Stephen Pryke

Well that`s all folks! It`s been suggested I invest in the `Modern Airfield Background & Base` from Coastal Kits Display Bases for my Diorama. I`ll definitely look into it, but for now, I`m calling this project DONE!

how did you find the build? Did you keep your sanity dealing with the horrible plastic & that awful seam around the fuel tank?

hi sorry for delay. couldn`t remember my password & kept getting locked out of my account ha ha. your trucks are looking fantastic. After all this time, I`ve finished the truck so will place it with the other models & take some pics to post here.

forgot to add these 2 handrails before painting. They refused to stick in place with poly & even with superglue (took several attempts, which spoilt the paint work so a respray is needed.) This plastic is HORRIBLE! That`s better. Time for gloss varnish. Decal time. Now to add the final parts. First the cab mirrors & lights. It`s now I discover one of the mirrors (pt17) is missing from the sprue!!! Have to try making one. Hobbycraft tool + spare sprue = Mirror. Then one part 16 breaks in half when I look at it for 2 seconds. After repairing with Tamiya thin, it later pings away from me during an attempted assembly, never to be seen again. Out of sheer frustration, I make 2 replacements from a steel sewing pin, and use them instead of the plastic parts. Final few parts nearly finished now. not good enough! No paint where the sprue was, so will need to be done again. I thought if I left them on the sprue, they wouldn`t get blown away. I`ll have to stick them onto tape & hope it holds, cos if one blows away, it`s adios amigo! Better & didn`t lose any. Almost finished................................because I`ve run out of glue!! Sorry!!!!! I just need to add the mirrors, & the rear ladder (- so close!) When I get these last parts on, I`ll get some decent pics with & without the rest of the dio. Back soon.

Hello All Sorry about the delay but my mum passed away Jan. 22nd, & obviously the build had to be put on hold a while. Anyhow, now on with the Skunkmodels R-11 refueler. First job is building the chassis. Then I`ll build the 3 main top parts - cab, power unit & fuel tank. Once they`re on, it`ll be a matter of decaling & adding small parts like the mirrors, etc. So.........................................I noticed the plastic is very horrible. Has a strange, orange peel look in some places. Glue & sanding turns the plastic a much lighter shade of green, plus it`s very brittle. Very powdery when sanding, like resin. Small parts break just by looking at them - BEWARE! One thing you`ll want to do is drill out the end of the exhaust pipe to give the impression of a hole at the end, as the kit part is flat. Simple fix. with the chassis parts assembled & fully dried, it was time to prime. While the primer cured, I can continue with the cab. Cab parts ready for assembly. The kit doesn`t include a driver figure, but I wanted one for some strange reason so it was time to raid my Hasegawa ground crew box & look for a suitable donor/s. One figure provided the seated body (although 1 leg is straight out at 90 degrees!), while another figure was needed for the 1st figures missing head! straightened the leg by holding it over heat & gently bending it into position. Cab interior primed & painted.. Ear protectors gone. Now to remove his head! (DIABOLICAL LAUGHTER............!!!!) A quick mock up. Because of the steering wheel being already in place, I found I had no choice but to build my man around it. olive drab applied joins filled just needs his head! That`ll do pig. That`ll do. I`ll spray the cab outer when I have the other sections ready to paint, as they`re the same colour. now onto the fuel tank. What a freakin` nightmare this was to become. The kit tank is basically 2 sections - top half & bottom half. This will leave a join line/seam running all around the middle of the tank, which will need to be worked on to make it as near invisible as possible, as there is no seam on the real thing. And there lay the problem; the fit was terrible & the seam didn`t want to go! What follows are pics of the tank, showing the bad join with sprue goo liberally applied. After several attempts of filling, filing & sanding, (4 I think, including 1 after I`d primed), I got to the point where I felt it was ready for a coat of paint. And a straight-jacket! sprayed so close, the primer orange peeled on me, yet the seam STILL showed through! By this point I was contemplating using thin plasticard along the sides, as well as throwing it hard against the nearest wall!!!! Luckily, after sanding & a final re-spray of primer, it looked good enough to paint. I needed a break from the tank after all that so decided to do the wheels. Another downer is the tyres have no tread on them so I had to replicate some using a mini saw blade. not super detail but looking much more acceptable to the eye than nothing at all. On to the cab. A quick mock up couldn`t resist! Tamiya XF-81 Dark Green 2 (RAF) going on.

thank you. next up is the refueller. pics soon of complete build

Revell F-15E 1/48 Scale 494thFS (Panthers) 48FW Based at RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk but here wearing nose art (Texas Ranger) as worn during undisclosed operations in Syria 2018.

Decals. surprising amount of small fiddly stencils even for 1/48! Wasn`t happy about that film showing around the LN so gently drew around the edges of the letters with a fresh scalpel blade, then picked the film away with a toothpick. Much better! I added a few little extras like a helmet left on a seat, & a mission map tucked into the canopy. I drilled out a pilot head from the Hasegawa crew set, & made the map using paper & coloured pencils. And that`s pretty much that! Time for the long awaited final reveal pics!

