Grey Ghost 531

Digital. I have a Sony that records onto erasible/rewritable mini-CDs so I can go to a museum or airshow and take as many pictures as I want of anything at every angle and then delete the ones I don't want. You can't do that with film. It is a little harder to take candid photos because the camera takes a second or so to sort itself out when you press the button. Auto focus, auto exposure.

I tried the wash method just the other day and it didn't work to the degree I expected. I think my problem was a combination of the wheel was painted with matte finish paint and the junction of tire to wheel not being a deep, defined groove. It was more of a step. This caused the wash of tire color to bleed into the wheel color. Maybe it works better if the wheel color is gloss. I ended up using non-thinned tire color, a tiny brush, bright light and magnification.

Kind of weird, but for little stuff that needs to be painted before it's incorporated into an assembly, I cut the pieces off the sprue so I can clean up mold seams, then glue them back on to pieces of sprue so I have a handle to hold them by when I paint them. Sometimes you can stick the stub of a streched piece of sprue through a hole in the part and paint it that way. Sometimes you can use the glueing of a part to the sprue to keep from getting paint on the glue point. You could probably stick the pieces to the sprue with "blu-tak" but you might blow them off with the spay.

I think the most common way is trial and error with a piece of cardboard and a pair of scissors. Another possible way is some modeling clay. Smoosh the clay into the fuselage, cut it at the point you want to build the bulkhead at with a piece if taught wire and trace the cut edge.

I think stuff like the engine nacelles and turrets are vac-formed. You're probably on your own for guns, landing gear and such. A guy here at work has a Gulliows B-17 he's working on. I'll ask him what it comes with. He's on the road right now but I'll be able to talk to him next week.

One method I've read is to use tubing to mask the tip of tapered items. 1) Paint the body color on the tip 2) hold a tube who's diameter is the same as the front edge of the stripe on the tip of the bomb and spray the stripe color. 3) hold a tube who's diameter is the same as the back edge of the stripe and spray the body color again.

The little tins are kind of a pain in the butt I think. Hard to pour the paint into the airbrush cup without making a big mess. If you use an eyedropper you have to clean that out too. The paint is good though.

If it snaps you're pulling it too fast. Practice...at least the raw materials are free!

I'd be worried about the thickness of the coating. You will be narrowing the intake trunk by about six scale inches I'd guess in 1/48.

Furnace filters are available in many sizes. Even if there isn't one exactly the size you want the frames are just cardboard. You can cut them with a scissors. That's what I use. I also have a "pre-filter" that's just a thin sheet of foam sold for air conditioners. It just rests against the back of my home made spray booth. The back of it is perf-board like you hang tools off of. The furnace filter goes in a chamber behind that.

FSM had an article a while back that listed the regulations for the application of invasion stripes.

It's already got the spoilers and the big fin in the back!

Yes, the web page says eliminates the need for engine bracing in the fuselage and allows for more cabin space. Kind of odd looking but if Honda makes it it's bound to be good.

Bear Air is another retailer to price check against. I can vouch for their service.

I'll second that. Works very, very well, and it's about the easiest, most foolproof method I've found to do it (barring aftermarket masks). Just don't burnish the foil down TOO much, or it'll be difficult to remove. I third it, just don't do what I did. I masked both sides of the wheels to paint the tires. Stuck the wheels to a strip of wood using doubled over masking tape. Painted the first side of the tires. Pulled all the wheels off of the strip of wood intending to flip them over to paint the other side....D'oh....look at those little circles of foil stuck to that masking tape!

Sheet styrene or sheet plastic is how I've heard it described.

I find I have a hard time getting the foil wrapped around the strut withoug wrinkling it. Testors chrome silver paint looks better than foil that was put on wrinkled I feel but if you can get the foil smooth that's the best.

Take a straight piece of sprue about 100mm long and nip off any side nubs. Hold it about 25mm over a candle flame and rotate it to heat it evenly, kind of push the ends together gently until it's getting shiny and soft. Don't let it catch on fire! Remove it from over the candle and pull the ends away from each other. How fast you pull determines how thin the sprue gets: fast will get you hair thin (or thinner); slow will get you thicker. Pull as far as you can without breaking the sprue or running out of arms and hold it for a few seconds until it cools. The thin stuff you've made can be u

For thick CA a toothpick, strip of plastic, stretched sprue stub, tip of the exacto... Never from the bottle. You're risking a big mess doing that. The stretched sprue stub is the best way, you can form the end to an angle if that's more convenient for the situation and we all have pieces of sprue laying around, don't we? For thin CA I have an applicator made from a little piece of dowel with a sewing needle stuck in the end. I cut off the tip of the eye of the needle to make it a tiny fork. That will hold a drop of thin CA for transfer to my model.

One consideration is how the join of the part looks. If it's a Tamigawa masterpiece it's often possible to paint the wings, tails, etc prior to final assembly and not have to fill the gap at the seam because the parts fit so well and/or were designed to join at an actual seam line. Sometimes it's difficult to paint the model after it's completely assembled due to hidden or shadowed areas. It would be hard to get the paint in to some areas with an airbrush and you'll see the paint lay down in a very grainy finish because the air swirls around in the angles between the vertical tails in Keith'

Use the tip of a round toothpick like a rubber stamp. Trim the toothpick until the tip is the right diameter. Take your white paint and paint a drop onto a sheet of glass or something so it's just a thin layer and use it like a stamp pad. Or, if you're truely insane, take a Waldron punch and die set, choose the correct diameter and punch out a bazillion dots out of white decal paper and apply them one at a time to the model using the proper decal setting solution...

I did a google search on "pouch-paint" and got a couple of hits. Curiously, one was a gallery on ARC: Boomerang; and anther was a review on another site that mentioned the pouch paint was discontinued. Probably why the store has them discounted. And by the way, MoFo is now partying like it's 1999!

I've got a pair of skinny tweezers and a dental pick I use. The strip of tape sticks to the tweezers and I manouver it in and when it's in the right spot I hold it down with the dental pick and remove the tweezers. You can nudge it around with the dental pick to get it in the final position.

Boyd's Primer White is a very good flat white too.

I'm not sure I understand your problem. If your problem is that you're trying to paint exhaust streaking on the wings and it's not showing up because the paint you're using for the exhaust is black and it's going on a black painted aircraft, the color from a high-octane engine that's running in a proper state of tune isn't black. Look at references. The streak of staining is usually different shades of gray with maybe some brown showing around the edges of the streak. The staining is caused by the lead additives used to raise the gasoline octane rating. If an exhaust stain is black it woul