opus999

I didn't get to work on this until late last night because I didn't think to collect the supplies I needed from the workroom before it became off limits because my wife's niece's son was taking a nap. So naturally i waited the whole afternoon for him to wake and when he did everyone decided they wanted to go out to eat. So at around 8 last night I got a big box out and collected everything I think I'll need and took it to our dining room. After that I had a couple hours to work uninterrupted. I was able to finish cleaning the last little bits of paint in the nooks and crannies using Mr. Surfacer levelling thinner. Then I set to fixing those big gaps on the wing undersides using putty first and then finishing with CA on the surface. I think they turned out well. I also painted the seat. Sorry for the fuzzy picture, but there will be more coming because I still need to do an oil wash on it, paint the buckles and drybrush silver on it. Cockpit work next!

This is really coming along -- getting to the fun part now! I'm glad to see this is relatively trouble free. I've lost more than one bracing bar in my time. Luckily they're easily replaced!

I love it!

Look Ma, no panel lines! Part 2: You'll notice on that last photo that the wing undersides have very bad seam gaps where I didn't do a careful job of gluing the wing bottoms to the wing tops. There's no getting them apart, so I will just use some putty topped with a little CA to whip those into shape. Also yesterday, I got the seat altered to fit in the cockpit: It looks a little short on the bottom because I had to take a couple mm off the bottom so it would fit with the canopy on. That's OK though, because my experience is that in 1/72 models with closed canopies, you can only really see the top 1/3 of the seat. If you try really hard you can see the seat pan, but its almost impossible to see how thick or thin the bottom of the seat is. On the Hobby Craft build, I only thought of ordering seats late in the build, so I had to try to retro fit the cockpit and shave down the seat with the model mostly completed! This was a far easier process. Next up, I need to clean all the gooped on Testors tube glue off the mating surfaces, make a couple modifications to add detail and fix up the cockpit a little. On the HobbyCraft, I had to make a floor, an IP and side consoles. Here's where the difference between the HC and the Revell is the most striking (and disappointing): The Revell cockpit is just wide enough for the seat... no side consoles! I think the HC is actually the correct width, which is why finding a way to graft the HC nose onto the Revell would've been nice. I just discovered I didn't take any pictures of the resin seat in the HC cockpit (darn it!) but here it is with the original HC seat: Ugh. I wish I knew how to make the side consoles look more realistic. So, on this build, I will make the IP and add the resin seat, and that is all I can do. The other details I need to add have to do with the main landing gear. There is a strut behind the main gear that folds outward as the LG deploys. With the LG up, the strut is faired in with a semi-cylidrical covering that extends forward over the landing gear doors. I don't know if I'm allowed to try and cross-link to photos on Britmodeller, so I'll just provide the link to the walkaround photos if you're interested in what I'm talking about: Pictures 8 and 25 show what I'm talking about the best. On the HobbyCraft build, I used sprue and styrene stock to make these details and I will do the same with this build. Here's what it looked like on the HobbyCraft: I'll have to go down and grab a picture of the finished product, since I don't have one yet. The other feature I have to add is an odd item right at the back underside. I don't have a photo I can post, but it is nozzle, pointing downward, mounted on a sphere that is inset into the body. I don't know what it's for, but the sphere makes it look like its directional. Maybe a directional jet for some fine tuning of the aircraft's movement??? Anyway, my wife found some glass beads that were just the right size and I used the Dremel to sand one down and then used a large drill bit to make an indent resembling the one in real life. I glued the bead into the indent and voila! It isn't perfect because there should be more of a nozzle than a hole, but it's pretty darn close. This one ended up off center and I elected to leave it alone since it was a huge pain to get it positioned without it falling into the (closed up) fuselage. This time I plan to do it before closing up the fuselage, so it should be considerable easier. I don't know what my weekend schedule is going to look like, since my Wife wants to show my niece and her family around this State they are now calling home. Hopefully I will get enough time at the bench to fulfill my primary goal this weekend, which is to have the fuselage all buttoned up.

That's interesting that the colors are almost uniform. On my computer screen they are noticeably different. Well, stick around,... hopefully you'll see the real thing before too long! .

