CraigSargent

I used Tamiya's new acrylic flat varnish XF-86 I used CA at the back (I use Hot Stuff CA which has never fogged a canopy on me). Once glued at the back, I gently press a t-shirt or soft rag into the canopy, and then press down to get the PE part to conform to the canopy shape. I remove the t-shirt/rag, and then use a paintbrush to apply a small drop of white glue (Elmers, MicroScale Crystal Clear, PVA, etc) thinned with water, and allow the capillary action to pull the glue under the etch part at the front to attach it to the canopy. As the white glue dries clear, it is pretty much invisibl

Here is the reference pic of this jet in operation I was using. The centreline pylon was used with a gun pod fitted operationally as far back as Desert Storm. You will see a cutout panel on the tunnel/bridge part that is removed with the pylon fitted. Edit: seems I did not include this image in the in-progress thread here.

Excellent. So tempted to pull my A-10 back out do some more work. Plan to do the PA colour bird from the TwoBobs sheet I helped with, and this is motivational. As the master of all things Monogram, I think you should tackle the Dragonfly next...

Pretty much what Jay said, although I did have a set of Hasegawa wings available, but prefer the fit of the Monogram B wings to Monogram A fuselage over trying to get the Hasegawa wings to fit. Also, the Monogram wings better capture the angles of the composite wing Harriers than the Hasegawa wings do (no need to "de-kink" them). And have not finished yet, still very much a work in progress.

Congrats and beautiful work - been waiting to see some good pics of this. Any chance you will be updating your In-Progress pics with other images of the A-10 pre-paint (without interfering with requirements for the published article)? Be keen to see how you did some of it as have the same kit to do down the track at some stage. The Monogram kit is still superior to the CopyBoss and/or Italeri kits in so many respects.

Armourers finishing prepping jet for mission. Something different to add some visual interest. I should also mention that this model is dedicated to Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell from VMA-211, given that the model was finished about the same time that they lost their lives in the terrorist attack on Camp Bastion.

Definitely be a starter for the Indiana jet in 1/32!

Finished pics posted in Critique Corner

In progress here

GBU-38 JDAM and/or GBU-12 Paveway

Ok, time for some teasers. Finished weapons - ready for the jet Painted canopy with photo-etch det cord installed. Just needs a wash and matt varnish - will be done tonight. Stopwatch and clock for the cockpit - to be installed once everything else finished The pièce de résistance, the wind angle indicator to mount on the stalk in front of the cockpit. Will be cut off the attached rod about half way down the black portion of the stalk and will be the very last thing attached. For the final "reveal", you will have to wait until I get back from the IPMS NZ Nationals this weekend...

Paint progress. Have painted the base colours and now I'm in the process of weatheriing and fading. Interestingly, I was able to successfully mix Gunze and Italeri/Vallejo acrylics. I used a mix of the Italeri Gunship Grey lightened with some Gunze lighter grey to start the fading and it shot beautifully. Will hit it with one more lighter grey to add some further fading, and tehn some salt weathering before doing alittle blending of all the techniques. Upper with paint on. Tanks are base coated Gunze to give the Italeri something to bite into/onto. Lower areas masked with blu-tack and Tami

Some interesting experimentation last night with paints. Decided I would try the new Italeri acrylic Gunship Grey as, out of the bottle, it is a spot on match to the FS595 fan deck colour chip. The Gunze Gunship is a little on the browny pink side of the colour. I tried mixing it with Italeri's own thinner which strangely seems thicker than the paint (wonder if I got a bad batch). After spattering all over my test piece, I cleaned out the airbrush and decided to try good old water and got the same result (actually worse, as I had to strip the airbrush as it completely clogged up). Universal

Paint in progress. I preshaded all panel lines, joins and recesses with thinned gloss black. I then painted the undersides in FS35237 (Gunze H337) - the correct colour, not the one Hasegawa tell you to use. When that was dry, I oversprayed a random mottle of Gunze H338 to lighten and wear it a little. The lower surface gets grimy, but does not seem to have many repairs to the paint work, so have limited different colour panels to a couple of places on the gun pods. The upper surface is very splotchy as can be seen on the boxtop photo at the start of this thread, so as well as preshading in

I have plenty of pics of the jet with the airshow loadout, but only one outside of the airshow. In that pic, the F-14 has 4 Sidewinder rails (2 per wing pylon), no Phoenix pallets in the tunnel and no weapons loaded. Other than that, the options would be pretty much any of the usual F-14 loads which Google can readily help with. My 1/32 example will be carrying the airshow loadout, and I've already scratchbuilt the two rocket pods and the TALD. The GBU's, AIM-9 and AIM-7 have come from various other 1/32 scale kits. In 1/72 and 1/48 putting together the airshow weapons load will be even easie

I would echo what Anton said. The Eduard etch det cord is the only one that faithfully captures the double lines of the dual det cords and is actually very easy to attach using some thinned white glue (which dries invisible to the naked eye). It only really needs to be attached at the front and back, and can be shaped to fit the canopy by carefully taping the front and back in place inside the canopy and pressing a soft cloth/t-shirt into the canopy so it conforms to shape. Here is one I prepared earlier and am just in the process of fitting another. I have done this successfully 4 times and

Good to hear Gianni. Look forward to seeing some progress.

Little overdue for an update. Modelling bench has been quiet for a while as we have been working through my wife's grandmother's passing. Needless to say, am a little behind schedule, but still optimistic I can finish this in time (2 weeks to go). All prep work is now finished and painting has begun. Here are some pics I got before painting started. Ejection seat finished with Flying Leatherneck stencils. Compare to earlier pic to see what else was done. Front. Back. Tire flattened and treads rescribed. L to R - mains x 2, nose, outriggers x 2. Due to the straightening of the wing kink

Aires/AeroBonus to the rescue! http://www.aires.cz/arms-and-weapons/mk-77-mod-456-fire-bombs/

I do, but they are currently down. The site they are on is hosted off Hyperscale and when Brett moved hosts recently, that site got left behind. Waiting for it to get restored. Edit: In fact, no. The WIP thread is on a site that is not allowed to be mentioned here. Waiting for my website to be restored then I can post some pics here.

Hi scapilot. As i Understand it, you work on the F-35 program? Are you abe to confirm colour is Gunship Grey or otherwise?

Yeah, figured as much. Guessing that is going to be an issue for the resin companies too, might not see a good cockpit (or many other bits for that matter) for the Kittyhawk kit for some time. Any chance you have external pics you can share - Looking for a really good pic of the APU exhaust area which is missing from the kit. Outstanding - that I would even pre-order.

Any chance of an AV-8B or F-35 guide? The AV-8B never gets any love in publication form (there is not a single available, good walkaround/usage book in printed format), and the F-35 while still maturing, is not covered at all yet, obviously. But I did vote...

If you look on page 15 of the instructions, you will find the colour call outs for the main paint scheme. It is the detail painting throughout assembly that there are no colour call outs for. Main colour is listed as Gunship Grey FS36118. I have matches for this listed as Gunze H305, ModelMaster Enamel 1723, ModelMaster acrylic 4752Italeri 4312AP, Pollyscale 505382. For colour matches, you can always try here: http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/helpdesk.asp