Back in the Saddle

@Alex1978 Thanks for the heads up - I’ll check the nose wheels tomorrow. The Zvezda kit certainly looks simpler - just a page of instructions instead of Revell’s booklet. There are a few differences in construction, hence this thread - I will compare the two and see which is best.

You clearly build quicker than I do! I’ll pop over to RFI and take a look...

I know exactly what you mean - you think you've got it, then the light catches it at a different angle and you have to go back to it again! Those seats look excellent, well worth the effort.

Thank you! Cheers! Despite my best intentions, I've only glued half of the fuselage: Due to the warp, I thought it would be best to anchor the front before attempting to close up the rear!

That must have been a fun masking session! Excellent build Chris

Incredible - you've set the standard with this one. Bravo!

I'm grabbing popcorn for this one too!

For tyres I've stolen @Heather Kay's tip and now use Humbrol 32 - it looks spot on to me! As for the other colour variations, 85 is a solid black with a satin finish. I wouldn't add any other colours to it, as that will change the shade... If you have any satin varnish, any version of black should suffice - just apply the satin varnish over it once painted.

Three excellent builds for the price of one - I only popped in to see how your Tornado was going! The Mirage is stunning and I have no doubt the Spitfire will look rather good too once it's finished.

Those who have followed my recent builds will know of my affinity with the 747. Whilst my current 747-436 tribute build is stalled (I'm still waiting for replacement decals), I thought I would turn my attention to some more modern 747 kits. Hopefully they will be far less hassle and go together much more easily than the venerable Revell 747-400! The only modern version of the 747 is the -800 variant. Both Revell and Zvezda have 1/144 versions of this aircraft, but which is best? There's only one way to find out - build them both! To start, here are the two boxes:

The story of my weekend (so far) has been filling, priming and sanding! The fuselage is now looking reasonable, but I felt the transparencies could be blended in better: I'm hoping a final sanding session and prime tomorrow will see this job done. The wings however need much more work, especially around the exhaust sections...

A had another session of filling and sanding today, but was still not happy with the result - the windscreens in particular need more work... They are masked to protect them, so more plastic putty was liberally dabbed around the frames: The yellow primer is a filling primer from Halfords - it does a decent job if used with caution! It only gets used on my more troublesome models - three of them were attacked with this primer today...!

Unfortunately they are - I think I knocked one this morning during the shoot.... I will try and fix it later... Thank you for all the kind comments. This scheme was the obvious one for me to choose from the three provided in the kit, just because it had a splash of colour. Natural sunlight certainly enhances the nmf too!

RFI is finally done!

A belated RFI, for a model I finished last month... It was part of the recent 'Interceptors' GB and the build thread is here if you want to see it come together. I took advantage of the sunlight this morning and grabbed some shots - hope you like them! It was a great kit to build and one I thoroughly enjoyed. As ever, comments or critique are welcomed!