Undercarriage: Time to do the FOD covers now, as easier to insert while she`s on her back. The nav & targeting pods can go on too. Then it was varnishing all over & on to the decaling. Finally on her wheels & not a tail sitter!

Hello all, Sorry for the long delay updating. Personal things going on behind the scenes etc etc. Anyway, a lot of progress since last time. The F-15 is FINISHED now. I have also finished the R-11 refueler too! I will simply continue the build updates here as before for anyone still following the progress.

Engines: The accentuators were VERY fiddly. Take your time & be very careful with these as you only get 2 spares. All the engine/nozzle parts were sprayed with AK Extreme Metal steel, then given a light over spray with jet exhaust (a shade of black.) I added charcoal dust to the nozzles & fans then fitted the PE part onto the fan. Then the fan part was glued to the bottom of the engine tube. WOW what a difference that makes!!! Nozzles glued on next Then finally the rods. Gave the insides of the nozzles a rub with a paintbrush dipped in white charcoal powder to lighten them up a bit & provide some contrast to the outer nozzles. I think I`ve cut them too short as they're not long enough to reach across from the outer to the inner surface, although I don`t have anything left behind on the resin sprue. Maybe they`re made too short? As I said, it`s probably my mistake. No matter. They`ll have to lie alongside the nozzle. Some dark wash will help add some depth. That`ll do pig, that`ll do.............. They`ll look great when they`re finally in place. I`m very happy with them & that`s what matters eh?

building up the FS36118 (in my case Vallejo AV71097). Although you can use Vallejo model air neat, I added a few drops of distilled water to thin it down to help spray the coats thinly. This helps the black shading along the panel lines to fade slower between coats & avoid fading too much or disappearing altogether. I left the nose blank because as radomes weather differently to the rest of the airframe (radar?) I wanted to paint it separately with a lighter shade of 36118 when the rest was done. Although it looked ok at this point, when it had fully dried, it looked much lighter & I felt there was far too much contrast, so I`ve had to paint over it. also getting the aluminium/steel areas done top & bottom. Starting to look recognisable as a strike eagle now so I must be on the right lines lol! not forgetting the sway braces........ which I didn`t dry fit & discovered they needed filing to fit right before assembly - very fiddly! once they fitted, it was easy to put each in place, adding a little Tamiya Thin to keep them in place permanently. My advice? File each to fit, paint, then attach. The joy of hindsight eh? Also I noticed this strange option in the instructions: door up OR down even though the wheel strut is out. The model is clearly intended to be displayed `` on the ground`` so what`s going on here? After asking on a few F-15 sites, I have the answer: the door opens/closes to allow the strut to clear the airframe so it`s shut almost all the time apart from when the strut enters/leaves the wheel well. It`s usually opened & left down by crew during maintenance. Although I`ll have some groundcrew in my dio, most pics depict the door closed, so mine will be too.

Hello all! So, back again. I`ve been busy with several things going all at the same time & as I went from one thing to another, I forgot to take pics. SORRY. I made a start with pre-shading the Eagle, then began on the tool box, flight line trailer, starter & generator. Going from one thing to the other & dealing with problems (I`ll come to that later) it was easy to forget to take pics along the way. Anyhow, here`s more pics............ Pre-shading. 1st I painted the airbrake area white as per Revells call out. MISTAKE!!!! I`ve since discovered this area is painted with same grey as outer fuselage so this step is unnecessary. TBH I did such a good job with the white, I simply couldn`t bring myself to paint over it ha ha! then I built up the resin kits: Toolbox (sorry no build pics!) Generator & starter (again no build pics) Flight line Trailer: The main part was 1 big piece of resin! Assembly was simply attaching the axles, wheels etc to the bottom. Once done, (didn`t take too long as using superglue for resin is much faster than plastic/poly), it was primer time. Once cured it looked spot on so I applied a similar light grey coat over everything then painted the tyres using Tamiya NATO black. After gloss varnish was dried I began the decal process but these disintegrated....had to carry on without them. Disappointing. I`ll paint the figures last as I`m c!"p at figure painting & those 3 grey camo uniforms they wear look HARD to replicate! Now to start applying the main paint & make this start looking like an F-15E......This is what I`ve been waiting for.....

thanks

So.......here we go....... Firstly, the rectangular box section has to go. The cylinder is too small but will have to do. My scratchbuilding skills are practically zero ha ha ha. This is how I made this - it is NOT a tutorial LOL! That`s pretty much that. I will use Mote Green (paint from Games Workshop. I think that`s how you spell Mote), for the overall green. Wheels/tyres need painting & then attaching. Electrical wire needs to be painted black (I don`t have any black wire!) & wrapped round the staple. One end glued into the drilled out hole on top of the tank. Should look the part. YEAH! A hazard decal to the back should complete the look. yeah, happy with that. While I had the Mote Green out, I watered some down with Klear & applied a VERY thin coat to the hud glass.

