Whirly

At last! I saw nearly everything announced in these pages and still nobody seemed to care for this training workhorse.

If the box photo is to be taken as reference I doubt they will include the 3D nozzles: that would mean a major conversion and Hasegawa cunningly chose the IFCS configuration which allows them to apply the stunning colour scheme adding only the canard foreplanes.

Agree with you Colin! Citing from Bill Gunston's excellent feature in Wings of fame vol.16: The ‘Tailsitters’ or ‘Pogosticks’, as these two designs were collectively known, did not do a lot of flying – in fact the XFV never took-off vertically – but flew long enough to probably save the US Navy a large sum of money, earmarked for a concept that was fundamentally flawed and a product of the technological ‘euphoria’ of the 1950s, when anything seemed possible. As for the kit... well, I built other Pegasus ones before but this is quite strange: for example I was expecting a very soft plastic and when I removed the exhaust plate I was faced with one of the hardest and brittlest material I ever dealt with...

Back to this build, I need to hurry up otherwise I'll fail the due date! @Greggles: challenging is the right word, after having made some more progress there's still much fighting to do! Given the "erratic" engraved lines that are anyway too deep I elected to fill everything on the wings and work only on the different metal shades to highlight the panels on the flying surfaces. The asimmetric exhaust was completely carved out, I will replace it with a thin plasticard sheet once the fuselages are glued up. The cockpit parts are quite depressing: just four walls with chequered engravings (?), a floor, a fantasy instrument panel, an equally unlikely metal seat and some rear canopy details. I'm searching for alternatives. I assembled the side intakes: fit is terrible as expected. Nothing that can't be cured with some filler and elbow grease. Pity they are completely wrong, the real ones are much squarer. Since the fuselage sections may not be simmetric, I preferred to assemble the wings first to obtain the correct dihedral. I also inserted some pins in the wing root to reinforce the flimsy joints and filled the gaps with fine stretched sprue. While studying the cruciform tail to determine the best assembly method I noticed these small fillets at the fin roots: Started work on the fins and located a candidate for cockpit replacement: should be an Italeri B-57 bathtub. That's it for now, hope to post more updates soon.

This year I made a resolution to complete as many models as I can from my pile of started kits and after much thinking I selected this oldie: Probably I purchased it in the late 90s, it's one of the last kits released by Pegasus, and after an immediate start it was put back in the box for better days. Actually I don't even remember why I lost my enthusiasm and didn't get beyond cleaning the plastic parts and applying Squadron White Putty here and there... On checking the fit I may have found one of the reasons: The fuselage has many asimmetries but I won't fix anything: it's not worth the effort considering the better shape of the later Valom kit. That's all for now. Bye Fabio

Hi Jan, no need to be so repectful You are right on both terms: I built the Airfix kit some years ago (a shortened DC-9-15) and I remember it requiring much work on the lobe crease, engines and nose, besides the conversion job. The problems of the Fly kit are not so evident, it seems instead a very good kit at first sight, but all summed up make for a missed opportunity: it's a matter of personal taste, probably because I hate when mistakes are made for lack of knowledge on the subject. If you are interested I can give you more info in PM without adding more drift to this thread. Fabio

It depends on your need for accuracy: the Fly kit is a badly conceived "reverse development" from the Minicraft MD80 to the DC-9. It has many subtle mistakes which make it less desirable than the venerable Airfix kit if you really want an accurate replica. Surely it's much more buildable if that is the main attraction point for a modeller. Just my opinions based on kit and images comparisons, plus many similar posts you can find googling around.

Hi Adrian, I would use 5 min. epoxy adhesive like this one: It gives you some time to position correctly the parts and it sets quite hard, also it doesn't harm plastics in any way. Any excess can be wiped off with alcohol. Just a bit messy because you have to mix two components but I find it great for acetate canopies and other "problematic" joins. Fabio

The GB end date is looming so I made a final effort to complete this adventure. Here is one shot of the finished model, more in the gallery. Just out of curiosity I soaked the remaining decals in water to see how they would have reacted and looking at the result it's just as well that I reprinted them! Overall though I'm statisfied with the result and I'll probably never got to the end without the GB pressure, so I have to say a big "thank you" to all those who contributed with help and encouragements or simply liking my posts. A special thanks goes to Trickyrich for hosting so well this GB with his continuous attention to everybody's builds.

F-16A FA-49 No 349 Sqn Belgian Air Force Beauvechain 1989 45 Anniversary scheme Kit ITALERI F16C/D 1/72 Decals from DACO

Time for another update finally. I had a few bad moments with the decals again, just lessons learnt for the future. My experiment with Kleer is to be taken with a pinch of salt since you have to be very quick at applying the decals after this treatment otherwise they will turn very stiff and hard to apply after full curing of the varnish. Here I have completed the black trims and part of the vertical tail bands. You can see in background the remaining decals after three weeks of sun exposition, unfortunately they still showed a visible yellow halo and this would not be acceptable over a white background. I choose to re-draw the offending decals and print them with my laser printer. While handling the model more problems appeared with the already applied decals being very brittle and splintering away... At least I got a decent result with the black decals! You can see also the stencils which I had to scrounge from an old Esci sheet. So now it's resting on its wheels. Last night I applied the white decals on the tail: despite three BATHS (coats doesn't convey the meaning...) with Microscale Decal Film they still broke down in two parts each and I felt lost for a moment There are still many repairs to do and missing bits but I'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel!

