fantastic work Trey!  You make it look easy!  I feel like a heel though.  I have barely made any progress on my little Matchbox Meteor.  It has just been too darn hot to paint here.  If I got up before dawn to do it, my family would probably choke me!

Regardless, you are inspiring!  Especially since I know that it isn't much cooler in Orlando.

Cheers,

Greg

Bish thanks, those gun ports were harder to get to look right than I thought they would be !

I finally got it in primer and it needed some serious tweaking, I wet sanded the trouble areas around the canopy ,nose,naceeles ,upper wing joints and lower fuse plug with 600grit then went back over the whole thing with 1000 grit. I'm going to let it set up and dry real good, in the mean time work on the landing gear should keep me busy.

Looking very nice, and good work on the gun ports.

Good progress this weekend, I scratched ,the 'schrage music' ports out of some sprue

also fitted the canopy and diopole support tubes and blended in the nacelles . I have to go over some panel lines but its real close to being ready for primer

Hercmech, Bish thanks!

I finally got the nacelles fitted. I'm left wondering after all the hassle with the vac parts if a donor kit with the DB603 series engines would be an easier route? Although that would be a waste of a kit just for 2 engine nacelles after what the Koster conversion set me back it might just even out.

Thanks TREY, i will deffinatly keep a closer eye on this GB. And must agree with Herc, you wouldn't know that not part of the kit.

Trey,

Can't even tell it's not plastic