OK, lets call this one finished

Oh that's awesome CN! Glad you got the help to get the tie-down straps right.

Kudos sir!!!

Thanks Gamera 

68GT, the second photo will be OK

Finally got the Mavericks finished and hung on the Lizard.

Hurrah Eagle! The Viper don't look right without all sorts of stuff that go BOOM hanging from the wings...

I managed a little Corsair bench time this evening. 

Good to see you workin' on it! A little LTV production line, huh?

Other than that not much happening in this GB :-( I'm still waiting for the last decal of my Cobra - but it's supposed to be on its way now.

Have a nice day

Paweł

Great Corsair line up!  I've got a few GBs to wrap up before this one - and fortunately this runs til 6/1/2022.

Yeah, I couldn't decide which one to build so I figured I'll pick 3.  I have a bunch more of them stashed away though.

Oh very cool Corsair collection!

Sorry, not much going on here. Been concentrating on getting some GBs done for the end of the year and haven't done much on B.A.s van. Hopefully will get back to it first of the year...

68GT;

Regrettably I'm going to have to withdraw from this GB. Unforseen circumstances have cropped up and I'm just not going to be able to get to the build in the time alloted. Everything you guys are doing looks great. Can't wait to see more of them finished.

MikeO'B.

Completely understandable Mike, I've had a lot of totally crappy things happen to me this year. I'll keep you on the roster just in case though.

I hope things get better for you!

I'm calling this one done.  It was an extremely frustrating build, and I think I'll be avoiding Hasegawa stuff from now on...LOL.  Had no choice but to go with the open-canopy configuration at the end, since the engineering on this is so awful the rear seat doesn't sit down low enough to allow the canopy to close all the way.  Anyway...here it is, with its early 80s loadout of a GPU-5/A 30mm gun on the centerline, 2 AGM-65Ds, and 2 AIM-9Js.  The gun was mounted with stryene rod that was glued into holes I made on the bottom of the fuselage.  It is press-fit onto those rods with the tiny holes I drilled in the gun pod mount.  The rest of the weapons are mounted similarly, but with even tinier holes in the weapons/rails, with everything press-fit onto 0.5mm copper beams.  Made for a sturdy, clean way of mounting everything.

Turned out nice Eagle.  I've had mostly good experiences with Hasegawa - looks like you beat it into submission.  Well done.

Delete please

Thanks guys!

Keavdog, when I made the discovery about the seat on Saturday, it took everything I had to resist sending it on a "test flight".  But, with the canopy open, it does a pretty good job of hiding the issue.

Ed, I can try to PM a link to you that will generate a good thumbnail that can be blown up for the completed build section.

That looks great Eagle! 

I know what you mean, I've completed stuff and then found something like that. I finished a P-51 years ago and then noticed I didn't put the radiator inside- so you can look right though the underbelly air intake and out the other side... DOH!!! 

Thanks Gamera!  Yeah, on some of these models, its almost as if they expect you to build the model before you build the model to check their engineering.  There were so many things on this one that seemed like their engineers said "You know what?  I'm just not feeling it today.  You figure out how to actually make these two things go together."

After this, and with all the issues that are now rearing their ugly heads on my Su-25 project (horrible fit issues with steps between fuselage halves, and panel lines that have staggered alignment issues), I had to get my new Tamiya F-4B on the bench just to get some relief from the mediocrity of the other 2.  LOL.  So far, the Tamiya is like a breath of fresh air, like a guy on YouTube says of his Tamiya projects "Everything just friggin' fits...no BS."

I actually have been working on my VF-1D slowly but slowly. I got stuck on step 1. Even though I've made quite a few of these over the years I guess I've forgotten how badly some of the pieces fit together, and this is especially obvious on step 1 with the exhaust nozzles/feet. Not only do they not really fit together, but there are no guide pins, either. It's kind of the wild west with them. So I got to this point and got frustrated:

You can also see places where there are ejector pin marks that are really hard to get to as well.

Then I remembered I have a couple 3D printers. So I gave up on those pieces and decided to 3D model them and print them out. After some trial and error here's what I finally replaced them with:

At least I'm on step 2 now.

BL: Looks good! The 3D printed parts are a big improvement. 

Hello everybody!

3D printing rulez!

Now I finally have the decals on - it looks a little obnoxious in gloss yet...

I have also worked on one of the last details/subassemblies left - the 20mm gatling gun (M197):

Thanks for looking and have a nice day

Paweł

Wow, those 3D parts came out real nice.  Excellent work!

Pawel, thats some good looking detail work on the gun.

Yeah those look really good Pawel!!! 

68GT, Gamera - thanks a lot for your kind words!

I'd say (if I may) it looks a little better still now that I added a flat clear coat and some exhaust soot:

Thanks for looking and have a nice day

Paweł

Sometimes thats all it takes.  I'm a big fan of subtle weathering on my builds for the most part.

Pawel: Looks great to me! And you're making great progress. 

Hello everybody!

This group build got really slow lately... So much, that I forgot to post my finished pictures! Let me fix that right now - my cold warrior is now done:

Thanks a lot for lookin' and I hope you liked it - have a nice day!

Paweł

It looks great Powel!  Do you have a preference of which photo to post?

I've been clearing up some lose ends before the end of the year and then I'm getting back to the Corsairs.