The Stealth Fighter... (F-19)

Well I started on my Revell 1/144 F-19 Stealth Fighter today. Admitted there isn't that many parts for it. I've decided to have the undercarriage up as the legs where shocking... Well that's not entirely true, the whole kit is shockingly bad!!! I guess it's the age of the molds, from 1988 this model is. I might do the "bomb bays" as closed also, dunno yet. The more and more I look at this plane, the more I see the "Have Blue" plane that was the prototype for the F-117 Stealth Fighter. With the rudders pointing inwards. I was gonna paint this model in two tone air superiority gray. But it's too much hassle for a "test" model, altho I might yet, and besides I can use the decals on my F/A-18E. What I am gonna use this model for however is practicing how to use filler, sand it down and see what gray I can use on my Hawkeye. I hope the pictures come out okay. This is my first blog written on my phone. :D

Peace!!

Dazz

New bits and bobs...

  The other day Nat and I went to our local HobbyCraft store.  The traffic home was terrible, took me 2 hours to travel 3 miles... yay... thank you Olympics!  Well I went there and noticed there was a model of a BF110 E-1 in 1/72, even tho I have the new Airfix's tooling of the ME-110C2/C4 which is a fantastic model, I thought I would get it as I saw the price ticket for it and it said £2.99.  I thought that must of been an admin error, but legally speaking if a shop advertises a price for something they have to sell it for that price.  It helps knowing the law when you, yourself works in an Admin dept for a big supermarket. ;)  Well I picked it up and was getting ready to have an argument with the management of the store.  The lady behind the counter scanned and I asked what it went through as and she said £2.99.  I was deflated... I was expecting to question it, but I got it.

  Not bad for £2.99 eh? So if you have a HobbyCraft near you, check out the BF110 E-1.  I admit it's not up to the tooling of the new Airfix one but I put that down to age.  However it now means I can make both the C2 and the C4 once I find out what was different about them, or just make the Airfix one as the "fighter-destroyer" used in the Battle of Britain and make the bomber version shown here.  Not sure yet.  I might make them side by side... altho I have a feeling the Revell one will be finished sooner.  As it has about a third of the parts of the Airfix one.

  Next up is this little plane.

   Now as I understand it, this little plane belongs to the subject of "Luft46" (Luftwaffe 1946).  It never flew to my understanding but as with most of the Luftwaffe planes of late 1945 it was jet powered.  Had the war continued I imagine that the allies would of had a much harder job of winning the war... or more horrifically using the atom bomb on Berlin... who knows what the war would of done had it gone on.  Anyhow, I picked up this model from ModelsforSale.com. To me the Flitzer looks a lot like the Venom and Vampire the RAF used up until the 1950's-ish.  Not sure if I can do the mottle camo, but I'll see what I can do.  Now for some reason that escapes me, both Airfix and Revell ship their German planes without Swatikas.  So I bought the two decal packs below.  One is for the BF-110 nightfighters and the other is for a BG109F-4.  Might actually buy the models they where designed for at a later date.  But for now I wanted them as they where cheap and they had the Swatikas in then. :)

  I also bought an Revell 1/144 Eurofighter Typhoon, I've seen good things about this model I might try to make it into an FGR4, just depends if I can get any weapons for it, like the Paveway IV's.

  PEACE!

  Dazz 


 

Espada 2 Rafale!

  I finally finished this baby, this is my first finished 1/144 scale aircraft and I am loving it.  I loved the detail and I loved how well everything fitted.  Admitted I could of spent a little longer making it, but I was rushing it (shocking)... I am still well impressed with what I have done.  Now I am not sure if you'd call this an "What If.." project as the Spanish do not fly the Rafale, they fly the great Harrier, where some of these decals come from.  I used the little decals for the Rafale that came with the kit and they are great!  I love the little "Rafale" on the top of the rudder and the "Dassault Rafale" at the bottom of the rudder.  I used the Spanish decals from my AV-8B Harrier II+ kit that I have still got to make.  Well I am impressed with this one, oh yeah I forgot to mention, I think the decals on the canards are so cool!  I think they say the usual "No Walk" kinda thing.  Well I'll get onto posting pictures of it.  Hope you like it as much as I do, please let me know what you think of it too.  Oh yeah, for people who haven't read the rest of my blog, I was trying to make one of my fav "Aces" from Ace Combat Zero : The Belkan War.  Espada 2 flies an Rafale while her leader flies an Saab Draken.

