TheRealMrEd

A good long drying time for each layer is the secret, plus a Clean model and a Good primer surface... Ed Thanks for the kind comments, folks! Ed

Another quickie... Starting to mask the canopy: Above right, all masked up and ready to dance... Time to attach the wing. With the exception of a little gap toward the front of the wing/fuse join, the fit is virtually perfect: Above right, an all-over coat of Krylon Gloss Black enamel, decanted and air-brushed. Then an overall coat of Alclad II Airframe Aluminum: Above right, all masked off for the second color of metallics, as well as the anti-glare panel (34092) and the vertical stabilizer tip (36495). Note that I have managed to knock off the butt-joined left horizontal stabilizer. At last, all in her factory-fresh looking paint job, with 3 shades of metallics: Next, time to "age" the finish, first with an all-over coat of very thinned Aclad II Aluminum, then a top coat of Aqua Gloss, then the decals, then a top coat of nearly flat clear. On the far stretch now! Later, Dudes! Ed

Brief update... After a few rounds of filling and sanding, it looks like so: Above right, with more sanding, I'm trying to achieve the straight panel lines where the two red lines are shown. These panels are flat, leading straight into the intakes. While it's hard to see here, the model laying atop the side-view drawing shows that the vertical shape of the nose is about right. The "X" above denotes where I sawed off the front landing gear doors, as they kept getting in the way. They will be re-installed later. The next picture shows that the panel lines are starting to shape up. This part of the process consists of sanding, then adding small bit of putty either above, below or within the panel lines, a little at a time, until a reasonably crisp line is achieved: Above right, a little Mr Surfacer 500 is added to fill tiny marks, and more sanding ensues. The areas around the canopy sill have been painted Interior Black, the seats and control stick installed, and the canopy is attached with G-S watch, cement, to protect the latter items. Back when there's more to see. Ed

Carvin' and choppin' is what I do, Cookie! Ed

Okay Wulfman, I'll expect to see it in the next several months! Ed

That's why I like it, cheap, readily available here, and id does the job very well! Ed

Well, back again. The paint on the P-26 is almost dry, but I'll give it a few more days before getting back to that. On the YF-94D, My first concern was trying to find something like a fuel tank, missile nose, or whatever would serve as a base to which I could apply putty. I scrounged around my pretty extensive spares collection, and the best I could find was a 30-40 year old F-4E Phantom, probably an old re-box by MPC, I think: I chopped it off where indicated in the pics. Above right, note that while the vertical profile is pretty good, the nose is way too fat, horizontally. The arrow points to the gun fairing, where I will sand each half of the nose thinner, until the gun fairing is eliminated on both halves. The side air scoops can remain. The Heller kit has to be chopped off where indicated below, to best fit with the F4E nose: Before the new nose halves can be attached to the Heller F-94B fuselage, there is a little work to be done on the cockpit opening (above right) to fit the aftermarket cockpit. As shown by those arrows the rear turtle-deck has to be opened up, and the front coaming has to be removed. Then, the aftermarket cockpit assembly can be inserted from below, before the wing assembly is attached, later on. Back to the nose. Yet another putty that I use for plastic modeling is this: This is because I still plan to fill the new nose halves, so that when I sand through, some suitable matter will be there. Above right, a copy of the nose fuselage profile is cut off the drawing, and glued with white glue to a strip of 20 thou plastic card. After the putty-filled nose halves are dried, the plastic profile with the paper glued to one side is cemented with hot liquid cement (I use Weld-On #3). When that has dried, the paper is peeled/sanded off the glued-on plastic card, and the other putty-filled nose half is glued on, carefully aligning the nose and fuselage ends as well as possible. You may or may not choose to install extra glue joint re-enforcement at the fuse to nose join in the next step; I chose not. Next, I glued to new composite nose to the Heller fuselage with liquid cement. I have not yet sanded the plastic card profile to exact shape, as some areas will need sanding down, and some will need filling. I will use my second copy of the side profile to correct the vertical shape, and my good old USA-manufactured MK1A1 eyeball on the sides: Above right, the cockpit tub, sans seats and control stick are installed into the cockpit. I also inserted a bit of lead weight ahead of the cockpit, but it really isn't needed. Below, you can see the sides of the new nose are a little more slender than needed, but the cockpit tub snuggles right in: So, above right, some 3M Spot Putty is slapped on, in about three thin layers, which dries much faster than one thick layer -- just a word of caution! Boy, ain't that a schnoz? There's going to be a large amount of puttying and sanding in my future, so I'll check back later... Ed

