Last blast, let's go out in a blaze of glory! Weekend Group Build the 2015 Edition.

OK   one more time.  Got to finish this years madness on a high.  I intend to start at midnight.  My final attempt........1/48 Academy F-16C.  Admittedly, the kit is not the greatest, and the weapons options are a bit out there, but I think I will keep this one an "out of the box" build.  At least the marking options are nice, and Photobucket seems to be working again.

T minus 10 min. and I will be off.

At 2:00 pm I'll be off and running.

and we are DONE

The Sniper was a demonstration aircraft for an Israeli proposed upgrade of Romania's Mig 29. This was on display at the Berlin Airshow a while back.

The model was pretty simple, a basic cockpit with an ejector seat that looked as if it had been hewn out of a granite boulder. I replaced that with a seat out of an Airfix Vampire. Fit was generally good, except just around the sides of the nose where it had flared out and required help with a file to get to shape. Locators for the wings and horizontal stabilisers left a bit of play, but the verticals were lined up very well by their tabs.

I accepted a lower quality than normal in an attempt to get in under time; Since I have only completed two models this year (I'm just slow, not good), I find it a real spin to whack one out in two days.

So thanks again for the inspiration lewbud.

And apologies for not commenting on others work, hope to look through properly on the weekend...

Nice Nord and 190 there taxtp

They look great to me, nothing to worry about.

Start proof 10:15 am Wednesday:

Office complete and installed after a few hours:

White and Blue layers done after 22 hours

PLenty of overspray there as well as the tape stuffing up the white. Carried on regardless:

And did the lighter blue colour. Paint job is worse than the time i sang 'Viva Las Vegas' at Karaoke, but 31 hours down and off to a boozy dinner...

Done with the office, finally.

The 190 and 108 look great!  Interesting choice for markings.  Very nice.

I've finally finished the Bf 108. Whilst I took an extra 8 days to complete it, I did finish off a Hawker Hunter in between :)

It's not a great model, but it's an acceptable shelf model. THe last photo shows it with it's stable mate.

And, the AIR-2 rounds.

The cockpit, just needs the ejection handles and the belts. Bent painted wire and painted Tamiya tape.

Oh yeah. For some reason I got the idea to super detail the cockpit. It's an unusual one, and with the canopy slid back there's a lot to see.

No pictures of that yet, but I did remember at the very last minute to put weight in the nose. It took a little surgery...

Wow, great work on that Spad, it's an amazing effort to get that done with gloss enamel paint within 48 hours. Also nice progress on the 109 and Baka.

I finally finished my BF 108. I'll try to post some glamour shots in the next few hours.

Cheers

Tony

Very nice SPAD so far Lew. One of the classic aircraft 

Caveman, life happens.  Unfortunately, paying the bills is more important than modelling.  Looking forward to your build this weekend.  How you doing out there GM?  Still hanging in there?  As promised, pics of my latest attempt.  Had to call an audible at the line when it came time for decals.  I tore the rudder decal from the kit markings.  Markings are from an Eagle Strike sheet.  The markings are for a Marine squadron in Korea, 1954.  On the sheet, they had a silver color to them, once I put them on they were very opaque, and very white.  Anyhoo, the pics.

Proof of start pic.

Didn't take any pics of the actual construction, was too busy (Yeah, that's the ticket, they'll believe that).  Kit went together a lot better than I expected.  Just a few seams on the top and bottom to take care of.  Here she is all primered up and ready for paint.  At this point I called a morning and went to bed.  Thus endeth the first day.

Normally, I would have masked the canopy and used it to cover the cockpit.  Instead I took the lazy (for me) way out and covered it with some tape.  Time for some blue.

As the paint dries, my former car builder's eye notices that the paint has pulled away from some of the deeper panel lines such as the elevators, and flaps, outlining them in the light gray Tamiya primer.  This is a hazard with all gloss paints when they don't have significant tooth and as they dry,  they pull away from the edges, leaving the panel lines, door lines, etc. in the color of the primer or plastic.  Didn't really care as it was going on the shelf.  Got ready to apply decals, and noticed that I hadn't entirely coverd the port side of the tail.  Pulled out the airbrush, and reshot the a/c, ending up with a shiny bird.  Did I mention that gloss enamel takes a loooooonnnnnnggg time to dry to the touch?  I've really gotten spoiled with Tamiya's spray bombs.  3-4 hours later, the plane was able to be handled and the decalling began.