 Top view, I'm not too sure if the Spanish Roundels work or not...

  Front left side, I think it looks pretty good.  Love the fuel tanks.

  You can see the "Armada" from the Harrier kit here, I think they work.

  Front right, I'm really happy with this, altho I see places I need to touch up tho... bugger.

  If anyone has any comments about this please let me know.

  Hope you liked it.

  Peace!

  Dazz

Airfix P-39Q Airacobra

  This model was made because a friend suggested it.  The kit was horrible and didn't fit together too well, needed lots of filling and the decals where crap.  Anyhow here be the finished result.

  It doesn't look too bad there, but the thing was a pain.  The decals are way too big, incase you couldn't guess.  The US insigina on the other side came away in my hand so looks horrible.  The windscreen didn't fit too well either, I guess thats my fault for not dry fitting and making sure it fitted.  Meh... Still I was shocked that Airfix would still release a kit like this.  Still I learned a few things on this model, like how to mask up a model for straight edges, how to use filler and.... bugger the cannons are still white.  Just noticed that... bugger it.  Nevermind I'm not going to display this one at all.

  Peace!

  Dazz

They called it a Tank?!

  Now if you was to ask Nat (my girlfriend), she would just say that I buy a model kits because it "looks" cool and I would open it, look at the bits inside and then just forget about it.  Well today I have done the impossible, I have actually finished some models! I'll list them below...

  The weird thing is... they are all armor subjects from left to right we have a T-34/76, a Sherman Firefly and a A-34 Comet.  Time for some closer pictures, now this aren't too good as they where taken on my iphone which I do not rate at all... but it was all I had to hand.

 I noticed there is a great big gaping gap in the front of the turret, I couldn't be bothered to fix it besides the gun had buggered up somehow.

  The Sherman Firefly, dont know why but I just love this tank.  I think it's because it was the only tank that could fight the Panthers or Tiger at reasonable ranges.  Gotta love that 17 pounder gun. :)  I only read the other day that the German Tank crews where instructed to kill the Firefly first as it posed the greatest danger (makes sense).  To combat this the tank crews painted a "countershadow" to hide the length of the barrel to make it looks like a normal Sherman.  I tried to paint this on as well, but it's bloody hard at this scale.

  Last but not least is the A-34 Comet, I like this little model.  It was the only model out of the 3 tanks that I chose to do a proper disruptive camo scheme.  Don't think it came out too bad.

  Now I know these tanks are not the best in the world and they are just painted to the basic level.  But I am still technically learning how to make these things again, so I am learning as I go along.  One thing I have learned is the value of the two products below.

  Now these two little bottles are a god send, they actually make the decals look good without any "silvering" and no bubbles either.  I love this stuff, glad I found these online, can't come highly recommended enough.  I'll show you what I mean.

  This is the right wing for my Ta-152, it looks horrible doesn't it?  The paint looks bad as it was rushed and hand painted too.  This was before I put some Micro Sol on it...

  And here we have the same wing after one coat of Micro Sol... amazing stuff!  I will be using this stuff a lot more.  Really good stuffs. :)

  Oh and welcome to first two followers (Other than Nat) of my blog, they be StuG and Ludo Weyden. :)

  PEACE!

