f5guy

Good news Dutch! Fred.

Hi everyone, Another update. Before I attached the wings I used some sheet plastic to reinforce the flimsy joint under the engine pylons. On my Eastern -800 build, I had the nearly finished model slip off of my bench and into a five gallon waste bucket nose first. It blew the right wing completely off. See pic. The wing fractured right along the pylon joint on the bottom, which prompted me to decided to reinforce it on this build. The process was pretty straight forward, and resulted in a much stronger joint. If you're planning on building any of the BPK 737 kits, I would strongly re

Thanks for the intel Tracy! Your method will come in real handy when it comes time for me to make the wing root lights for my Titan 72nd 757-200 build. Regards, Fred.

Hi everyone, First of all, Dutch, sorry to hear about the issues that you've been having. I had the same thing happen with a pair of 48th Tamiya F-14A kits that I ordered from Japan. Interestingly enough, they came from the same ebay seller who shipped them seprately. The first one arrived fine, but the second one was sent back because of a supposed bad address. Go figure! Here's a little insight for everyone. My wife is a window clerk for the USPS, and has been for 30 years. I know most of her co-workers, the Postmaster, and even a few regional managers. In the 10 years si

Hi Tracy, Thanks for the advice! I've toyed around with the idea of trying the UV resin out, but just hadn't gotten that far yet. I will check out the brand you mention, as it certainly has tons of potential uses. Have you ever tried it for fuselage windows? I have several business jet types to build, and the thing that always holds me back from starting a kit is having to insert those small windows singly, and strongly enough that they don't pop out and into the sealed fuselage during handling. When I first saw this UV resin, I thought that it might be a good solution for

Hi again folks, I got the glass on as well as the nose cone. There's about 2 or 3 ounces of weight in the nose. As with my Eastern 737 build, I had to do a bit shimming with plastic card to fill in some of the gaps. One of the shims fell inside and I couldn't get it out. At one point it came to rest against one of the existing shims that I had already put in, so I quickly hit it with liquid glue, and glued it in place. Well at least it won't be rattling around in the fuselage now. It's the white rectangle just behind the rear pilot's window. Once the model is painted, you'll never kn

Hi everyone, I got the lower wing fuselage section and wings on a few weeks back, and just like my Eastern -800, fit was not too great. It might have actually been worse on this kit. I had to add a length of Evergreen strip plastic at either end of the wing box section to help deal with a decent step(pic 1). Much filling, grinding, and sanding ensued. The cockpit was finished off and glued into the fuselage (pic 2). I didn't spend much time on the cockpit, as very little is visible once the canopy is on. Next up is getting the engines going. Stand by... Fred.

Thanks for the kind comments Don! Being an 80's Monogram kit, it was definitely a bit of a fit pig, but with a lot of sanding, re-scribing, and a Black Box cockpit set, it came out pretty good. Thankfully we have the MUCH better AFV kit now. Take care, Fred.

Hi Dutch, I saw Kursad's announcement regarding decals, but will likely just finish mine off with the kit decals, as they're in good shape, and I want to keep this build moving forward. Thanks! Fred.

Very much so Dutch! Progress is being made. I just haven't had time to take a few pics yet, but will post soon. Thanks, Fred.

Well..... I started the XB-70 kit about 4 years ago, but hit the wall with it with all of the endless grinding and sanding involved. I also knew that my gloss white painting skills were not up to such a challenge, so it got set aside as painting approached. Now that I've tackled the "Rat 55" 737-200 and Eastern 737-800 builds, I feel that my gloss white skills are now up to the task of finishing off the XB-70. So I suppose both 737 kits were guinea pigs of sorts 🤣 Fred.

Thanks everyone for your very kind comments! Once I get the AMT XB-70 kit that I'm currently working on finished, I'll get going on either the Titan Models 757-200 or BPK 737-900 projects that I've already started build threads on. Look in on those if its anything that interests you. Thanks for your support 👍 Fred.

Here's another pic from one of my Fallon photo shoots. I think you'd be good with any similar grey. Fred.

