Got the cockpit bucket and instrument panels done and mounted in the upper fuselage half.  I figure I'll put the seats in later since I just see them getting in the way and causing issues while I work on the rest of the jet.

That looks great Eagle! Are those instuments decals or did you drybrush/paint them? In any case love your results. 

I got B.A.'s van primered and painted the red stripes. Sorry, I don't trust nearly forty year old decals. I'll wait till this is good and dry and then mask them and paint the black body of the van. 

Spoiler and and 'fins' or what you call the raised areas on the hubs are red too.

Gave B.A. two coats of 'leather' paint and a black wash. He's starting to look more Mr. T-ish already... 

Rob Gronovius

Gonna need to add some scale chain from model shipbuilding to give him more bling!

 

Lol, good call Rob! They'd look way better than that pitiful flat molded jewery!

Gamera

That looks great Eagle! Are those instuments decals or did you drybrush/paint them? In any case love your results. 

Thanks Gamera.  The instruments are all an Eduard color PE set, and they're just about right for 1/72 scale.  In larger scales they don't have enough depth.  They even had PE for the HUD frame and ejection seat handles.

BA and his van are looking great!  Wise choice to go with painting the stripes.  Even if those old decals were still viable, the painted stripes are going to look so much better.  The skin tone on BA is perfect!  Mr. T would be proud.

Thanks Eagle! I used to buy a lot of the Eduard ZOOM sets since the instrument panels are way better than anything I can paint. Lately though I've been just building more straight from the box though. 

And you're right about about painting the stripes. Not only do they look better but the spoiler is red too, and I'm not sure I could have perfectly matched the red in the decals. 

[quote user="Gamera"

Wayne: That is very cool! I picked up some Soviet figures in NBC gear about a year ago. Not sure if this is the right protective suits for the Chernoybol clean-up or not though.

[/quote]

close enough. i have the first 3 kits. the 3rd kit is the roof cleaners, 4th is deactivators (decontamination all in full NBC gear), 5th is civilian evacuees from Pripyat who were never allowed to return. Kit 1 has one guy in decon gear. they brought in over 600,000 soldiers during the clean up. the roof guys were deploy go to the roof, throw one shovel of debris into the hole and be sent home becuse they got a lifetime or Rads. the whole cleanup was typical Soviet brute force inefficiency.

i have 3 books, read 2 additional books and watched the HBO series  which gets the basics correct but "modifies" some facts for drama. good visuals though. scary stuff. thinking of doing a 16 hour class based around the HBO series

none of my friends want to fly into Kyiv and do a day tour of Chernobyl and the big DUGA 1 Radar site.

Cool Wayne, horrific  story there. 

These figures were off AliExpress, don't know the brand. 

Got the upper and lower fuselage halves together and the wings on.  Fit has been typical Hasegawa...decent, but not wonderful.  Managed to get the seams between upper and lower erased with a tiny bit of super glue, tiny bit of Apoxie Clay, and miniscule dabs of Mr. Surfacer 1200.  Broke off one of the AoA probes, so I sliced them both off and just drilled a couple of tiny pilot holes for the Master Model probes and pitot tube set that I have on the way.  They were both kinda too big anyway.

Bigger gaps between the wings and fuselage, but nothing that I think Apoxie Clay won't be able to make disappear.

Also cleaned up the excess primer and black around the cockpit with a couple of q-tips dampened with 99% isopropyl alcohol.  Love that stuff for removing paint and primer!

Looks great Eagle! And sometimes it's just better to remove the probes for aftermarket or scratchbuild ones.

Nothing done with the van recently. I've ordered some polishing compound I want to try out. When it gets here I'm going to try to polish out the red stripes to a nice shine and then mask them for the black.

Thanks Gamera!  Yeah, had a week off this week, so its given me a lot more time than I usually have.  I normally build 1/48 and 1/32, and I've gotta say that 1/72 models will help me keep my sanity.  Its kinda nice to have something that builds up as quickly as a 1/72 fighter so I can feel like I'm getting something completed.  Bigger scale builds tend to get agonizingly slow at times.  Wanna get this done so I can get the new Tamiya F-4B on the bench with the Su-25...its a SCARY good kit.  Got my probe kit today for the F-16, and WOW are those probes tiny!

