silverkite211

My, but that's orange, init? Very, very nicely done!

Truly well done!

Oh, I failed to mention, I have 'MiG Sweep' as the wallpaper on my cellphone. 👍

I'll be watching this thread, being a big fan of the F-4 Phantom II. I mostly just wanted to say that I'm happy to see that you have 'MiG Sweep' oriented that way that it should be, instead of how Keith Ferris would have you show it. When people would present a print of the copy to have Robin Olds sign it he would rotate it 90 degrees, the way you have it shown and sign it across the "bottom".

That came out really great! Nice work!

Looking again at your original photo I noticed that there are two pieces missing from the High Flight set, they are the trailing pieces of the fairing that would cover what would be left of the forward Sparrow bays, as I recall the instructions tell you to fill in the aft bays, I used the bodies of two Sparrows from my spares box that were molded in halves to fill the spaces and then filed, puttied and sanded them smooth. It also appears that the piece used to remake the pilot's IP to a RF style is missing, the RF has two large instruments located at the top center of the panel, the corresponding area for them is removed from the panel and then the replacement is fixed in it's place. I'm glad that I have been able to be whatever help I have been.

To expand on what I said; I'm pretty sure that High Flight is no longer in business and from what I could gather the resin conversion is modeled off of the Italeri kit. It doesn't (didn't) come with nose gear doors and all the venting isn't there, since Italeri used decals to accomplish that on their kit. Still, until Hasegawa came out with their RF-4 kit it was, for me, an acceptable way to get a RF-4C. Also, I think that the cream colored cockpit set is probably the old KMC set, I think they were bought up by True Details, when KMC went out of business.

I can assure you the chisel nose RF-4 set is the High Flight conversion, it was originally intended for use with the Hasegawa kit, however I was able to sort out a way to use it on a Monogram kit.

That is looking great! Don't forget the position lights, red on the left wing, green on the right (top and underside) and white situated on the tail. I've seen some modelers use blue for the right wing light, approximating the appearance when the light is without power, but I prefer to use a little artistic license.

What I have done, when I've had a landing gear leg break, is to take a pin vise and a small drill bit and drill into each broken segment of the gear leg, insert a thin wire of the same diameter as the previously drilled hole and then glue the sections back together, allowing time for the repair to fully cure out. When I've had a larger diameter gear leg to deal with I was able to do the same thing with a larger size drill bit and use a section of plastic rod.

I sure thought that fuel caps would be red. But, as we all know, sometimes there is that oddity that occurs. And, to be clear, I wasn't casting aspersions about your excellent work.

Should the fuel filler caps on the wings be red, as well? Or is this, like the red tape over the gun ports something I was also unaware of?

It assembles very nicely and the windscreen and side windows are incredibly thin and distortion free.

You might not believe this, however I hand brushed the yellow. It is a water based paint of undetermined origin (it was part of the things I acquired from my friend, when he passed away) and it helps that the kit is molded in a rather pale yellow.

That is correct, the initial version of the Model had fixed landing gear, very elegant looking

This is a 1977 vintage molding of the Beechcraft Staggerwing, produced by AMT, I built this mostly box stock with the exception of adding seat belts and drilling out the ends of the exhaust pipes. The kit went together very well, one of the more trouble free kits I have dealt with lately, I even used the original decals, after coating them with decal film, just to be on the safe side. Unlike most examples today the decal sheet was one solid sheet, so each individual marking had to be cut out. In spite of that the decals went on very nicely, they were commendably thin and conformed to the surface detail perfectly. Like the De Haviland Mosquito it is a pity to have to have the landing gear down on the Staggerwing, however short of a stand there is no other way to have it displayed on a shelf. A nice thing is that, in spite of being a biplane, rigging was at a minimum, that is something that always makes me grind my teeth and utter epithets on the odd occasion I convince my self to build a biplane. Thanks, in advance, for looking.

I was unaware that they used tape over the gun muzzles on P-51s. Interesting.

The Model USA O-1 has pretty much the same problem, the engine and exhausts are rather finicky and you end up with just barely enough of the prop shaft extending to attach the prop to.

Very nicely done!

I have had the same situation when I have stripped paint off of a model, I think something in the plastic gets stripped out, as well.

It's coming along well, I'd be hard pressed to know that it is a 1/72 scale kit.

As promised (or threatened, you choose), here is a photo showing the paint scheme I applied freehand with an airbrush. Probably should've taken it out of the photo album, but you get the idea.

I built a Go 229 for a friend many years ago, I used proper RLM colors , 74, 75, 76 as I recall, but I did a tiger stripe pattern on the topsides. I have a photo somewhere, I'll try to find it and post how it looks.

Outstanding result! And, as you can see in my photo, I merely used the decal provided for the instrument panel, I think that is even more practical in 1/72 scale.

Here's how I did it in 1/48 scale. That being said, I found that unless you get pretty close and shine a bright light in there you can't see the bulkhead. I know that it is there, though.