t15dja

The link doesn't seem to work?

Thanks Sheepie. As it happens I've made good progress on fixing the issues with the nose, so I think I will be OK to use the parts that came with the kit. I'll post up more progress to show you what I mean in the next day or two.

This seems like a good price....free delivery in the UK too. https://www.jadlamracingmodels.com/revell-f-a-18e-super-hornet-04994-1-32-aircraft-model-kit?goal=0_20a5436e88-44220ccc34-123268181&mc_cid=44220ccc34&mc_eid=c3453686ee

Contrary to popular opinion I haven't given up on this kit, far from it in fact. I'm just experiencing the usual part-time modeller's dilemma, i.e. too much other stuff to do and not enough time for the hobby. However, things have been moving along, although not as quickly as I would like. When I left off I was focusing on the wings and centre / rear fuselage pending my request to Revell for replacement parts forward of the windscreen i.e. nose cone and nose section, given that mine were warped and the nose cone had two gouges out of it. More on that later. In the meantime, having studied photos and read more about other builds, the kit windows are too big therefore I've bit the bullet and decided to fill them and use decals, which I've ordered from F-DCAL. I'll also be filling the door outlines, since they are the wrong size, and using the F_DCAL decals instead. Normally with airliners, I fill the windows by rolling out a thin sausage of milliput fine and then squeeze them through the windows from the inside of each (unassembled) fuselage half, then cut off and smooth (using water) the excess that oozes out of the windows on the other side. This method provides a good anchorage for the filler in the window holes. However, given that this was a late decision and I've already sealed up the fuselage I couldn't do this. I did use the same methodology to fill the windowsbut this time pushing the milliput through the holes from the outside then cut off / smooth the excess. I was a bit worried that this wouldn't work so well given the lack of anchorage, however the milliput does dry rock hard and seems to be pretty well solidly fixed. After initial sanding of the milliput I then smoothed over any remaining imperfections with Revell's Plasto filler. Fuselage after initial filling with milliput. If you look closely you can see the imperfections in some of the windows. Another close up Then shovelled on a layer of Revell's Plasto I also filled the trenches that were masquerading as panel lines. I'll be doing that across the whole kit. I then sanded the filler and gave the whole kit a shot of primer (Tamiya XF-19) and sanded that down to look for any other areas that might require further filling and sanding....there were a few. A bit of a boring repetitive process, but necessary in my opinion to give a good finish in the end. I also put a tiny bead of perfect plastic putty in the wing / fuselage joint to make that as good as possible. After another coat of XF-19 I've also filled sanded and primed the hideous ejection pin marks on the flaps I also attempted to fill the front edge of the wings where they join the fuselage, since the kit has a very ugly joint here. I know there are some indentations for lights in this area but I'll sort those later. Below is the first attempt after filling, sanding and priming. Tiny bit off finishing off still to be done. underside view of tail joint looks alright now.... Also, this long thing on top of the fuselage was suffering from a bad case of sinkage, so it too was filled, sanded and reshaped. What did it do in real life by the way? I've also assembled the stand, which seems very robust, mind you - it needs to be! I've added the flaps and actuators to the wings. Getting these lined up with the wings took some doing....and several clamps. So this all gets me to here. The expression "headless chicken" springs to mind! I mentioned at the start of this update that I'd been in touch with Revell for replacement front end parts. Well they have just responded to say that they don't have any spares left for this kit, which isn't a surprise to me really - it was a bit of a long shot and I thought that's what they'd say. From my experience, Revell are normally very good with spares and associated communications. So I will have to fix and use the parts that I have. I've started work on the front end. More about that very soon.

Thanks Gabor, some news at last.....and good news too!

I think the £100 example is just another eBay joker trying it on. Here's another example....being offered as a "huge saving" https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.co.uk/ulk/itm/163477398707

Hmm....the ides of March.......and we all know about that date!

I, too, wish AMK all the very best with their F-14, but wouldn't it be great to hear some news / reassurance from them about where they are with the kit....anything would do! There a lot of folks out there, myself included, who have shown their faith in this kit and the company by placing pre-orders........AMK could easily and quickly repay that faith by giving the faithful an update. We used to get regular contributions from Martin at AMK, but have heard nothing from him for months now.

