ESzczesniak

I just across this and that looks awesome! How has this come along? I’d love to print one of those, even pay for the STL.

It looks like there are a couple Ford class carriers soon to be on the market, but at the moment there’s not a lot of options out there. This is the 1/2400 GHQ that is half model, half wargaming piece. I hate having to wait so long for another USS Enterprise, so this was done up as CVN-80. There’s not a huge amount to say, as the model itself is very small…only about 5.5”/14cm. So I present the pictures… I’d be happy to any comments or criticism and thank you for looking! Eric

Is that article referring to the AN/AAQ-28, or a newer lightening? They keep saying Lightening ATP. For the AN/AAQ-28, to my knowledge you see them on USMC birds and not USN birds because the pod is not rated for carrier traps. I’m not in the business, so I’m open to be corrected.

I am working on making some custom 3D printed parts for a 1/144 F/A-18F in landing configuration. I have the aft trailing flaps. Does any one have any knowledge of what angle the leading edge flaps would be positioned? I know they are "down", looks to be about 20 degrees. But this is just eyeballing things.

Yes, it's also the Academy kit. It was a bit surprising. I had done the exact same process in the past with all Tamiya paints without a problem. I used Gunze this round because my light ghost gray Tamiya mix wasn't looking right on an A-10. And in the past, Tamiya and Gunze played very well together. But the Tamiya gloss must have been too hot for the Gunze color coats. All the Tamiya was underneath the Gunze for preshading and mottling. I will say with a little idea what the expect, the A-10 is assembly very smoothly and cleanly this time round...not that last time was terri

Unfortunately this kit went to the shelf of doom from the paint booth. I did a whole lot of mottling and pre/post shading with a mix of Gunze and Tamiya paints. Then gloss coated with Tamiya gloss and it somehow ate through a lot of the top coats leaving some hideous heavily “preshaded” abomination. I don’t have it in me to strip and start over right now. I have started my other kit with the works. New intakes, exhaust, wheels, Quinta pit, etc.

Thank you both! I think I’m going to go with the instructions call out. I wish I was better at finding air frame specific photos. But the instructions have seemed pretty reasonable for accuracy and are roughly consistent with the photos I’m seeing.

When I think of false canopies, the CF-188's are the first image in my mind. So I'm thinking of a hard demarcation perfectly drawn canopy. I was holding this assumption until getting ready to pain the canopy on my Academy A-10C. The instructions suggest a soft demarcation line, which seems consistent with the photo's I've seen. The instructions call for a symmetrical looking oval, but looking through images online, it appears some of these false canopies may be rather irregular. Are my eyes playing tricks on me, or are this in fact correct for the A-10C? I'd love to hear from

But he could have 3D printed the part with basically no modification…a mesh usually needs to be “closed”, but that’s about it. He needed to rebuild the part because of the required tolerances. However in other applications such as scale modeling, it may not matter if two axes colinear, etc.

From my Google image browsing, I am finding the Marine's MV-22B are painted like helicopters with an overall black cockpit. I'm also building an CMV-22B COD and USAF CV-22B..some are labeled as CV-22B, but I'm not so sure if these are clearly a CV-22, or generically a "V-22" family photo. Definitive images of these airframe cockpits are a bit more elusive. Is anyone able to confirm my belief these likely would all follow the same basic principle being painted all block like helicopters? Thank you for any help!

Updated

Progress has outwardly has been a bit slow, although more related to work than the kit. The forward fuselage was joined to the fuselage. The end result is pretty smooth, but I did have to work in about a half to one inch at a time, clamping, gluing, then moving on to keep the joints smooth. I caused some damage to tow raised strips just adjacent to the top insert. This happened while trying to pry the insert up to glue and match the after fuselage better. These were fixed with some masking tape followed by putty and a light sanding. A minor detail, but the instructions

That’s good to know! Somewhere along the line I thought I’d learned that the flaps are in the up position at shutdown, but as the hydraulic pressure dissipated they dropped in to the down position under gravity. It appears I either learned wrong or never actually learned that.

Updated.

My work has primarily continued on the aft fuselage. Both wings are complete. Here’s a picture of the other split aileron undersurface seam before any treatment. There shouldn’t be a seam on this out flared portion and I have no good way of filling this without losing some of the raised detail. It could be replaced with some masking and Mr. Surfacer 500, but I think I’m going to just let it ride. Both wings are installed. They locate with a simple mortise and tenon type joint. The fit is very snug and I had to lightly sand the mortise to fully seat the wings. These joints