JFVicente

Hi all! Tomislav, I,m glad that you finnaly have recovered from that flu that seems like we are always exporting to the rest of Europe every winter. Finally I will try to post my update. Yesterday, I spent more than an hour writing it and when it was almost done I accidentally pressed the back button and everything disappeared, so now I,m writing it on word and will copy and paste on the forum when it is done... Well, me, like Tomislav started the project by cutting and cleaning lot of resin parts and components. Then I focused on preparing the cockpit(Aires in my case), so I attached all the photoetched belts to the seat: It was some tricky and patience testing, but once done the result is worth the effort. Then I dry fitted the cockpit on place. Needles to say is that it needed a lot of thinning by its lower face to be able to introduce it into the fuselage together with the front wheel bay. Also, thinning of the walls of the kit was necesary to install those provided by Aires. Here is it in place. The rear deck behind the cockpit is definitively installed: At this point I installed the front bay on place permanently: It fit exactly on the opening left when you remove the original Academy wheel bay, but it shows the battery compartment exposed and on the real thing it is hidden into the lower fuselage, as tomislav has shown, so I also covered this area. For this I used some strips of styrene. Now the problem is that the door that covers this bay is larger by about 5 mm. altought this is notvery evident on this pic. So I will try to take care of this at a later stage: With the front wheel bay in place and the cockpit dry fitted I checked the fitment of the two fuselage halves. I still need to sand a bit more the wheel bay. Aside of that my kit is slightly twisted so some wrestling will be necessary to close the fuselage when the time comes: Then I focused on installing the main wheel bays, and following the Aires instructions I removed the same area on the left wing that Tomislav shows on his update. This was a big mistake as I soon cracked the wing apart from the rest of the kit, as the joining resulting after the cut very thin. After gluing the resin well in place I was forced to temporally joining the upper and lower fuselages to be able to rebuild the damaged wing without altering the geometry or the dimensions of the lower wing. This was the final result: I needed to add a little strip of styrene to connect the resin part to the plastic wing as can be seen. This was probably due to an inappropriate cut by my side. For the other wheel well I took another way and instead of cutting all at a time I drawn a template of the face of the well on the plastic: And cutted the affected area: On the inner side one only ned to cut one of the walls of the original bay, leaving the others intact for better strength: Then after some trimming and dry fitting I was able to install the front part of the well permanently on place: And then cutted the remaining of the bay and a little area of the lower wing as instructed by Aires: This was carefully done in two steps taking care of not cutting plactic in excess. As seen one need to cut a part of the fuselage adjacent to the engine nacelle. And finally after some test fitting I was able to install the rear portion of the wheel bay: Some filling is still needed, but much easier that in the first case. If somebody is going to use this replacement resins I would fully recommend to take the procces iin two steps. It could be a bit larger but mush more sure for the integrity of the kit. That,s all by now. I have some more work done, so I will be probably psoting a new update tomorrow. Regards. Juan

Hi! Here is Juan, from Spain. Many thanks friends for your interest! I have just started with the work on this project, but have spent most of the time with the "dirty job", i.e. cutting and cleaning resins and plastic on the kit to make room for the cockpit and so... So nothing relevant or interesting as to be shown by now. And about Splinter, I have received a PM from him today saying that he has spent the last days in the bed with a serious flu, sio he has been not able to start with his work. Anyhow, stay tunned so I will try to show some pics by the begining of the next week. Rgds. Juan

Hi there!I am Juan, from Spain, and I have been around here for some time now, though this will be my first WIP in this forums. Also this is my first 1/48 kit ever. I have been always a 72nd modeller, but I will give this scale a try. Hope that the size will be not a problem to me... As Tomislav said I will be building Blue 57 from Ukanian AF, but not exactly like on the photo he has linked, but it will be on another timeframe, most exactly around the time of RIAT ´96 as I really like this paint scheme with the edging on the white portion of the vertical stabs. more or less like this: http://www.airliners.net/photo/Ukraine---Air/Sukhoi-Su-27S/2579903/L/&sid=c45e89b8d1c22fb81b0035597077451b So, here is my contribution on this thread, the Academy Su-27 with lots of goodies. Lets see what we have: - First of all, the kit itself. The original Academy boxing in my case: - Secondly, some resins, all of them from Aires. From left to right: wheel bays, exhaust nozzles and cockpit. - Third, more resins, in this case from the Quickboost range. From left to right, flaperons, antennas and nose. - Fourth, some PE from Eduard, at left the exterior detail set and at right the Air to Air missiles set: - Fifth, decals from Begemot, at left the Flanker family #1 sheet (kindly provided by my friend Splinter) and the Flanker family stencil set at right. - Sixth, a couple of metal tiny details: at left the static dischargers from Master Model (really tiny) and the pitot tube from Dream Model at right: - And lastly a couple of gems of sets. The Eduard Brassin R-27R and R-27T missile sets. I will be using only half of those sets (2 of each) as I will be sharing the other half my colleague, so i will start building this before the rest of the kit. So here is it! As Tomislav said we hope your support and will appreciate your comments and suggestions. Thanks in advance. Juan P.S. The start of the project by my part is not inminent,as I still need to finish the project on wich I am working at present, but for February 1st I will be cutting those resins. I have promissed myself!

