Fellow Hobbyist

Androids dream of...

The X-35 proved the better choice. The lift fan negated the threat of exhaust gases being re-ingested into the engines. During testing the X-35B demonstrated a vertical take off, transition into supersonic flight, and transition back to a vertical landing on the same test flight! Boeing never got anywhere near that and it's lift system did not address the ingestion of exhaust gases. What is more I suspect the main problem of concurrency and software issues would have plagued a hypothetical F-32 just as it has with the F-35.

Interesting building aid.

If snails have no bones...can they have arthritis?

Hello. I have a three kits I would like to put up for sale. They are as follows: An Academy 1/48 F-15I Ra'am: The box is unsealed but the parts sprues are still pack in their bags. Instruction and decals included. $35+shipping A Revell 1/48 F-15 Strike Eagle: The box is unsealed and a little crumpled. But parts are intact. Instruction and decals included. $15+shipping An Alliance 1/9600 Resin Cast Battlestar Galactica (re-imaged) kit. The box contains resin parts for the Galactica as well as a resin cast base. The Galactica has casting defects on some of the hull details. $40+Shipping

What is my favorite hot brewed beverage with a certain psychoactive compound?...coffee of course.

So one of the annoying things I need to deal with are the ugly voids within the cockpit. To deal with them I have used stretched sprue and CA to fill most of the gaps. Here is one example. Where you see the gray line above the cockpit tub there used to be an open void. Cutting the stretched sprue to length and inserting the piece into the void I used runny CA to wick into the remaining gap and fix the sprue fast to the model. Scraping with a knife and sanding helps to make the sprue as flush as possible. Smaller lengths of sprue were added to each side and glued in much the same way as t

Oh Chinook helicopter. Why did you have to be designed to look like a hungry amphibian?

Firstly a lead anchor is fixed into the nose. I don't want a tail sitter. Due to the location of the gun port I did not have to build any special fixture to block off the fuselage cavity. This is because the cockpit/ nose gear bay sub-assembly is right next to it. All I needed to do was add a small section of plastic card aft at the end of that sub-assembly. Afterward the surrounding parts received a coat of flat black paint. Yesterday I had completed initial painting and assembling of the items depicted in steps 1 and 2. I'm curious why Hasegawa made the instrument panel piece from clear

That was a great solution to get the nozzles to stay circular. Your cockpit detailing is also nicely done Mike.

Thank you the warning regarding the decals Mike. I was not aware that was how they were made. It turns out all of the three camouflage colors need substitution. Fortunately I remembered a website that would help find suitable substitutes. http://www.paint4models.com/ has a link to an online conversion data base. Users can select from several different brand lines to cross reference through. It even has the appropriate FS call out. So I first searched the light brown (#321 on the instructions). Using GIMP I entered the hex code of the color and drew a swatch. I figured a tan or sand color

As planned my contribution to this GB is the 1/72 Hasegawa F-1 fighter. I'd like to keep this as an OOB project if possible. I did an initial test fitting today. I also put the decals into my room's window. The white pigments have yellowed while in storage all these years. Some sun-bleaching is in order. I'll check back on them in a few days time. Some questions. I would like to enter this as a OOB build for an up and coming model show in addition to this GB; I noticed the gun port needs to be blocked off as one can clearly look right on through into the fuselage cavity. Am I allowed t

Necro-Americans have rights too!

The cockpit detailing is superbly done. Looking forward to seeing the completed Lightning Tomcat.

From the beginning it was intended to place the finished model on a display stand. Thus the necessary tubing had been installed prior to joining the fuselage pieces together. Unfortunately I never documented that. But here is a photo of the end result. The engine nozzle piece was modified to accommodate the brass tubing. I have attached the pylon for the centerline tank. Brass wire was used to both improve the mounting. What remained was a gap that needed filling. I used latex-based wood filler to remove the seam without destroying the plastic. The surrounding area was masked off... A

GIMP. It's free and I've used it to design some decals myself. GIMP has an interface similar to Photoshop; but it does take some getting use to if you have previous PS experience.

Now that's impressive.

I recall a similar problem with the clear piece that encapsulated the cockpit of an Anigrand C-5 model. The piece had too wide of a footprint and easily overlapped the cockpit sill. The solution was to heat the part in water. It bent to the correct footprint with no discoloration and no overt stress fractures. I do concede that the part was polyester resin.

For the booms, you could use styrene. If possible drill through the styrene part and insert a metal rod. That should address the concerns of the booms sagging.

So some minor progress. Prior to painting to entire model I figured I would paint the canopy frame before attaching that piece to the rest of the kit and mask over the affixed piece afterward. Don't be fooled by the clarity of the canopy forward of the frame. The liquid masking I applied had dried when I took the photo. The section aft of the frame was small enough to use tape alone. And here is the painted frame. Now I will be honest. Rarely do I ever get to this point in my builds so I am pleased that the masking technique employed kept paint seepage beneath the mask to a minimum. I ha

The canopy frames look amazing.

You might not be aware of products like Arduino or Raspberry Pi that allow folks to design, build, and program a myriad of projects from 3D printers to improvised bio-metric door locks to usable micro-PC's. Visit sites like Instructables and you can get a glimpse of what people are doing with products such as these. You could say that these folks are the hobbyists of the 21st Century. Granted increasingly we can't take apart the hardware of modern consumer electronics...this limitation has not prevented people from learning to exploit the software and programing of our electronic products to g

Strangely that reminds me of Top Gear; where Hammond was getting teased for buy a car type that actually did suffer a string of engine fires. His car caught fire as well.

Excellent advise Joel. This will be the first all gloss finish I have ever tackled and your tips should prove very useful.