Greetings all
First, very nice F4 Bish. The base works fine - you've just got a vignette as opposed to a dio. I did some work on festivities in Vietnam a few years back, and I've never been able to figure out whether I think the Phantom is sweet or ugly. (Crusader - Ugly, Skyhawk - Sweet) It's got a very lethal look to it - thing must be nearly the size of a B-17. I've never built a jet. If God wanted them to fly, he would have given them props. Actually I do have a Revell 262 that I might rescribe like Paul Budzik recommends - that's a very neat plane. I've thought of getting a F-86 and a Mig-15: they did fight in a war which few jets have. (Suppose a Phantom and a Mig-21 would work: could avoid NMF too.)
Real world has been getting in the way of important things and it's taken forever. Finally made some progress on the Airfix Tomahawk. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I'd waited a month before buying the P-40B model - because the UK Tomahawk came out not long after the kit debut. No problem with the plane (they're identical - it even carries the RAF fittings for a drop tank and a RAF seat) but no joy with the decals. (I did stick the kit decals away - I'm going to make a Polikarpov I-16 in Chinese markings - more of them flew than AVG. No no shark teeth. I will not use shark teeth. Ever. German idea, they should have kept it. And I bet it's a nasty decal to get right. And it's childish. No blinking teeth.) Fortunately I have several sets of RAF decals - but none in one place that actually fit the plane. If you look at the pics, the rondels are smaller than normal all the way around. So to get those I had to raid some Aeromaster RAF Hawk decals which I bought dirt cheap (very good - Cartograph methinks) and a Tamiya Brewster Buffalo. But that still left me without proper ID markings, both large and small. So I bought some made specifically for Clive "Killer" Caldwell's Tomahawk made by Montex. (Caldwell was the Oz top gun with 28 - also the war's top P40 pilot from any nation. He added a few when flying Spits in the defense of Darwin starting in late 42 - a period the RAAF would like to forget. But you have to like the guy. He was part of a "sit down strike" waged against the insane RAAF ground attack campaign in 1945 against bypassed IJ forces on Moratai. He also was reduced in rank for smuggling whiskey in to sell to US troops at the same time. Cheers. BTW: I avoid "ace" planes, but here the decals made me do it. And no teeth. ) The add on EvilBay was very deceptive: said masks, stencils and decals. Turns out the small ID markings were decals, as were kill symbols. (Very delicate, but very good.) Anyway, I had to spray on the major ID markings. That was a proper hassel. In a world where decals are very good, I don't see the point of doing this, but it was do it or go for something that wasn't quite right. The Montex masks were very good, but there was still a little overspray which I was able to clean up with a toothpick. So it does look okay. In the meantime I had to replace the rondels used on the top wing from the Buffalo with a cheap set I found for a Westland Lysander. The Lysander was used by Finland, so now I also have Finnish national markings. The Tamiya Buffalo isn't quite the same one used by the Finns, but it's very very close: I'm no purist, so it's tempting to do a Finnish Buffalo.
OK: here's what we have:
Tomhwk2b by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Fusebase by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
botbase by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
The bottom pic doesn't show the azure color at all - you can see it on the fuselage. However, it does highlight the heavily mottled look from the black basing. I did something else too. I decided to cover the decals with airbrushed Clear. That gives a kind of uneven finish - which normally I wouldn't want. Indeed, like all my black based planes, the plane looks a fright now. However, this plane is getting heavy duty salt fading, and I'm thinking that an irregular finish will actually work nicely. The desert planes were well and truly pounded by the elements - I'll have pics at the end. Or so I hope. There'll be oils too. I do want this to work, because I have a C-47 that is going to need uber-fading for service in New Guinea.
I cannot gather enthusiasm for good cockpits because I never look at them. But, just for kicks, here's what I used for seatbelts. These were made with strips of Tamiya tape backed with aluminum foil and then painted. I find these much better than decals, and I've never like PE belts. Above all, they were easy - I can do better with Apoxie Sculpt, but this is a snap. And it passes the five foot away test. Got a tad sloppy hand painting the walking surfaces, but it looks fine from the crucial five feet.
Seatbelt by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Hoping for the best
Eric