WiP - 7 - CF-188A Hornet

  Well I have done some more work on the CF-188A (CF-18A)... nearly finished, just gotta sort out the wash, which I just can not do... I think it's the varnish I am using.

   For some reason, Humbrol varnishes do not work well with either Gunze or Vallejo paints, in my experience.  Dunno if I am doing something wrong or not... need to try another varnish next time.  If you look closely at the top view picture, you'll notice that the paint has been "washed" away.  I didn't notice until the decal had gone down.  Typically...

   Was suggest to me, to try using Tamiya smoke in the wheel bays to give it some definition.  What do you guys think?  Not too sure if I like it, or if I have put too much in it?

 
  The two Bugs all ready for their place on my shelf.  I do wanna sort out an airport apron for them to actually sit on.  Will look into that one. :)  These two models are on hold until I can figure out what I have to do with the wash to get it working.  :)

  PEACE!

  Dazz

WiP - 6 - CF-188A Hornet

  Done a little bit of work on the CF-188A today as well, gotta pick out the small details and such, but I think she is pretty close to the decal stage!

 Hopefully you can see the spray of Orange on the top of the engines.  Wasn't too sure if they would come out okay or not, but I think I have managed to get it done.

  Peace!

  Dazz

Revell 1/144 F-18D WiP5

  Well this update is about two weeks old now.  First up, I had the F-18D all decaled and loaded up and thought "result!" then I put a sealing coat of varnish on the bugger.  This is what happened.  Now the "silvering" is where the varnish has reacted with the other varnish, its not where I have screwed up the decals.  I am actually pretty good with decals for some reason... I dunno.  Altho the "reaction" was pretty bad, it melted the glue and paint from the front canopy and the two HARMS fell off too as did the right Sidewinder.

  That little lot just made me cry, well I put the pictures up at Britmodeller as I was putting this build there as an WiP for them to laugh at.  I was given advice by Jessica, tomprobert, and Neal (from Britmodeller) that a light coat of gloss varnish *might* fix this cock up.  Well I gave it a try and here be the results.

  You have no idea how happy I am that this turned out this way, I need to touch up some areas but other than that I am well chuffed that it worked.  All I gotta do now is to tidy the canopy, paint the arrestor hook and the engines and this will be done.  Overall I am massively impressed with the RetroWings cockpit and control services parts.  Will be using their gear again soon. :)

  Constructive comments welcome.

  PEACE!

  Dazz

WiP 2 - Revell 1/144 F-18D and CF-188A

  Well I done some work on the two Hornets, I'll post up what I have done.  First I must point out something, while looking at the pictures of the plane I am making I was shown that the antennae where wrong (by Jessica from Britmodeller.com, so I decided to see if anything else was wrong that my eye could spot.  I found something that I wasn't expecting, first a picture of the real plane.

Right, first I must apologise for the quality of the picture.  This was the only picture I could find without any obvious copyright issues.  Airliners.net has some great pictures of what I am about to post.  If you take a look where the AIM-7 Sparrow recesses are you will notice they are flat and ready to receive a new Sparrow, should the need arise.  Now onto the kit part.

Notice the error?  I believe these are little "adaptors" for the TILAD pod and whatever the other thing is for the F-18D, I am sure they have a proper name but I don't know it, so it's now known as a "pod adaptor" by me.   So anyhows, I had to cut these down and sand them a bit.  Really I would of preferred to use some needle files to make and curved indentation but I do not own any yet, so I had to make do with what I had.  Onto the more fun parts.

As promised the picture of the cockpit, now that I got my DSLR back.  I'm kinda disappointed there wasn't more detail in the cockpit, but I am also relieved as this is my first one and wanted to be broken in gently.  I like what I have done here, not sure if any of this will be seen once the canopy is on tho.

Heres the F-18D with the flaps/slats/folded wings and the rudders.  I wasn't too sure on what side the rudders go when the plane is powered down as I have seen so many pictures of them in different poses so I just took a gamble and put them this way.  The slats and flaps look off, likes theres a massive gap inbetween them and the wings. I am hoping it's just a trick of the light and glue.  The folded wings look sweet tho, not too sure if I am going to stick anything on them or not.

The CF-18A all masked up, this is before all the filling and priming.  Didn't have any issues with it, but I am thinking of cutting the areials off before I put the decals on.  I'm predicting some problems there.

CF-18A after she has been primed.  Just noticed that nose cone needs looking into, well there is a few things that I need to sort out on this one after priming.  The next picture will show you what I mean.

I didn't sand down the filled in bits for the plyons or the joins too well.  Thats the point of priming I guess, so you can spot the cock ups in great big detail.  If you look closely you'll see the sparrow recesses and how I "bodged" them.  It's not perfect, but it will do me for the time being.  Also trimmed up the launch rails on the wing tips because this bird is not going to be armed.