So after soaking I was left with this mess. The next step was to fill in the panel lines. Filling in panel lines is a tedious procedure. First I fill in the lines with liquid CA: Then I sand... and sand... and sand. I start with 150 grit which is generally not recommended because it can gouge, but it sands down the CA quickly and I just have to be careful not to press hard. Then I use my micromesh and sand with progressively finer grit down to 6000. The first couple (1500 and 1800 grit) I work very carefully to make sure I remove any gouges I might have caused. I wasn't going to post any pictures of this because they would be probably as boring as doing it! But... in the end... Look Ma! no panel lines! The next step is to do the same to the wings and tail fin. All this tedium prompted me to finally get off my duff and order some UV resin to use @Bertie Psmith's technique of fixing oops's and filling in panel lines. I was torn between that and @mark.au's UV activated nail gel. The cost was probably the same -- even though the UV gel came in 500 g, which seems to be a lot, the nail gel seemed to cost more per ounce/mL. That will come Friday, but I'm nearly done here so I will continue with the CA. My next build, however, will need the panel lines filled in, so I well get to test this new technique! (Thanks guys!) Taking this apart, I made some interesting discoveries... First, how much Testors Tube glue did I really need???? And then there's just this random glop...

That is a beautiful build. I really enjoyed the WIP too. Great work!

Typical.. I find a good thread like this at the end. Well, it was a good read to catch up! You've done a beautiful job on this so far. If this kit is anything like the 1/72 Eduard kit, then it was probably a joy to work on (although I don't remember needing any filler for the 1/72 wing roots... I could be wrong though, it was a while ago). Gotta say I'm jealous of the LHS. My town of ~120,000 people has one real hobby store with about 10 aircraft models...

+1! I always hand brush the aqua gloss on and it self levels beautifully! I've posted some RFIs of glossy birds that were done using the hand brush AG method ( CF-104, and my latest the Norwegian F-86F off the top of my head)

Lovely work on the cockpit so far. I wish I'd been aware of your build earlier! I have this very same set sitting next to my bench scheduled to be built (a double build as well) sometime before year's end. The Eduard kit is terrific... by far one of the best kits I've ever made. I'll warn you though, that the tolerances are tight and I had a devil of a time getting the two fuselage halves together. I'd recommend going over the mating surfaces of your cockpit assembly with sandpaper and doing some careful dry fitting!

Very nice Canuck! I love how the surface metal looks worn.

Nice to see you doing another Clunk. The other one turned out so well, I'm interested to see where you go with this one. Nice start so far.

