Head in the clouds.

Looking stealth and being stealth are two different things. I recently read an article that purported to state that the SU57 Felon had an RCS equal to an F18E/F.

Hinckley show was kind for me, I bought the grand total of two items. First is #141 Warpaint Viking, Valetta and Varsity. It has given me a few new ideas for future builds; Next up was this beauty and one I did not expect to find simply because I did not realise it was out there , Micro Mir John Cobs Crusader K6 ; I wish more manufacturers would produce kits like this. Last up a pre Hinckley purchase, Dspiae electric mini sander, should come in handy with my scratch building; Until the next show...🤑

I had seen reported somewhere (sorry, memeory fails as to where) that the F16 is a known quantity to the RAF, the Chinese hardware was(is) not so therefore the F16 was a better option from the RAF's side of the fence. But as stated earlier this is probably all incidental, all they want is a capable ADF force.

Very smart indeed, I know your pain with masking that colour scheme, I did XH754 with the black/yellow diagonal bars underneath.

Cheers Dave, you beat me to the draw. Nice to have you along @Space Ranger. Well done for getting your hands on the conversion, it is a good one on first impressions. I believe they have done another run of them, sure I saw them somewhere.

Turned out rather nice Pete, they are some meaty engines strapped on there so I reckon she can get bit of a lick on....for a freighter! The blending of the canopy worked out nicely too.

That is a very nice build and superb weathering too, also, the black paint job looks very realistic so well done.

Nice work indeed and one I have in the stash, it's good to know it goes together well.

Seeing as you lost my last photo it just means I have to punish you all over again. This is me on the right a few years ago on a holiday in Cornwall, the lads on my right claim to be my sons.....likely story! The baseball cap and shades disguise obviously isn't working🥸. My daughter is out of shot sulking as she was all holiday...😆. We had a flight in this lovely Dragon Rapide, oddly, I seem to have a strange woman following me now! Need to upgrade the disguise..🤣 The visit was to the now defunct but superb CHAC at the old RAF St Mawgan. On the plus side we did have Tom Cruise as pilot.....

No worries @woody37, there is no Herc without Erks and their stories to tell, the human element is as fascinating as the mechanical wizardry. (Other and all trades included..😁) 👍 😆 At last, something I can relate to, everybody has a ' Neil' somewhere in their tool kit, we had an 'Ozzy,' there was nothing his Ball Peen hammer and sharp half metre swing couldn't sort, if there was anything left to sort was another matter 🤬, he really was our last chance saloon. God bless him.

Hello @MarcNewitt. I have sat at that fence many times doing what you did, Cambridge airport affords good viewing points around the perimiter and you never know what will drop in or be sat on the test bay.

Not I Amos, I stand in absolute respect for anyone whom has served and you all have my lifelong thanks for doing so. When you took the shot of 'Snoopy' while at Marshalls of Cambridge it was at the beginning of it's life as the iconic aircraft we know and love today. While working on it did you ever see the fabled Elephant with the red and white trunk that I spoke of in earlier posts?

Thank you for your kind words @ColinChipmunkfan I hope I can continue to keep you entertained and suitably supplied with ideas and inspiration....and a little research material.😁 Cheers @MrB17 glad the thread is bringing back some good memories for you and it is also very welcomed when people like yourselves share those memories with us all here. While those chocks look substantial they have a bit of grow to do before reaching these monsters; I don't think these chocks will get jumped. It is hard to believe that just like cars of the day your CC130's had ashtrays in the cockpit and smoking was Ok, how times change. As for MEK, your cuts and grazes can't play hide and seek with that stuff, like you I found out the hard way...🤣 That makes sense considering the pic above, it looks like XV208 has run up onto plates like you describe. I now know what their official name was so hopefully Marshalls will have an idea of what I am talking about when I contact them...again😁. Thanks @MrB17, another mystery solved.

Found it, must be that magic tea of yours....🍵, after 10 years on the forum I have finally set my notifications so I don't embarrass myself by turning up late.... Nice work as ever and what a way to use the old Rotordyne kit; push it into the future by several hundred years. I know I said it yesterday, although your builds look good on here they look even better in the flesh. Dandy work old bean!

