bianfuxia

This is actually a great kit. I bought it hoping to do the aerobatics scheme, too, and was pretty miffed when I discovered I'd have to mask it. So I made the grey version and actually enjoyed the build. According to the internet the design was influenced by the Israeli Lavi project. I saw a bunch of these fly over Beijing at the 2009 and 2012 military parades. Looking forward to your build!

Just discovered this - it's super cool. That scheme looks great and I love the test engine. Awesome work.

Awesome!

Looking good! I am a bit behind you still...I like how you did the red on the wheel door.

It would make an awesome payload. Unfortunately this spacecraft was launched by a regular rocket - I was disappointed to learn (although glad too because it means I didn't need to spring for the 1/72 shuttle when I already have three in 1/144 and five in 1/200!)

Looking pretty good so far!

More progress today: Fuselage together: Wings and tail installed: It passed its tail-sitting test - easily. At this point, I have still not installed the bottom panel on the fuselage. I left it off in case I needed to add more weight, but I am confident it will be fine. Those missiles are for another build, not for this one!

So this morning I decided I could do more with this kit. First up, here it is in scale, thanks to Mike ( @bootneck)! That's a 1/76 Airfix astronaut. Anyway I realized that I should have factored this gold foil in from the beginning, but I just cut off a piece about the right length and wrapped it around the telescope following the artist impression from the wikipedia article I linked back at the very top. There is just a tiny amount of glue holding it together at the back. With a super sharp knife I t

Yes I did a little today in fact. Mostly I've been putting off dealing with the big radar array on this one. But I aim to finish up before the deadline. Next step for these engines, apart from tidying them up, is to add the little mounds on the left side of each nacelle. These mounds cover some kind of electric generator that uses engine power to run all the radars and computers on board (as far as I understand it). I can use the engines on my P-8 as a guide.

I made a little more progress today, apart from spending ages looking for images of the cockpit. Just now I saw @Anatol Pigwa's thread on his F-111C which had some super helpful links. One thing I figured out on my own though was to mask off the red areas first and then paint the grey for the wings. I only masked it because I wasn't confident that my Vallejo red will go down nicely on Tamiya spray paint. But this way I don't have to mask the grey (it's Tamiya "Gunship Grey").

How did I not see your F-111 build? It's looking good. I have already learnt a lot for my own model from those links you posted. Thanks!

thanks for working that out for me! And thanks all of you for the compliment - now that I finally did one of these I will try the other two I have. They're good fun and I can recommend them as a nice change from the usual!

This is my Metal Earth kit of the Kepler Space Telescope. Not sure what the scale is. The model is 60mm long and the real thing was 4.7m long so the scale is...beyond my maths capability to work out. The telescope was launched in 2009 into an "Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit" which basically means cruising along behind the Earth as the planet orbits the sun. It just pointed at one spot in the sky - which included over 150,000 stars - and watched for the faint dimming of light that happens when a planet crosses in front (basically an eclipse). This way, it found 2,662

And finally, it was done:

I finished this one up tonight. First, the long strip with all the instruments and powerpacks on it had to be shaped into a hexagon: With that done, there were only two pieces left! When I first tried to join the two elements, I realized I'd neglected this important diagram on the "assembly flow chart". Note the little pointy hand icon: The hexagon has a slot on each side for the instrument bus, but four of the six are double slots so you can also attach the main telescope too. You have to align it properly so the