Wings unlevel

That beautiful crescent shaped wing is taking shape, although I’m still to fit the infamous clear wingtips. Which means I could mate the wings to the fuselage. Fairly please with the fit after a bit of sanding to get the saddle section of the wing to sit snugly over the fuselage. Still have to fit the underside inner wing sections and the aforementioned clear wingtips. But getting closer to finishing assembly and focusing on filling and sanding…

Nice Cliff, I think it’s going to look terrific painted up.

Very nice Col, it’ll be quite a good looking thing in the CIA sea blue.

Very nice and clean, John.

Glad its time has come!

Thanks for the terrific explanation Pete, and great work so far - a full tin brush painted is impressive work! I mainly use lacquers, no issues with the endurance of my airbrush and compressor, but the operator might struggle with the size and scale of the task, especially in applying lots of thinned coats. I painted the intakes with Mr Surfacer 1500 white which was quite effective, I may just use that for the base coat and polish it back a little. Just pondering though how to get some tonal variation… Anyway, your Valiant is looking terrific and is definitely tempting me to pick one up!

It does seem the logical - and only? - replacement for the Harriers. Interestingly there was some discussion in Australia about acquiring F-35Bs to operate off our Canberra Class LHDs, which as you’d know are based on the Juan Carlos. But it has never been seriously considered.

It does look impressive though!

Fortune favours the brave! Good luck. 😆

Oh right. All the more impressive work then Patrice.

You almost could, it looks pretty good from here, but I will watch with keen interest to see how the Colourcoats anti-flash white goes, as I really haven’t worked out how to tackle painting my Victor yet.

Best of luck, that’s no doubt a very stressful situation to be in.

Ah very nice subject choice Craig!

Looks just right, Patrice.

Keeps looking better and better, Patrice. I like how Tamiya offers the option of dropped flaps, a very nice detail for 1/72.

Cracking start for a day’s work. Oh, if you need me I’ll be searching online for those gorgeous drop tanks…

Nice work Dermot, thought I was looking at 1/48 for a minute there!

Great progress, Pete, you’ve done more on your Valiant in a week than I’ve done on my Victor in over a month! With your fettling and care it looks to have gone together very well. Think I need to build one one day for sure.

I like your torture rack… I mean assembly rig. Looks very effective! I assume this is an earlier Special Hobby release, so short run by nature? Terrific subject choice.

That’s a big beautiful beast Nigel, looks superb. 👏 The NMF finish really suits it.

Gorgeous Cliff, love it.

Hi Andrés, welcome! I am keen to see what colour you can bring with your F-35B! Gerard

Thanks for the kind comments! Yes the wing fit doesn’t look quite as bad as I’d feared based on others’ warnings but I’ll definitely have to sand back some of the shoulder section to get it flush… Cheers Craig, glad to be back at it, even if there’s a fair bit of taming still to come!

It’s really coming to life now.

Very fine work with the prop.