Bish & Bob: Those are looking great. Nice to see them all sealed up and ready for the wings and painting. 

Thanks guys.

Looking nice Bob.

Coming along nicely there SB.

BK

It's been awhile but I've finally made a bit of progress on the Intruder.  I've got the fuselage together and the cockpit installed.  There was a bit of a gap behind the cockpit and the fuselage and some small ones here and there along the join.  I filled them with Testor's contour putty and spent the next week or so sanding it out and getting rid of the prominent seam line since there was a bit of a fit issue and there was a step along the entire join.  To protect the raised panel lines, I placed masking tape on top of the panel lines around the area I was going to sand.  Pretty time consuming but it worked and the seam looks pretty good to me.  I'll have to check it out when I prime it after I get the rest of the plane assembled.  I also primed and painted the landing gear bays.

Bish, that pit does look good. Those upgrades are well worth it on any Revell kit. IMO

BK

F-15 is looking real nice Dan.

Been playin a bit of catchup on the 162 last couple of days afer falling behind a bit. The Revell pit was finished off withthe remaining PE and some masking tape on the gun barrels, the idea coming from PJ's build. The guns in the Revell kit are pretty awful bearing no resembelance to the real thing. Good thing they can't be seen. I do like this PE pit, but if i was to do this again or be asked for a suggestion, i would go for the CMK resin pit that PJ has used.

And the ejecion set all ready to slide into place.

And the main wheel bay fitted with PE added. Still got to oput the indentation in one piece.

And then closed it up. Still got some clean up to do and finish off the wheel wells. Going to get those, the doors and undercarriage poainted before adding the wings.

More soon. I hope.

BK that F4 came out incredible! Beautiful finish!

Dan - nice work on the F-15! Coming together really good. Looks like a nice little kit. I haven't built a F-15 before so I may have to pick one of these up.

She's looking really sharp there Dan. 

Love how you left one sprue gate on the ends of the missiles for painting. Clever idea, I'm going to have to steal it from you. 

Man, that -15 is looking really nice. I hope mine will build up half that good.

BK

BrandonK: Great job on the F4-B, excellent finish. Really like the colorful tail. I've been thinking about picking up one of those Academy F-4's.

Thanks Johnny.

Thanks Gamera.

Work continues on the Eagle. Last Friday the aircraft was fully assembled. I dry fitted the canopy on it is first perfect, lines up great.

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Before I primed I masked off the cockpit, using Tamiya tape sticky side out, then placed a cotton ball inside. I used Model Master enamel gray primer #2737, letting each side dry over night. Filled in and sanded a few seems. Next up I pre-shaded with Tamiya X-1 Black. I covered the nose with the X-1 to make the gray darker, plan to use XF-24 Dark Gray.

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The first base coat I applied was Tamiya XF-82 Ocean Gray.

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Finished painting both AIM-9X and AIM-120C

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The tip was painted Tamiya Gunmetal X-10, body MME Light Ghost Gray #1728, fins where hand painted Testors 1180 Steel.

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The tip was painted MME Insigina White #1745, body MME Light Ghost Gray #1728, fins where hand painted Testors Steel.

The AIM-120C's are mounted to the side of the fuselage, the kit has you mount them under the wing to the pylon. I'm going to try and scratch build parts so I can mount my AIM-120C's to the fuselage.

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68GT

 

 

Gamera

68GT: Cool, that's one plane I still haven't built. Love the eye-catching blue on the tail, and is that a puffin? 

 

 

 

 

Not really sure what it is but it looks like a Trojan helmet.

 

Ah that's got to be it. I've seen those markings before. Sorry my eye-sight isn't that good and it's not getting better with age... 

Gamera

68GT: Cool, that's one plane I still haven't built. Love the eye-catching blue on the tail, and is that a puffin? 

Not really sure what it is but it looks like a Trojan helmet.

BK: That's a beautiful job! Makes me want to pull out a Phantom from the stash and build another myself!

Dan: Nice work!

Thanks guys, I appreciate the kind words. Even with all the decals, it was a fun kit. And you can't see half the decals in the photos either.

BK

Dan. Great looking Eagle.  Your stands and jigs are a great idea.

BK that is awesome.  Now I see why decaling took so much time.

Now i do really like that BK. Really nice finish and great choice of markings. Got to be chuffed with that one.

