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Richie B

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About Richie B

  • Birthday 09/02/1967

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    Marlow

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  1. Well slightly later than planned but the cockpit is getting there! The pilot is one borrowed from a Hasegawa kit (why do so few kit manufacturers include pilots?) and enhanced using some Eduard PE. I'm not a huge fan of PE in 1/48 as the pieces are usually very small and I end up losing them or using too much glue to secure them. However, they do add a lot of detail so I'll just have to persevere. The seat is a resin one from Eduard as part of the kit extras and builds up very nicely. I lost the Oxy cylinder so had to build a new one. The helmet visor and patches are printed out on paper then cut-out and glued in place as I can't paint that level of detail! The Eduard PE front Instrument Panel is very detailed and looks great though as its metal, I can't back light any of the instruments. The cockpit lighting is therefore a mix of point lights in the side panels using thin fibre optics, some wider fibre optics to light up the side panels (these will be partially hidden by the cockpit side-walls) and a single LED mounted above the front IP . I think I'm about ready to get this cockpit installed and then work out how I'm going to wire the rest of the kit up!
  2. OK, Xmas and New year done and well behind us now - hope yours was a good one - and its about time for an update! First up its the intakes which as you will remember I cut up to allow easier painting and seam busting. Well they're all back together now which with the help of some alignment tabs was less problematic than it could have been. I've sprayed and the forward parts Air Superiority Blue before joining the rear section and both parts have been lightly weathered with pigments to look a bit dirty. Happy to say the joins are pretty good and seams are pretty much gone (or certainly well hidden!) I'll stuff them with some sponge until the rest of he build is complete so bye-bye for now. Also been working the exhausts which are quite distinctive on the F-15. The insides were dirtied up using pigments in layers which came out quite nicely, just need to add some more detail to the outside of the cans before adding the actuator arms. I suspect the actuators will stay off until the very end as they are guaranteed carpet monster seekers. When I finish spraying other areas or models, if the colour is suitable I start the marbeling process on items such as the fuel tanks. Its the wrong grey colour but once blended in it will add a little discolouration and interest to the tanks. Thanks for looking, next input will hopefully feature a cockpit update!
  3. Jumping around on this kit a bit as it needs a fair bit of prep before gluing together. At the back end I've opened up some vents, thinned down the ancillary exhaust vents and added a fair amount of missing rivet detail which is quite visible as the exhaust area is unpainted on the real thing. The kit comes with some very nice replacement resin exhaust nozzles which certainly look more detailed than the kit parts. Parts have been cleaned up and the first stage of paint added. The kit also comes with a healthy dose of air to air weapons but I'm not sure how many of these I will actually use as the aggressors were usually only fitted out in a trg to fight capacity. Still, they look ok as a starting point. Just a quick update and in case I don't get round to any more soon, Merry Xmas!
  4. Slime lights are probably the trickiest to introduce as they're comparatively bigger, not in convenient places (to model!) and not a point light source. I've not found a way of successfully using LEDs to mimic the effect but I have used glow in the dark decals in 1/32 scale which took a while to shape and need a UV source. They do look OK but don't last that long. Probably long enough for an initial impact at least! Another alternative is to use the same electro-luminescence panels as they do in the real world - though in miniature. You can get strips which you then cut to size but the electrical connections are quite fiddly and they need a transformer as they work of 110 volts. However, they are more authentic looking and keep going (as long as the battery does). They only really work for 1/32 scale though as the strips and wiring is too bulky for 1/48. All things considered I think this will be a 1/48 test bed for glow in the dark decal application.
  5. Okay, on the theme of lighting one of the areas I will be adding lights is the wings. The F-15 has two lights on each wing, red position lights on the leading edge near the wing root and red/green navigation lights on the wingtips. The position lights can be created relatively straightforward by carving away the plastic where the light should be then adding some coloured transparent plastic. In this case I used parts from an old toothbrush, cutting them to size then sanding then back to the wing before polishing the plastic so it retained its see through quality. As mentioned before the Academy wing tips are solid which means a somewhat more drastic approach. Because the LED has a cable you need to be able to feed it through the wing. As the wing is solid you need to carve a channel deep enough to hide the wiring. The LEDs are coloured according to the wing light colour as white light even against coloured plastic, looks too harsh. The channel was carved out using a wide scriber and the plastic where the light was just cut away. I created a large enough gap to fit an LED at the end of the channel, luckily there was just about enough depth in the plastic to do this. The LED was then secured inside and a wingtip light carved out of some more coloured toothbrush parts before being sanded flush. The channel was then backfilled with filler and sanded smooth. Even without the lighting its an improvement on what the kit provides. I've also added some riveting detail which I did before gluing the wings together. The wires for both LEDs will then be fed through a hole in the fuselage to the battery. I've also started to add some more elements to the cockpit though most of this won't be seen since the canopy will be closed. At least I'll know its there.
  6. I had a go at the Italeri kit a long time ago (no lighting!). Only bit I didn't care for where the engine exhaust nozzles - resin replacement required. Nice photo of a Lakenheath jet. No slime lighting for this build but might try something else.
  7. Hi bar side, yep the Academy kit has solid wingtips just like the Revell F-15E. I'm definitely up for adding the wing lights so standby for some plastic surgery! I wont be adding the fin tip lights though as the solid fins are too thin to be workable. It was bad enough on a 1/32 version.