With a title such as "Mirage IIIO 1/32 scratchbuild how could I not be curious and with the author being Bandsaw Steve I thought I should pull up a chair early on into this build and support you...😉 As ever Steve I find your builds absolutely fascinating and no matter how much you whittle away it always seems fresh to see, the litho plate work is something new too, great work! I have had a marathon catch up and enjoyed every post but the most satisfying part is seeing that at 2 years your builds are as glacial as mine, we must be kindred spirits....🤪🤣 The man cave looks superb, top dollar in fact and a worthy investment. In these days of technology it is good to see that mankind's oldest building material is still kept relevant by people such as yourself in these modern times of 3D printing, PE and resin. Right, that's my grovelling done for being so tardy, crack on sir, more to do yet..😁

Appreciate that @amos brierley , it does please me that others get something from my builds, even if it's a good old yawn to clear the lungs 😉 Brass is my favourite medium, is easy to work with and looks wonderful when polished up. More people should give it a go, they may surprise themselves.

They do indeed and no apologies needed, they are very good pics. The first pic is probably what Airfix saw when they visited RAF Lyneham but with the brake pack on. The third pic shows what Italeri were probably trying to achieve but had the 90 degree transition boxes sitting way too low in the MLG bay.

Thank you @Sabrejet. Luckily I did not purchase them, I found them on the web when I was researching the MLG thinking they may help but did not hit the 'buy' botton. Anyway, I got so much satisfaction from making my own.

Cheers Pete, the 5 hours spent on it payed off.👍 Thanks @woody37, although much of it will never be seen I do enjoy the process and knowing I have done my best within my abilities. Cheers Neil, it most certainly does and probably explains some of the mistakes on the various MLG that is out there. Interestingly, the grandad of the kits Airfix is the only one with the holes in the top of the bay to allow full retraction of the gear.

Scribing continues........ Other news, yesterday I decided to ponder the merits of the MLG and decided that the Zvezda will stay as is, OOB but the Airfix and Italeri really need sorting and bringing up to a standard I am happy with so I have decided to go down the Brass route. Now, I am aware that there are metal replacement MLG out there from SAC but I had heard said that many of them are just copies of the original which will not help me one bit and be a waste of money. This si the SAC version; Identical with all the same mistakes. There is also the ACM offering; Although this in 48th scale and assuming they do a 72 offering this too is riddled with mistakes so as they say if you want it doing right do it yourself....Ok then, will do! Using the last picture in my previous post and the superb DH book I made some scriblings to get me on the way. There will be a little scale creep either up or down as the sizes are governed by the brass stock size but it should look thereabouts size wise but more importantly it will look right; Next I needed my MLG kit; Here we have left to right; 5mm solid brass bar. 2mm solid square brass bar. 2mm solid round brass bar. 2.5mm brass tube. 1/64 x 13/64 flat brass stock. Added while I was building was 3 mm brass tube, the slide version that slips nicely into the size below in a telescopic fashion, ideal really as that is how the real version works. First job was to make the wheel spindle hub that is attached to the bottom of the main oleo, drilling the hole first before cutting it off to size is much easier as you have more material to hold in a vice and less chance of damage to the work piece. I also file a little flat on the round bar a) to find the centreline and b) to give a flat surface for the centre punch dot to aid drilling; The 2mm hole was then drilled using my new toy. In the past I have used a Dremal type tool to drill holes but trying to get them straight in all axis is incredibly hard so I bought this; This purchase was driven not just by modelling needs but also domestic needs, I am currently repairing my daughters shower controls and my Gert has me fixing everything from bedpans to ornaments to jewelry. She has now taken to looking around shops for damaged items that are going cheap because she is confident I can repair them.....cheeky mare! This was her latest such purchase; The horn was broken but not detached so at half price she thought....bargain. I have not told her what my rates are yet...🤣 Anyway, the drill press should allow for more precise drilling and it's first job was to drill the 2mm hole in the hub and remoce from the full length bar and file to size; Perfect. Now I needed to make the plates that will hold the torsion bar that sits between the two main oloes, this is where the flat stock will be used. Two lengths will be cut oversize and soldered to the recently made hub. I reason it will be easier to solder them on oversize and file accordingly rather than make them to size and risk a misalignment during soldering. A length of 2mm solid brass was cut a little over size and inserted into the hole, the plates set up and soldered. I always sand the surface of the brass to give as clean a surface as possible for soldering; I had already done one of the plates and shaped it before doing the other but this had it risks so I need another method of holding the work. Holding small work pieces is always a challenge especially when soldering, as you can see mine has some flaws. Once both plates were on I centre punched the hole; Drilled; and while doing so did the 1.5mm holes for the torsion bar pins; Now I needed to fatten the oleo and this is where the 2.5 and 3mm slide tube was used, two identical lengths cut and inserted; The right hand end will have a dollop of solder on it and sanded to shape to form a truncated cone. Once this was done the 2mm wheel spindle was added; One down, seven to go...triple C130 build anyone?🤪 I mentioned earlier about altering the way I approached the soldering, on the next one I held the work in a bulldog clip with both side plates in position. I use gas to solder as I find it more controllable and easier to use. One thing I did on these small scale items is to flatten the end of the solder so it melts quicker and so needs less heat time, first time I tried it and it worked a treat. Less to clean up; Both plates on; And plenty of material to go at. Both done; Thanks looking in.

