Salineated Michigander

I recently purchased this Italeri kit as mentioned above and would like to attempt to convert it to a gunship. Has anyone done this? What would I need to do a reasonable conversion, 'reasonable' in the sense of reasonable cost for AE stuff and actual modifications necessary? Any info available would be greatly appreciated.

After wrestling with all the gear in their deployed positions, I ended up just supergluing the hell out of all of them and applying accelerator it to inconspicuously up inside the bay doors to harden everything up so hopefully it won't show. Accurate? Oh, hell no, but at least the airframe is now supported on it's legs without fear of collapsing. I also braced the front gear with brass rods to aid in the stability which helped a lot.

You chose wisely to forego the landing gear down option but I'm curious as to how you'll display it when finished. As as aside, speaking of exceptional fit, I just finished the Meng Kamaz 4386 Typhoon and that was quite an amazingly good kit.

Has anyone here built the Zvezda Su-25 Frogfoot in 1/48? I'm about half-way through the process and am quite dissatisfied with Zvezda's engineering, or lack thereof. The landing gear assembly process is laughably spindly and fragile and now that I've got it completed I doubt it's going to support the weight of the fuselage, especially after adding more than 40g of extra nose weight as the kit called for. Not only that, but there's a woeful lack of functional connecting points and a maddening lack of illustrated details in the instructions so much to my chagrin I've r

I've had your book on my want-to-read list for 6 months now so seeing this was excellent. Thanks for posting it.

I used the Galaxy mask set when I did the Meng F-35 too; it was VERY tedious and not worth the effort IMHO

Thanks for the photo; I saw mention of this Takom announcement first at Scalemates, then at Modelling News. Good news, indeed.

I got one coming from Bulgaria. Zvezda Su-25 1/48 scale. Hobbyland Bulgaria 69 euros, and that includes S/H

I've built the Hypersonic Chevy block startcart; it's a very nice kit, lots of tiny P.E. and other details.

Super Cool, Jeffrey, these will look very cool in the flight deck. Thanks.

I'm nearing the end of mine; I wanted the digital camo set but could not get it so I went with a painted splinter camo scheme. I kinda phugged up the build tho; due to a massive brain fart I left off part of the bomb bay hatch superstructure and ended up boffo-ing the closure to conceal what I did wrong. Oh well; if you don't look at the bottom side of the aircraft you won't see my boo-boo. The rest of the build went very well and things fit quite nicely. Zvezda has upped their game; it was a superior experience compared to the YAK-130 I wrestled with a couple of years ago, alth

Jeffery, I just took delivery of your 1/48 start cart so my obvious question is, are you still planning on the SR-71 release?

Because of this blog, I got this kit.

Does anyone have an experience building this thing? It's damn big, although not quite as big as Trumpeter's same scale TU-160 Blackjack. If you've built it, what was your opinion of the kit? Well engineered or not?

I like your work, Dagon. I'm finishing this same kit, but in the Royal Dutch Air Force 70th Anniversary version. I, too, have been very impressed with Meng's engineering.

Oh, I will. I already looked to see if it was up.😷

Just watched Tutorial #3, John. Good work! I'm enjoying your erudition, your dedication and your skill. Keep them coming.

I picked up Hataka's Have Glass lacquer (comes from Poland, expect a long shipping wait if you're in the USA) to use on my current build, not a Dark Viper SEAD, but Meng's Royal Netherland's F-35 Lightening II 75th Anniversary version. So far, to my eye, the Hataka paint mimics at least one or two Alclad aluminum shades, not sure of their official title off the top of my head but almost interchangeable to my naked eye.

I have experience with only the Bobcat version and I thought it was a real dog.

I've essentially completed the build myself and ended up rattle can spray painting it with Tamiya white primer. It took two full cans! Flankerman's review and pictorial is spot-on in describing Trumpeter's rather whimsical notions of joins and connections; as big as this kit is, you'd think they would've engineered more functional joining processes. The only acknowledegment is reinforced landing gear struts that are metal; otherwise get ready to fiddle with it as it is very large, flexible, and handling it was a big challenge. And forget using a painting booth; this thing was WA

Of course it's an essential business!! I mean, look how many people on 'model makers' on reddit label their most recent build 'my quarantine build'! Just about every new entry is labeled as such! How much more essential do you have to be to assuage the mental anguish of MILLIONS of people across the globe?

Gents: Have any of you assembled this kit, the Trumpeter SU-160 Blackjack (or White Swan)? If so, due to its massive size, how did you handle painting it? Overall, was it a desirable project for you? Any opinions on the construction, the execution, and the results of your labor would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

It certainly is unfortunate that the TANmodel guy is dealing with illness, but speaking solely as someone who has experience building one of their products I have to admit it was quite a dog of a kit. I'm talking about their 1/48 scale rF-84f Thunderflash. I have absolutely no experience with anything else they've produced but my experience with this kit gives me pause as to whether I'd buy another one from them.

Thanks all for the great pics. Definitely drool-worthy

I got the Mig-29 SMT from Kitlinx 2 weeks ago, just started working on it yesterday.