Thank you Erik for you support! Actually I meant no other attempt in 1/72 I knew of the Hasegawa boxing but it's the wrong scale to me. And if you can find one, have a check at the decal sheet: Scalemates dates it to 1994 and most probably the white will be a nice cream shade by now...

Yes Trickyrich, it's a real pity and I wonder why nobody ever made an attempt at this beautiful scheme besides DACO. Anyway, in all fairness, I should say that the sheet I own is very old and was issued at the very start of DACO's existence: I remember ordering a few sheets through the local IPMS chapter after some members had visited the Belgian Convention in Antwerp. It was a cumbersome affair involving International Money Orders, paper letters and other exotic things of the past century

Of course you're right Trickyrich! I was tempted to use the softener because as first applied the decal seemed made of brass sheet... Anyway, this is remediable, just some more work to paint the belgian flag. As I wrote before this decal and the roundels are on a separate sheet, different paper and probably different printer too. So they were definitely put in blacklist and more usable roundels have been sourced from an Esci sheet (I hope so!) Turning to the main sheet, I've been most careful given Danny's advice and I applied three coats of Microscale Superfilm. I experimented with a spare decal and it still disintegrated as soon as I touched it with my tweezers after being soaked in water, so I changed plans and applied a thick coat of Kleer. This worked well, it only reduced quite a bit its responsiveness to softening liquids, so hope to apply the rest this evening. Some decals are still 'baking' in the sun since the yellowing is quite visible on a white background, hope they will get better shortly since I'm running out of time

Exhaust and grey done. I started with an easy decal and immediately got stuck withe the result after a mild application of decal softener... This will be hand painted, hope for a better result with the other decals, they are on a separate sheet so I may have a little bit of luck

More masking done for the exhaust, canopy frame and radome. I stupidly forgot that there is one more shade of gray to be applied over the nose, upper intake and rear fuselage sides... I'm getting quite tired of all this masking as I had never realized how complex is the F-16 camouflage, especially when mixed with a commemorative scheme!

Hi Pin, I have to dig out my references but going from memory the dihedral break should be just outside the vertical fins.

Wow! It's amazing how you can get attention with a darkish and not so close distance picture Thank you all for the appreciations, though it didn't really come out so well. I still need to paint the radome and exhaust then I'll have to do many touch ups while the decals are baking on the window.

Here we are!

Me too, It's taking ages to come to an end! The blue is done. It was something of an odissey since I was happy to have the exact match in my drawer (revell 50) but when I opened the tin I found it was rock hard... so plan B was to use xtracolor X146: it's matched to FS 15183 but to me it looks exactly identical to RAL5012 as specified in the DACO instructions. I opened this tin (never used) and I found it very thick... In the end I managed to push it out of my airbrush with the help of Mr.Color Levelling Thinner, but it was a struggle and every now and then I got some micro dots of darker blue on the surface, probably some pigment is refusing to mix with thoroughly.

Finally got time to spray the white and spent a long evening for masking: it seems quite simple but the templates provided were useful to a point, much trial and error was involved. The only saving grace in the process was the availability of Tamiya flexible masking tape: it's simply amazing, I rate it as the best new modelling product of 2016 in my opinion!

Hi Danny, thank you for the precious advice! The decals have slightly yellowed so I planned to expose them to the sun for a few days and this can have negative effects on the film integrity so I already planned to give them some coats of Superscale liquid film. After reading that I will lay a few more coats for extra assurance. Bya Fabio P.S. by the way It's great to see that Customer Care at DACO extends well over 25 years!

Where did my thread go?? I was absorbed by heavy work commitments and I couldn't do any update here, at least I did some progress on the workbench... The filled joints were tidied up and I added spines to the tailplanes since they weren't much straight anymore after my puzzle game. I told you before that this is jurassic modelling, so I chose this fossil which just screamed to be used Once assembled and painted it's not that bad, I think though that the photoetched sides are way oversized since the pilot couldn't even reach for the sidestick! By the way, I have another much better kit (Hasegawa) I'd like to build later and I was wondering what are currently the best options for a resin seat (or even a complete cockpit).. Maybe one of the builders in this group can throw in his knowledge? Here I did the ECM bulges for the nav lights, I think they will suffice... (note in background the Scale Models feature I dug out from the darkness of my basement) Here is the finished and sealed cockpit. I'm preparing all the parts for a first white coat so we can finally start with the fun

Finally made some progress yesterday! First i played Tangram with the tailpanes I didn't follow Rob's detailed tips on how to get the early shape because I really hate reprofiling the aerofoil with sanding, so I cut the original parts in a way I could save the sections while getting the smaller area. I only sanded the leading edge towards the root to restore its thinness and had to slightly fill the joints, we'll see the outcome today: Then the fin was glued on and I added a small intake on the parabrake housing after removing the side lumps (probably this ESCI part was meant for the Norwegian Vipers) Finally I tidied up all the joints, note how much filler and Dissolved Putty went on, this kit is best avoided! I also experimented with PPP on the tricky intake joint and it came out really nice, I only need to seal everything with some paint before washing up all the parts in preparation for painting.

Hi Rob, no need to apologize, I've plenty of other (more pressing) things to do besides modelling as anybody who is married with a family will know! I think you sent me all the information needed, I hope to use them this evening and I will report the results.