Pappy

G'day Dean and John, Brilliant stuff, cheers, Pappy

G'day John, Thanks, that has cleared up a few questions. I have two last questions. There is a small panel on the fuselage spine forward of the small air inlet, it has two small vertical rods, I don't know if it is a dielectric panel or not. It looks to be a pale yellow colour. Is it yellow or is it a metallic colour instead ie cadmium plated. I was going to paint it black but I think that would be wrong. The other question refers to the two ventral strakes. It appears that they had a khaki/buff coloured strip along their bottom edge, though this looks to have gotten very grubby in use. What colour was it? cheers, Pappy

G'day people, During the process of packing up the model cabinet, I thought that I might share some pics of this little fella. The Italeri kit was released before the WAH-64 officially began to serve with the British Army, and as such the kit has a number of errors, chief of which is the incorrect cheek sponsons. The kit depicts the early style , which is incorrect, although it does include the mast mounted radar. The kit should also have a whole plethora of laser and IR detecting bits and bobs, so a little work would be required to bring it up to speed. I built this kit whilst I was away from home undergoing a course, so this was my little project to keep me from getting bored at night, and so I built the kit pretty much straight from the box, though I did add a few little grab handles here and there. Anyway, I would like to share some pics before it gets boxed up and relegated to storage, cheers, Pappy

G'day people, I am packing up my model room in anticipation of a removal. I thought that I would share a few pics of this old clunker from the back of the cabinet. It was built about eight years ago and I know it has errors ie the cockpit should be black and the eagle decal on the fin should be in a light tan colour not white. The tail has been snapped off in a previous move and most of the static discharge wicks have been knocked off, but it is still otherwise okay. It was one of my earlier attempts so go easy! cheers, Pappy

G'day John, I would like to do her up in a two tone grey scheme, natural metal nose. I forget which squadron it is, but I really like the one with the shark mouth markings. I think only four jets were painted that way, but that is what I am going for. I am waiting on an Xtradecals sheet at the mo, I ordered it a couple of weeks back so it should be here soon (assuming the Chrissy rush hasn't bogged it down) so I should be able to start painting bits soonish. I have seen some pics where the external fuel tanks were painted a very light grey, was this common practice? Also some pics of late grey schemed aircraft appear to have segments of the belly tank in natural metal, possibly cannabed from another aircraft. Again was this a common practice? Final question, the gun troughs appear to be the same metallic reddish colour that is seen on Jags, is that correct? cheers, Pappy

G'day John, Thanks mate. The step is pretty small but it can be fixed. I don't want to start Trumpeter bashing, there already plenty of threads that do that, but for the price the errors and shape issues are vexing, especially since they could have been avoided. The thing to remember is that they can all be fixed, or they can be left and the kit built OOB. I am certain that if built completely OOB, this would be a weekend screamer. For most, the kit would look like a lightning and be a dramatic improvement over the Airfix/Frog/Hasegawa releases. Unfortunately, I seemed to have come down with a bout of AMS. I have not been a fan of the Lightning (but that is changing quickly) so this build has been a learning process for me. The more familiar one is with a subject, the more one would notice any errors. That is why I elected not to reduce the depth of the belly tank, however even I could see the shape of the back end was off, so I spent the time to fix it. I hope that you do get a couple of these kits. I say build 'em and enjoy them. A lot of people are holding off, waiting for the Academy release, fair enough. What if it isn't released for another year? Will it be more/less expensive? What if it also has the same shape issues (or different ones?) I wanted to post this WIP to show that the Trumpy kit can be built and that with some 'fixes', a respectable replica could be achieved, hopefully without the use of aftermarket (not that there is anything wrong with that!) as the kit is already pricey enough, cheers, Pappy

G'day Dave, Thanks very much. I was hoping to demonstrate that with a small amount of effort, the back end issue could be overcome. It was a bit of trial and error, but having done it once, I reckon I could do it a second time with much less effort and a lot quicker, mainly by not adding so much Milliput. Remember, the more you put on - the more you have to sand off! cheers, Pappy

G'day Darren, Yeah I know Andrew, we both used to be in IPMS Queensland together! Do you know him as well? Say Hi from me if you do, cheers, Pappy

G'day people, I have attached the fin. The fit is generally pretty good except that I have a small step where the front of the fin meets the fuselage spine. The step is more noticeable in side profile. I also added the small fairing that sits directly behind the rudder. I used a small section of stretched sprue. I also need to replace the rear formation lights that live just aft of the elevators. Trumpeter only included one of these, but I managed to sand it off whilst working on the engine contours. cheers, Pappy

G'day Ale, The gear units and undercarriage doors are a gloss light grey. The inside of the undercarriage bays themselves are gloss white. I can't tell you the name of the grey, but I have used light gull grey (FS 16440) but a barley grey would also be close, cheers, Pappy

Kaloste ton Perikli mas! You are correct, do you have a picture of them? cheers, Pappy

G'day Bex, Cockpit stuff is my favorite part of a build, so I really like to put a bit of work into it, even if most of it won't be seen. The Matchbox pilots are the best figures in 1/72 that I have seen (IMHO anyway), although there may be better figures from resin companies e.g PJ productions etc Since you said some nice stuff, here are some pics of a 1/48 pilot that I finished painting. It is for a 1/48 TUDM (Royal Malaysian Air Force) Hawk 208 (the Neomega conversion set + the Airfix Hawk 100 kit) that I will post pics of when I am done with the Lightning. I added a new oxy hose/comms lead, a wrist watch and a knee pad. But that is for another time..... cheers, Pappy

