Whirly

Seems great! Hope they will supply all of the many variations in colour schemes of the two airframes, this would warrant multiple purchases, at least from my side! 😃

Thank you guys! This is a base I have since a very long time and it was donated by my brother: He has always been pushing me to add bases to my finished models, so (I think in a moment of desperation) gifted it to me 😍

Thank you all for the positive feedback, greatly appreciated! Sorry @exdraken for the wrong date: I could even read my own model and see at least that it must have been 1996 onward! 🤣

Hi all, this is a very popular special color painted in 1997 which attended many airshows before being grounded in the early 2000s. I really liked it and chose this subject for my entry in the SAAB DRAKEN STGB, though I couln't complete it before the deadline. Here it is now completed, built from the Hasegawa dedicated boxing with all the mods needed for the Austrian Drakens, not supplied in the box, and flying surfaces lowered as it was always when parked. Thanks for looking!

Hi to all, unfortunately I can't show any updates before the deadline because I went on holiday for a few days shortly after my last post. I'm determined to finish this build though and let you see the end result! I will post the continuation in the WIP forum as soon as I have more to show after coming back home. Thanks for your attention and support and good luck with finishing your builds in the last available hours.

Hi Adrian, thank you for your wishes: you really need A LOT of luck with that damned canopy! Not only you don't get a backup, but it's also very difficult to install and quite rudimentary. My guess is that the cabin was sliced from the 3d model, then the windows created as deep depressions and the part printed out to be used as a mould. The result is not very good, creating optical distorsions in the side windows. It would also help a lot to have the solid mould as a template over which to cut the acetate canopy (and a spare one as a bonus!). I admit I added my own mistakes in choice of adhesives to complicate matters: the first attempt was done with UV-curing resing, it seemed a good idea but it didn't prove so. It was even worse than using two-part epoxy glue. Then I resorted to superglue, knowing the risk of fogging and making a total mess. For some reason this did not work either, maybe the residue from the previous attempt was inhibiting the chemical reaction. I left it pause for a couple of days before it went straight into the bin, then I made a third attempt again with superglue. This time I also trimmed the canopy to get a better fit on one side, then the planets should have been aligned because I managed to complete the operation without further damages. After a few minutes, I flooded the joint with gray acrylic paint and this showed a lot of work ahead for me to fair in the canopy! I seem to have won the battle but the war is still long. Let me say that this is a big let down in the kit and could benefit with a lot of improvements, all coming from past experience in vacuform and resin kits (so nothing related to the new 3d technology): - create a female mould for the canopy, with better detail definition and avoiding the recessed windows. - supply a corresponding male mould as a support for cutting out the canopy. - offer a spare canopy to cover any accident, this is quite standard whenever an acetate canopy is supplied. - include in the printed fuselage a flange going around the cabin edge: this shouldn't be difficult to add to the 3d model and would help a lot supporting the canopy and keeping it in the correct place. Just my two cents. Thanks for looking! -

Hi all, a light sanding of the primers revealed the striations of this material, a bit like natural wood 🙂 Fortunately they are very light and hope they will be hidden by the paint (at least it's not natural metal!) And here we are at the crucial point: the cockpit is painted and ready for installation. I cut and formed from thick plasticard a rear wall which will avoid seeing into the whole rear fuselage and will also support the rear of the acetate canopy. More soon, after I cut the precious single canopy supplied 🤞 Thanks for looking!

Hi all, I sprayed a coat of Mr.Color primer for resin and then Tamiya white surface primer to check the surfaces. Some minimal striations are visible, but nothing really worrying. The worst part is the very heavy handed surface detail: some lines, like the engine cowling and the rivets (?) over the wings are really huge. Anyway, the finished article should be mostly dark blue, so at least the trenches should be less visible. Thanks for looking!

