kiseca

I really like that. Lovely detailing. And I can never manage to get the weathering and panel line definition that clear. That's one of my weaknesses. Great work!

Fantastic detail. I really like the crew access ladder and platform in particular.

Excellent build and a nice collection.

that's a great bit of work, nice one! I love the colour and the finish in the photos at least looks good to me. I'd be happy with that shine on my model cars.

Thank you very much! I find the Humbrol white in particular goes down well over the Tamiya primer. I used the same paint on a Concorde and was happy with the results there too. The red is indeed Humbrol 19, gloss red. The Humbrol enamels are my favourite paints to spray, they go on so well and give a nice, hard wearing finish.... but they're not my favourite paints to mix or for cleaning up afterwards .... and then the quality is variable, I've had a few that are so thick that they were useless, and one that was so thin it was too thin even to airbrush. And then they go off, they have a limited life once opened. Maybe I need to clean the cups better before closing them but I find the gloss black particularly difficult to keep in good condition in the tin. Lovely to use though. Thank you. I was impressed with the level of detail for an '80s kit in a few areas. The instrument panel is better than many I've seen on modern 1/48 scale planes, the level of detail for the canopy mechanism is excellent and the landing gear is pretty good too. On the other hand the missiles are pretty basic. The Sparrows aren't even round!

That is really cool!

Beautiful detail and fascinating history. Thanks for taking the time to post all of that!

thanks for confirming that. I had read somewhere about the difficulty in printing decals with white in them. Not sure how I'll get the US flags done I'll probably have to buy some if they don't set. I've got microsol and microset, hopefully they'll help them set, or I could lay them down on a drop of gloss varnish. I'm most worried about them breaking up. Getting them to stick can be a challenge but I've had a couple of old models where the decals just break up into pieces. Much harder to jigsaw them together...

Getting started with the red coat in my deluxe model paint booth.... A couple of areas to touch up but I'm happy overall with the outcome: Oops, forgot to take the masking tape off the fin. There's a thin red stripe down the wing roots on the underside going back from the LERX. That's supposed to be there, but I think I made it a little bit too thin. And that's it so far. The thread is now caught up with the plane. Next up will be finishing off the missiles and painting the metal parts incl. the landing gear bays, the speed brake recesses, and nozzle area which I forgot to mask off before I added the white coat. And the touching up of a couple of places where my masking failed. After that I get to see how well the decals have stood up to 30 years of waiting.

A bit of a gap while things got done that I didn't take any photographs. The two gun barrels are a single piece that goes in to the upper fuselage section before the fuselage is joined together. The barrels sit in two recesses on the upper nose so before gluing them in, I painted them gunmetal grey and painted the fuselage recesses red. The fuselage went together and bits and pieces from the weapons and canopy assembly were painted. The fit was mostly good, but the joint where the engine section meets the rest of the fuselage needed a lot of sanding and filling. Then, the left side LERX, which is part of the intake piece, didn't line up with the wing. I tried bending it under pressure while gluing it in place, which did actually improve it a bit, but that still needed a lot of sanding and filling. The right side needed some fixing too but wasn't as bad. I masked off the gun barrels and paint beneath and then sprayed the whole plane firstly in Tamiya grey primer and then painted the whole aircraft Humbrol gloss white enamel (Humbrol 22) Once dried I made a paper copy of the decals and cut out the black fuselage pinstripes to help me mask her up for the red coat. This was my first time using the Tamiya 40mm masking tape and I found it very different to their other sizes. It's a different kind of tape and even a different colour. I thought someone had swapped them in the bag but an online search reveals this is the normal stuff. I was a bit disappointed but it worked OK for me this time at least. I masked off the curved white stripe on the vertical tail too. That section is a decal with a white centre between the black stripes, but if the decals prove to be unusable and I have to print new ones, that one would be a problem to print because the bit between the black stripes need to be clear and I'd need to make white a transparent colour when printing the decals out. I think!

