jonbryon

Thanks guy for your comments. Much appreciated. Jon

Hello all, This is the last kit to make it to the finish line in 2020. It's been a productive year. This is Kinetic's 1/48 F-16B made from the F-16A/B NSAWC Adversary boxing. The decals are from the kit, although I did not like the 'TOPGUN' marking (too wide) so masked and sprayed it. The blues are MRP and the greys are Mr Color. I've really struggled to photograph this one and it's not quite blue enough. The only aftermarket are some Wolfpack resin seats and an Eduard resin nose wheel. The pitot is brass tubing. The kit is a pig that was no fun

This, absolutely this. It seems quite a rare approach, but I credit it with me actually finishing stuff. Also, I do force myself quite often to model when I don't feel like it. It's like exercise: there's an activation energy to overcome, but the results are worth the effort and discipline for me. Jon

How about the F-CK-1 in 1/48? There are two decent kits out there but practically no aftermarket decals and I hear that the AFV Club kit decals are not great. Jon

While I'm at it, I'll also put in a request for decals for the Fouga Magister. No one has done any aftermarket French air force markings for the AMK or Kinetic kits in 1/48. A really long shot would be to ask for some 1/48 decals for the AU-23A Peacemaker to replace the useless Roden ones. Jon

The FS30279 and 30140 are MRP. The FS30219 is Hataka (orange top lacquer). HTH Jon

Excellent! And while I'm at it, no one has ever done decals for an early F-84E (without the canopy framing) for the Revell 1/48 kit... Jon

Any chance we could get some markings for the FJ-4 Fury in 1/48? There is almost nothing out there 😞 Thanks Jon

I finished a Hasegawa F-16A in October. I enjoyed it. I'm making a Kinetic F-16B now. I'm not enjoying it. When I'm done, the Hasegawa one will look better because of the nose and being a much better and more cleanly moulded kit. Jon

Thanks! Thanks for the feedback. I've just discovered I can improve my website by moving to Wordpress.org. I shall be attempting this in the next week or so, which should improve the image quality. Jon

Hello all, My eighth completion of the year is the venerable Hasegawa 1/48 F-16A. I believe this tooling originates from 1983, which makes it kind of sad that IMO this is still the best kit of the F-16A available in 2020! Aftermarket is limited to a Quickboost seat and Eduard main wheels. The nose pitot is scratchbuilt. Paint is MRP and Hataka lacquer and the flat finish is Mr Color GX113 thinned with Mr Rapid Thinner, which has resulted in a grittier finish than when I use Mr Leveling Thinner. The decals are from the Kinetic F-16A/B kit and are not quite accurate in detail.

Yes - I'd love a GSB HUP-2 option. The kit only comes with a yellow USN airframe. Jon

Thanks! I went with a combination of interior green and black as suggested by the instructions. However, US Marine HOK-1s that are in museums tend to show a grey interior. I couldn't find a single colour image of a Navy HUK-1 in the gloss sea blue scheme, so I had to guess. Jon

Thanks for your comments! I don't know anything about the 'Pedro' designation, but the HUK-1 became the UH-43C in 1962, right around the time the model is from. As far as I can tell, the HH-43B/F had a different engine, tail, tail booms, rotor mast housings and fuselage. I don't k know if AMP plan on doing that kit, but I think it would require almost an entirely new tool. Cheers Jon

I received my replacement canopy/windscreen part this morning. It fits *much* better to the fuselage than the part that was in the kit. I'm annoyed it's taken this much effort and £5 to make up for Italeri's poor QC, but at least I have something that's buildable now. Cheers Jon

Hannants Lowestoft is indeed amazing, but basically a warehouse where you have to work to find what you're looking for. It's shut to visitors at the moment. Hannants London, however, is nothing special. It used to be prior to moving to its current location, but these days it's a fairly small shop with limited stock. It's main use, for me, is you can pick up orders from there with a 10% discount, which given I can travel in London for free, is a facility I occasionally use. Jon

Thanks! It's all written here: https://jonbryon.com/amp-1-48-kaman-huk-1-huskie/ Jon

Hello all, This is my latest finished model, AMP's HUK-1 Huskie in 1/48. It's the most fun I've had building a model in a long time. There's no aftermarket and I only made some small changes to better reflect this particular airframe. Paint is Mr Color 365 and the decals are from the kit (although I replaced the national insignia). It's a tiny model (excluding the rotors, about the size of a 1/72 WWII fighter) with lots and lots of parts. The close-ups show a much rougher finish than I would like, although in real life it looks pretty smooth. Comments welcom

Email received from Italeri: Dear Sir, herewith we inform you that we have checked. As our first aim is our customer satisfaction, we can send you the part D1 of item 2733 free of charges but we kindly ask you to pay 5 euros for the transport charges. Here following you will find the instructions to pay: The spare part(s) is (are) available, see below the instructions to pay on our site: - search the article 99995 in the field “search item” - click on the image - select the quantity and click on “add to cart”

I really hope some people who know what they're talking about can get hold of this kit as soon as possible after release and give us a detailed evaluation. I'm really hoping it's more 'A-6 Intruder' than 'Tornado' on the accuracy front. Jon

I think it's identical to the Squadron one. Certainly the one I ordered from OZ mods a few years ago *is* the Squadron canopy. Jon

I've had this response: Dear Sir, thank you for your e-mail. We kindly ask you to send us a picture so that our technical department can better check. Best regards, Italeri Staff I've emailed back with some photos. Mine is not quite as bad as Pappy's. I've looked through a couple of articles on finished models and they all state the fit of the canopy was good. The photos in those articles would seem to bear that out. I'll let you know if I get a response. Jon

Thanks. As long as some are on their way, I'll be okay 🙂 Jon

I've preordered mine through Hannants. I presume they are going to get some? Jon

Thanks for this post; it has made me check my kit. Mine is the same. I am worried it's a design problem, rather than a moulding problem. The part can be bent to fit most of the way round, but not everywhere. I've submitted a request for a replacement part via their website. I'm not optimistic, but we shall see... Jon