This is the self-inflicted damage to the wing root. Unfortunately I could repair only one side with the broken part, the other one disappeared in the meta-universe and will need careful restoring with plasticard and putty. Then there are the tailpanes. I previously wrote about oddities, but this is plain wrong engineering IMHO. Please note how they are split in two parts with a ridiculous pin to be inserted in the fuselage for support. Why don't copy the clever engineering of the Airfix Cherokee kit and make a full span tailplane to be slotted in the rear fuselage? Who knows... My fix for this was to drill through the two sides, insert a steel pin and glue as one continuous surface. Then I sawed a slot in the extreme rear fuselage to let the pin passing inside and glued everyting together. Much neater and more robust if I can say.

Hi Adrian, actually the parts are quite clean after removing the printing supports, no lumps of resin or other undefined shapes like you find in the cruder short-runs. There are however some oddities, like the rudder trailing edge which is nearly 1mm thick. Can't find a reason since all the other flying surfaces are very thin.

Hi @Mr T, actually I found out how rubbery and brittle this resin is at the same time: first while cleaning the fuselage from the printing supports it distorted a bit and then failed in the middle. Then , while trying a dry assembly of the wings to fuselage joint, I briefly lost grip on the wings and damaged the cutouts in the fuselage. You have to be really careful handling those parts! The kit supplies alternate noses for the three versions but nothing is told in the instructions, so I made a few comparisons with images of the real aircraft to identify the correct part. First the one with the plain cowling can be left out. Then I compared the shape of the cooling intakes and other details, the most fitting one seems that on the left. Same story for the undercarriage and wheel covers, by the way even the most fitting ones could be more faithful to the actual shape. Anyaway, it's by far the best Piper Dakota on the market, though a bit more assistance from the instructions would have been appreciated 😉 Thanks for looking!

Thanks for the welcome, I'm going to use superglue like any common resin kit: this is what is suggested in the instructions. Thank you James! Oh yes, the instructions are ... ahem ...quite succinct. Well, let's start with liberating the parts from the cage of printing supports. You can see the parts are quite abudant with detail, only just a bit heavy. The cockpit is supplied as one piece, only the control yokes are separate. And here is the pile of scrap remaining Ok, first milestone reached! Thanks for looking!

Hi, this is definitely out of my comfort zone: I built some resin and vacuform kits over the years but never tackled a 3D printed full kit. I will try to stay inside the due date but I cannot guarantee being a late entry. My goal would be to build a Piper Dakota in Chilean AF colors, but as you can see in this other thread, the details of the intended color scheme are still a bit blurry! Thanks for looking!

Very nice build of a fascinating subject with a really unusual scheme. Bravo! Where does it come from the C-125 Raider? Is it one of the "bonus" Anigrand kits?

Thank you for the warm welcome, hope to keep the interest high. This is the tailboom supplied by Pavla, I managed to assemble it only with many applications of superglue and Mr.Surfacer to smooth the joints as best as I can. I'm sure a better result could be obtained through careful soldering, but this surely is not among my skills! The engine is very simplified and different from the Italeri one, especially the exhaust system: by pure luck, it seems more fitting to the AB-47G2, but there are so many possible configurations I'm not entirely sure which is more correct for my subject! The cockpit is all from the Italeri kit, with a couple of scratchbuilt additions for the missing parts. I'm relieved I'm not using anything from the Pavla kit here because it's really hard to find something useable, not to mention the yellowed vacuform bubble which is also beyond redemption. Thanks for looking!

Too little, too late... Here is the latest progress on my Draken, I'm sorry it didn't make it despite having a time extension too, I will post in RFI when it's finished. Thank you for organizing this great GB, it was nice to see so many Drakens being built all together!

Thank you @reini! Not many changes still missing: this is the intake on the fuselage spine. Holes in the stbd wing root, visible when flaps are drooped. The port side is different for some reason and still in the work... A pair of braces added inside the canopy (black streched sprue), seems all Drakens have them. Thanks for looking!

