Colin W

Finished the first set of decals. Fuselage and fin look ok. I used the painted decal film to do the engine nacelles. I assume that they are painted on the inside as well. Colin.

Cracking job there. Colin

Very good build for this Rich. Especially as you did it in such a quick time. Well done for the award. The F14D presumably is the one from last year's GB? In which case well deserved too. Colin

Looks like a lot of work there in the interior, are you sure that the floor went full width? Some planes of this era didn't even have a floor, e.g. Spitfire and Hurricane. One of these in the stash so interesting to know. Colin

Great to see this finished to such a good standard 57 years after it's release. Colin

Good to see some proper modelling going on. Your lathe looks like it's made short work of the wheels. Colin

Well it comes down to whatever you enjoy. I do buy AM decals but usually only national insignia. Colour matching is quite hard and the concistancy of ink jet colour is not as good as you might hope. Black or red letters are pretty easy to make though and with plenty of free fonts on the web a lot is done for you. The challenge is to print white of course. I just used my own technique in the 80s Front line Asia Group build to finish the Eagle artwork on a Thai AT37. No decals available so printing your own is the only way. Colin

When I make my own decals I always make a few spares. This time I made white and clear roses so had plenty spare to help masking. I wad sure the dark blue stripe would show through even the white decal, hence the mask. I found some 1/72 decals but I'm not aware of any 1/48 decals for this scheme. I avoid buying decals as they are expensive and I only use a few on each sheet. Far better to make your own. Colin

Cessna A-37 Dragonfly. Revell 1/48 kit reboxed by Encore with resin and PE additional parts, supported by an excellent instruction manual and decals. This model is from the kit but with home made decals to represent a plane in the Tango museum in Bangkok. The aircraft was obtained from the USAF in 1984 and assigned to the 221 squadron until retirement in 1992. It's dull and raining here today so not easy to get good pictures. I'm away for the next few weeks so I'll post these and update later. Thanks for the comments along the way and to Minion for hosting. Colin

Well I'm calling this finished. Eagles blended in to the camouflage, canopy jack made from the closed kit parts with a carbon fibre strut inserted, few other bits and pieces finished off. A good starter kit with about the right amount of PE and resin to bring it into this century. The only filler needed was in the airbrake well. I didn't sand off the raised panel lines which I regret as they stand out on such a small model. Colin

Starting to look like the real thing. I'm glad you are attending to the shape of the engines as they are not simple 'tubes ' Colin

Excellent job there. Looks fantastic. Colin

Stripping came out well. I had a bit of bleeding under the tape at the base of the final but I knew this would be a problem area so put extra pressure on the seal. I painted some clear decal film with the blue, yellow and red while I had the colour in the airbrush. I'll use this to make strips for the engine sides as they are too confined to paint and poor fit precluded pre painting. Colin

Still masking and painting. Blue then red and now yellow. Big reveal later! Colin

Cracking stuff. A really impressive build of a tough looking kit. Plenty of issues and challenges along the way but you knew that when you bought it so that just makes it more interesting Shame about the missing parts, always an unwanted distraction. Good final model as well. I didn't realise it was quite that much bigger than the P61! Thanks for sharing Colin