Ladybird? What ladybird? Pappy

Thanks John, coming from you that is high praise indeed! cheers, Pappy

G'day people, I have been working on the undercarriage today. I added some very basic depiction of the hydraulic lines to the main gear, I wanted to give my Lightning a more candid appearance so i cut apart the nose gear unit and re-attached the wheel forks so that they were off set to the left, A quick blast of paint followed, before giving everything a dry fit (not the wings are not actually glued on) to make sure I didn't have a tail sitter on my hands. I also painted up the pair of Red Top missiles, Whilst painting these I made a couple of unfortunate discoveries. The first one is that the missiles are missing two of the four the little triangular extensions forward of the central wings. Two of the wings have these but my reference pics show that each large wing should have one in front of it. The second bit of bad news is that whilst Trumpeter supply decals for the missiles in the form of dotted lines for the lifting points and H/E and rocket motor bands (the yellow and brown bands respectively) , the decals themselves only cover about one third the missile diameter! I found some spare yellow and brown bands in the spares box, however the lifting decals were used as is. I positioned these so that they are on the outside of the missile body facing the viewer, what a half arsed effort! On the plus side the decals that i did use worked very well, so hopefully that will bode well when the time comes to use the other decals. The decals fro the Firestreak missiles are similarly insufficient. Whilst everything was drying, I added a little more detail to the driver. I made some seat harnesses from very thin strips of Tamiya tape and applied them to the pilot. All that remains now is to add the seat initiation handles, which I will add at the very end of the build. cheers, Pappy

G'day all, Thanks for the encouragement. On the subject of the wheels, I really only noticed the problem when I was putting a wash through the rims, it is not something that jumps out at you. It is a pity that the entire wheel hub is on display, I otherwise I could hide the worst bit behind the undercarriage door. cheers, Pappy

A point well made Damien, I have taken about 1mm out of the middle to give a deeper 'figure 8' section. I also added the little horizontal fairing using some scrap card pieces. I have started to paint the wheels when I noticed something peculiar. The outside wheel hub faces appear to be off centre. In th eabove picture, the wheel hub is much closer to the wheel rim at around the 8 o'clock position than elswhere around the hub. I won't bother trying to fix it, but I thought I would point it out in case someone else wants to have a go, cheers, Pappy

Ahh yes, that would be it! I though it might have been but I didn't want to give a bum steer to anyone. cheers, Pappy

G'day Mike, I had a better look this morning and I found that I have to agree with you, the inner 'iris' does look too small. My initial idea was to try and use as most of the kit parts to avoid the need for aftermarket bits on what is already a relatively expensive kit, and perhaps show a cheap way to correct the kit for those that want to. I had a rummage through the spares box and found something that would substitute for the kit parts. I am not sure what they are from? I removed the Trumpy end caps and added them to the end of the exhaust tubes. This is the result I think this looks a lot better now and as an added bonus you can actually see the flame holder/spray ring detail at the end of the tubes, sort of... cheers, Pappy

G'day people, I worked the accessories today. First up, I took care of some small seams on the wing underside. Incidentally Trumpeter's instructions would have you attach the inflight re-fueling probe to the belly. A part from being wrong, the kit already has the holes opened on the underside of the port wing. Unfortunately, the light on the re-fueling probe is moulded on the side instead of the underside. I am not sure if I will correct it. Next up I cleaned up the Red Top missiles. Trumpeter supply two Red Tops and two Firestreak missiles. Whilst the Firestreak missiles are moulded in clear, the Red Tops are moulded in normal grey plastic. I wanted my Red Tops to have clear noses so I lopped off the seeker heads and cemented a section of clear sprue that matched the missile body. Once set, the clear section was sanded to shape and subsequently polished to clarity. I also did a little more work on the exhausts. I hacked away the moulded 'ring' that surrounds the kit exhaust pipes. The next step was to sand the exhausts until they were approximately level again. Once satisfied, the exhaust faces were attached to the kit supplied exhaust tubes. The whole assembly can now slide into the brass tubes at any point in the build. I will put these aside until after all the painting is complete. It is one less thing to mask after all! cheers, Pappy

G'day people, I am building the Trumpy 1/72 Lightning. If anyone is interested in how I fixed the rear end, take a peek at my post at the "in progress" forum under Trumpy 1/72 EE Lightning. I used a couple of bits of milliput and some sanding to decrease the valley, and added two sections of brass tube to replace the undersized exhaust tubes. Cheap and simple (I think) , but it will take some sanding. You will probably need to add filler at some point anyway, and it avoids the issue of having to align two bits of fuselage, cheers, Pappy

G'day people, Well in today's installment of Pappy vs Trumpeter, I have re focused my attention on the fuselage. I had previously added wedges of Milliput to both sides of the depression between the engines. Once hard, this was sanded back, the intention being to reduce the valley into something more akin the graceful dip it should be. I also superglued in a section of aluminium tube (cut at an angle) into the new location for the APU. I still need to clean this bit up. I marked out the centres of the two pilot holes that would locate the exhausts. Having done that, I now drilled out the back end using progressively larger drill bits. Patience is the key as the temptation to move to a larger bit too quickly could easily result in a mangled back end. I had earlier decided to replicate the exhausts using brass tube. I don't know what size I have bought, I think it is 10mm. I actually took one of the kit exhaust tubes with me to the local model shop (for locals!) and selected a tube size that allowed the plastic tube to fit inside. In this fashion, not only could I keep the engine detail by slipping the plastic kit parts inside the brass tube but also eliminating the problem of the too small exhausts. Hopefully, I only need to do a little more rescribing to restore lost panel lines and then I can add the wings. cheers, Pappy

Thanks Bex, Here are a couple more with the little guy test fitted, cheers, Pappy

G'day Wolfie, She's a real beauty, You certainly have done the kit justice, cheers, Pappy