OKay ! As promised, here is the completed Academy F4-B, VF-111 Sundowners.

What a splendid kit to build. Simply execellent throughout. All the parts fit perfect, or near perfect and this is a putty free build. The decals are simply the best I've ever used as I had absolutely NO silvering anywhere. I did have some wrinkle on the nose art, but with a complex curve I just could not get it down any other way.

I have plenty of flaws in my paint work, but nothing so bad that I can't live with it. Overall, I am quite pleased with the outcome of this kit. I will likely add the -C to my collection from Academy in the furture and do a camo Vietnam era bird.

If you haven't built this kit yet I highly recommend it, you won't be sorry.

BK

My F4-B is basically done. I have to attach the open canopies and take pics. I will post those up late today. Glad to have this one wrapped up; it was fun, but the amount of stencils about did me in.

BK

Thanks Brandon:  Forgot to add, I used the box art as a guide for the antenna's, the kit comes with many different sizes and shapes.

Dan, that is definately looking good. That's a -15 if I've ever seen one. And after watching you put this together you have given me several ideas for working with mine. Great job.

BK

Thanks Silentbob: Nice work on the cockpit details.

Thanks Bish: Jig's always seem to come in handy.

Thanks Gamera: Looking forward to your F-16B.

After the glue had dried on the rear stabilizers, I glued on the nose cone. The right rear tail was not straight so I removed it and re glued and re-positioned it. Filling and sanding the rear stabilizers was pretty easy, the nose cone was not. First I used 400 grit sand paper, that worked on the sides and bottom, not so for the top. Had to bust out the 320 grit, and grinned the top of the nose till it was flush with the fuselage. A little filler was used. 320 grit really leaves scratched behind so I took extra time to polish them out with 1200 and 2000 grit sand paper.

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Next up was building a stand, using balsa wood glued together with hot glue. All the layers glued together looks like a gingerbread house.

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Next was antenna's and pylon's. I was going to leave the exhausts off but when sanding down a part that had been cut to, I took a little to much plastic off. So I glued the jet exhaust on. The pylons didn't meet up flush with the under side of the wing, only the two line up pines and the front and rear are making contact with the wing.

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Only a few more parts to go and the Eagle will be ready for primer. Looking ahead the camouflage scheme will be a challenge to paint.

Bish, Dan, Bob: Those all look great guys! 

I really need to get more done on my F-16B but I've got a bunch of stuff that needs to be done first... 

Thanks guys.

Dan, the F-15 is looking nice and another good example of a home made jig.

Bob, nice work on that pit. Was just reading through your WiP thread, some nice info there.I didn't know what the TRAM was before.

Great work Bish, that PE really does the trick in that cockpit.

Dan, your Eagle is starting to look mean, and that's a neat trick with the jig.

I think I'm finally finished with the cockpit.  I did it OOB.  I'll probably go back and repaint the yellow on the ejection seat handles, I'm not really happy with how they look. There is flash on almost every piece so clean-up takes awhile.  And putting the seatbacks together was a pain.  I also realized Revell didn't include anything to cover the backs of the seats so I just put some styrene sheet in there to blank it off.  Any comments/critiques welcome.

Thanks BrandonK.

Thanks Gamera.

Silentbob: Nice work on the A-6E cockpit.

Thanks Matt.

Bish: Great start to the He 162, looking forward to seeing this build.

Moving right along with the Eagle, after the glue and putty had dried over night I got to sanding. First started out with squadron course grit stick which worked great, some area's I used 400 grit paper. For the most part just sanding, a little grinding here and there. Then used 600, 1200 and finished off with 2000 grit sand paper. Nice and smooth seems.

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Next up was gluing the vertical stabilizer's and horizontal stabilizer's on, I made a jig taped down with balsa wood and styrene strips. Popsicle sticks where taped to testor bottles to hold the vertical stabilizer's.

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Thanks BK. I do tend to throw every bt of AM i can find at these kits. We seem to be a bit spoilt with them at the minute, what with PJ also doing the Revell kit, me doing a 72nd Dragon as well as this and we have at least one 48th kit about to be built.

Bish, that is gonna look very nice. And ya, the larger scale intimidates me a bit due to my nature of wanting to add more details. I think I would likely never feel I had enough. This is a cool kit and not one we see too often.

BK