Caricature Kit S-B *** Open***

[TimJ]

Great job on the Tiger, it turned out well.

[flakmonkey]

Going from one Tiger II to another Tiger II, although in this case it's the Northrop F-5E Tiger II. This is the AFV Club kit from their Q Scale range. Tere are two kits in the box, enabling the toymaker to build both the early Taiwanese SEA scheme and the current grays scheme. I shall be building the SEA scheme.

Here are the sprues.



I'll be starting shortly.

[jssel]

Time to get the paint gun going again. This time a dark yellow, red brown, dark green scheme with maybe some "pokka" dots.

At any rate, these things are fun!

[flakmonkey]

That looks great already, Jeff. These kits really are a lot of fun. I can't wait to see this in the three colour ambush scheme. With dots.

[flakmonkey]

It didn't take very long at all to get this far.



It's not strictly speaking a snap kit, and I have used cement. The fit of parts is good. I have given it two coats of Vallejo primer, and that has now cured so I am ready to start painting the camouflage pattern. The natural metal tails section and jet exhausts were airbrushed with Vallejo Metal Color silver and steel. The cockpit has been painted with Vallejo NATO black.

There is a rather charming Johnny Pilot, too.





I have given him a unit badge from the decal sheet, which incidentally seems to cover a lot more subjects and schemes than there are instructions for. Maybe a little research is in order.

[beany]

Beany's Meng B-17 build - blink and you'll miss it!

This turned out to be a game of two halves. The build was to be OOB just as the intended participant i.e. a child, would do.
And very enjoyable it was.






The snap together parts did just that but not so much they couldn't be "un-snapped" if needed and then re-snapped without any detriment to the joined parts. the only cement was used on the guns just in case they get knocked off by my sausage fingers and lost inside the fuselage.



The whole build took barely more than half of a YES CD (Fly From Here - Return Trip), so 30-40 minutes in total.




Then came the stickers. The were lovely thin vinyl and proved to be quite tough when I peeled some off several times to reposition them and one eventually tore in protest! However I found them extremely difficult to peel off of the sheet without the paper tearing and coming away with the sticker. I ended up using a very sharp scalpel blade to "lift" an edge and peel them from the sheet. I really don't know how a youngster would cope with this.



I think the idea is that the stickers are large enough to overlap and stick to each other on the top and bottom of wing halves for example, but I don't think that will ever work in reality. The best I could see happening is to trim back the overlap and then infill with the correct colour paint.




As can be seen here, the shade of grey used on the sticker is not exactly a perfect match for the moulded plastic colour - but I don't suppose a youngster would mind to much.





I actually really like the finished model for all of it's few faults and moreover my roughshod approach to the build.
I have seen some guys put a lot of effort into these and build and paint them like a proper kit and I may well find myself doing that on the next one. The Lancaster, Liberator and He.177 all look great so I will add them to my Amazon wish list and cross my fingers for Father's Day (which is how I obtained this one btw!).



Cheers
Al.

[iggie]

Blimey! That came out of nowhere
A brilliant looking build; top job Al

[JohnRatzenberger]

Congrats on a quick completion - shortest flash-to-bang time yet !! And very nice build notes.

[flakmonkey]

That looks great, Al.

[TeeELL]

This is my build:



The contents:



I have no plans to do anything other than an OOB although, having said that, I wanted to build an aircraft ‘with a connection’. My rather tenuous connection comes in 2 parts, both associated with one individual; he is very famous but for neither of ‘my’ connections.
Firstly, he was seconded to 29(F) Sqn because it was thought that his night flying experience would be beneficial.
Secondly, he was OC the Lancaster sqn based at the airfield next door to where I used to live in Martin, Lincs.
His name - Guy Gibson, the aircraft (his second on the Sqn) ‘ADMIRAL PRUNE II’ ZN*Y serial ED593.

[TeeELL]

I used the stickers supplied by MENG to determine the sizes of replacement transfers suitable to the aircraft I plan to build. In addition a search of t’interweb found suitable reference pictures and a reproduction of the cartoon ‘Mickey Mouse’ painted on the side of the fuselage.
The end result of some designing on CorelDraw and printing on my new colour laser printer:



In addition I airbrushed a suitable acrylic undercoat on the tailplane that matched the colour of the ‘brown’ plastic. I found the acrylic paint didn’t seem to like the very shiny plastic of the kit - despite washing - so, rather than blast everything with Tamiya grey primer I went back to trusty Humbrol enamels. At close of play last night the earth brown had been added (actually the brown plastic of the kit was a fairly near match!)
I have used the Tamiya primer on the bomb load though.



I’ve been pondering the removal of the H2S from the kit but there are images of 106 Sqn aircraft so fitted, to remove it will only cause an extended delay in the build.

[flakmonkey]

The single piece slide moulded lower fuselage/ wing/ engine nacelles/ tail is a work of art really, when you look at it. I was actually a little surprised upon opening the box of my Lancaster to see the H2S, and pretty astonished to find there was even the clear part included for it.

I think this will look great with those decals.

[flakmonkey]

I now have the SEAC Taiwan AIDF Agressor camo on the F-5E. I didn't use the official colours for the greens as I wanted them to pop a little on this cartoon character.







The brown is standard USAF brown FS30219. The dark green is NATO green. The medium green is zinc chromate interior green FS34151. Undersides are camouflage gray FS36622. Radome is Agressor Gray FS36251. Again not the official colour, it should be dark ghost gray FS36320 but I preferred the contrast between the SEAC camo and the darker Agressor Gray.

It has had a coat of Vallejo Metal color Metal Varnish, and that has now had 24 hours to cure and so it is ready for decals today.

It's a lovely little kit, and it really is a lot of fun to switch between this and my much more serious ongoing AH-1Z Zulu Cobra build.

[TeeELL]

My goodness, interpreting cutting out and masking the Lancaster has taken most of the morning! However, the upper cammo has now been applied. I need to paint the ‘black’ a more ‘not exactly black’ black though, but it will have to wait until the green has dried thoroughly.

[TimJ]

Great build of the B-17 Al, that went together quickly.

The Tiger and Lanc are coming along well guys.

As there are a few empty slots available I'll crack open my F-16.

P1060485 by timothy jones, on Flickr

Here's what's in the box.

P1060505 by timothy jones, on Flickr
P1060506 by timothy jones, on Flickr
P1060507 by timothy jones, on Flickr

I might use the Dutch markings as most of these are probably built as the US version.