Oh, I see that now that I re-read your post. I probably shouldn't post anything until I've finished my morning coffee 

Done.

 

 

Great job! I really like the look of those glossy Navy birds

Yeah, she came out great, congrats!

Well, I was hoping to be done by the end of the month... I went back and resprayed the Alclad over the yellow overspray and of course it had trash in it. So I carefully sanded down the areas, washed the thing off and put it in a friggin' box to make sure it didn't get dust and trash in it. Today I pulled the model out of the box and sprayed down more gloss black as primer underneath the Alclad. And I look at the model and the black primer is full of dust and trash- where does it come from!?!?!?! I almost threw the stinking thing across the room. Not sure I'll finish in time or not, I don't want to even see the blasted thing now much less work on it...

First off, I want to nominate myself for the worst GB host ever award. The past several months I have been very busy with work, and have not been able to do much of anything with the hobby except tinker with a Hurricane. I SHOULD have foresaw this issue popping up and at least had a co-host or something. I will certainly keep that in mind if I decide to host another GB in the future.

That said, there has been some TOP NOTCH work going on! I am very impressed!

Ok now that I have that out of the way...

I originally planned on doing a Monogram F-80. However, I am still not confident enough in my NMF abilities. (Plus I couldn't come close to doing a good a job as silentbob33 did on his Shooting Star.) So I'm gonna go RAF, and have started on the Tamiya Gloster Meteor F1. I believe this is the redesign, and the speed-breaks that were erroneously put on the 1st issue have been taken out of the wings.

This is actually a pretty simple kit. Within the first few construction steps, you pretty much have the airframe built up.





The top portion of the wings are on and drying as we speak. I will say that while the fit on this kit is not bad, it falls short of what I have come to expect out of modern Tamiya kits.

Good start ajd! I have only built a couple of Tamiya kits, but they were both older ones so I think I know what you mean. I'll be building a modern Tamiya kit pretty soon. Thanks for the kind words about my F-80, it was one of the more difficult Monogram kits I've tackled.

Don't sweat it Ajc, though I was wondering where everyone went!

Nice work on the Meteor, I built one years ago and don't remember any serious problems with it.

I mean dont get me wrong, its a nice little kit. On a letter grade scale, I would say the fit is a B, maybe B-. Which isn't bad at all! Just when I open up a Tamiya kit, I've come.to expect A, A+ fit. Maybe I'm just spoiled by their Mustangs and Wildcat.

Anyways, the airframe is pretty much a done duck. I am not going to display the nacelles open, so I didn't bother painting up the engine aside from the front portion that can be seen looking up into the intake.





On to the cockpit now? Feels all backwards!

Lol, the more I think about it I do remember some issues with the upper wing panels not fitting all that well. You're making good progress though!

So the cockpit on this sucker is far more simple than you would expect out of a Tamiya kit. I spruced the seat with some belts. I got these from some gentleman of Ebay. They are printed on a nice cardstock, and I added Tamiya tape to the backside to make it alittle thicker. These turned up looking MUCH nicer than I thought they would, and I intend on using them in my future projects.

Oh those seat-belts do look really good, almost better than the PE ones I've been using.

Got the cockpit tub and canopy installed



And she has now been Mr. Surfaced and sanded in all the right places (and trust me, there were quite a bit for a Tamiya kit)



And now I have a lighf coat of primer drying to find where I missed. Hopefully I did a good job, but I have a feeling I will have to go back over the engine intake-leading wing edge seem at least one more time.