What kind of polishing compound are you trying out on your van?

Eaglecash: Nice work so far especially on that cockpit!

Gamera: B.A is looking much more like himself now. Also, can't wait to see the outside of the van fully painted.

Haven't had much time to work on the truck lately because of another project on the workbench that needed to be finished. One of the rattle cans I have been using to paint the box ended up giving me clogging issues so I decided to move on and start working on the engine and cab until I go to the store to get some new paint.

Thanks Keyserj!  The Mack looks like its coming together nicely!

Nice work guys, keep up the good work!

I'm hoping to start something in the next few weeks. I'm still not sure what its going to be.

John: That looks great! She's really coming together!

Eagle: Sorry, didn't see you question till now. It's the Tamiya polishing compound. There's an article here on FSM about polishing out orange peel. On the van it's not too bad but with the slab-sided flat shape I figure it should be good practice.

No problem, Gamera.  Let us all know how that polishing compound works out for you.  I've been having really good results with Novus applied with cotton gloves, but having as many options as possible never hurts.

Almost ready for paint.  Got the major issues worked out with the airframe.  The holes for the elevon pins were way too big, so I drilled them out to 2mm and glued in some 2mm OD brass tubing.  Then I used a little Tamiya Extra Thin on those elevon pins to soften them up a little so I could get the elevons into their proper, slightly downward angle.  They have a 1.5mm OD, so they fit nice and snug in the brass sleeves I made.  Also had to add a tiny chunk of .010" Evergreen styrene strip to the inside of one of the mounting slots for the strakes.  That slot was over-sized and everything I tried for securing the strake to the fuselage failed.  The styrene shim was the magic bullet.

Also got the 1980s-appropriate armament put together and ready for paint.  Very little to deal with in the way of seams.  Fixed those with a few little dabs of the trusty old Gorilla Super Glue with the light blue cap.  Everything is smoothed and polished.  Just have a little re-scribing to do and all will be good.  Loading it with 2 AIM-9s, 2 AGM-65s, a GPU-5/A gun pod, and 2 370-gallon external fuel tanks.  Was going to put LANTIRN pods on it too, but those weren't around in 1983 when this one was flying at Hill AFB.

Eagle: She's coming along well- nice work!!!

The Tamiya polishing compound worked really well. I wish I'd tried the Novus years ago now. I did encounter a few bad spots in the paint so I sanded them out and repainted. Sorry I didn't think to take any photos. Going to let it dry for a week or so and I'll take some then when I try the polishing compound again.

Nice ingenuity Eagle!

Gamera, I can't wait to see how your polishing works out.

Thanks for the comments guys.

Gamera, I had been using Novus for years on 1:1 aircraft canopies and windscreens to safely get my skull prints off them after finishing an avionics job, but only recently discovered how awesome it is for models.

Cool! Thanks guys! I'm going to let the paint go a little longer to make sure it's good and dry.

Well...it took about 3 days to get all of the masking and painting done, but the airframe is all painted!  Whenever I think about how "long" it took to get it done, I just remember what it was like doing this kind of paint job prior to MRP paint coming along.  With the standard Model Master Enamels I had sworn by for years, this same job could have easily taken weeks or months to allow for proper cure times between colors.  Another good thing is that all of their paints are semi-gloss, so I won't even need to clear coat before putting decals on it.

Thanks Ed!  Just got the radome painted, as well as a gloss black basecoat for Alclad on the exhaust, AND Alclad.  Was able to put a semi-matt clear coat on the radome too, all in a single afternoon.  That MRP paint is a game changer for the amount of time finishing takes.  Their clear coat though is slower to cure, that's pretty much an overnight kind of paint.

May I join with this?

I like it CN, very cool! 

Got the box all finished up today and was able to get the engine and cab exterior painted. These old amt kits have a terrible fit but I am really happy with how this is coming together.

Pretty amazing detail work on the box, Keyserj!

Got the decals done on the F/A-16B and was finally able to unmask the canopy and get it polished up.  Its always so tempting to unmask it before its done and pull it off the model to see if the masking worked the way I wanted it to.