chrislowe

Some "gigery pokery" tonight firstly adding the cable / hydraulic to the IR shields. Happy with how they have turned out although I'd like to find some resin joints or fittings for making these details a little better in the future. And then lenses onto the defensive suite on the nose. I'm not sure about that. The lense is visible in the photos on the walk around, but mine don't quite look right. More thinking required. Edit: those close-ups really do make it look like awful. I need to work on achieving a better fit and using more filler.

Got it, thanks. I found a really good pic of it here that raises a couple of questions. First is this pic taken looking fore or aft? Gut feel says aft, but I'm not confident. Second, is that a bungee cord on the left hand side, and if so, where is it attached at the other end? Airfix didn't include the "lump" for hydraulic ports, so I'll try to scratch build that along with the pipes.

Not too much progress last week because I was over the pond, but I'm back now and ready to get going. One question for the collective wisdom of BM. What is the thing that hangs underneath just behind the doplar sensor, and what colour should it be? This is it, in the PE... Thanks

I like it. It's not easy to get that right, especially in this scale!

I went back to the disco ball with more clear red. It's definitely better than before, not quite what I was going for, but I'm going to leave it at that, learn for next time and move on.

Do it! I've never looked back since I made the jump!

Thanks for the kind words. It's the Eduard Big Ed AH-7 set. I think you can get all the packs individually, if for example you just wanted the interior.

So a bit of progress. I'm not 100% sure what these are called. I'm assuming they're to diffuse the heat of the exhaust and reduce the IR signature. Whatever they are they needed a but if filling and filing to get them looking ok. Some of the reference photos seemed to show the grill on the back somewhat lighter than just flat black, so I used a mig burnt iron. They look ok, I think I also had a crack at painting the ALQ144 IR jammer. I painted silver on the inside and different intensities of clear red on the outside Trying to give the effect that each face reflects more / less intense shade from deep red through to silver, but it looks horrible I'm going to take it off and try a more even coverage. Lastly I added the skids, and some of the blade antenna Thanks for coming along.

Ah! So the legs aren't really visible when the seat is folded up! That makes sense and also makes my job easier if I want to butcher scratch build some folded seats. Photos very welcome, thanks

I have the Italeri CHinook HC.2 kit on the shelf and as the Lynx WIP is ticking along nicely, I've started thinking about what I want to do with the Chinook. I'm thinking of ZA707, which in HC2 form seems to be all over green rather than the black/sand mottled pattern that would be "interesting" to paint (phew). So I have a question about the cargo space. The rear seats in the kit seem to be moulded with support legs at the front of the seat, connected to or resting on the cargo floor. Presumably the RAF seats were capable of folding to make room for, oh I don't know maybe the Landy that came with a certain Lynx? In the case that they were folded up out of the way, what happens to these legs? I can find pictures of the seats folded, but I can't match them with what's in the box. Where do the legs go? Have Italeri got it wrong, or am I looking at the wrong pics?

Imperial eh? Are those numbers in inches or months? I never could remember how many lbs in a furlong. I'll keep that somewhere safe for my Chinook.

So to the aforementioned update... I have half the decals done. As you might imagine, because I had the PE door handle, this one was a little challenging I am very happy with the way that the Airfix decals respond to microsol. Especially the fire access panel and the roundel. I don't think the Xtradecals I used in the last kit were quite as responsive. So next up, obviously is the starboard side and the underside. That should give me some time to figure out what to do with the disco ball.

You hit the nail on the head there Paul. I'll see if I can find something that'll do the job.

More updates coming soon, I promise. In the meantime, does anyone have an effective way of painting the AN/ALQ144 disco ball? It looks like the kind of thing where one's chances of making a pigs ear out of it are much higher than doing a good job. The closest I've got to something close is a practice run with tamiya clear red mixed with silver, on the inside of an old canopy. Trouble is, only some of the elements seem to look redish. Depends on the angle of the light source I guess. Some elements look silvery and others look like they have a hint of yellow, but not so much that they look gold. Pain. Anguish.

Thanks! As far as I know, the big Ed set is in limited supply as it's discontinued, so maybe grab it if you see it. Watch out for the RBF tags though, they're more like US ones than UK ones. I think the interior / exterior PE is still available individually.