kiseca
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Posts posted by kiseca
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3 hours ago, keefr22 said:
Really lovely job!
I built Mr.Sheene's bike complete with him on board waaay back in the dark ages for the missus - I seem to remember it was in an Airfix box at the time? Only bike I've ever built and I very much doubt it looked anywhere near as good as yours!
Keith
Possibly the Matchbox (later Revell) one? Red on white instead of red on black? I know that one came with a rider and I am pretty sure I built it as a kid because I remember the decals, but I don't remember the actual finished model, weirdly.
I wanted to get another one but the Matchbox ones are way too expensive as anything other than an investment now, so I went for the same Italeri one that the OP has built.
P.S. It looks fantastic, Ian A. Beautiful build and I only hope I can get anything close to that finish on mine.
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The engine looks monstrously huge now! Lovely looking conversion. My dad had a CB900F in the early 1980s so I'm quite familiar with the original bike. I went out onit a few times as a passenger but I didn't really enjoy the experience at all. If anything it has put me off motorcycling for life, though I still admire a motorcycle as a piece of engineering or work of art and have a few in my stash that I need to get to.
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Beautiful build and your decision to display it with the suspension at its lowest setting really does highlight the car's gorgeous flowing lines
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This one's nice, too!
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Very nice!
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Fishcan?? I sometimes wonder what the communist bloc names are for Western aircraft.... The F-15 Figtree.... Panavia Beltdrive... ?
P.S. The build is spectacular!
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Very realistic photos. Lovely build and great detail!
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12 hours ago, Booty003 said:
Excellent work, Mike. The F.1 is a great looking aircraft, the photo of it landing (above post) is a belter, MLG almost looks like an eagles talons....!!
Yes, you're right! It looks like the curled talons of a bird of prey reaching out for the ground (or something on it). Even from the front, the F1 has a happily complex looking main gear arrangement.
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Beautiful looking Mirage. The panel detail is very crisp and really brings out the detail in the model.
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Very eye catching livery on a very pretty aircraft. Nice work!
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That is a lovely build. I take it then that the Special Hobby kit is recommended?
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Very nice! I'm also currently busy with this tiny little kit. I'm finding the fit and finish aren't the best, so it's not the quick and easy build I was hoping for. And I'm certain I'm going to lose at least one of the tiny bits at some point in the build!
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The camo job and paint job look excellent. Seamless. Very good looking Eagle!
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Looks good, and I have the same idea
How did you do the Santini Air script?
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Superb finish. That looks excellent.
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That's a subject I don't see often. Looks good!
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Fantastic work, it's looking great!
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On 10/11/2022 at 7:58 PM, jackroadkill said:
She looks grand, sir. I built the Revell X and found the same issues as you describe.
Same for me. Particularly the landing gear which I had followed the instructions and just couldn't get it to fit in the wheel well. I ended up scraping quite a bit of bodywork away. The trailing arms are now mounted much too far back on mine. I was still quite new into modelling at the time and thought it was just me being untalented, so in a way it's gratifying to hear that others have had problems with it too.
General fit was really good, but the engine covers, landing gear and wing joint (rear edge) were all problematic for me.
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Looks lovely! I thought the weathering looked expertly done but couldn't imagine the real aircraft would be that dirty until you posted the reference pics!
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8 hours ago, Pinback said:
Outrageous and brilliant!
Love it
Maybe there should be a group build where Merlin's are grafted onto various airframes. Now where was that Tiger Moth kit I have in the stash....
That could go both ways. 4 Merlins on Concorde perhaps?
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Those look almost as crazy as a Gee Bee!
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Lovely looking build!
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11 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:
Looks like great progress to me, the last shot looks wonderful and really brings back memories of the show. I have been humming the excellent theme tune whilst reading your posts.
Great work
Chris
Thanks! I need to get this one finished as I'm starting to get bored of the theme tune playing over and over in my head
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Time for an update! There's not actually a lot to show, but there has been a fair bit of background work getting done to prepare various parts of, so here's how things are going with The Lady.
Firstly, on my previous update I had mentioned I was still toying with the idea of using the transparent fuselage parts to give a view into Dom's station. Well, I had a closer look at the parts:
And that pretty much settled it. The transparent fuselage isn't clear enough to give a good view inside. I could probably polish it up, inside and out, to improve that, but it won't be easy particularly around all the angles, and the window I'd leave open will be quite small anyway so that it doesn't expose the undetailed parts of the interior. It's a lot of work and a good chance of not working out well so I'll stick with the interior light and the black fuselage halves.
With that decided, it was time to tackle that unsightly ridges at the forward edge of the custom panels applied to the Bell 222. Here's how the actual helicopter looked:
Notice that the point where the custom panel joins the fuselage just behind the door has a clear edge, it's not quite flush, but it is not far from being a smooth transition.
