James G

Great build and photography!

It looks like a Uschi van de Rosten one, they are a good source for printed Soviet/Cold War bases. Or possibly Coastal Kits?

Great work so far. I must try some of the Quinta products, they look really nice in place.

Very nice, great job on the weathering

Really nice, great build!

Nice work on the corrections and the finished model looks great in those markings!

I like that a lot!

Spectacular! Looks real.

Great work Johnny! You don't see many Hind-A's built and you are knocking this one out of the park.

Work on this project ambles on at a stately pace. Currently I'm negotiating reassembling the Hornet wing from the eight separate pieces that I chopped them up into (see photo below). I'll post some pics of the folded wings in place once they are done on both sides. I've also managed to get a bit of detail onto the sidewall, mainly the junction and switch boxes, pics below. The plan is to do the basic overall painting of the sidewalls first, then start on detailing the ceiling piece and painting that. After which the more 'protruding' elements such as the winch platform, ladder, hoses, cabinets and larger pieces of piping and ducting will be added. I also have some decal artwork prepared for the various pieces of signage and some lettering for the figure's clothing. Quick question to the BM hive mind, does anyone know of anyone offering a decal printing service? I have previously printed my own on 'Expert's Choice' decal paper, which was not terrible but definitely on the thick side. Does anyone sell the paper that e.g. Cartograf uses? Please let me know. Hope you like the pics.

Great build. Appreciate your sensitivity on the post regarding the horrible situation in Ukraine. I have loads of Soviet/Russian models in the stash, they will be wearing Ukrainian markings now where I have that option!

Very nice, I like that

Lovely details so far, thanks for sharing

Hi all, hope everyone is well. I've finished the nitrogen cart, great little kit and lots of fun. In most pics I saw of the real carts they are heavily worn, scuffed and dirty, and that is the effect I have gone for here. Also at the bottom is a pic of the finished main gear bays on the Hornet. Regarding the diorama, I had yet another re-think on the textured panelling, and removed the brown-coloured plasticard (luckily I had only added 4 panels!), and I will make the panels in plain plasticard. Then the plan is to print some fine mesh texture onto decal paper and add it that way. The current slight hitch in this plan is that we currently have no printer! I am deciding between using a local print shop or a specialist decal printing service. Any advice on this front would be appreciated! Hope you like the pics, any constructive feedback welcome.

Hi all, here's an in-progress shot of the nitrogen cart. Forgive my shocking ignorance, but I only learned today that it is used for inflating aircraft tyres! The next steps on the model are an Alclad clear coat to seal in the decals, wash, weather and assemble. I've painted the main gear bays on the Hornet too, will post some more pics when all these bits are finished.

Nice work! If you have not seen it already, the video below may be of some use:

Many thanks! I will head over to the group build page to check our your super bug.

Hi All. I've had some travails with this diorama, feels like a case of 'one step forward, two steps back'! The main stumbling block was the rectangles of mesh-textured panels on the upper part of the main hangar deck. I am on attempt number three for representing this feature now; the first one was fine mesh superglued to the plastic, which looked rubbish under a coat of paint, so off it came! Number 2 was stippling concrete texture paint between the masked dividing lines. Under a coat of Mr Surfacer the texture was mostly lost, so that required another re-set. Attempt no.3 is pictured below - I got some textured sheet from my LHS next. As I so often do, I decided to make my modelling life difficult by scribing lines between the existing ones on the textured sheet. I appreciate that the result is over-scale, but I am relatively happy that it looks neat and regular (and also can think of no feasible alternatives)! Two panels down, 46 to go....😬 There is not much progress worth showing on the Hornet, but I am relatively happy with how that looks after managing to shoe-horn the resin landing gears bays in. The main gear bays had a considerable gap to the outside edge, which I filled with smoothed epoxy putty, and added some wiring and rib detail from Tamiya 'pla-paper' to blend it in. It looks all right under a coat of paint. As a change of pace, I switched to building the US Navy nitrogen cart (bottom two pics), as I fancied doing some painting and weathering. The PE front panel is not depicted, and I have left off the main wheels and surrounds for now for ease of painting. This is a great little kit from Bren Gun, I am adding some wiring to the back of the panel so I can run some 0.4mm wire into the tiny holes pictured, to link up to the nitrogen bottle valves - will post some pics of the nitrogen cart when it is done.

Really nice build and great display idea!

My condolences also on the loss of your dad. Welcome back to the hobby, your Tomcat is a fine build!

Looking good Ray!

Great build and a lovely Tomcatters collection

I thought that it was impossible for a static scale model to look fast, but this proves me wrong! Great build Al.

Very realistic, great build and photography!

Yes, I like to use Loctite '60 second' CA glue that gives you a little time to position the film on the the instrument panel (obviously remove any raised detail first) and then add your painted photo etch over the top, using the same glue, and lining up the instrument dial faces with the holes in the PE. Hope that makes sense? There are probably some good visual 'how to' guides on YouTube I imagine, if more info is needed.