spejic

This kit definitely has some areas that can catch out those that aren't careful, but I don't see any evidence of them in your build, so excellent job in construction.

I have the 1/72 UM kit, which also had photo etch skirts but no holders. I ended making new holders and replacing the skirt panels with plastic card to make gluing everything easier. The shapes are so simple that it was easy, and the provided photo etch was so thick I didn't really lose any detail. But in my research I also found multiple images of real life Hetzers missing all their skirt panels, so it definitely happened and you can consider your model accurate as is.

Went together well with very little putty needed. The one troublesome construction part was the fuselage and wing - you need to squeeze the fuselage to fit the wing until the glue dries, but if you do that right you get a join that looks perfect. Top is Model Master Dark Earth and RAF Dark Green, bottom is Tamiya Sky. I built a new control stick for the cockpit and made a custom decal for the instrument panel, but they are both pretty much invisible now and I don't recommend anyone else doing that kind of work. Adding seat belts looks nice. I used the standard box decals. I had a bit of a silvering problem with them, particularly over the panel lines. It was really hard to get the decals down in there. Structurally they took my repeated poking with toothpicks pretty well, however. Might have went a little too dark on the lines on the bottom. I thinned the walls of the radiators a bit. I used the water-soluble Perfect Putty applied thinned and then wiped with a wet coffee filter to tone down the large panel lines.

Like the dust placement and the oil stain.

The S-3 Viking. It would be a little over 50 years if it still flew, but there are zero flying now. You would think a carrier would want to know if there were subs around. And you could stick a wide variety of electronics in that fat belly. But I guess F/A-18s do everything these days.

This is a fascinating story. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

I own the Hehen German serials decal sheet (although a version for small scales) and they are sharp and totally in register. Recommended.

That's a really nice build. I like how you managed the panel line shading across the different colors.

I have quite a few pictures of both kinds, and as near as I can tell this is the only difference: This British Apache (which this is a picture of) has no panel here and the American one has a panel with three silver toggle switches. Otherwise I don't see anything in either the front or aft seats. Even all the warning and "Do Not Grab"s are all the same.

Every picture of every variant I've seen shows the cabin painted a neutral, moderately dark gray. I think Dark Ghost Gray (FS36320) looks close. The Revell instructions ask you to add white to their gray 76, which is a pretty dark gray. Besides the seats the cockpit is entirely black, which includes all surfaces of that structure that separates the cabin from the cockpit. Sometimes there are black details in the light bars in the ceiling, but as Revell doesn't have those in the model it doesn't really matter. The walls by the rear exit ramp are carbon-fibery black beige in some versions, cabin gray in others.

The Hatsushima-class minesweeper was Japan's main coastal minesweeper for the 1980's and 90's. Its major advancement over the previous Takami class was a remote control vehicle designed to drop explosives on bottom-dwelling mines so it didn't require divers to do that themselves. This is MMC-661 Takashima, chosen because that's what numbers I have from modern Pit Road decals, the original decals being oversized and cream-colored. This model comes with the Pit Road Yamagumo-class destroyer and technically it's the first ship model I ever bought, which was an embarrassingly long time ago. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) I also bought issue 74 of the Maru Special at the same time, which was devoted to minesweeping. So I had excellent resources full of pictures before the internet was really a thing. I'd build up some part of the ship, compare it to the book, be disappointed, try again, and repeat that cycle many times which is how I learned shipbuilding. I've taken many breaks building it, but I started again this year for the final time. Masts are made of stretched sprue, antennas are wire from the crap cable Apple shipped with Ipods, the gun is 3D printed, the line between the masts is Modelkasten, and lifeboat canisters are brass. Basically everything sticking up from the deck except the three smallest cranes is scratchbuilt or extensively modified. With my universal measurement device.

It is acrylic. The dust is not just on the surface but within the clear. I will try this in the next few days and see what happens.

I dipped a canopy in Tamiya Clear and it looks fantastic except that a large bit of dust landed on it. Is there a good way to fix that? I've removed clear from clear parts before using alcohol, but it makes the clear parts foggy.

You were right not to get this model dirty, because it was put on display at the Tiger Meet soon after painting and the paint scheme wasn't there long enough to get very worn or stained. And you did an absolutely fantastic job on the decals, which are not easy to apply on this kit. One thing that can help your models is something called a "wash". It is very thinned paint which, when painted on the model, will collect in the corners and not on the flat areas. If you put this on your landing gear, you will highlight the detail and it will make the tires look a lot neater. It is very hard to paint tires with a paintbrush perfectly, and washes are one way experienced modellers make it look professional. Eventually you might try doing it all over your model to darken the panel lines, but I don't want you to ruin this truly excellent aircraft trying that for the first time. There are many good descriptions all over the internet on how to do washes. I recommend using watercolor paints for that as you can remove it easily if you mess up.

I am very familiar with the problem areas of the kit (like the airbrakes and intakes) and you did a really god job with them.