Thadeus

With touch ups done I gloss coated this little piggie. I experimented with polishing the surface after gloss for more even finish 2000 grit wet sandpaper was used. The surface was indeed smoothed out. I polish every matt coat with paper towel and it works like a charm. Gloss color and gloss coat I can't. This I hope will eliminate any silvering problems. Now, the first decal to go was obviously the Oregon ANG Eagle. And success! Great! There's a lot of color difference between the head of the Eagle and tail of the jet. Only the font is wrong. I still feel the light gra

I use MM Acryl semi gloss white for most landing gear and missile business. It usually takes 2-3 light coats of paint. I thin it with water, to about 3/4 density I'd normally spray it. So it's a bit thicker. No wet coat, I sort of mist the elements. I never achieved anything similar with Gunze or Tamiya acrylics. I recently did something like that. I black based wheel wells, painted them white in 3 passes. The gear covers were painted in 2 passes. They are significantly more white since I did not black base them.

Well the test build looks much better than Italeri I'm building right now, or the Revell I'm planning on buying. Is it just me, or that spine looks a bit fat? Might be the angle though or the light.

So I slapped some paint on the Italeri F-16. There's still some touching up to do. Mainly on the Neutral gray area of the nose and the intake. I've lightened the 36118 a tiny bit. I'm not too happy with the 36375 shade on the underside. Very little contrast between this and neutral gray.

There might have been some info in Osprey Books. US Navy Hornets in OIF. That's where I took the info regarding the VFA-115 and VFA-41 sharing deck. There might have been some info there on loadouts and such. I don't have the books, and I read them quite a while ago. Here are some shots with weapons, all from this time. I see some GBU-16's. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_030401-N-9593M-050_An_Aviation_Ordnanceman_from_Strike_Fighter_Squadron_One_Fifteen_(VFA-115)_wires_up_ordnance_on_an_F-A-18F_Super_Hornet_assigned_to_Strike_Fighter_Squadron_Forty-One_(VFA-41)_at

As a matter of fact the Hobby Boss D kit has the proper instrument panel for an Night Attack (USMC) version. The only kit in this scale AFAIK. Kinetic and Hasegawa both use the B style IP. The cover is indeed just plain ugly. Hasegawa one looks much better, but it's for the B. The Kinetic one looks very nice, but again for a B. Shame really. Hoped someone would just release the aft IP with proper cover, once the Kintetic kit hit the market. Something similar to what Metallic Details did with SH ACS. I too dig the early schemes for the SH - there's nothing wrong with that. I really

Oooh little pig... ekhem Vipers where are You. Here we are here we are, You won't catch Us. I'm still at it. And plan to finish the job. Though my attention is shifting nowadays to other projects. Here's the both newest and oldest one. Hasegawa. The one I have the least problems with I'm dead set on markings (not much else to do with a block 60. Right?), decals are ok-ish for the build. Basicly what's left is to paint, glosscoat, decal, glosscoat, weather, flatcoat and do the final assembly. Some filling was needed but I expected that from

I checked the canopies. The D is approximately 18mm wide at the base of the frame at front, 20,5mm at the rear and 67,8mm long. The F is17,5mm wide at the base of the frame at the front, 22,5 at the rear and 67,8mm long. It's approximate as I don't have a digital caliper. I guess it might do for an open canopy. For a closed one a 2mm difference at the width of the frame could be troublesome.

Hi there. Can I go first? When I saw the announcement I just knew right away what to build. This Tomcat, along with VF-103 christmass special scheme has been on my mind for a while now. The 1977 variation of VF-142 scheme. There are quite a few photos of this jet on the net. I'm using the 1/72 scale Hobby Boss Tomcat. Never built it before, so that's new. Very nice boxart. OOB Decals I'll be using. There was a while I considered the VF-41 gray/white scheme. But I'm sticking to this one. I did start this kit a ye

Nice. So now I know what my next project will be. Awesome!

I'll check the canopy length and with on the Hasegawa F and D later. They might be close enough. You'd probably need to reshape the two seat canopy insert. It might be doable. Or perhaps the Kinetic legacy Hornet might be a donor - the F/A- 18A/B and Blue Angels boxings have both the single and dobule seater options. So does the adversary boxing. You'll still need the aft instrument panel and cover. The Hase Foxtrot gives You only the early type. The Delta aft IP and and cover doesn't look that similar, depends how accurate You want to be. The IP is for the Bravo, so the middle MFD is sim

Sweet. Another Super Hornet. New type exhaust petals are welcomed. Fun fact - Italeri has something resembling the cut out petals in their Super Hornets. Totally unusable though. Regarding ordnance - have the SH ever employed the GBU-24's in combat?

Sweet. All I need to build for the rest of my life will be Hornets - all liveries from F-16 to Su-57. Not the worst perspective! Paint them all up - all are lovelly.

Looking pretty nice. Paint came out pretty nice.

I'm still at it. No reason not to. Here's my printed vents. I had to make them anew. I did quite a few of them. They're rpinted on Techmod "1/72" scale sheet (the smallest one) I had some issues with printer and could not adjust the size of paper properly. The print came out undistorted, but I lost one row of decals. It's not bad. I printed it on a regular laser printer, no fancy stuff. Even the closeups are passable. Hope when applied they will be a bit lighter, as I've noticed them before. Here's a full family photo. Can You