Military trainer aircraft Group build 2020

keavdog

  Here I thought I was the only guy left with the SNJ powder

 

I'm pleased to hear it's going well, it looks good so far too.  Definitely on my list to do.  I only rode in a T-34 once and flew it a little, but l flew almost all of it's civilian brothers and sisters.

Looking like an airplane.  Kit is going together well, better than average Minicraft kit.

Little work on the Mentor.  Pit done (may look at it tomorrow) but mostly done

Next up - closing the fuselage.

mach71

Nice, fast work!

What photo do you want up?

Good to know about the Gunze yellow, I need to paint some yellow on a moon buggie.

Thanks!  How about this picture for the front page:

keavdog, I'm not sure about the Navy but the Airforce would be grey.

Nice, fast work!

What photo do you want up?

Good to know about the Gunze yellow, I need to paint some yellow on a moon buggie.

Thanks for the tips John - I'll look for those paints.

Starting the Mentor.  I'm doing the yellow navy 130 BUNO 140706 built in 1955.  The instructions call for interior green OR flat medium gray for the interior.  Wondering what would be period correct.

I wish I had bought more SNJ powder, John, but the one bottle seems to last.  As to the Yellow, go to Gunze paints, their yellow has amazing coverage, gloss, and dries fast.  The number is 329, they call it Blue Angels Yellow.  The red is Model Master Italian Red and it has nice coverage too.  I did spray a light coat of Model Master Flat White in the yellow areas for a base. 

Nice masking there.  I can never get silver, red and yellow to play nice.  Here I thought I was the only guy left with the SNJ powder

The SNJ is all together.  I found it is not necessary to glue the cowl to the engine, since the prop is removable the cowl can be posed on or off.  The engine molding is just soft enough to make it difficult to paint but it doesn't look too bad.  I made a new pitot tube from music wire, with a shark fin soldered on from a scrap of PE.  Unbelievably I never broke off the wing machine gun.  Star, US NAVY, and tail buno and type marking decals were drawn up and printed on an ALPS printer.  The antenna wire is the Fine grade from Uschi, I used Super Fine on a G4M Betty I built earlier and it is almost impossible to see even in an enlarged photo.  The kit landing light covers wouldn't fit over the landing light detail in the wing so new clear covers were made from thin acetate.  The first photos revealed a few touchups to do as usual so that was done. 

I used Alclad II polished aluminum for the nmf areas to begin with, and I am not that happy with it, it seems more fragile than the ALC 101 aluminum in that line.  After all the painting was done, I masked off all the colored areas and rubbed in SNJ aluminum powder and overcoated that with ALC 101.

With the Revell PT-13 and Planet PT-19.  The Navy didn't use the Fairchild, the Stearman was an N2S to the Navy.

With the Tamiya F4U-1 and Hasegawa F6F3.

More progress on the SNJ.  Paint. paint, and more paint.  Lots of masking.

Thanks, John, and yeah, that's not gonna be fun.  I have the Reno Racer set which I think is red.  Also one by Necomisa (Monogram mold) from the Miller aerobatic team molded in an almost transparent white, and a Revell Germany T-6G kit which is in yellow.  But what's good about that one is they added to the clear sprue to provide the G windows that don't have the knockout bars in them.  That's the only kit I've seen of these molds or the Modelcraft ones that have that option.

Edit:

I checked one of my Modelcraft kits, the one that comes with the Goldilocks decals.  It has both styles of sliding canopies.  It's a Harvard IV.

Looks really good John.  I couldn't find the standard T-6 monogram kit so I ended up with the Miss Behavin Reno Racer version which is molded in red... that will present a few problems.  I figure I'll go through some primer 

Fast work!

And nice work also. Great modifications.

I added it to the front page.

I went ahead and started the Monogram SNJ.  The kit of course is not new and some of the detail is not as sharp as the latest kits, but it fits pretty well.  There has been no filler used so far.  I removed the tail wheel, it was eay to saw into the fuselage half it was molded to which left a good shaft to slip in the resulting hole in the fuselage.  The cockpit is a pretty tight fit in the fuselage and next time I will remove some material from the cockpit upper sill to get things to fit with less pressure.  I made some decals for the instruments and added Eduard seat belts. It was easy to pose the elevators in the down postion dut to the elevator being part of the upper half but not the lower, not much plastic to cut through with the JLC saw.  I have also already made masks for the canopy sections and applied them, but I'll probably also use some sections from a vac canopy to pose the sliding sections open.

I'm going to do VN-3 markings.

Your T-38 is getting close!

I'd like to add a Monogram 1/48 T-6 to the GB, I'll be building it as an SNJ-4.

The anti glare paint is on.

The Talon is on it's wheels!

I changed the build plan for the -38. I decided to build it with the rear canopy closed instead of open. As if it was going out on a solo flight.

I'm waiting on one thing from Amazon, a poster. It was shipped weeks ago and they just notified me that its lost in the mail!

I hope to have an update soon. I started to make some progress on the T-38 again.

The plan I had for the T-37 might not work.

I think the ground equipment is almost done.

mach71

Which photo would you like on the front page?

You can choose but the first one would work for me.

Bish

Thanks for the info John. Thats come out really well, lovely looking aircraft.

 

Thanks for the info John. Thats come out really well, lovely looking aircraft.

Well done!

Which photo would you like on the front page?

Looks like the bell has rung on the PT-19.  The decals were great and I survived the vac canopies, though that seemed in doubt for a little while.  A pretty good resin kit, maybe one of the better ones to try if you haven't built a resin kit yet.

With the Revell PT-13 Stearman

And with a P-40N also.  USAAF trainers were low powered airplanes, but they weren't small.

Bish

The PT-19 looks nice there John, not a type i am familar with.

 

The red on the hawk looks pretty good to me John.

The PT-19 looks nice there John, not a type i am familar with.

Got paint on the Hawk, twice.  ht e layer was model master fire red and that was way to marroon, had to use the little Testers bottle of red,  I think it's a pretty close match to the color the Revell of Germany intructiond listed. 

Still working on decals

John

Jeaton01 thats coming along nicely! The blue looks perfect.

Bish I love the paint on your swallow! The mottling looks perfect!