Hi Daniel, congratulations for finishing a nice model despite the decal issue. 26 Decals produces both traditional screen printed sheets and laser printed ones. The latter have translucent inks, especially for light colors, and this may be the reason for the unexpected result you got on first attempt.

Update 15/6 I didn't expect a flood of replies, though this seems a really tough question In the meantime I tried my luck contacting the Museo Nacional Aeronáutica y del Espacio at Santiago, where the restored airframe resides, getting a quick and kind reply in the form of a few images of the underside. I appreciated a lot this cooperation from the museum people, though getting more details created more problems than it solved: comparing the images with the few historical ones available I found some discrepancies which made me wonder how much this repaint is historically accurate. I asked again if they held any records of the original airframe but they said the repaint was done based on recollections 🙁 So, I'm here again with the initial question. Anyone can offer some help? Thank you!

I agree, this is definitely out of my comfort zone: I always steered away from photoetchings, but this time there is no way out. Anyway, in this GB I will have more time to struggle and the deadline coincides with a club display where this helo is bound to be completed.

Hello everybody, I'd like to enter my build of the immortal Bell helicopter, it will be finished as one of the many examples used by the Italian Air Force Helicopter School at Frosinone. The base kit is quite an hodgepodge because I had a started Italeri Sioux AH.1, where I robbed the engine, part of the tubular structure and both rotors to scratchbuild an AB47J. That is unfortunately a stalled project after the issue of the LF Model kit, but that's another story... Then I remembered I also had somewhere the horrendous Pavla short-run kit, so I thought I could try picking some of its useable parts and make a complete airframe. You can see here below the raw materials: in the last few days I assembled the cabin from the Italeri kit replacing some parts I had robbed for the AB47J and then I tackled the photoetched tailboom 😱 The more I look at it, the more it seems a bad approach to remedy the coarseness of the Italeri kit, but in this case I had no choice. It is hopelessly flat and nearly impossible to assemble straight and true without bending some brace here and there. I hope it will get better once painted. Thanks for looking!

Hi all, having finally completed my Mirage in the Dassault Group Build I can now resume work on the Draken, though I really doubt I can finish it in time. I corrected the fin tip shaping a plastic piece to resemble the complex fairing inherited from the Danish Drakens. Then I added the simpler boxes integrated in the rear afterburner intakes. And finally I made some changes to the rear fairing to accept another pair of boxes. This is the end result: not totally happy with them, but I had to accept a compromise. Thanks for looking!

Posted in the gallery (I nearly forgot the deadline! 😱 Thank you all again for all the appreciations and especially to @TEMPESTMK5 for hosting the GB! Glad to have inspired your future project, please post on BM your progress!

Mirage 5BA BA33 'Blackbird' Belgian Air Force Bierset 1987, 70th anniversary 1st squadron 1/72 Revell kit with nose from the Heller box. Modeldecal sheet 92, build thread is here

I'm glad I gave you unconsciously a useful tip: I'm so used to using this foam block that it never occurred to me to promote its use among fellow modellers. Well, I have two pieces of news, one good and one bad. The good one is that I completed the build, please see the images below. The bad one is that I didn't take any images of the final stages: it was such a troubled journey that I totally forgot! In short, I soaked the decals with a coat of Mr.Color Super Clear GX100 which gives a high gloss durable finish, so that I could mask over them and correct the many blemishes with thin coats of yellow paint. This stage went more or less well but took a lot of time. Then I added all the details, mostly scratchbuilt (arrestor hook, ecm cone, pitot, aerials... ), u/c and wheels (Reskit substitutes) and gave a final coat of Tamiya X35 semi gloss. Last touches were adding the ejection seat (Pavla) and glueing the canopy open. Overall I'm satisfied but it took way more effort than I expected for such a simple kit, so I'm glad it is out of the way now. By the way, I just noticed I have a bad case of silvering with the belgian flag on the fin 😒 Hope to take some decent photos for the gallery in natural light and then I can say 'mission accomplished'. Thank you all for the positive comments, they helped a lot being motivated to finish!