Thadeus

After suffering a little mojo breakdown I'm reangaging with this project. The F-22 is going to take me forever. I'm having issues figuring out the nose panel line demarcation, and It seems the radome is actually split in like two parts - one in fuselage colour, the other one in the light gray colour. That was the thing I always felt off with my previous Revell Raptors, the radome felt too long. I really wanted some progress so I decided to paint the gloss black. Well, not the best of ideas here. There are a lot of scratches on the surface like the ones on the wings so I'll have to

They got released. First the IAF IIICJ's then the AdA IIIC's. Quite nice little kits, plenty of options. One or two tricky spots to build. https://www.scalemates.com/kits/special-hobby-sh72352-mirage-iiicj--1165750

Nice project. It's similar with Kinetic AIM-9x's and Hasegawa Super Hornet AIM-9X's (even in 1/72!)- the exhaust You have to add separatelly. The plastic is a bit easier to attach obviously. But I guess it all comes down to detail You want in there.

Ok, last progress and discoveries really drained my willingness to do any modelling. First, after procuring some 36622 I managed to spray the undersides of the F.1. Neat. With that stunning success I proceeded to paint the main colours. The base colour is lightened gunze H79, brown is actually H310 and green is H309. I didn't like the colour of the raw H79 so I added some light gray. After all the camouflage was done I had to do some resprays, and since I didn't write down my proportions and I didn't leave any paint mixed for touchups I had to do it again.

Looks great. Love how the paintjob came out.

I have a feeling a lot of aftermarket seats are a little off, very often in order to fit the kit they were designed for. So I guess if they did the seat especially for the Ammo MiG cockpit it could be the same case here. You MiG however looks great, with or without the ejection seat. Keep up the great work. I hope my early MiG's will end up half as good.

Love the work. Amazing cockpit details. It's a shame about the kit 3d printed seat. A lot of us buy these releases for these parts. It's nicer to have a set with some resin parts that I'd expect were put in by the manufacturer and are guaranteed to fit. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for You. Good luck!

Thanks Sevastijan. I can recommend both kits, despite some issues. So let's try another update, eh? Here goes nothing... So I was long overdue to do that. I made myself some paint chips of my own. From left to right - Gunze H8 silver, Tamiya X11 chrome silver, Tamiya XF-16 aluminium, Vallejo Model Air Chrome and Vallejo Model Air Steel. I was forced to do so, as I'm struggling with silver finishes, be it NMF or just Silver Laquer. One thing I noted, the Vallejo paints when applied by brush are amazing. Hardly any texture of silver flakes. Amazing. And once sprayed they

It looks like a very nice MiG-23 in the making. Looks nicer than the RV Model one, or the KP one. And much better fitwise.

Ok, I'm trying do to an update here. Apparently some AI on the server sees what I'm about to post and gives some server error bs. Oh... well I'll try again later.

It seems I'm a slow updater. The Mirage III is a very nice, probably a little overcomplicated kit. It does offer a lot of options, which seems to be the Special Hobby The fit is generally pretty good. You have a main fuselage split in two halves with separate exhaust shroud. Pretty neat, as there are differences between Mirage III variants here. I love the cockpits on these little Mirages. Both F.1 and III have similar, and very nice cockpits. Wings have moulded trailing edge flaps. They can however be easilly asse

Well, It would be much less weird had it been an F/A-18 kit. Funny thing is I have three larger projects ongoing, and two additional projects in progress. Plus, I've already a plan for another project. I must resist. So, let's check some progress... One thing nice about the SH F.1 is I can put it together in a couple of hours. There are however a few places I seem to struggle every time. First one is the intake/speedbrake assembly. The parts itself are very nicelly moulded. However the entire assembly feels like it's tiny bit off. I usually end up with a minim

Very nice work here. A lot of attention to detail. You just have to appreciate the ugliness of C-130. It's so ugly it's pretty.