Hi mate! Looking realy nice! Your efforts are bearing fruit Congrats!! Juan

Looking nice! Rgds Juan

Hi again Werner. Sorry for the delay. I have been out of home for some days. About the matter of the launching bar, Spain originaly aquired a batch of 72Hornets fresh from factory (A and B models). They sported on the tail the matriculation codes C15-01 to -72(or CE-15 for the twin seaters). All these aircrafts were devoid of such bar, as they will never be used from a carrier. The sample that you are building is one of that from said batch. You can see some pics of it on that very days of the 2007 Tiger Meet: http://www.natotigers.org/tigermeet/photogallery.php?ntmID=6&type=nr&p=3 As you can see that bar is not present. Some time later a second batch (about 25 F/A-18A) were aquíred. All of them were second hand, mailnly from NAWSC squadrons. On them the launching bar was present. The aircraft on your photo is one from the first batch (C15-15) but for some reason she is using the front landing gear from one of the aircraft of the second series. Aside of that, spanish Hornets from the first series has been modernized, upgraded almost to F-18C standards. Said updrade included position lights compatible with night visión glasses, like on your photo, but the modernization was after 2007. Hth. Rgds. Juan

Hi Werner! Nice subject and beatifull progress. Just one pointing: for this specific aircraft you must remove the launching bar con the front landing leg. Spanish Hornets from the original first batch had it removed and a counterweight intalled in place. Take a look http://www.airliners.net/photo/Spain---Air/McDonnell-Douglas-EF-18B(M)/2527153/L/&sid=ca151c1ff2866e4e531e86d1b012262b HTH Rgds. Juan

looking nice, friend! You are almost done with this bird. Go ahead! Juan

Hi Tomislav! Glad to see that you are on the road again with that kit! Nice painting job on that camo. Juan

Gorgeous build, Diego!!! In my humble opinion this thread should be pinned on every forum, as it is a master clas. Juan

Hi friend! Nice to see some progress on this thread after so much time, and a pitty that you have had to remove the paint... Keep that good work, mate. Juan

Perhaps I should have said costly instead of expensive, as obviusly seems that the kit is worth the price you paid for... But it is a good amount of cash. Will be following you! RGDS.

Nice work, friend. I,m following your build with great attention, as I am planning to build that bird on few months. I ordered the North Start exhaust nozzles too and I have to say that they look magnificient! Altought don´t know how they will fit against the original fuselage... Also, are you going to rescribe the entire fuselage? Keep those updates coming, please! Juan

Amazing!!! and expensive: http://www.hlj.com/product/IMCZ-001 Juan

S***t!! What are you able to do with a real aircraft? another lesson learned, friend! Cheers Juan

hi Andreas! I,m Juan again. First of all, no problem with your english, it,s far better than mine, for sure. So, you was awared that Max was looking for somebody to do this set? About the said pictures on Facebook group, I have only been able to find two of the Lansen Gamma, so if you have any aditional it would be welcome. I would look thoughtfully to your build to take ideas for my transformation. I would like to see your pod I have a picture of the Gamma scaned from a book in case you could be interested, but I,m not able to post it here in the forum... Wait to see your progress, mate. Juan

Hi Andreas! My name is Juan and I am a modeller from Spain. I am very involved lately on swedish aviation modelling, as I have done some masters for resin sets for Maestro Models. I have recently accepted the job of creating the masters for this conversion for MaestroModels, both in 1/72 and 1/48, so I will be looking closely at your progress. Are you intended to modify the ventral tank to include the cameras and build the pod on the left wing? I have some more photos of that aircraft that I could pass to you if you were interested, let me know. Cheers Juan