Cheers Pete. I will have some wheels if you want them, Airfix, Italeri and Zvezda..😉 I have a confession, my mate and I would buy, build and destroy a kit in a morning, the glue would hardly be dry but we played with them anyway, When they broke in a box they went only to see the light of day again when we were older to sit on our version Shoeburyness ballistics site. The garden looked like a battle ground and I think to this day nothing grows due to the amount of lead shot in the ground..😁. I had forgotten about that until you mentioned it..👍

A wee update folks. The re-scribing still goes on, now doing the wings; can't remember if I said that last time🤔 but lets just say it is now the upper wing surfaces being scratched to death. Another distraction from the scribing has been to start looking at the MLG and the bays into which they retract. The MLG on the C130 is robust but also very simple in how it retracts into the bay, a simple( by aviation standards) vertical torque shaft rotates and lifts the whole gear vertically with no rotation of any part of the MLG, the perfect application of 'KISS'. So how did our 3 design teams at model kit central catch this section? Here are all 3 together; As expected the Zvezda is streets ahead of the other two and is fairly accurate of the real thing, even down to the horizontal panel lines which represents the internal structure of the MLG bay. You can make out the vertical torque shaft/screw jack in the main strut channel. The Italeri bay in the middle is an half hearted attempt to replicate the real thing, the three horizontal and two vertical bars seem to be fictitious. The Airfix bay bottom is as basic as you can get, if it wasn't for the 4 ejector marks there would be nothing of note in here which to be fair is typical of the standards of the day. On the plus side it is a blank canvas. There is also a size difference between the 3, the Zvezda and Airfix come out identical to each other; The Italeri item fits snugly inside either of the other two but with no dimensions to work with I don't know which is right. It is my understanding that the Italeri kit was made from the Airfix mold before it was altered forever into the AC130H so why is there a size difference in the MLG bays? Anyway, we can't leave the Airfix and Italeri kits MLG bays as they are so after looking at the superb Duke Hawkins book I set to work on scribing the horizontal slats visible on the Zvezda kit followed by the channels that the MLG oleo runs in. I thought it would take half an hour but it turned out to be more fiddly than I had envisaged but we ended up with this; That is the MLG bays sorted apart from fitting the PE set to the Zvezda kit as this will have no MLG door on it. What of the Main Landing Gear though! Viola..... Eeeek! They are all diferent. I wont carry on describing which is which as by now you will probably know by the colour of the plastic so with that in mind I shall just carry on the waffle. The Airfix MLG is again what you would expect from a kit of that vintage, the wheels are very simple which is not a problem as they are to be replaced, as are all the others. The big problem however is that as we know Airfix were granted access to a C130 that was in maintenance and as such they have molded the disc brakes ( the round disk where the oleo and torsion bar meet) as an external item rather than an internal part of the wheel assembly. I have tried to find a pic but of the ones I can find they will not download. If you have the Duke Hawkings or Erks on Hercs book you will see what I mean. What I need to to figure out is if I can remove most of the disk while keeping some strength in the assembly, I feel it would be a big ask so I may end up making my own from brass item..🤔. The Zvezda item is probably the best, the torsion bar would be fitted when assembling although the flat tyre seems to afflict a lot of models nowdays...😆 The Italeri item has the same same mistakes as the Airfix item plus some, they have basically managed to polish a t**d and made it more detailed;but wrong. The brake disks have been rounded off and a little detail at the sides and an additional torsion bar has appeared at the top of the MLG. I have a feeling they have molded the horizontal torque shaft and gearbox's to the top of the oleo's which seems to be a bit low to me. Thoughts? This is what the rear of the wheels should look like from the C130 at Cosford; The brake assembly is within the wheel hub as should be. It was a tad tight under there and wearing a C130 on ones head is not too comfortable..😁 It now looks like I may have more work to do, 2 sets of MLG oleo's and torsion bars, luckily I enjoy working with brass. That's your lot for now, thanks for dropping by.

That looks lovely and nicely finished, it is on my to buy list to complement my old Frog kit.

Nice build and presentation of an old Airfix classic, mind you, I hope the pilots weren't too miffed to find out they had no joystick at the very moment they needed it..😁

Not only have you built a fine kit but the presentation is among the best I have seen, well done.