uilleann

Hey Kevin - yeah, I went with the 50. The stuff is great!

Just WOW!!! 🤯🤯🤯

Just so so so good!! 😁👍🏼

I'm just over here in my corner, cheering: "VALVE CAPS! VALVE CAPS! VALVE CAPS!" 😁😁😁

Manfred, they look...just ok. But I can't see where you have modeled the individual tire air valve caps, perfectly scaled, and in the correct color here. I feel like you've really let us down on that one. 😁🤣👍🏼 Kidding of course my friend! This is just staggeringly good!!!

The kit main doors do take well to the Eduard update - limited though it is. I've not been able to figure out why *every* new release of this a/c continues to get so many important details wrong, or at the least not offer things such as the overly simple early gear doors (as Trumpeter and everyone else has done to date), and the later door style, at least as close as can be reasonably managed with PE as Eduard has attempted here. It would be far easier to just make the kit correctly from the outset one would think, particularly as good, high res data/photos/reference material has been available for more than decade now. *shrug* Oh well. Your doors look great, and when the paint goes down, they really do look the part. I threw a few extra stiffeners, and rivets at mine just to busy them up, but it's mostly the Eduard bits doing the work. Gads but my paint work needs some...work! I've no doubt yours will come off far smoother than mine! I did find that my old Model Master enamel "British Crimson" (#2009), FS20061 worked quite well for the bumper pad color. It's more a dark brick red, and less saturated than my cell phone image makes it appear there.

You're correct. The operational F-117's had an additional layer of filler (a putty, something like Bondo), then an additional layer of RAM material was applied over that. My understanding is that this last layer went down something like sheets of Linoleum - just a few mm thick, but provided the final skin of the aircraft. Any other joints or exposed rivets, screw heads and the like were always filled with a special RAM putty material to try to keep the surface as smooth and contiguous as possible, and/or painted over with the magic RAM paint you mentioned. They were certainly extremely labor intensive to keep stealthy! All of these now on display have had an extremely aggressive sandblast to remove any trace of the original RAM, and also the Bondo material as well. In addition to the removal of the surface materials, the pressure from the aggressive blasting seems to have further oil canned or puckered the aluminum skin between the underlying frames. In addition to the removal of any of the still "sensitive" areas such as the leading and trailing edges of the wings, and basically the entire nose and pitot tubes. It seems that at least so far, none of the museums that have received these airframes for restoration have taken the care to recover the operational appearance, and seem to feel that just slapping a coat of any old flat black paint on them is more than enough. This of course exposes the warped body, as well as the rivets you noticed - none of which was present on any operational aircraft. So if you're wishing to model a true to life operational a/c (as I think most of us are), then the rule is no rivets or screw heads of any kind visible (apart from inside the cockpit), and even things like the molded on RAM tape patterns on the Trumpy kit, as well as the panel lines around the deicing lights etc, all need to go. I think a more appropriate scale size of RAM tape on a 1/32 jet would be much much thinner - think perhaps about the thickness of decal film (used without setting or dissolving solution of course to keep the film itself just visible), then shot over with a final coat of paint. Does that help a bit? Cheers! B~

Here are a few I grabbed with my mobile on a day they did an "open cockpit" event with several of the jets. Hope they may help somewhat - though the lighting was really awful in the hanger there, and the images aren't all as clear as I would have liked. Still, better than nothing I suppose. We were only allowed to approach from the starboard side, so no great shots of the rear of the cockpit area from port.

Here's to a healthy, and happy New Year Manfred! Thanks so much for sharing your incredible work with all of us here! Cheers! Brian~

Ah the old worm vs meatball saga! There are some funny panels with the astronauts themselves weighing in on which is the "better" logo. For my own part, I've always been partial to the meatball, but the worm is cool in its own right! Great work and research on all these great details Manfred! Really love following your build here. Completely epic! I know our local planetarium would LOVE to build a permanent display for something like this out here, but no locals have this level of skill or patience! Do you have display plans when you're finished at all? Brian~

Nice! 82-799 sits just up the road from me and I'm happy to try to get any reference photos needed if it may be of any help. Though admittedly they haven't been exceedingly helpful in my getting any images in the gear bays for example. But I'm happy to try again. 😊👍🏼

This is a quick snap with the phone of the screen. The company, TWP Inc. out of California, provided a couple of 4" "sample" squares of their stainless "transparent" mesh for about $20. They have several different weaves available, and I expect would work well for this application, and many others in scale modeling. I hit mine with a light spray of burnt metal paint to tamp down the sheen a bit, and it really seems to look the part. Hoping this may be of use to others, and with apologies to Lox for the thread hijack! 😊

Great work Lox - I recently pulled mine out of the box again and am hoping to start work on it again soon. Several related projects in the works as well to improve several important aspects of the kit such as the engine RCS screens, the gear wells and the main gear struts, (they should all be "T" style as the nose gear is), correction of the exhaust vanes, and possibly even corrected intakes if you wish to model with the blow in doors open. I did find a source for an almost invisible wire mesh screen for the FLIR and DLIR openings...the glass in the kit is incorrect and should not be used. I can send on more info on that if you like. Look forward to following along! Brian~

He says it was worth a shot. 😁🤣 Thrilled to have been along for the ride on this one. Really epic stuff, start to finish. Cheers!!

Ah Fozzy, its spectacular! A museum deserves to be built just to house it properly!I remember well when you had just started this project and being amazed with every post at your skill, and the ingenuity of using so many household and ordinary items to such great effect! A real masterpiece here you've created, and no mistake. I know you never intended to do the wings, though have you given any thought to doing say a single engine and prop perhaps? ...Asking for a friend. (The little devil on my shoulder) 😁