Here's the same area on the model:
That big step stands out like a sore thumb once painted. It's enough to break the illusion for me, that point when it stops being a little Airwolf and becomes a toy. That point where I can't look at the model, and imagine the real thing. I have to fix it if I want to enjoy my Airwolf model once it is finished.
This will involve a lot of sanding but there's a problem. Here's the inside of that same ridge:
Basically, there's a limit how far down I can take it before I break through. Still, if that happens, I felt I could reinforce that interior area with styrene so it should be salvageable.
This ridge by the way was another reason I decided not to use the transparent fuselage. I'd have to leave the ridge on one side, in an area that would be painted, because doing all this surgery while leaving the transparent, unpainted section next to it clear and polished enough to be presentable seemed like a big challenge.
Anyway, I got on with the sanding, and managed to get down to an acceptablly thin ridge, with curvature to match the fuselage, without breaking through. See port fuselage, sanded, vs starboard side untouched.
To me, that looks a lot more to my liking, however I feel that ridge left over will still stand out strongly once painted, so I blended the rest in with Perfect Putty.
The end result finishes too far forward, as that means the panel overlaps the door slightly where on Airwolf it doesn't, but I'm happy with the result. It's what I had in mind so now I just have to see how it turns out once primed. I'll make a decision then if I want to tidy it up any more or not.
Here is the completed modification. The two fake square windows just above the intakes had been half deleted by my work so I scribed those back in, and sanded that area down a bit to restore some of the recessed area:
Also visible above is that I've sanded the rivets down an awful lot in the hope they will be less prominent on the final model. The rivets are all present on the actual Airwolf and clearly visible in closeups, but from more of a distance, and possibly partly due to the resolution available on 1980s TV shows, the rivets pretty much vanish and the skin looks smooth. When I look at builds of this model, the rivets really stand out and it doesn't look quite right.
Anyway here's a top view to show the angle and join of that panel edge:
There's quite a lot that needs to be done on this model before the fuselage halves can be joined together. I still have to finish the crew compartment and get the LED securely mounted, then clear up any light leakage through the compartment joins. This compartment then needs to sit on a second floor, the external belly of the aircraft, which itself needs to be painted. Then the intakes, top and bottom, need to be prepped and painted. The insides of the fuselage need to be painted. Partly, again, to reduce LED light leakage, but also to paint the front cockpit interior. The cockpit glass needs to go in, the jet exhausts, the horizontal stabilizer thingy on the tailboom, and the tail rotor shaft parts need to be painted, assembled and installed.
And then there's these two little doors, one each side, that open up to reveal a chrome part that I guess is meant to be the flare launchers. These are clever little sections that can be closed and opened as desired.
Here they are closed
And this is what they look like when open.
It's a really nice idea. The problem is, the doors sit proud of the skin. On the real thing there are two doors in this area, but they are flush. If the ones on the model were flush, they'd be almost impossible to open and close. So, decision time. Do I keep the opening doors and detail, or do I reduce them so they can fit flush in the hole, and have them fixed in the closed position? I decided I wouldn't miss the extra detail so I've filed the doors down and fitted them in flush. I need to sort out the hinge gap still. I'll probably use filler for that area. It's too small and fiddly for my untalented fingers and equipment to prepare a little square of styrene to fit in there.
Other than that, I've made a start on the side pods and cannon, and the undercarriage is painted. The instructions call for them to be white. On the show, it looks more like the wheels are white, and the legs are light grey, so that's what I did. The grey is very light and under the table light they pretty much just wash out and look white, but they're a bit darker in reality than they look here.
I still want to put a wash on the wheels to bring out the detail a little, and take some of the shine off the tyres.
That's got the thread up to date now so I'll leave you with a parting shot of a bunch of parts dry fitted together to show something looking a bit like an Airwolf. Happily the kit allows one to swap out the landing gear pod detail. They can be displayed as seen below, with cannon deployed, or they can be detached and replaced with caps as though the cannon are in their stowed position.
I did think I'd prefer the stowed look but the extra width with the cannons actually sits really nicely on her. Not that it matters as I can swap them over as I please, which is nice!
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What are you reading - Part II
in Chat
Posted
I found the early e-ink readers, the ones that aren't backlit, were really easy on the eyes and for me as easy to read for long periods as paper... as long as you had good light. Advantage was all my books in one place and no struggle to keep a page open if hands were busy doing something else (I often read while eating). But if the light isn't good, they are harder to read than a book.
I'm sold on the early Kindles, but I'm not sold on newer, backlit ones. I am not convinced they'll be any less tiring to read on than a tablet.