eharrold44

I attached the cowl last night. Most of the major assembly and painting is done, so now I'm mostly focusing on cleaning up areas I'm not satisfied with and painting some of the smaller trim lines and details. Also working on the ordinance, landing gear, and propeller. I added a light coat of Navy gray to further blend the preshading, and to bring down the brightness of the white on the control surfaces. And yes, the canopy is d-i-r-t-y. Yikes. I'll be cleaning that up soon.

Thank you for posting. The look of your finish is really superb. The various weathering techniques really give it some scale-appropriate depth. Great work!

Ideally, I would paint the intakes prior to assembly. Much easier to mask and weather them that way. The unfortunate downside is that it will make it difficult to deal with the internal gaps without harming your paint job. The best solution I can think of is to thoroughly prefit the intake parts to the fuselage to minimize the gaps as much as humanly possible, and then attach it to the fuselage (after painting and weathering) with a thicker CA to fill them. You could leave some room for a light post-assembly coat of white by going a little heavy on the weathering and shading, and the fan b

Great question. Being a 1/48 guy, I didn't even consider the possibility of it being anything else. lol Apologies if I pointed the original poster in the wrong direction.

Yeah, I should mention that I model on a budget- and being a noob, I don't want to screw up a $50 kit. Really, that's about the only reason anyone should try what I'm considering. The Testors kit does not have a cockpit. I still can't wrap my head around that. I know it's an old kit, but wow! Those builds are nice, though. Definitely some pretty work. I did appreciate the April Fools humor in the first one. :D

Has anyone done a really extensive rehab job on the 1/48 Testors/Hawk F-5 Freedom Fighter? Or, heck, any of the old Hawk kits? I'm kind of excited at the prospect of turning such an outdated, basic kit into a nice display piece, but the time investment is going to be pretty daunting. Especially since I'm still a bit of a noob. We're talking about doing a total rescribing job, totally scratchbuilding the cockpit and the wheel well detail, dramatically rebuilding the landing gear, and possibly scratchbuilding some wingtip tanks (as most F-5As didn't carry Sidewinders on the wingtips, IIRC).

This article by Darren Roberts has a couple of handy tips for building it, assuming you're working on what was originally the Monogram kit. Darren Roberts F-14 Tips One of the tips is to cut the fuselage piece off the intake prior to assembly. I highly recommend doing it that way. I skipped that step on the Tomcat I'm working on, and it definitely would have made it easier in hindsight. There's another piece on FSM's site. It's available for free at the following link. FSM F-14 Tomcat article The FSM article is very detailed, with plenty of pictures and notes- including notes on colors

Great lookin' Warhawk!

Great start! The added details should look really nice, and I love the attention to detail on the stick. Can't wait to see it finished.

Painted the anti-glare area and the control surfaces.

Brilliant build. The paint job looks great, very clean and smooth, and the detailing on the jet nozzle in particular looks very sharp.

I'm definitely planning on doing the exhaust streaks. I'm considering a layered approach, spraying a base streak of slightly darkened Navy gray and then going over it with pigment. I kind of like how that looks, in my head at least. I had heard of the raised line replacements, but I didn't know where to find them. It looks like a great product, and I know others here have used them effectively. I might look into it. Thanks for the link.

I bought some kits from Cobrahistorian. Stand up guy, kept me in the loop and let me know when my stuff shipped. The package arrived as advertised. Buy from him with confidence!

Well, I feel a little better about my front canopy masking failure. Looking at reference pics, I was going to have to remask it and repaint it anyway, since the black anti-glare stripe extends into that part of the framing. I think when I botched the masking, I was subconsciously reminding myself to check my references. It's funny how mistakes sometimes work out like that. I'm hoping to do that tonight and maybe post some updates tomorrow.

Hi all. I set the Tomcat aside while I try to figure out what to do about all the raised panel lines I destroyed with my overzealous puttying and sanding. So, why not do another Spad? The cat made a subtle cameo.... Overall color is a custom mix that approximates Tamiya's version of Vietnam-era Navy gray. It came out a slight shade lighter than the bottled paint, but I'll just say it's a weathering effect and call it a day. The difference is fairly negligible, IMO. The preshading is still a little heavy, because I wanted to leave room for a thin coat of gray once the decals go

Beautifully rendered cockpit, really exceptional work. For the exhaust pipes, some sanding needles might do the trick if you're looking to clean them up a bit after scraping with the hobby knife. They're very useful for doing cleanup work on fine details and confined spaces.

Hasegawa F-2A @ Hobbylinc Only $26.79, and I've had good experiences with Hobbylinc.

2 1/48 Trumpeter Seahawks I won this one the other day. I'm still going back over the listing, trying to find a catch. Seriously, $31 bucks total for 2 sealed kits that retail in the $30-40 range? From a Top-Rated Seller? That's a reasonable price for 1 kit, much less 2. It's by far the best deal I've ever had on eBay.

Nice looking Spad! What did you use for the clear coat, if you don't mind me asking? The satin finish looks really nice on this plane.

Stunning work! That paint job is superb. Nice work on the panel wash, and I like the subtle weathering on the underside of the fuselage.

The wash really highlights your excellent work on the panel lines. You did a great job there. If you're going to go to the trouble of rescribing such a big bird, you might as well show it off! Kudos.

Your cockpit work is superb, and the shading on the underside looks wonderful. The attention to detail in the cockpit is just great. That's a sharp looking Hawk.

It's an interesting and well-rendered subject, and the AMRAAM is a nice touch. Very cool display.

I'm sure most markets are the same. The largest slice of the pie belongs to domestic subjects, but there's still healthy interest in international birds. Airfix makes a lot of British planes, Heller makes Mirages and Etendards, Hasegawa and Tamiya make a lot of Japanese birds other companies aren't interested in, and Revell of Germany replaces the U.S. markings with Luftwaffe ones in a lot of the kits of planes flown by both countries. They all make international subjects to go along with the domestics, though, and plenty of modelers buy them and build them.

I guess it depends upon your viewpoint. If you're mostly concerned with strict accuracy, then using scale effect comes into direct conflict with your priorities. Add some white to an FS numbered paint, and it's not FSxxxxx. It's inaccurate. If you're the type that takes more artistic license and interprets what you think the color should look like, then hey- it's just another way to experiment with your colors. I'm a mix of the two. I prefer to use accurate colors, but I'm open to adjustment if a particular color doesn't look right to me. Of course, the color will probably be perfect if