Jump to content

TheRealMrEd

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    832

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Community Reputation

3,347 Excellent

3 Followers

About TheRealMrEd

  • Rank
    Obsessed Member
  • Birthday 04/06/1944

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Marietta, Georgia USA
  • Interests
    1/72 US military aircraft and small scale r/c aircraft.

Recent Profile Visitors

2,004 profile views
  1. TheRealMrEd
    Thanks everyone, for the comments, and thank you, Tommy, for the links. I'm sure otther modelers will find these most useful, as I have! Ed
  2. TheRealMrEd
    Thanks folks, for the kind comments! Let me now announce that I have had an epiphany! As I was getting ready to glue on the vacuformed canopy, I was just setting around looking at the model, and I thought, "maybe there's another way to do the canopy. I will try to explain. The DB conversion kit utilized their vacuformed canopy to fit between the parts of the kit canopy that I glued into place, and a little rear "turtle-deck" or whatever, at the back end, which was to replace the kit "turtle-deck", and consequently, was much lower in profile. I elected not to go that
  3. TheRealMrEd
    Now, a little work on the rear end. First off a piece of Lit-Brite peg or red translucent toothbrush handle, is glued into a slot filed into the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer (arrow) "A": Above left, at "X" the flare chute doors need to be glued in and the seams filled. Next, the benefit of building the Hasegawa kit is that a lot of different variant parts are provided, such as the smooth fin tip shown, which was used before all the sensors were added to later variants. While the kit does not offer the exact needed tailcap, I simply chose the s
  4. TheRealMrEd
    Time to finish up the front end. One thing I had forgotten about building these Hasegawa F4 kits was how critical it was to properly align the rear end of the lower nose part correctly: Above, note the two arrows. The sides of the lower part of the fuselage to the upper part are not equal. This is a critical thing I had forgotten about. The cure for me is to loosen the glue join in those areas to allow me to "shift" the lower fuse back into alignment, when the rear half of the fuselage is assembled to the front half. I'll show this later on. Figure "X" shows wher
  5. TheRealMrEd
    Hi Toby! Another tip for masking the Alclad II in these circumstances is to lay some Parafilm "M" down first, then put the tape atop that, THEN cut along the tape edge lightly to remove unneeded Parafilm "M" and paint. Later, when you remove the tape and then the Parafilm that was under it, you shouldn't have a problem. One work of caution however, if the blade is dull or you cut too deeply into the primer, it may crack along the cut line. Easy does it! Ed
  6. TheRealMrEd
    Oh, one thing I forgot to mention -- do the filling one panel at a time, masking off the panel with tape, and you should pretty much be able to save most of the panel lines easily. Just sand down to the thickness of the tape, then use a sanding twig, etc., to sand down the rest, as long as it's a very fine grit sanding twig. You can just snip off the end of the twig as you go, when it clogs up with putty. I also use a fine wire brush to clean the sanding twig, between cutting them off. The small twigs will give you very good ability just to sand very small areas. Ed
  7. TheRealMrEd started following 1/72F4H-1 Phantom II Kit-bash and How To Duplicate Vac-U-Form Canopies
  8. TheRealMrEd
    It comes up now and then, whether it is possible to duplicate vac-u-formed canopies. The answer is yes! I will show you how I do it. First off, the canopy you wish to replicate has to be closed at both ends. If it has already been cut out of it's plastic sheet, you are going to have to devise a way to make it hold a runny sort of product. One way might be to glue plastic pieces to the part that needs to be sealed off, using a glue such as G-S cement, which can later be dissolved with 91% rubbing alcohol, without harming the plastic. BEWARE -- THIS METHOD WILL NOT W
  9. TheRealMrEd
    I have encountered this problem many times, mostly on older resin kits. Most manufacturers have improved, and many now use pressure casting, which is the holy grail of resin casting, for eliminating defects in resin casts. That being said, the thing that works best for me is to first, closely inspect the bare resin surface with a good light (not necessarily diffused) held at a low angle across the parts being inspected. This will usually disclose the little buggers, after which, I fill the with a coat of 3M Glazing and Spot Putty. This was developed to finish pinholes in Bondo d
  10. TheRealMrEd
    NOW you tell me Tommy! Well, I'm too far down the road on this one, but to anyone else building this, be aware! Ed PS Tommy, it would be most useful to all if you could post links here for ALL the blog stuff on the F4H-1. Also, a short digression on your new F4H-1 book would be useful. I am only interested in the very first F4H-1. How much of the book is dedicated to that, vs more info on all the other F4H-1's? It would be useful to have as much info as possible, referenced in a single space. BTW, for any of you that are interested in this book, it is
  11. TheRealMrEd
    Next, more cockpit. The DB kit gives nice metal instrument panels front and rear, but they are devoid of any detail, and are basically the same shape as the HAS kit parts, so I will modify the HAS kit parts a bit. First off, the front IP. The blade tip points to the bump on the face of the kit IP which must be sawn or shaved off: Above right, a crop of a much larger photo found on-line that shows that for at least the fist flight, the hood was left off the IP, and the backs of the gauges can be seen, along with some of their wires. If you wanted to replicate this,
  12. TheRealMrEd
    Thanks for the input Tommy! You're always welcome to jump in on any of my builds. AV O, thanks for the link. I had seen that page and chickened out when it came to removing all the detail from the intakes... Ed
  13. TheRealMrEd
    Moving along, one of the early things that needs to be done is getting the cockpit ready for insertion, prior to joining the fuselage halves. The first item on the agenda is the rather unique seat used in the early F4s, which looks like this image, kindly provided by Tommy Thomason: A slightly more detailed drawing can be found HERE Since the Hasegawa kit had a seat with some vague resemblance to what was needed, I decided to start there. Plus, there were two seats provided, so I could afford to mess one up! I began by sawing off the headrest
  14. TheRealMrEd
    Hello everyone. Let's all hope for a happier new year. Some time back, I acquired a DB Models F4H-1 Phantom II Prototype conversion kit for the Hasegawa F4B/N kit. I had earlier decided that building this combo would be my first build of the New Year. But, after successfully building my kit-bash of the Republic XP47J, and with new-found courage, I decided instead to swim upstream again! After all, how many of us 1/72 modelers are going to ever be able to find such a conversion kit (or possibly afford one!). The odds aren't good. SO, I decided to fight ba
  15. TheRealMrEd
    I like your work, keep at it! Ed
  16. TheRealMrEd
    Beautiful models and very nice paint jobs. Conratulations! Ed
×
×
  • Create New...