Thanks Bejay53, that sure is a pretty F-86H. I'll have to do one in this scheme soon! Ed

Thanks Bill! Tweener, I think the dihedral was increased on the "C" model. I think the A and B models were alike. Sabrejet, I've not seen any F-84 mods of that nature either. They might have had room in the RF-84's if they removed the cameras, but I don't think anything larger could have been added to the fuselage of the F-84F! Ed

Hello all. While waiting on the paint to dry on my side-tracked P-26 Peashooter build, I have decided to get started on the next project, a 1/72 scale conversion of the Heller F-94B kit to a Lockheed YF-94D, which I have never seen modeled. As usual, after waiting for someone else to give me a conversion set, I decided that no one would, so I'll just get on with it! Below are the major component parts I'll use. The Keller kit, the True Details F-94C cockpit set, and a side view of the subject aircraft: The side view, with the actual length to scale needed, shown below: Note the actual length is for the actual aircraft, NOT the paper size. This is a picture in 200 dpi, so it seems a little large. Actually, it needs to be scaled larger to be actual 1/72 scale. I didn't print it larger here, because it would have been more than 1660 pixels wide, and not a very happy match for some folks' computer screens, and thus, not very useful. So, you'll have to scale it yourselves, if you need it! The particular aircraft I'm building is this one: Originally to be designed as a new ground attach version of the F-94, it was converted from an F-94B, and only the nose was modified. It was to have originally tested a variety of guns, such as 20mm, as well as a retractable nose refueling probe. I don't know if if ever did, but it was in fact used for aerial testing of the M61 Gatling gun, later used on many other fighters, to this day. I believe I read somewhere that when testing the M61, the aircraft would come to an almost stop in the air, as the Gatling gun had such a kick. But, perhaps it happened to another test aircraft. A lot of things slip away with the onset of old age... This is just to whet your appetites, because, as stated over on my P-26 thread, I'll be away for a few days. So, it'll be a while before we can find out whether I've bit off more than I can chew. See you then, Ed

Just a brief status report. After a week in a small, enclosed room with a dehumidifier blowing right onto the model, it's about half-way dry. As I'm going o n vacation for a few days, hopefully, it will be dry enough to move on. If not, I'll shot a coat of Aqua Gloss atop the sticky paint, and see whether it will work that way. Keep your fingers crossed for me! Anyway, the next update will be sometime toward the last week in July. See you then! Ed

Hi Folks, sorry for the long delay between updates, but I've just (figuratively) shot myself in the foot for the time being! Actually, in the last pic, I had just painted a layer of the Klear to dull the shine a bit. A few hours later, I realized that I must have failed to either shake or stir the bottle! Unlike Aqua Gloss which doesn't like to be shaken or stirred -- certainly not very James Bond-ish! -- this stuff requires it. So, I am now stuck with several days/weeks of waiting for the paint to dry enough to handle, plenty more of which is going to be required. Right now, the P-26 is setting in a closed room with a dehumidifier running full tilt, trying to speed the drying process. It seems to be working, slowly. Anyway, I'll be back to this thread when I have better news to report. Meanwhile, I may just start something new, to tide me over a bit... Ed

