jonbryon

It never ceases to amaze me just how far you can push Mr Color. This morning I painted about 25% of the upper surfaces of an F-4 with about 3 drops of paint (highly thinned, obviously) over a black base. The bottles are small, but they last ages!

Thanks all. I'm afraid there's nothing precise about it. I find it impossible to be precise with Mr Color because the paint viscosity is so variable from pot to pot. The 311, for example, I had to resurrect from a layer of solid paint into something liquid before I then thinned it further for airbrushing. In general I am thinning it probably about 1:8, with some Mr Mild Retarder added in. That means about 3 drops of paint plus thinner and retarder occupies 3/4 of the paint cup on the airbrush. Pressure is probably somewhere between 10-15PSI halfway along the compressor line. Airbrush is Iwata Custom Micron B, with the crown cap removed. Thinner is Mr Leveling Thinner. Jon

Hmmm...how weird! Nothing I can do about it sadly, but I'm glad you liked the images 🙂 Cheers Jon

Thanks. I assume you're viewing it on a mobile device. I haven't resized the images - they're direct links from my website. I assume it's a bug on the forum software when it resizes for a phone. Jon

Hi all, In a fit of madness I decided to build four 1/48 Phantoms at the same time. Here's the first: Hasegawa's 1/48 F-4E from a 2001 boxing in the kit decals. Paint is Mr Color and applied freehand. The seats and pylons are True Details resin. The engine exhausts are from an Academy F-4. A full description is written up here: https://jonbryon.com/hasegawa-1-48-mcdonnell-douglas-f-4e-phantom-ii/ Comments welcome and thanks for looking. Jon

You learn something new every day 🙂 I'm building the Hasegawa 1/48 RF-4B at the moment and I think I've got all the mods corrects for 7347 in 1979 as a thick-winged post-SURE pre-SLEP airframe in overall gull grey. Hasegawa seem to have got quite a few bits and pieces wrong. Jon

Yes, the original boxing does, at least. That's the one with the green-tailed gull grey airframe on the front. Isn't it the last 12 RF-4Bs built...my memory must be failing me... Jon

Thanks...but I still can't see it. Do you have a pic that shows the bulge? I intend to build this kit next year, so I'm gearing up on some references. Jon

Where is the missing long oval bulge from base of the left vertical tail on the real thing? I can't, for example, see it on this photo: It does look to me that ICM over-emphasised the size of the bulge in the fuselage at the base of the centre of the vertical tail, just aft of the wing. Thanks Jon

Monogram AH-1S: https://jonbryon.com/2018/04/19/monogram-1-48-bell-ah-1s-cobra/ Jon

PM sent. Jon

That matches my memory of the discussion; thanks for confirming. Jon

Where are you based? I have one of these: https://www.scalemates.com/kits/112484-special-hobby-sh48002-sikorsky-r-4b I'm in the UK. JOn

Has this ever been definitively established? As per Tommy's post, this was asserted when the kit was released, but there were conflicting results from different people. Because of the breakdown of the fuselage it is not simple to measure the length of the Trumpeter kit. When (if?) I get round to building mine I intend to measure it in various ways, but I am open-minded at this stage as to whether there is actually a length error. As per other's comments, the main visual error to me is the canopy. I have the PJ Productions correction, although I've no idea how much of a fix that provides. Jon

The most important thing with a Hasegawa 1/48 Tomcat is to ignore the instructions and not attach the inner intake trunking until you've attached the outer trunking to the lower fuselage. This solves any fit problems with the intakes. The only other significant problem is a small mismatch in the cross sections of the nose and fuselage sections. Jon