bianfuxia

First in with their placeholder. I'm going to build an Australian Mirage in the classic camo scheme as on the box art above. As a kid I remember seeing the tail end of Mirages in Aussie service - a 1986-ish airshow in Nowra with the Mirage displaying with an F-18 has really stuck with me. I'll get started on this one in October.

I've now done most of the decals: This isn't going to make it into the gallery tomorrow but it will be finished soon. There are a few obstacles to get past though. The canopy has an unholy seam line in it so I've decided to fix it and install it later (as mentioned earlier). The tail fins should be gloss white on the outboard side. First my TS-101 base white spray somehow bubbled up. Only after I put multiple coats down did I realize that on one of them I'd sprayed the wrong side. So I have two right-side white fins instead of two outboard-side white fins. Very frustrating.

I've made more progress. The fuselage got a spray of TS-101 base white, which I guess is like a white primer. Then a coat of gloss white over that. And then i did the decals, using the Hasegawa kit decals for the windows and the after-market set for the rest: they are a bit better than I was expecting them to be. I think the windows from the Peach kit are designed to be on a purple fuselage, and so the outline of the overwing emergency exits is white and therefore invisible here. I might see about using a very fine marker in the engraved line to fix that. Actually I have to say I am quite pleased with how the big tail marking has worked out. It doesn't stretch right around the bottom so there's a strange white gap there and I can't tell whether that's real or a mistake - there are not a lot of rear underside shots of a Latam A320 on the internet. But I will deal with that later. I have to put this aside for a couple of weeks due to a work trip, so it's a small chance for the gallery now - I get back (with jetlag) the day before the GB ends....unless it's extended!

It's incredible. Obviously the poor guy has had a lot to process from his early days. That's the general idea for this GB though of course I hope no-one has had to suffer like this guy seems to have.

Placeholder for my entry to this GB, which I will start in a few weeks. I tried to get it going in the recon GB in early 2023 but didn't even get it out of the plastic bag. Better luck this time! I've selected this one for double relevance in this GB. It's a Ukrainian kit of a plane doing the do for Ukraine.

Great job - well done. So different to the 80s era JMSDF ships I've built a few of.

Well, I won't lie. I got this kit for the nose art. Lady Boomerang is hot, that's kind of all there is to it. Just a place-holder for now, as I am not able to get started for a couple of weeks. Lady Boomerang was based out of India in 1944.

Beautiful build and a great model. That red is just stunning. Well done!

How about KP? Maybe not a wide catalogue but I'd bet they were many people's introduction to kits from the old East.

I didn't even know this kit existed 48 hours ago Didn't know it had been released until I saw your post which...I am so here for (my first go at that 2010s internet parlance). I'm keen to get this kit myself so I'm looking forward to seeing how you go with it.

A big thank you to everyone who got behind this idea. Remember it at Bunfight time!

I've done a bit more work on this F-14. Turns out it really needs a lot of nose weight. I did some tests before putting the fuselage together. It was going to be a tail-sitter, potentially, even with the fair amount of weight I had up front. So as you can possibly see in the pic above, there's some heavy metal in there. Here is a shot with all the metal I considered using. One of the issues was that I needed to make sure it didn't snag the mechanism for the swing wings. In the end I used that spanner, the ball bearing, the little nut, some of the washers, and a lot of bluetack. The front end weighs a ton now so I hope it works. I'd sprayed the wings and the top and bottom fuselage halves prior to assembly - I feel like you need to do this because if you spray when the wings are inserted, you'll get a mess at the wing join and you miss a bit no matter how you do it. Wings swept, you miss the paint on the inner-most trailing edge. Wings extended, you miss the part that's hidden then. So I sprayed all that and then built up the whole airframe and put some bluetack worms across the wing join. I discovered that the canopy has a huge seam line right down the middle. Because yesterday was my only real opportunity to spend time spray painting, I decided after a test fit that the canopy could be dealt with later (rather than miss my spray window and waste a sunny Sunday sanding). So I taped up the cockpit and put down the rest of the light gull gray. I noticed a few blemishes but the can is almost out so i am just going to run with this.

I put 💯 as my comment because that's your mark for courage! Actually it doesn't look half bad and i think you get a bonus point for being probably the only human on Earth who's brought that kit to completion. Well done!

Your other half is obviously wise - you hang on to them, lucky guy! And welcome aboard. Battle is imminent!

This little model represents one of the four KC-767 tankers operated by the Japan Air Self Defence Force (JASDF). Mine came in a twin-pack with an E-767 AWACs - one of four of that type the JASDF also operates. As far as I can tell these are simply modified from the earlier Hasegawa 767 boxing. Fortunately it has no fuselage windows to fill. This one has been a while coming - I started it in about 2017 or 2018. I painted it too dark a grey at first but now it's roughly in 16440 like it should be. Apart from that, I should have made a better effort to smooth out the panel lines behind the big cargo door. Oh well. I think it's pretty good and I am happy with it. the main wheel bay doors have been taken off for....maintenance. They'll be installed once I find them! Busy day at the JASDF base I'm rapidly developing - a US P-8 has dropped by and there's two C-130s and a C-1 on the hard stand.