  Dazz

Revell 1/144 Northrop Grumman E-2C Hawkeye Part 3

  Just a little update.  I finally got around to looking at the Hawkeye again, I was actually re-reading one of my Scale Aviation Modelers International magazine the other week, when I noticed an article on the new RAF Voyager, actually an Airbus A330 MRTT but meh... anyhow a bloke in it (I will find his name and give him full credit at an later date) had an A330 and he was going to convert it to the Voyager.  However he had already painted it using the display colours of the A330 at various airshows.  So he had the problem of removing the paint (as well as putting more nose weight in), anyhow he said that he got a tip of using Mr Muscle Oven Cleaner and putting it in a bag to "cook" for a day and then washed it off.  Well it's only £3.00 ish at work and even cheaper with the store discount (yeah I work in a supermarket, fucking hate it with a passion).  I tried it the other day and I can say it worked a treat!  Admitted I buggered up by getting water into the canopy but I can sort that out later.  Below is a picture of her drying from being washed.  I am back on track in getting this "simple" project done.

  Now I just need to decide on the colour of the aircraft and I will get the bugger done ASAP.  Well depends on when my Firestorm Armada cruisers get delivered.

  PEACE!

  Dazz

C000021a...

  Every now and then I get given a computer to look at to fix.  Now as I am qualified with the A+ I have started to charge for it.  Well whats the point in paying £750 for a qualification if I am not gonna make any money back on it eh?  Anyhow, I was given a laptop by my mothers friend, Kim to fix.  I was told that the laptop has been dropped onto a table.  Not a bad problem to fix, or so I thought.  I know that there was a stick of RAM that was rattling around somewhere and had been replaced.  I checked that first just to see it had been reseated correctly.  I was also told that the hard drive was making a weird noise.  Thats not usually a good sign, so I tried a boot... nothing, nada... not a peep.  I then listened to the hard drive and heard it making this noise.  The only way I can describe it, is that it's like the noise an old LP makes when it's finished it's track (showing my age here).  I checked the BIOS to see if the HDD was being recognised, it wasn't.  So I ordered a new HDD for Kim to put in there.  Being a Bank Holiday last weekend (Easter and it rained most of it... Thanks Jesus!...) the parts took some time to get here.  Well they turned up and after finally getting hold of a copy of Windows 7 (legal I'd like to add) I went about installing Windows 7 onto the new HDD.  Thats when the fun started... every time I tried to reinstall Windows, it's get to the Windows loading screen (where the little window flashes) and then it would show me the lovely Blue Screen of Death!!! Oh NOES!!! I expected that from XP and Vista but not 7.  It said (in short)

STOP : C000021a {Fatal System Error}
The initial session process or system, process terminated unexpectedly with a
status of 0x000000000  (0xc0000001  0x001003f0).
The system has been shut down.

  First of all, I thought it could of been the RAM, with the stick being knocked out and everything.  So I tried with one stick, then I tried two new sticks and still the same error.  So out to Google I went... I read everything from it overheating to the ACHI being turned to compatibility mode or something.  I tried everything I could think off and find on Google... however my Google-fu skills where letting me down.  Well thats not entirely correct.  I did read somewhere that the AMD's Cool'n'Quiet technology could be the answer.  If you turn it off it would work as it buggers up with a Windows logon process.  Well into the BIOS I went to turn that bugger off... failure on that end.  It's a Toshiba laptop with a basic BIOS so no turning off for the C'n'Q.  Then I had a really crazy idea... I took the HDD out and put it into another computer that I knows that works and installed Windows 7 on to the HDD with that laptop.  I know it's not supposed to be done because of the drivers and such but bear with me.  It finished the install and I put the HDD back into the Toshiba.  I turned her back on, yes I know... she crashed BUT I got back into the Windows 7 installation screen.  This time it actually worked... dodgy installs 1 logic 0.  I got the install done correctly and all sorted.  Now everynow and then it would crash again with the same issue so I went into the BIOS to see if I had messed with anything.  I hadn't, but then I noticed the BIOS version V1.5... I checked Toshibas website for the BIOS and there was an update, V1.8 released 2 years ago-ish.  I installed the BIOS update and touch wood, it's been a stable platform to use.  So if you have a Toshiba Satellite Pro L300D and it's got an AMD cpu in it AND you are getting that stop code.  Then check the BIOS version and see if it needs an update.  You'll thank the stars that you didn't waste 8 hours on it like I did.

  PEACE!

  Dazz