August's Toybox

[K5083]

Thank you. This is actually the first color PE cockpit set I have used. But I would use more of these if I built more jets. The level of detail in the panels and consoles, especially, would be hard to do any other way. With the Harrier GB coming up later this year, I may have to invest in a PE set for that.

I was a little disappointed that the PE set included nothing to spruce up the canopy, such as mirrors or latches.

August

[PTB11]

You're doing one heck of a job on that F-14. It looks great.

[Clashcityrocker]

"Just a walk in the park."

Nigel

[PGAS]

Wonderful progress on the F-14. Great work in the cockpit! The photo etch really fills in the details.

[K5083]

With three completions thus far this week, I'm focusing this weekend on the F-14, the Camel, and the Halifax. I've chosen Roy Brown's colors for the Camel, with the red/white tail that seems to be the current research consensus of how it looked on 4/21/1918. Here it is a couple of days ago before I got started on the rigging.



This morning I almost completely rigged the wings. The white dots are Perfect Putty that I watered down until it flowed and filled in the holes for the rigging. We'll see how it sands out.



Early in the build, I made and attached all of the control horns, but those have pretty much all broken off while handling and masking the model, so I'll have to repeat that task later in the build.

August

[TeeELL]

Great work and great progress August.

[ShaunW]

That Camel is coming along a treat I must say.

[iggie]

Lovely work on the Camel and I'll be interested to see how the hole filling goes with the watered down putty

[jssel]

Great work on this bench. Most impressive

[K5083]

Today was a bit chilly out, but the overcast lighting was good for a quick photo session with my completed Curtiss P-1A. As noted above, this is the Monogram 1/72 P-6E kit with the old Rarebits conversion (vac fuselage) and scratchbuilt landing gear and prop. Decals are from a variety of sources. The legends on the side are pieced together letter by letter from a decal sheet I found on ebay that was a reasonable approximation of the USAAC font.













August

[iggie]

That's magnificent!

[K5083]

This weekend's update on three projects. A fair amount of work got done, but a lot of it had a frustrating quality because it involved fixing kit faults.

The Matchbox Halifax is coming along and is a couple of weeks from completion. There is still a long list of little things to do.



The Camel is mostly waiting for decals. The personal markings will come from the Roden sheet, but I don't want to use the roundels on this kit because then I won't have them for the Roden. None of the decal sheets in my stash yielded a properly sized set of wing roundels. I have ordered a Pegasus sheet that I hope has the right kind.

I glued the kit wheels on, and they immediately looked wrong - undersized. It threw off the whole look of the plane. I measured and scaled, and found that the kit wheels are fully 1mm too small in diameter, which is a lot when you are talking about an 8.5mm versus 9.5mm wheel. So I broke them off before the glue could fully set up and went pawing through the parts box and came up with a proper sized pair. Found them, installed them, much better. Here are before/after pics with the kit wheels versus my substitutes.



Now on to the F-14. The intake trunks were a terrible fit with large gaps.





Well, we all know what to do. Fill, sand, fill, sand, make less progress than expected. But it all got done. Then the nose went on, after I built some ejector rails and pseudo detail to fill the empty space behind the rear seat. As you can see, again a poor fit. I had shimmed the nose to make it the same width as the fuselage, but they just aren't the same cross section. In a way I have to admire the AMT people for never missing a single opportunity to make parts not fit together.



Anyway, overall the model is starting to look F-14-like. I am pleased with the cockpit, but the paucity of detail on the opened canopy, e.g. mirrors, latches, etc., was beginning to bother me, so I sprung for yet another PE set to trick that out. Luckily, canopy-only detail sets are just a few dollars. It is on the way.



August

[iggie]

Cracking work August, and the Camel wheels look the part. The Halifax looks amazing, and will look even better I'm sure when fully assembled!

[skypirate]

In a way I have to admire the AMT people for never missing a single opportunity to make parts not fit together.

Maybe they were determined to make real modellers of us!

Wonderful projects, coming together very well!

David

[mjatx]

Very nice work going on here, August. Keep it up!