I would love to see those builds if you have pics or a thread on them! Here's the cockpit. I found the instrument panel surprisingly detailed for a model of this age and scale. It's not often I come across something that has so many raised details on the panel. I'm sure the light green isn't an accurate colour for the VDUs, but I thought it comes across as a colour one might expect of them, from this era, so I used some artistic license. That too is a part of my builds. Ultimately for me it's more important to have something nice to look at than something completely accurate, so from time to time I do tend to use inaccurate colours if I think it will make a detail stand out more, or add a bit more interest to the model. Pilot looks like he's missing a hand from this angle..

Hi all, I've been commenting on all the great builds I've seen so far in here, thought it was time to contribute some of my own work too. Like many of us, I used to build models when I was a kid... in the 1980s in my case. I stopped before I hit twenty and have only picked it up a couple of years ago because I really wanted a specific model (a Lotus 79). When I was a kid, I didn't much care for the building part. My favourite part was gluing the bits together. I was always more interested in the final product, the 3D shape, and I always picked models of machines that I think look nice. I didn't even bother to paint many of my first builds when I was young..... I'd buy them and by the end of that day I'd have a completed (by my standards) model to admire. One of the ones I did paint was the Monogram Tigershark. It was my favourite model. I just love this plane. Now, as an adult modeller, not much has changed from when I was a kid. I'm still more interested in the finished product than the build process, but I do put more effort in now to at least make it good enough for my more critical adult eyes. So I put more effort in now. I'm never going to match the talent and patience shown by so many of you on here so expect relatively simple, OOB builds from me as a whole, with minimal weathering unless the shape is really bland enough to need it. But, as a kid I never used an airbrush, and many years have passed since then so I needed some practice, not least with said airbrush, before I took on that Lotus. That was two years and 14 models ago, and I still haven't got around to starting that 79! My stash grew way beyond my original aspirations. Anyway, that old F-20 model is long gone, and I needed another Tigershark on my display stand. I found one at a reasonable price (or rather, one that wasn't in USA with its expensive shipping costs) and added it to my stash. On to the model itself. Most builds I've seen of this model go for the BMW charcoal grey colour scheme. I always preferred the red and white scheme. My childhood version was painted in that scheme, and this one will be too. I'm quite far into this build now so the thread will catch up over time but here's the box and contents. One of the things I really liked about this model is the unusual metallic charcoal colour of the styrene and sprues. The pictures don't really do it justice. In the flesh, it really does sparkle. The decals look in good condition but I've made a copy of them in case they are gone and I need to create new ones. That copy will come in handy later to make guidelines for the paintjob. I remember when I was young it was my favourite model not just because of how it looks and the colours, and not just because the colour of the styrene, but also it went together really well, at least back in the 1980s. I can say this time around the fit needs a bit more work (or I'm a bit more critical) but it still is going together pretty well. Anyway I hope you enjoy the build.

Fantastic looking build. Very very nice work.

That looks absolutely lovely!

That looks fantastic, and then to hear it is scratchbuilt? Incredible.

I flew to South Africa from England on one of those when I was very young. This was in the days of sanctions on South Africa and SAA had to fly the whole route over sea, around the bulge of Africa instead of over land. It had an engine problem and landed on some island halfway through the flight. My parents have a photo of the aircraft. I think it was Tafelberg but I'm not completely sure. I always liked that colour scheme too, esp. with the black mask around the cockpit glass.

That is fabulous! Great work, looks really nice especially considering it was originally built 45 years ago!

The detail is fantastic and then the model is so tiny! Brilliant job, beautiful model and presentation.

The ship looks lovely, but I particularly like the name plate on the display stand. that looks brilliant and sets the whole display off perfectly! Did that come with the model?

Very nice build. I agree, the French do have a pleasant history for making good looking fast jets. The Rafale is much prettier than its contemporary Typhoon and Gripen, from two generations ago the Mirage F.1 just looks perfect from any angle, and then there's Concorde.... a joint venture of course but from what I've seen of the original proposals from both countries, Concorde inherited most of its good looks from its French parents.

I love that build, with the cockpit and badge it makes a brilliant presentation! Nice job!

I completely agree with that! MiG 25 isn't a pretty plane but your model looks lovely.

One of my favourite planes and I like the backstory. That's a good looking build!

That is a thing of beauty!

I always love a Tornado, and that one looks fantastic. Lovely job!