While waiting for the primer to cure, I started on the ground equipment. The Hasegawa fire extinguisher in the groundcrew box is outdated and the wrong type anyway so I had to make a few changes to make it look like a halon extinguisher. The Hasegawa one: I have to go from this.... to this...... My target:

Hello all back again with more progress. Note to self: remember to take pics before moving to next stage. Anyhow I managed to get the resin tub/wheel bay into the nose section but gluing the nose section onto the rest of the fuselage turned into a freakin nightmare. When I mated up a good join at the top, there was a gap at the bottom & vise-versa, causing the nose section to move and not stay in position for the glue to hold. I had to make several attempts using superglue before it finally stayed in place & pointing straight ahead. I left a gap at the bottom to work on, rather than top as it would be less visible when finished. Same thing again with the intake assembly. Parts just wouldn`t stay in place with poly, so had to re-glue using superglue, which resulted in some seepage & finger-marks where the glue had run under my finger where I`d been holding everything together. When I`d finally finished the main assembly of the fuselage & looked at the fudged gluing etc, after all the work I`d put into the cockpit, I almost threw it against the wall!!!! (hence the lack of pics) Anyway, after walking away from it for a while, I came back & spent 3 (yes THREE) days filling & sanding all the gaps & seams best I could. Once a few coats of primer were finally applied, the bad joins seemed to disappear & it suddenly looked like a half decent Eagle. I was so relieved a tear formed in my eye & my mojo was returned. I cut the flaps off so I could re-attach them drooping like a parked Eagle. As Eric Morecambe would say `` You can`t see the join!`` Very pleased with that.

Thank you for your kind words. 1st tip - get a brand new scalpel blade & remove the makers stamp on the outside of the kit as well as the large seam along the canopy! I have noticed same issue with my Revell F/A18F Superhornet. I hope this isn`t a Revell standard thing as I have a few other Revell kits in 1:48.

I heard only good things about this kit myself but I think folk are referring to the finished model! I`ve had a proper look, dry fitted some parts & whether it`s just mine or not, it`s a dog! The thick raised seam on the canopy & the makers stamp on the outside can`t be limited to just my kit can it? The intakes assembly is a fiddly nightmare. Seam lines on almost all parts & a lot of rough flash along main edges. It`s going to take time just to get a part ready for assembly.

Hello All Sorry for the lack of activity but my 90yr old mum had a stroke & everything's been a bit hectic with the pandemic making things worse (no visiting at hospital for starters.) Things are a lot better now she`s at home with carers in place so I`ve had time to get started. So as always with aircraft, first port of call is the cockpit. As mentioned, I`m going with the Avionix tub which isn`t quite as detailed as the Aires (Aires have separate strapping whereas the Avionix is all moulded), but is far superior to the Revell kit parts, which in fairness aren`t too bad, especially if you`re going to display canopy down. I have a high res video of the finished tub which I was very pleased with, only to find I can`t post video here! Luckily I took a few pics at the bench. I decided to work on the tub first, then do the seats separately. After the usual cutting, fitting, sanding, re-fitting & re-sanding one has to do to get a resin tub to fit, it was ready for priming. By the time it fitted good, the bottom of the rear seat was almost visible when put in place - the resin was so thin! BE CAREFUL WHEN SANDING TO FIT. Only make small adjustments at a time & constantly check fit. The tub, 2x control panels & seats were washed, left to dry, then primed with Vallejo black. Grey paints were from the Vallejo Air Wars series. The fuselage main colour is a dark grey (FS36118 AV71097) so I selected a lighter grey from the set to add contrast. Not sure which one I went with in the end but I think it was FS36375 (AV70615). As long as it`s a standard grey & much lighter than the 36118, it`ll look fine! Details painted with Tamiya flat acrylics & a toothpick. Mainly white for switches, with a few red. Communication cords are NATO green. Panels painted grey, screens with NATO green then a drop of Klear on top to give a slight shine to make them look like `dead` glass screens. On to the seats - Taking a breather ha ha ha!!!! Ready for assembly. About this point I discovered that the wheel well has to be glued to the bottom of the cockpit tub so that it fits along the opening at the bottom of the front fuselage so I assembled that as it was also part of the Avionix set & would need to be assembled & fitted in the same way as the tub as they were all resin. Like the kit, there`s a door/strut part that leaves a part sticking out from the well. Easier to cut it off & glue it in place later when the main paintings done. Also, as you have to file down the resin under the seats, I found it easier to omit parts 20 as they won`t be seen & simply file down the resin under the seats until they fit perfectly then simply glue into position. Much easier & quicker I found! Tamiya x2 flat white. Wash added. Looks nice & busy - just how I wanted it! NB: I noticed this 2nd makers stamp on the OUTSIDE of the kit. Along with the massive seam along the centre of the canopy, it will HAVE to come off! You will need good scalpel blades & a lot of filler for this kit! There`s a lot of flash, seams to remove, clean up, etc......look at those edges

I`ve been given only the nose art decals by a friend as he`s used the ``Gears of War`` decals for his, so he won`t use the Chuck Norris one. They are from the 48-265 F-15E Maximum Effort Eagles decal sheet by Two Bobs.

Hello all! Up next is my all time fave aircraft - the F-15E. For this build, I`ll be doing a Lakenheath `mudhen` with nose art worn during operations against isis targets circa 2018. I will also build groundcrew, equipment & an R-11 fuel tanker to place around it.

Thanks Mike