And here is the F-18D with all of her resin parts primed, not that I see her in this light she doesn't look bad at all.  Come out better than I thought it would.  Those little stake things next to the rear canopy (or where it will be) look massive to me, not much I can do aout them now.

  And a different angle, I like the looks of this one looks like something out of a sci-fi show like this.  Well the wing tips look cool to me worth the efftot thus far.  Might buy these little wing things again for the other models I got.  I got a few bits to sand down and sort out on this bird yet, but she is getting there.  Gotta decide what load out I am going to put on her.  The little resin cockpit/canopy backer thing needed to be filled in and sanded down as well. Should start painting her next week sometime.  Decided I am going to buy the little carrier deck that Retrowings sell also.  They are getting alot of business from me of late.

  Peace!

  Dazz

New Project Revell 1/144 F-18C and F-18D Wild Weasel

  So I stared these two while I was waiting for the Puma's primer to dry.  I was having a lot of fun with these two so I continued and left the Puma to it's own devices.  Anyhow on to the pictures.

   Here we have the usual Revell box art, I likes this one, still trying to work out what plane is on fire to the right of the box.  The box artwork for the CF-18C and the schemes can be found here....

   This is one scheme that I will not be using for this model, I have bought a second one, so I will be making this version when I build that one. :)

   Technically this is two schemes in one, as there is different "tiger" stripes before and after 2009.  I am still trying to work out if this is a Tigermeet scheme or not, and now that I think about it, I dont ever recall the US Marines ever going to a Tigermeet.  I could be completely wrong, but I personally have never seen/remember it.

  The sprue shot... (bowchica-bow wow!)... both models have the same sprues so I am not going to post two pictures of the same thing.  On to the fun part of this build.

   I bought this Retrowings cockpit upgrade set thing to go with the F-18D when I realised that during the fun job of cleaning them, that there will be parts left over for the single seater, aka the F-18C.  So I am getting two models upgraded for the price of one... RESULT! :)  The two parts in the middle with the long pole things threw me off a little bit.  I thought the pole things where just spare resin for the moulding process.  Turns out when I was researching cockpit colours that they are infact the pump/jacks that open the canopy.  Who'da thunkit?!

 And the control surface upgrade for the F-18, this one will be going on the F-18D.  A fair bit to clean up but not too much to make me cry.  The only issue will be the flaps making sure I do not cut too much off when cleaning up.

  So I marked off what needed to be cut from the F-18D on the model, quite a fair chunk of it by the looks of it eh??  Was fun cutting it all off, I only cut off as much as I dared and sanded down the rest as I didn't wanna screw up the whole thing.  This is the first time I have ever used resin or cut a model, so I am going to go slow with this.

  Here we have the F-18D on the left with all of her wings hacked off and on the right is the CF-18C untouched.  I have used the canopy spines from the cockpit kits here as I want the canopys to be open.  I hope I can pull this one off without screwing it up.

  The two offices side by side, not really much to see but showning what they look like.  The canopy colours are kinda boring, either black or grey.  But easy to paint so not too bad I guess.  Not much else to say really, wonder what stuff they have where the second seat would be??  HHmm...

  And finally we have all of the Retrowings cockpit put together and painted.  You can also see two leadshots to stop her being a tail sitter.  I doubt she will be but I would rather not find out the hard way.  I like that back seaters cockpit, looks the part.  The Pilots instrument panel has been stuck onto the fuselage already, you'll see that at a later date when the halfs are married up.  Not much else to report apart from what I have done on the models I have liked, will be buying more of Retrowings' stuff in the future.

  Peace!

  Dazz

New Purchase - Retrowings (OzMods) BAe Hawk T1 1/144 and Retrowings Hawks in Worldwide Service decal sheet.

  I couldn't resist buying this the other day when I ordered some more resin parts for the other models I own (most cockpits tbh).  So I purchased this, I loved the Hawk Mk.127 that I built earlier in the year I decided to build one in the scale I am now starting to prefer.  Onto the pictures and a little about each one.

 here is the box for it, nothing fancy and nothing to write home about.  Clearly says on the box that the model was manufactured by OzMods (still gotta buy some bits from them but the shipping is really putting me off).  I think the Hawk on the picture is from Indonesia, I might go for that version it's a tooled up little Hawk with the 30mm Aden Cannon, two Sidewinders (assuming it's the same the other side) and what I think is an Mk.84 bomb.  I got a few of those weapons in my stash (mostly from the F-18E) so I might use that.

   Once again nothing to write home about, the parts look to be okay.  I know I will have a fair bit of work to do with this model.  But that's part of the fun with this one, am really looking forward to this one. 

  I am so glad that the main wing is one part, makes my life easier as I was worried about fitting them both and getting the right stance for some reason.  Also glad that the wing has the little stake things in it already.  I hated doing them for the Hawk 127.

  Here is the decal sheet that Retrowings released to go with the Hawk model, it's got 10 different planes from around the world which is a bonus incase I wanna do an unusual country choice or an what-if.  Also good to have. :)

  The first page, I am loving the way this is set out.  I've always had a thing for technical drawings like this, was always good at school with these kinda drawings and I could understand them quicker than most in my class.  Anyhow... I love the RSAF colours for some reason, probably because its the same colours as the Tonkas have... I dunno...  The only problem with this sheet is that you can see the Hawks Mk. 53, 65, 109, 209 as well as other marks.  I can only do the 53's and 65's as thats all the T1 was.  I wonder if anyone will do a conversion set for this model in the future??

   First thing that gets me about this page is there is a ROKAF plane in the bottom right.  I never knew that the South Koreans had the Hawk.  But now that I do know that I have had an idea, as I wont be using the decals for that plane as it's a Mk 63 and has a different nose to the T1, I was thinking of buying the Revell 1/144 F-15E Strike Eagle which has all of it's decals in tiger stripes and replacing them with the ROKAF ones as they do have the F-15E.... Okay they have the F-15K Slam Eagle (cool name!) which for all purposes IS and F-15 just different internals.  Not a bad idea I thinks, depends if the stencils are in the tiger stripes too.

  What decal sheet wouldn't be complete with the top/bottom views of all the planes.  I never noticed how much the wings differ from the Mk.63, 109 and 209.  Stuff like that fascinates me... geeky I know but you had your warning in my first post. :P

  All of the decals, I have two problems with this sheet, first one being the lack of stencils for the planes.  I wouldn't of minded paying extra to have them included in the sheet.  They are shown on the diagrams so why not?  The other problem is the fact that the US Navys not on there... they are the biggest operator of the Hawk... Well they call it the Goshawk but it's still a bloody Hawk, just Navy-ised.  Still thinking of the Indonesia decals...

  Peace!

  Dazz

New Purchase - RetroWings and Freightdog Model parts.

 So I said I would post some pictures of these resin parts, I've tried to give them a little wash, but the only wash I have is a light grey.  Hopefully you can see some details on them.  Onto the pictures.

   First up is the "Freightdog 1/144th Tornado GR.1/1A Gulf War weapons set pack".  You can see 3 LRMTS pods, one TILAD pod, IR Line Scanner and two JP233's. I love the details on the JP233's, altho one thing I am not too sure on, is the fact that the Tornado had a TILAD pod.  I know towards the start of the war, the Tornados had a Blackburn Buccaneer buddie who designated the targets for the Tornados.  Which pretty much turned the Tornado into a bomb-truck.  Will have to check up on that one.  Ironically enough, I read the other month that the RSAF is planning on doing the same thing with their Typhoons, using them as bomb trucks and using the Tornado as the designator.  Might do some kind of diaorama at some stage with that in mind.

   Hawker Hunter cockpit, lots of flash here, will have to be careful of what I cut away and what I dont.  The chair is well detailed tho.

   The Hawker Hunter's cockpit again but this time you can see the business end of it.  Looks likes fun to paint this lot. 

   Front end of the A-6 Intruder, hope you can see the details in it.  Once again the chairs look cool, look forward to painting these.  Will knacker my eyes out tho.

   The "Office" for the A-6 again, lots of detail there.  Very impressed with these :)

   New nozzles and intakes for the Revell A-10, not much here to look at, SYSIWYG.

   Cockpit kit for the Revell ECR Tornado, very cool, even got the holders/arms for the HUD.  Gonna have to find some thin clear plastic for those.  Still lots of bits to paint up again.

   Tried to get a better shot of the cockpit, hope you can see the details.

   This time a close up of the chairs and my left hand.  Loving the chairs, lots of detail to bring out on them.  You can see the HUD holder better here.

   Dragon Tornado set, pretty much the same as the Revell one, just a darker resin.  Still will have fun painting this bugger.

   Close up of the Navigators (back-seater) console.  That bit glues onto the plain flat bit you can see in the cockpit tub.

   Same kit again with a close up of the cockpit tub, lots more details to paint up there.  Hoping I can bring out the details in this one.  Might see if any of the decals can be used on here.  Probably not tho.

  This is the set I got for the F-18 "legacy" models.  Now that I have the model, I am rethinking if I want to cut it up or not.  I'm thinking not and getting another Hornet to cut up instead. Lots of details in the wing tips and the elevators too  Got the flaps and slats as well as the control surfaces for the rudders.  Might be a good addition if I can EVER get a carrier deck.

  Hope you can actually see the details in that lot.  I tried to get as close as my camera would allow.

  Peace!

  Dazz