striker8241

YW Ray. Wow! What plane is that??

Really a phenomenal build! You must have nerves of steel. BTW, if you are still looking for a source of fine wire that is easily bendable and even solder-able, try taking a piece of co-axial television cable and carefully cutting away the vinyl cover (the cover is only about 0.5 mm thick). Inside should be a woven shield made up of hundreds of very fine tin-coated copper strands. Looking forward to more updates, Cheers, Russ

No, I tried that at first, but the thing shattered, so I used the clear windscreen as a template and glued strips of styrene together for the window frames, as shown below. The wrap is flexible enough to cover all of the side windows at one time but it's too difficult to get all the wrinkles out and you're fighting against time while the Future dries. I found that doing each row of windows at a time worked much better. The front three windows were best done one at a time.

Really impressive work! Love your internal strengthening and detailing. Will be watching this for sure! Cheers, Russ

Hi, All, I just wanted to run something by you. After I replaced the front cockpit clear window piece with individual mullions, I ran into the problem of how to get realistic-looking window panes. I tried using glaze, but it produced recessed window panes as shown below. This was unsatisfactory because the window panes on the C-130 (and many other aircraft) are flush with the skin of the aircraft. Also the glaze is difficult to apply to large openings, especially ones that are slanted, so it looked really bad on the front three panes. In desperation, I tried using clear food wrap. I applied a bead of Future around the window openings with a small brush and then stretched the film across it, as shown in the photo below. That worked very well. The food wrap clings to the plastic but the Future doesn't dry right away so you have time to stretch it and get out any wrinkles. Also, the Future can be re-applied and it won't cloud the edges of the food wrap. I trimmed the film about 0.5 mm away from the panes. Below are the finished windows on my model. This was tricky because I had to apply them over a painted surface. This technique gives a nice clear and flat window surface that is flush with the outer skin, a feature you can't achieve with the painted canopy or using glaze. And it's durable (so far) and easy to clean. One con is that you will have to mask the windows before painting. If you want to do the portholes, they should be done from the inside. I would grind and sand down the inside surface around each porthole to about 0.5 mm thickness first; otherwise, the windows will look too deep. Since I already had a lot of detail inside, I had to use glaze instead. You might be asking "Why do I need such clear cockpit windows?" Although I went to extremes in detailing my cockpit, that much detail or accuracy is not necessary. The important thing to your brain is the illusion of depth of detail that you get when you move your point of view. If you were to stand a scale 20-30 yards away and look at a real C-130 cockpit, you would see few details that you could recognize. But the clear windows help increase depth in the cockpit when you view it from a distance, regardless of how realistic the detail is. Sorry to go on so :D. Anyway, if you should decide to try this technique, please post your results, opinions, and any suggestions, here. Thanks and Cheers, Russ

Thanks, HAJO!

Thank you, C2J, for the good words!

Many thanks, Ray!

Hi, All, Well, this beast is finally finished. It fought me to the last antenna, and what little hair I had left is now in my trash can. Below are some pictures. Many thanks for looking, and for your interest and support all these many months. Cheers, Russ

Thank you, Ray! And you are so right. I'm tickled pink to be finished with this one!

Thanks, Steve! Great to be back!

Thanks, Guys!

Hello, Everyone, I hope you're all well and happy. I've finally found a stable image storage site and I've repaired the images in this thread, at least as best I can remember. I've been away from modelling for some time, but a few months ago, I started working on the Clamp again. I've pretty much completed it, but I still need to add the comm antennas and some decals. Below are some pictures of my progress. I'll post more in the days to come. This is the topside camo pattern. And below is the underside camo patten. Many thanks for looking! Cheers, Russ

Hi, All, Here is the link for the Rivet Clamp build on FSM: http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/2/p/176054/1968708.aspx#1968708 You'll always be welcome any time you can stop by, Cheers, Russ

Thank you, Walt. for your support and encouragement!