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Darren Rhodes last won the day on November 4 2013
Darren Rhodes had the most liked content!
About Darren Rhodes
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Surrey, England
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Darren Rhodes started following Navy Bird
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1/144 Revell A380 Qantas Airways
Darren Rhodes replied to Darren Rhodes's topic in Ready for Inspection - Aircraft
Yes, I polish with micro mesh at every stage, primer, main coat and gloss finish. But I don’t spray my clear coats. I use a good quality wide flat brush and Alclad Acqua Gloss straight from bottle - it’s self levelling properties are amazing. Darren -
1/144 Revell A380 Qantas Airways
Darren Rhodes replied to Darren Rhodes's topic in Ready for Inspection - Aircraft
Umm, thank you! That’s a bit of a blast from the past! I see there are some alternatives on that popular auction website, by TB Decals and Ascencio, so may be not all is lost. Darren -
MiG-23MS Red Eagles YF-113E
Darren Rhodes replied to paulsbrown's topic in Ready for Inspection - Aircraft
Very nice! You're open canopy angle, shows mine up big time! Great diorama with the Su-15, tempting me to start my Su-15, but I really need to finish more of my shelf of doom first! Darren- 44 replies
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Airfix Phantom 'Black Mike'
Darren Rhodes replied to Jimbobtheflimbob's topic in Ready for Inspection - Aircraft
Nice model. I'd also recommend Alclad Micromesh polishing clothes to knocking back the primer coat before the main colour coat, the coarsest grades, 3,600 or 4,000 grit. More expensive, but definitely worth it. Darren -
1/72 KP MiG-23M Red 56
Darren Rhodes replied to Darren Rhodes's topic in Ready for Inspection - Aircraft
Be wary of the seam between the forward and aft fuselage parts which is split just behind the cockpit, very visible and also aligns with the wing root inserts (to cater for the extra dogtooth on the MLD variants). Also the fin is not terribly secure fitting - mine came off at a late stage, with the engine cooling ducts in place, addressing the fin/fuselage seam was a challenge. Lesson, I'd add metal pins to the fin to make the connection extra secure. Bin the decals unless you have an RV boxing... Darren- 11 replies
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1/72 KP MiG-23M Red 56
Darren Rhodes replied to Darren Rhodes's topic in Ready for Inspection - Aircraft
I've just committed to proper reading glasses and together with a large magnifier, they were essential for the missile decals! But the decals behaved flawlessly as I'd expect from Eduard and Reskit. I particularly liked that the R-23R missiles come with different microscopic decal serial numbers, as they should! Thank you all, far too kind! Darren- 11 replies
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Spectacular!
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Darren Rhodes started following 1/72 KP MiG-23M Red 56
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Hi all, First completed model in three years. 😬 Following on the heels of many here, I've decided I need to tackle my shelf of doom box of unfinished bits. Here's the first completed resulted. I gave up on this two years ago. It's the KP kit, which was also boxed by RV Aircraft, the KP variants coming with no resin bits or photoetch. And as I discovered, the KP kits come with much poorer quality decals - they're suitably thin and go on well, but the majority of mine were massively out of register and the stencils are completely overscale. The bort number and squadron award decal did come from the Academy boxing. I should have quit using the decals, but I'd already lost patience with this kit - the fit is typical limited run and the parts breakdown to cater for the later ML/MLD variants makes for lots of fiddly inserts that don't fit and require much sanding, losing the lovely surface detail. I think the stance is a bit nose high - the main gear legs are in two parts with a break at the main 'knuckle', but have no key to help determine the correct angle... It seems illogical now, but I added Reskit R-23R and Eduard R-60/AA-8 missiles as the kit comes with nothing except the centreline drop tank, and my models need to be armed and dangerous! The R-23R missile fins are all separate so they took a quite a lot of time to separate the fins from the casting blocks and glue, but look amazing. The R-60 missiles are single piece with minimal clean up and look equally impressive. I had planned to rob the missiles from the Academy boxing, but the R-23 missiles in the Academy box look about as close to an R-23 as an R-23 does to an A-7 Sparrow... 🙄 I also added Reskit wheels and a Master pitot probe. The Reskit wheels included separate resin wheel centres to cater for the early or late nose wheel hubs, a first experience for me. This made them a little more fiddly, but nothing too taxing. Paints were Tamiya acrylic primer (which I quickly regretted and will stick to Halfords grey primer in future 🤦♂️), AK Interactive acrylic for the cockpit, Xtracolour enamels and Alclad for the metal areas. I wanted a dirty, heavily worn machine, courtesy of an oil wash and to tone the decals and stencilling, I applied a heavy coat of Tamiya Flat Base, with sort of worked... Generally dissatisfied with the outcome, I've already acquired an RV Aircraft MiG-23P, which I may attempt in a camouflage finish. The decals appear far superior in the RV kit, are in register and with appropriately scaled stencils, but I've already got a Print Scale stencil decal set, which is what I should have used in this case. On with the photos. Darren
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Darren Rhodes started following Need help from Flightradar24 or any other flight tracker users
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Yes! Looking forward to this! Darren
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- Eastern Express
- Bombardier
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Very nice and seriously impressive for only 11 hours work! I’m still priming after 11 hours :-/ Darren
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Very nice! Darren
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Very nice, lovely looking aircraft. Darren
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BUA BAC 1-11 G-ASTJ. Last build for 2017!!
Darren Rhodes replied to Paul J's topic in Ready for Inspection - Aircraft
Very nice! Darren -
Need help from Flightradar24 or any other flight tracker users
Darren Rhodes replied to stevehnz's topic in Real Aviation
Hi Steve, Apologies, I don’t lurk here too often and have only just seen this. I have access to flight records for only Heathrow, but they go back a few more decades. ;-) Your inbound flight was on B-KQN, but you are correct, you returned on B-KQA. Regards, Darren -
Airspeed AS57 Ambassador - 1:144 Welsh Models
Darren Rhodes replied to Viking's topic in Ready for Inspection - Aircraft
Super impressive work, yet again! A beauty in it's own right, but all the more excellent to see it alongside the HS.748 'Budgie' and the Connie. What a collection! Darren- 20 replies
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