Hi Don, Here's a pic of the inlet. It looks like maybe light gull grey, or similar? As for painting it.... if you're using the AFV kit part, all I can suggest is painting it very carefully 😂 If you're using the Quickboost set, it will likely be easier. As for colors of the jet that you posted a pic of in Dave Roofs VMFT-401 decals thread... I built an E in that same scheme a number of years ago using the info from a Twobobs sheet, and the colors were dead on. The colors I used were FS36495 for the light grey, FS36375 for the medium grey, and FS35237 for the darker gr

Thanks everyone for your very kind comments everyone, and for tagging along on this extended build! Next up for me is to finish off a 72nd AMT XB-70 that I started awhile back. Then I'll get going on either the Titan 757-200 or BPK 737-900 conversion that I'm doing progress builds on. Thanks for tuning in, Fred.

Huh.... I didn't know that they were born yet again. Thanks for posting this Jeff 😉 Fred.

Hi folks, Well after nearly a year and a half of struggling with this build I'm calling her done. Lots of goofs, so it's definitely a three footer. However, it looks great in my display case. A link to the build thread is here: I definitely recommend the BPK 737 kits. Yes, they are challenging, but quite impressive when done, and also very rewarding. Thanks BPK for giving us something other than yet another teen fighter or Bf whatever that's already been done to death! Fred K.

Alright everyone.... I'm calling this guy done! Overall I'm pretty happy with it, but it is DEFINITELY a three footer (looks good from three feet away or further). I made a ton of mistakes on this build, but was able to salvage things and learned a few new techniques in the process. The biggest headaches were that gloss white paint, and the decals. Thanks to this build though, I have come up with a workable system for doing large amounts of gloss white now. The decals.... well.... they're very tricky. They are laser printed by V1 Decals, and I'm not bagging on them at

It's something that I generally try to avoid myself, but this time around I had to blend the nose colors into the decals, so some careful masking was in order. The next time that I have to do stripes on a big airliner model I will definitely be painting the stripes if possible! Lesson learned 😂 Agreed.... that Eastern scheme is a real classic! Fred.

Thanks Dutch! It's getting there..... Maybe in another week I'll have it done if I can get some bench time 👍 Fred.

Hi everyone, I had some time to work on this build today. This involved painting the nose section. I had to mix the light blue, and got mostly there. It's not quite a 100% match, but pretty close. Thankfully the darker blue was much easier. Revell's #54 blue was a dead on match. It's actually a very dark purple. At first I thought that no way would it match, so I touched up a small pin prick spot on the decals and it was right on. I do need to go back and do some touch ups, but the base is there. Interestingly I had the decals try to peel up under the masking tape (Tamiya

Hi everyone, I got a bit more done on this build over the weekend. First up I got the fuselage plugs in placed and glued. I used wide strips on sheet plastic to reinforce every joint (pic 1). In the pic you can see that there is a raised ridge on the fuselage half that will need to be filed off to get a good fit. I recently got in the BPK C-40A/B and E-7A Wedgetail kits in that I ordered several weeks back directly from BPK. Neither of these kits has this ridge, but every -800 kit I own has them. I also had to shim a few joints to get everything to line up straight.

Thanks for always following along on my rollercoaster style modeling adventures Dutch! I'd have to agree with you.... a set of all four NG 737's lined up in my display case would look mighty fine 👍 Perhaps someone will eventually make kits of the -300 to -500, and maybe even the MAX jets. Now that would be an impressive dispaly! Thanks, Fred.

Hi all, Here's a few pics of the aircraft being built along with the decals. The first pic represents the aircraft as it was when we flew on it. The second pic shows the aircraft as it is today, and how I plan to model it. Note that it has been retrofitted with a large WiFi antenna dome on the spine, and the newer "split scimitar" style winglets. The WiFi antenna will come from Click 2 models, and the winglets will be modified from the kit supplied parts. The decals come from Draw Decals, who kindly scaled up their 1/144th sheet for

Thanks! I decided to start another thread for the 737-900 build to not hijack my own thread 😂 Here's the link. Fred