It's been a few months since I've had a WIP thread. Frankly, I've just not had the energy to maintain a WIP thread. I've had a hard enough time just following the folks here who do interesting work! So I decided I will try to make the time and energy for a WIP for this project. I actually started this project back in April; I realized that the Begemot Yak-38 decal sheet I bought 6 or 7 years ago had Ukrainian decals on it. I'd bought the decal sheet to restore the 1/72 Revell Yak-38 I made in High School. Partially because I know I can do better now and partially because the off-register decals drove me crazy! I noticed that, even though I knew the correct colors for the nav lights, I somehow guffed this one up and switched the colors. Well, thanks to the magic of computer technology I can fix that: There we go... that's better. When I started this project I was going to use a HobbyCraft Yak-38 in the stash, but decided that it looked too inaccurate to continue. The side profile of the HobbyCraft is actually pretty close, but it fails miserably from any other angle because they made the main part of the fuselage a rounded off square in cross section, which really doesn't look right. The Revell isn't much better, because it is too skinny in cross section, and the nose is too long. But when considering the overall look of the model, the Revell to me seems closer to the overall look of the real thing than the HobbyCraft. I had already started the HobbyCraft and decided to finish it off, because a lot of the details I have to add to the Revell also had to be added to the HobbyCraft and this would be a good way to figure those out. I finished the HobbyCraft, but do not feel comfortable doing an RFI for it given current world events. Here is a good idea of the difference between the models: I thought that maybe grafting the cockpit and nose of the HobbyCraft on to the front of the Revell (after it had been split down the middle and widened) might make an even more accurate representation, but I couldn't figure out some of the details and was mostly done with the HobbyCraft at that point anyway. Apparently the AModel Yak-38 is the best representation in 1/72, but I've had no luck finding one. So here is a "Before" picture for the restoration: It wasn't terrible, but like I said I can do better now. I had to do some research about the colors. One of the appealing things about this scheme is the camouflage. It is a blue/gray patterned camo: Here are the colors they call for, with the underside on the bottom right: Looking for pictures of this airframe however, yielded pictures of a Ukrainian Yak-38 in an outdoor museum with much brighter colors (I can't post the picture here because I don't know the copyright status). I began to wonder which was correct. A lot of searching finally turned up a photo of this paint scheme when it was on an operational aircraft in the Soviet Union, and the color swatches above looked correct except for the underside, which seemed lighter in real life. Or at least the contrast was greater. (another picture I can't post... ). Once that was settled I had another dilemma. I couldn't find the lightest top-side color. Using some online tools, I found the nearest match in my collection, which looked fine when compared to the photo of the real life aircraft. So the colors I am going to use are now: You'll notice the underside color is now extremely close to the lightest topside color. I have since found a gray that is lighter and matches my photo better. It doesn't have an FS number, so I can't post a color swatch. During the last week, I soaked the disassembled model in simple green: I was able to remove all of the paint. So, my next step is to fill in the panel lines, which I also did on the HobbyCraft. It is a pain, but the lines are very deep on the body and they are inaccurate when compared to a schematic I have. I plan to pencil them in at the end. The rest of the build will be out of box, except for a seat and some wheel (both of which I also used on the HobbyCraft) and there will be some details I need to add, particularly around the mail wheels. I've been looking forward to doing this for a couple of months now so I'm excited to get started. The HobbyCraft Yak-38 took much longer than anticipated, so I'm glad to be done with it. On a side note, my pace may be slower than those of you who have followed my builds in the past may be used to. My wife's niece and her husband and 3-year-old are living in the room that my bench is in since they moved here from the midwest. They're only here until they get a house, but that is proving to take more time than we thought. The problem is, their 3-year-old's nap times seem to be at the same time I am free to get to the bench, so it has been a struggle to do much modelling. I am thinking about where to move my stuff in the meantime...

That is gorgeous! That is probably one of the best weathered metal finishes I've seen!

Beautiful finish! I like the Su-17's look and you've captured it perfectly!

That turned out beautifully Alistair! Nice work.

This was a fun build to read through and I learned a lot from it too! I've gotta chime in and tell you how great the heat stressed back-end looks. I've been pretty apprehensive about doing heat stressing, although i did some on one of my first build coming back to the hobby (a Navy F-4) and it turned out OK. Still, its that apprehension that keeps my 25 year old Su-27 Flanker in the closet... Aftermarket lights... I hadn't thought to look for those! I agree that the lights are one of those details often over looked but always add appreciably to the realism of the build. I'm never satisfied with my attempts to paint them on and haven't figured out a repeatable way to make them. So I guess I'll have to go shopping! Terrific work -- it looks incredible!

Done already? Wow, either you're quick, or I haven't looked in for a while... This looks fantastic! I love the finish -- it is remarkably realistic. All the little details are a treat too. I'll have to go catch up on the build thread now. Nice work!

Yay!

Heh. I've never done that... You've done a masterful job of correcting these issues, and the bonus for us is we learn more about the F-100. I confess, I've always admired the Hun as a sexy aircraft, but I know practically nothing about it.

I dunno, I think that's some pretty convincing scratchbuilding there! I think it will more than do the trick for the finished product.

I like your pilot and cockpit! If the CA clouded the canopy, it should mostly wipe off, or a little polishing with mircro mesh or a mircro fiber cloth or even an old t-shirt might do the trick. Getting the canopy back off without marring paint is a different matter...

Thanks! I just couldn't let that cockpit be the way it was. it was too easy to see into the cockpit with that Malcolm hood. Thank you ME! It was pretty tedious masking, but it turned out better than I hoped. Thanks Terry. Yeah the masking was tedious and tricky, but it helps that Tamiya makes 1mm tape, so I dind't have to spend a bunch of time cutting!

RFI any day now!

Wow, I've seen two H model builds today! This is a striking scheme and it looks fantastic; very nice work! I got an RS models P-51H for Christmas, but haven't had the courage to work on it yet. This certainly makes me want to dig it out...