Hi, I'm Thaddeus and I'm a serial kit starter. I don't know about You, but I seem to have a favourite kit. And to my surprise it's not an F/A-18 kit. The Special Hobby Mirage F.1 kit I seem to have to have in an in-progress stage. Not too long ago I built my second kit, and I imidietly had to start a third one. The aircraft itself isn't particulary appealing to me visiually. Not more than, say, F-16 or a MiG-21. The kit however is extremely nice. Some thick panel lines, yes, a little bit of filler needed - indeed. But overall, I really like this kit. I seem to have an urg

Lovelly work. Can't have too many Phantom builds.

Shoot, they called, but once I told them how many jars of Gunze paints it's going to take they said they will stick to their own brand. Anybody want to but a million jars of Gunze H8? Back to Sinkmarks... Decals looked fine on backing paper. Once I dipped them into water they reacted nicelly, quickly coming out of paper. The decal film is a bit milky though. Although, the effect seems kind of nice. I am a bit afraid of silvering though. It seems they have a tendency for it, but since they are a bit milky I can't really tell if it's air underside, the paint

I would be lying if I said I know what I'm doing here. I hate two things about painting. Mixing paint and masking. Very good choice for a project, eh? Ok. First the regular H53 apparently looks just like the one on the oval part - it's the base of a Zvezda display base btw. Very nice piece of thick plastic. It would seem that both of these colours are different. Yup. More or less the same with flash. So I painted the stand, from right to left - H8 mist (double layer), H8 mist (thin layer), H8 + semi gloss (thin layer) and h8 + semi

Ah, I should've been clearer. The 1/48 Kinetic Hornet I'm doing using kit decals. But for the 1/32 Academy Hornet I did it by airbrushing. They are similar schemes, but the big one was from 2005, and a different BuNo, not ATARS. The 1/32 Academy F/A-18D is by far my favourite model. Wish I had space for one more. So here's one more pic of the beast. Once the Kinetic bird is finished I hope for some comparison photos.

First colour is on. Or is it? As planned, I used Gunze H53 neutral gray with three drops of white and a bit of H8 silver. All of that on the black base. Well. Quite the surprise, as the result is... metallic brown. I wasn't expecting that. Wow. I like the colour. But It seems way off. First pic is from the first layer. In the picture its a little more opaque than in real life. Ok, now all the coats, at least in theory, are complete. I don't feel that much of a difference. After I completed the paint I still wasn't satisfied. I miste

When in doubt, clamp it out, right? I've never had to use that many. Funny thing, just the next day after I posted this I used the large clamps the third time ever - for fixing the dishwasher. Nice.

Ok, I really thought decaling this beast would be easy. It really wasn't easy, but then again, it wasn't hard. I just wasn't as focused as I should. Not as tedious as masking the entire thing though. When I built the 1/32 version I chose the dumbest way around - masking the outline of each tiger stripe. So I figured decals would be foolproof. Well. Not foolproof enough for me 😉 I begun with some of the places, where stripes are easy to locate, such as around the national insignia, nose modex and the speedbrake. I figured the further from these places, the less precise

This is some pretty awesome work. I wondered how FineMolds parts would fit the Hasegawa kits and vice versa. Still it's quite far from what You're doing. It's a bit sad FM kit doesn't come with extended speedbrake options and the lower fuselage aux doors.

So I'm kind of having fun with these two projects. I could call them Sinkmark and Intakes from now on. Sinkmark is literally next up for painting. I'll just have to make a new HUD and add the ejection seat. But first I have to figure out the colours. Bronco instructions give You only generic names. J-20's would be Neutral Gray overall, Dark Seagray spots and Barley gray outlines. Luckilly, other manufacturers have actual colour callouts. According to Dream model instructions, J-20's are overall H53 neutral gray with H331 Dark Sea Gray spots and H336 Hemp outlines.

Very nice model. Love the weathering.

Nice jet. Love the scheme.