Looks great Brandon! 

I've unfortunately stalled out with High School graduation things and vacation starting up at the end of the week.

Well, after countless hours of work I'm calling this one done. Now that is it complete I am glad I added a touch more weight to the nose because it is nearly perfectly balanced. It will sit on its gear or tail sit with just soft touch. The recommendation on the kit was 100 grams in the nose, I added just over 120 and it barely sits on its gear.

The kit had its early challenges but once I passed those it went very well. There is a lot of work to do on the kit as you go and it becomes increasingly hard to handle as more and more bits and bobs get added. It can only really be picked up by the nose now.

I went out of the box on the kit and only added the antenna wires. The paints were primarily Gunge Mr Color and some Model Master on a few bits. It is weathered a little bit and left with a semi-gloss finish. I had the whole kit wased with a panel line wash but I hated how it looked so I removed most of that off the fuselage and then used a HB pencil to highlight some of the softer panel lines. I wanted them to show up but not stand out. Overall, the kit is good with the exception of the warped parts early on. I would build another Kintecs kit with the knowledge that I will run into issues that will take some out of the box solutions. The details on the kit are great and it builds up into a very nice bird. I am very happy to add it to my collection. 

Thanks for coming along on this one.

BK

Well, I'm nearing the finish line on the Hawkeye. I should have it done this weekend. There has been a ton of small fiddily work to do, but it is really starting to shape up. Stay tuned.

BK

I'm going to change it up a bit and do one of the 2 RF-4Cs as a 106th Recon Squadron special paint from 1993.  These decals are a apparently sized up for the Testors/Italeri RF kit also.

I finally reached a major milestone, I have the decals complete. I still have some painting to do, little bits a in few spots. I need to complete the props and tires, weather and put it together. Still plenty to do, but she is shaping up nicely and I love the look. She is really starting to look dead sexy now.

All the black is paint except the letters and numbers. The red band on the fuselage is also painted, I don't like long skinny decals that don't want to cooperate. Stencils went down over that and it worked great. The decals are from Fighertown and they are very nice, but they are a bit reluctent to settle into the panel lines, but I worked them over and hit them with some Microsol a few times and they behaved. I may have had a tough start on this kit but it is shaping up nicely now.

BK

Yeah, I've been procrastinating about the gaps too long.

Gap filling one of them jobs that just has to be done.

Mmmm, wing root gaps, my favorite.  Keep up the good work, I'm looking forward to seeing these in paint.

BK

Things have been a little slow on the bench but here are some progress  pics.

Doesn't look like much  but I got a bit done this morning 

The 2 weight bearing struts are superglued and hopefuly properly angled. The wings are a bit on the heavy side so these 2 "N" shapes will carry the entire weight. Hopefuly.

A bit dark image but once the wings have been placed in position, not quite where the markers are, I couldn't move the plane any more. The yellow wadges that are holding the wings are stiff spanges from my 3 years old daughter's toy box

Moment of truth will be tomorrow evening . This is one of those kits where, if you srew up you will screw up majorly at the very end with the most visible part.

Yes, I have Two Bobs "No Gun Shoguns" decals and both will be in Euro 1 paint.

15th TRS of Kadena.

I got a start on the Phantoms this morning.  Canopies are going to be closed so I'm not going to detail  the interior  much.

It's always the little bits that come along a bite us during a build. I'm sure you will find a way to overcome the issues. It looks really good thus far. Keep it coming.

BK

Brandon, it looks great. Very inspiring, makes me want to build one

Some progress and re-gress here. The cammo is reasonably good, I think. The things on the ground are part of the struts which are very fragile and they broke. They are not weight supporting parts, so a bit of superglue should do it. The machinegun was attached to the sprue at 3 places and broke at those 3 places and is beyond repair. I am trying something with a machinegun from a tank but it is 1/35 and looks a tad too big. Maybe this Henschel will be defensless?

At least your airbrush is feeling well-loved!

Paint looks top notch. That many trips to paint and I’d have a fairly sizeable issue that I just wouldn’t have the energy to fix haha. 

I thought I should add a small update on my progress. To say that painting this Hawkeye is easy would be a lie. This is a difficult bird to paint due to all the antenna, its size, the complexity of the shapes, and so on. I have thus far been to the paint booth 8 times for paint work and I have 2-3 more that I can think of yet to do.

 I have primed, then painted with AS-16, which I didn't like the tone, so I overpainted that with Gunze and was satisfied with the color. That's 3 booth visits there. Then I painted the tail stripes, which is a huge pain to mask and that took 3 trips with the masking and painting steps to get it all done. Doing those in one step was just not realistic. I then painted the interior white of the wings, which was a masking job in itself and then the red for the open flaps and whatnot, that makes 8. Ugh!

I still have to paint the intake and outlet of the nacelles as well as the red band on the fuselage and red warning on the gear bay doors AND hand paint all the gear bay doors with a red open band around the parimeter of each. Not to mention I still have to complete all the prop painting, which is 4 colors as well. So, this is taking some time to work through, but it will look great when complete.

Oh, and I still have to paint and stripe that tail hook. Yeah me.

BK

Deffinetly worth showingthat engine off castel,pit looks very nice as well.

Ready for the cammouflage paint. The colour is a bit darker then I was hoping for but will do

The engine is a dry fir for now. It can be left open and visible. Since I went into trouble of making and painting it, may as well leave it open.