rafalbert

Sorry guys, I am done building for a while. Since my Nimrod incident, I have managed to screw up every model I have built so I am walking away from them for a few weeks and not participating in any more GBs until I can get past this. Good luck with your builds guys and thank you for letting me play up until now

Sorry guys, I am done building for a while. Since my Nimrod incident, I have managed to screw up every model I have built so I am walking away from them for a few weeks and not participating in any more GBs until I can get past this. Good luck with your builds guys and thank you for letting me play up until now

It takes up a lot of space

The serial for this one is JV141, any help you can give would be gratefully accepted! This has gone together generally well but the cowling was a terrible fit. I know they are not a flush fit but this had a large step between the top of the fuselage and the top of the cowling which required a bit of surgery to make it look at least reasonable. It was a shame as the rest went together ok, just needing a bit of filler in places. The other issue is that I managed to get a gluey thumbprint on the rear starboard window, a schoolboy error!

I was surprised how much filler this kit needs, so feel your pain with this one. With PPP you can use water to smooth it down, I have no idea re the Mig stuff. Bring back Squadron Green Stuff!!

I have been working away on this for a while without any updates but she is finally taking shape. The fit has not been the best and a lot of filler has been applied and rubbed down, but it is to be expected for such an old mould kit. The windscreen was quite badly distorted so I had to use superglue to fix it and typically it is not seated correctly. Such is life, I will have to live with it. I have given her a coat of primer to highlight a couple of areas to address before I can start to apply the paint.

Right, now the Bison is finished I can crack on with this wee beastie. I am impressed with the sprue layout in that Academy seem to have arranged parts for specific areas together rather than all over the place as is often the case. The cockpit is surprisingly pretty well detailed for it's age and price, with the walls being separate pieces. The rear windows needed to be cut out to allow the kit to be modelled as different versions so needed a bit of cleaning. I need to touch up some of the green before closing the fuselage but I am leaving it clean rather than weathered to keep this a quick build.

Now the Bison is finished I can crack on with my 16. It has taken more filler than I expected (no doubt due to my meagre skills) and I have messed up the join between the two upper sections which I will approach differently next time. The tail is not attached to make it easier for painting, and I am leaving off the tailplanes at the moment for the same reason. Looking at the instructions I am surprised that there is not much more to do before I can start applying paint so hopefully i will have more updates shortly.

Finally finished, not perfect by any means and I could not blend the cockpit section properly to save my life. Still, she looks pretty impressive and is pretty big, and will look pretty good on my shelf. Dave

Hi guys, please accept my apologies but with work being bonkers as we are prepping to reopen the unit and me being over-comitted with models and being generally slow, this will not be finished on time. I am now on leave (technically at least) for a few days so should have this completed by the middle of the week at the latest but not in time for the gallery. Most of the painting has been done, a few touch ups are required then it just needs the undercarriage to be attached and decals applied.

I have made a start, made a bit of an error in not attaching the upper cockpit section to the upper wing section prior to attaching it all the the lower section . I am building a "what if" RAF 3 Sqn machine alongside this so will try this assembly method with that kit.

This is a placeholder as I need to finish some of my other builds first, but I will be building the Academy kit with old Tally Ho decals to finish it as a FAA machine. Hopefully it will be a simple build after all my other recent builds and I am looking forward to getting started. Dave

That is excellent, many thanks!

Thank you for that, I will start searching for photos of FA-34 in 1985!

Despite being massively slow with other GBs I am in with the trusty Revell kit (not that I have built one yet). I saw my first Belgian -16 display at Church Fenton in 1985 where it blew the performance of the USAF -16 (which had displayed earlier) completely out of the water, along with my 12 year old mind. I have no idea what machine was used for that display, but I know they used "FA-17" from 349 Sqn at the 1986 display so I will be modelling that. After some of the issues I have had with ancient IM and resin kits (not to mention melting my Nimrod ), I am looking forward to one which will hopefully go together fairly easily . The kit itself I bought from Jason on here who kindly put two kits inside, but only one set of decals as I had different plans for this kit initially. Luckily I have an old Italeri sheet from somewhere in the stash plus the Modeldecal sheet which should serve me well. Dave