Back again, this time with MORE sad news about the Starfighter decals! When I applied the decals for the cowl ring, I found that they were WAY too short, fore-and-aft. I even went back and checked the fit on the Revell original kit cowl ring, and they are too narrow for that also. Didn't anyone from Starfighter actually build using these decals? Above right, my first attempt at correcting the decal hand hand painting resulted in this view. Not correct, but better. At this stage, I also added the antenna mast, made up out of hard plastic sprue, and the tail mast, also of harder stretched sprue. They were both drilled and pinned with thin, hard wire, and inserted into holes that I drilled in the aircraft. After model hand-brushing and fiddling, I got it looking a little better. Not exactly the way the photos of the real aircraft back in the day look, but interestingly, it looks quite a bit like the sample hanging in a museum! Guess they had a similar problem, figuring out the correct curves. I guess I can live with this. Also note that I may have installed the cowl backward, but I couldn't get it ti fit over the engine the other way around... The shine on the paint has been killed a bit, using an air-brushed coat of Alclad II Klear Kote Lite Sheen, and while that dries, I'll start on the PE rigging fret. Since there was a PE bomb rack on the fret, I figured I'd start there, because if I messed it up, I could just leave it off! I began by separating the bomb rack parts from the fret with a sharp #11 X-Acto blade. I then positioned the long vertical (in the picture) parts to a rolled-over strip of Tamiya tape. There are three etched-out spaces on these where the two thinner, and one thicker, cross-pieces go. All the pieces have center lines to help line things up before gluing: Above right, when all three horizontal parts have been positioned correctly, and stuck down onto the tape pretty well, each intersection is glued with a drop of CA, for which I used a Glue-Looper. Then I installed the first of two vertical parts onto the previous assembly, aligning the three shots in the bottom edge with the horizontal crosspieces. This makes for an L=shaped beam going the long way of the bomb rack. After all the parts are CA'd into place, the little parts on the end are bent straight up, and by using the @11 blade gently on each side, the completed bomb rack can be separated from the tape, without too much bother: Hope this helps any future builders of this little critter. Well, back in a few with more, Ed

Hi billn53, I just shoot it straight out of the bottle, about 20 psi with a .02mm tip. They don't recommend shaking it, stirring it or thinning it at all! It goes on very thin. Airbrush cleans with water, IMMEDIATELY after painting. You didn't say exactly what your problem was, bit it sounds like you might need either more air pressure or a bigger tip. You do NOT want a thick coat, however. Ed

Hello again! Time to fix the decal problems. At first, I had decided to just touch-up all the decal errors with paint, but then my lone bottle of Insignia Red decided to act up, so I went with option "B", using other decals from the Starfighter sheet. I cut just the red and white rudder stripes from another set of the decals, and applied them just around 2mm or less back from the blue stripe on the originally-installed rudder decals. Unfortunately, I cut too close to the blue, and left a tiny strip of blue (arrow) that will still have to be touched up! I will cut the other side about 1/2mm further away from the blue to avoid this problem again. also, the "X" 's show where strips of black decal can be cut to repair the leading edges of the tail-feathers. Next, just a shot of the underside. Note that the excessive shine is from the coat of Alclad II Aqua Gloss used to seal the decals. This will be toned down later, as I don't believe that this level of gloss is scale-like: Above right, repairs done. Next up, the carburetor hot air intake installation. This was, for me at least, one of the toughest things to figure out. Hopefully, the following photos (many lightened to better show the detail) will make YOUR task easier, should you travel down this road!: The two longer pieces actually extend to the front, between engine cylinders, to admit cold air. This area is heated by a turn of the exhaust pipes around these tubes (out-of-sight), and air is exited through the short pipe directly behind. Next, the numbers correspond to the Starfighter upgrade set numbers: Above right, a view of the left side, showing also the carb air intake tube. Finally, the cowl ring is installed, with tiny drops of Canopy white glue atop each cylinder head: She's coming along now. A few more detail, killing the shine a bit, adding some antennae and she'll be ready for the part that scares me a bit, the Starfighter wire rigging set! Back anon, Ed