  8. OK, the intakes on the Academy kit are pants. Maybe the designer thought we modellers needed a challenge so they added extra bits that clearly shouldn't be there and a whole raft of butt-joints that just don't. Seamless they are not. Also, there is the question of painting them as the colour goes from fuselage colour (in this case Air Superiority Blue) to an off-white. To help solve this I decided to glue the main intake trunking together then saw them in half where the paint changes colour. The front parts were then painstakingly put together with plasti-card reinforcement tabs then gap-filled and sanded, filled and sanded, filled ... etc. Oh, and did I mention the large number of sink marks on the intake walls? To paint the intakes in this fashion also means not constructing them in the manner Academy would like but I figured that since they'd made such a hash of the design it made no sense to do it that way anyway. I also glued in the undercarriage doors which were a remarkably better fit. With a fair bit of work, patience and sanity checks, they are finally coming together. The rear part of the intakes was less troublesome but the fit still less than desirable meaning more filling and sanding joy. Luckily this area is far less visible. The tabs on the front were added to help alignment when I glue them back together. And to think that most of the time you won't even be able to see down the intakes!
  9. So it's been a little while but time to update on the next project, yep another F-15! This one is a late C model courtesy of the 1/48 Eduard F-15 kit which is an upgraded Academy kit. The upgrades include nice decals, resin wheels, ACES ejection seat and most importantly some very nice exhausts. The kit also includes some PE including colour PE for the cockpit which all together make it quite an attractive bundle. The only slight caveat is that it is still the academy kit which does have some fit issues especially regarding the engine intakes and nose-to-fuselage join. As most of the essential bits are already upgraded, I'm not planning too many additional items however, this will be lit up with some LEDs which always requires some additional thought/patience/sanity-check on a 1/48 scale model. Subject of choice will be a blue aggressor machine from the 65 AGRS at Nellis similar to this one (but not a twin seat version). Decals for 65 AGRS machines are courtesy of an old Afterburner set I bought ages ago (as who doesn't like some more Aggressor options!) and as this will also be an in-flight display, I'll need a pilot . Right onto the kit and straight into the first issue - which to be fair I knew when I bought the kit second hand. The cockpit had been started but it looks like initial efforts to assemble the PE elements had not gone well and subsequent attempts to rectify the situation with copious amounts of super glue had also not gone well. Even the cover-up paintwork failed to improve the look which was probably the point the previous owner decided to call it a day. Anyway, never shy of a challenge (and knowing that a closed canopy will hide a multitude of sins) I set about removing the super-glued paint as best I could with chemicals and assorted files/sanders. All the front cockpit PE was trashed so I purchased another set and set about to recover what detail I could. As you can see, there was not a lot left to play with. Some clever paintwork required here I think or more likely for my skill level, just rely on the seat and pilot covering up most of the issue. The new PE for the front IP should also help. Talking of the seat, at least the Eduard resin one is nicely detailed and some additional PE should detract nicely from the melty-mess of the rest of the cockpit. More to follow soon, intake heaven (not).
  10. Many thanks all, I have added the build thread below if interested. Now to concentrate on actually finishing the 1/32 F-15B, now that has been a marathon!
  11. Many thanks everyone for your very kind comments. It took far longer than I expected but that was through no fault of the model, just the modeler! Hi Marcello - the background is just a black bedsheet hung down to avoid any creases. I process my photos in Adobe Lightroom which allows me to make the blacks really black so it removes any highlights in the background and blends it all in to one shade of black. I also use high aperture and a tripod to get better depth of field. Hope that helps.
  12. Ready for Inspection pictures at the following link:
  13. Well it took a bit longer than anticipated but this cold-war Mig is finally done! It's ICMs 1/48 version of the Mig-25 PD with the challenge of a mostly monotone grey colour scheme. The main colour is MRP traffic Grey but I used a fair bit of artistic license when pre-shading with various other colours such as brown. Note no missiles or fuel tank in this shot. Eduard photo-etch was used to enhance the various aerials and intakes, along with a Master nose probe. Decals are by Begemot and went on fine. The base is made from mdf sprayed gloss black with a Soviet star added. The acrylic rods were bent into shape using a heat gun and 'gentle' persuasion. Although panels were mainly different shades of aluminium, I added random shades of metallic colours such as titanium to provide an interesting (in my eyes!) patina to the rear fuselage. The large fuel tank is detachable as it's held on by magnets. I used the kit missiles which were ok with a bit of work and added magnets so they can be added and removed easily. The pilot is an Aerobonus one which also came with a very nice seat though you can't see that much with the canopy closed! I used Alclad metals on the rear and weathered with brown washes. I went for blue lights from the exhaust just to add a bit of colour but best viewed in the dark! I lit the cockpit with a couple of red LEDs as I had no idea what they actually used and red seemed appropriate. I liked the ICM kit, it's well detailed and goes together nicely. It's certainly a big and imposing fighter! Thank you for looking!
  14. And slightly (actually a lot) later than planned, she's finally done! The missiles and fuel tank are removable as is the model from the base if required. In case you were wondering if the lights still work... I really liked ICM's rendition of the Foxbat, it is nicely detailed goes together relatively well and certainly looks the part. I'll put some more pictures on the Ready for Inspection site soon. Thanks for staying with me on this one!
  15. Just a quick update as I am plowing on with the weathering and nearly finished. I'm using a selection of panel washes (mainly brown) on the tail and dirtier lower sections with some lighter grey highlights on the top surfaces. I'll add some Mig oilbrusher spots and fuel/hydraulic staining to add a bit of tonal variety but there's already quite a lot going on. I'm pretty sure the Mig-25s were not pristine so hopefully a little artistic licence will be acceptable! I'm also making a custom base to show her off in-flight out of sprayed MDF and adding a Soviet era Red star. Sorry there's not more photo's this time round but I'm keen to get her over the finish line. Nearly there!
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