While the decals were setting, did mundane things like paint the prop, assemble the landing gear etc.  Woke up this morning, glued the front of the cowl on, attached the prop, and the wheels.  Shot the rear canopy, and headed off to work.  And so here she is when I stuck a fork in her at 0547 this morning.  Came home, cleaned off the rear canopy and hear she is in all her glory.

Sorry Lewbud, 

I just got home from an unexpected 14 hour emergency call in to work.  I only have 6 hours left and now no chance of getting the Eagle done.  So much for my days off.  I will try to find something for next weekend and try to finish this build on a high.

I am always amazed when I see the shape of the Horten.  Great work thus far guys!

GMorrison

Yeah Bob, you me and Carlos may have to start the "96" club.On account of being slow old farts.

 

how about an "over 50" time limit for over 50 builders ;) 

Yeah Bob, you me and Carlos may have to start the "96" club.On account of being slow old farts.

Stik-the Baka is a neat addition to the collection-definatly a conversation starter.

68GT-very nice job on the 229-love the camo scheme

GMorrison-looking forward to seeking progress pics

I did nothing on the 109 today-just wasn't in the mood-started on masking the canopy, realized that I have become too dependent on the Eduard Masks for canopies and lost any skills I had prior-hope get the canopy masked tomorrow after work and have the 109 finished by Friday.....slightly outside the 48 hr window but still this has been a great motivation to get the airbrush setup and running.

Lewbud-again, thanks for running this GB-always a good time.

You bet Stik. Just put a second coat on the AIR-2 missiles.

Wunderbar! Time to go get the leftover Spaetzl out of the fridge!

68, your 229 is looking very sharp. Especially in the "Tropen" scheme. Very creative! 

GM, I can't wait to see your progress... I'm at work now and will be checking in from my phone for the next 36 hours or so...

So i couldn't leave it be and dusted a bit to add some depth.  I might go back again later after this sits a while.

Looking great guys!

The 229 is really cool. One of the few I've seen finished.

Bob the 109 is good clean building sir.

Stik that Baka is wild. I think there was a manned version of the V-1 planned too, the guy was supposed to bail out?

Its been raining all day, but I get gaps to paint. The J decal sheet is poor, but I'm going to raid my D model and get that sheet for the stencils. Worry about the D later.

I still have an hour so i might get some dusting on this one.  Otherwise here it is.

68GT

Stik, I've always wished I picked up that set.  I'm going to have to look around for it.

 

Ya know, it really is a cool little kit and a perfect canvas for somebody who wants to try their hand at scratch building a cockpit. If I was not in such a hurry here, I could really have gone all out now that I know where to look for reference.

The V-1 could use a little help too. I built that in about 20-30 minutes Friday nite, but will not add it here.

aside from the original Hawk boxing of this kit (which probably costs a small fortune now if you could find one at a collector show)

the Testors or Italeri boxings are still to be found for a good price here and there...

Thanks Lew. This is easily a 48 hour project. Too bad I did not have 48 hours... 

So last nite before bed I was looking thru my laptop's photo library, and low and behold the "missing" photos had loaded into the main portion, rather than into a sub folder as they had been doing... so I edited them, uploaded them to PB, and went to sleep....

the final cockpit photos before I closed it up

wings and tailplane glued on

bomb shackle attachment lug (taken off of a Panzer III roadwheel arm). I also drilled away the kit front sight post for replacement with some styrene rod

canopy masked and glued in place

styrene shim for gap filling, sanded to match the sourrounding area

new front sight post added

rocket motor nozzles, and control surface balance horns (not bad small details for a 50+ year old kit)

base paint coat on, Tamiya IJN Gray Green

and after this I did the Future coat and decals that were in the photos in the post before this... The Cherry Blossom decal is from the kit, but the ID numbers shattered, so I took some IJN tail code decals and cut off the 1st prefix letter and last suffix number to make a replacement set...

so the post above is how the kit looks this morning.