Yes I noticed that....the AMK.com web link from their Facebook page now takes you to a web hosting service.

As I said in my post on January 14: "I'm aware that the good folks from AMK have previously responded to posts in this forum, meaning that presumably and hopefully they are reading this and previous comments. If so, come on AMK, please tell us what is happening with this kit that did, and hopefully still does, promise so much." Well......so far the silence is deafening!

Yep, I've heard good reports about that, too.

Below is a picture of the gloss white spray paint that I used... it's a 200ml can. I think two of these cost me around £6 including postage.

Hi EuanT and welcome to the club! For primer my "go to" product lately has been Tamiya XF19 sky grey, which works really well. Ive literally just primed my fuselage and wings with that stuff to see how good or bad my filling has gone on those sections.... see picture below. You will notice that ive filled in the windows and door panels, since they are the wrong size on the kit. I will be using decals for them instead, which I have ordered from F-DCAL. For large areas I've also previously used Tamiya' s fine primer in a spray can. End result as a primer is excellent but boy does that stuff smell...you must spray it outdoors! As regards the top white coat, I am going to use some gloss white spray paint that I bought off ebay. Even though it's cheap to buy it does produce an excellent result in my opinion. You can see the result of me using this paint on my completed Revell 1/144 A380, which can also be seen on Britmodeller. I'll dig out the details of the white paint and post them up here later.

Indeed....as someone once said ......"I've started so I'll finish"

I'm aware that the good folks from AMK have previously responded to posts in this forum, meaning that presumably and hopefully they are reading this and previous comments. If so, come on AMK, please tell us what is happening with this kit that did, and hopefully still does, promise so much.

That could indeed be why it has gone quiet! However, I still have faith....and two on pre-order!

Its all gone very quiet again. Does anyone have any update please?

Yes, I can picture people taking to the streets on receiving the news of a new 1/72 Concorde tooling, enjoying street parties, participating in spontaneous outpourings of public happiness. Yes, I see in my mind's eye scenes similar to those outside Buckingham Palace on VE day, indeed on that subject I see the full Royal family making repeated forays out onto the balcony to receive and acknowledge the public joy at the news. BUT.......sadly, and even despite the up-welling of positive human emotion at such a momentous announcement, I still don't see the trains departing on time!

Yes, I did read that the windows on the kit are oversized. Unfortunately that was after I'd joined the fuselage halves so I can't do my usual trick of making a long thin "worm" out of milliput, pushing it down onto the windows from the inside of the fuselage and then cutting off, smoothing and sanding the bits of milliput that get squeezed out through the window holes. I could try doing the same from the outside in to the fuselage but I'd be worried that after sanding the milliput wouldn't have enough surface area of the fuselage to grip on to i.e. the milliput "windows" might eventually fall inside the fuselage. What do you reckon?

