CrowTRobot

Thanks. If I ever build another F-84F it would most likely be the Kinetic kit. The plastic in that kit has a rough surface texture that you have to sand & polish smooth in order to achieve a nice natural metal finish, but I'd rather do that than polish another Hobby Boss turd.

I finished a Hobby Boss F-84F in September, and my answer is "nope". Here's a list of problems I found with the kit: The machine guns and shell ejector ports located at the wing roots are missing. The recessed area on the vertical stabilizer where the horizontal stabilator attaches is missing. Various cooling air scoops on the fuselage are missing. The suck-in doors on the lower front fuselage are poorly rendered. I cut them out and substituted doors from a Kinetic donor. The landing gear is over-simplified and generally awful, I substituted the landing gear fro

I have the Dream Model Viper, but I haven't built it yet. It looks pretty good in the box. I normally don't build models of modern stuff or helicopters, but my son works on these birds at Camp Pendleton, and I'd like to build the pair of them for him.

Looks great! What paint did you use, and where did you get the model? I want to build one for my son in the Marines, but I can’t find them anywhere.

Thank you. If I built one of these kits again I'd skip the Aires cockpit and just install a nice resin ejection seat in the kit cockpit. The Aires fit was lousy, and you really can't see much it once the kit is assembled. While dry fitting the leading and trailing control surfaces on the wing I noticed that if I posed them in the drooped position there were very few gaps, but when I posed them in the raised position there were lots of tiny gaps that had to be filled. It was worse on the right wing because it was a bit warped. I straightened it by dunking in hot water and bending against the wa

Doh! Sorry about that. Perhaps a moderator will boot this into the display case forum.

This was a pretty tough build for a Hasegawa kit. I opted to build it with the wing down and droops & ailerons up since the whopping majority of photos of parked F-8s show it in that configuration, but it wasn't easy getting rid of all the gaps that presented. Then there was the infamous problem of posing the canopy open. It's clear Hasegawa intended for the wing to be up and the canopy to be down, but I just had to be contrary. To make matter worse, the kit decals shattered when they hit the water. I managed to salvage them by spraying the sheet with Future, but that made them tend to cur

I was planning to use the kit-supplied decals with my Hasegawa F-8J, but they shattered like glass when they hit the water. I ordered a replacement sheet from Hobbico nearly 3 months ago, but I've received nothing and I really don't expect to given their financial situation. I'm looking for one of the following sheets so I can finish my model (listed in order of preference): Aeromaster Colourful Crusaders III 48-445 Hasegawa decals from kit HSGS0226 Aeromaster Colourful Crusaders I 48-403 Aeromaster Colourful Crusaders IV 48-450

I just finished this Encore/Monogram 1/48 F-102 Delta Dagger. I started it way back in 2014, but I shelved it while working on my U.S.S. Enterprise Refit. I picked it up again last October, and boy am I glad to be done with it. The fit was poor, and there were nasty seams to be filled on the underside of the wing and the starboard side of the vertical stabilizer. There were also some rough molding artifacts where Encore had grafted the Case XX wingtips onto the molds resulting in ridges that had to be sanded and pits that had to be filled. Some of the Encore "enhancements" & details seem

Kitsworld has a good selection of racy decals for P-51 and P-47 subjects.

That was a fascinating story. Thanks for posting it.

I normally spray a coat of Future over Alclad with no ill effects. I've never tried Aqua Gloss, but when in doubt it's best to experiment on some scrap plastic so you can tell exactly what the effect would be without jeopardizing the finish on your model.

If you end up going with a Sandy loadout try to find a 150gal resin fuel tank for the starboard stub. The Tamiya kit provides a 300gal tank for this station, but 150gal tanks were more commonly used there. Two Mikes made a 150gal tank for the A-4, but the same tank was used on the A-1. I used it on this build:

Thanks! I didn't post anything in-progress- only the finished model.

I finished one of these kits early last year. Take a look at this posting to see my comments.