Right, then, Christmas and New Year celebrations are done and dusted so it's back to the build and a progress report. You may remember that the nose cone and the two pieces back from it had moulding issues and I had emailed Braz models to see if they had any plans to produce replacements. On hearing nothing from Braz I'd emailed Revell to see if they had any replacement parts and Revell have since written back to say they have referred my request back to where their spares are kept in Germany. So I'm currently waiting to see what they say. I'll be very pleased if they do have spares (Revell's spares Dept have always been very good and have never let me down in the past), however given that this kit is (a) quite old now and (b) ex-Airfix/Heller I'm not holding my breath. The parts I've got can be used with a bit of work. So, in the meantime I've been working on the rest of the kit i.e. fuselage, tail & wings. The instructions would have you build the tail and fuselage as sub-assemblies and then join them together. However, doing it that way I thought it would be inevitable that the tail and fuselage sections wouldn't join properly so I elected to glue the left fuselage to the left tail and vice versa, see photo below, and then join the two halves once the glue had set. There is still a seam between the tail and fuselage sections but this will be easy to fill and sand. Once the two halves are set it's just then a matter of attaching the fuselage "bulkheads" and front wheel well and then carefully joining the two halves together, gluing a small section at a time in order to minimise any centre seam as much as possible. Then fill the small seam between the fuselage and the tail. In doing so I've noticed that main fuselage section of this kit (parts 103 and 104) is made from a much thinner grade of plastic than the tail or nose sections....has anyone else noticed this? It's very apparent if you hold the sub-assembly up to the light thus: Also, the small leading section of the tail fin that is part of the fuselage is much thinner than the main body of the fin as hopefully can be seen below. In this photo I've already started to add some filler to thicken out the front section of the fin. Here's a side view: The tail wheel doors did not easily fit the lip of tail wheel well therefore I added a bit of sprue as support. Once the doors were installed I also filled the large, out of scale indentations on the underside of the tail.... Before...... And after filling but before sanding.......... So with the fuselage / tail sections joined it was time to add the bottom plate that makes up the fuselage and bottom surface of the wings. I don't have a photo of this stage but suffice to say that, after much clamping and taping, the two sections went together well. The instructions would next have you glue the upper wings to the bottom wing plate and fuselage. I chose to do this slightly differently in that I glued the upper wing sections to the fuselage sides but not to the lower wing plate. In doing it this was I think I have achieved a pretty good upper wing to fuselage joint that hopefully will require minimal filling and sanding. Once the upper wing / fuselage joint was thoroughly dry I then glued the upper and lower wing surfaces together, which brings me to here (ignore the undercarriage door for now - more on that later): There was quite a large gap between the front fuselage and the front of the wing plate that I had to shim with thin styrene sheet, trim and sand. Before.... After.... I noticed that this does leave quite a visible seam between the lower wing plate and the upper wing sections that will require filling, since photos of the real thing show this area to be smooth. Outer lower wing sections were then glued in. This left a noticeable gap the whole length of the joints. I understand that most of these joints will be covered by the engines however just in case I added in some shims of thin styrene sheet, which will be trimmed and sanded. Moving onto the wheel wells, I'm doing Concorde in flight so all the gear doors have to be closed up.....another problem! All of the doors, both front and main, have very little lip to sit on so I've had to glue spare sprue to the inside of the doors and then trim it to the right length so the doors fit flush with the fuselage: Main gear doors #1 Main gear doors #2 I also had to do the same with the front gear doors. So, here we have a photo of the underside with all gears doors attached as flush as possible, and all wing sections glued. Gaps abound! Once again, I used shims of thin styrene sheet to fill the larger gaps, the rest will be filled and sanded. Did I mention which filler I've been using? Well it's this: Revell's filler is smooth to apply but does dry fast so you have to work quickly. It does sand beautifully smooth, though. So, here's a picture of the underside with filler applied but not sanded. The masking tape is to avoid getting filler into the the panel lines. And here's the result after initial sanding: That brings me right up to date. Next stage will be to apply a few shots of primer to see what further filling and sanding of the various joints will be required. Oh...........and by the way......I also want to do a Concorde with wheels down and in Landor livery, so I couldn't believe it when I recently managed to pick this up from ebay for the princely sum of £22 plus postage! To be continued.....

Yes, the link most definitely works.....many thanks for doing this. I for one will enjoy studying these photos at my leisure over the festive break.....and a happy Christmas to you too.

That cockpit view is brilliant and just what I need.....thanks!

Many thanks for that! You are a very lucky man indeed, Sheepie, to be able to just "jump in" Concorde's cockpit....I'll think of you doing that while I'm battling the Christmas traffic!

Sheepie, following your kind offer to take photos, could I also trouble you to take some close up pictures of the "shroud" (sorry, don't know its technical name) underneath the visor if you are able please, so I can see how to try and model it. Also, if I can borrow one of the pictures from neilg's build here: As you can see, the way the cockpit is located means that the kit's engineer's console partly obstructs the window to the rear of the first officer on the starboard side. Is it like this in real life? Again, a couple of photos of this window and its proximity to the flight engineer's console on the real thing would be most helpful. Thanks in anticipation.

I'm doing mine in flight with the nose up. I am intending to put in a panel under the visor to hide the (redundant in my case) droop mechanism and also to avoid having a void under the screen. That build by "bornagainmodeller" seems like a good representation, although the horizontal strengtheners don't seem to be equally spaced as can be seen here: