AntPhillips

A great reminder of my youth, where I grew up in South Wales was under one of the main transit routes into the Low Flying Areas of mid Wales, we would get all sorts over flying us but F-111's were by far the most regular sight and sound back in the 70's & 80's. Lovely build, I had one of these years ago but sold it on, now the Resicast stuff is available I should really seek another one out.

A big shout out to @Dansk & @modelling minion for hosting the GB and of course to @Enzo Matrix for his usual sterling behind the scenes work and for his bevy of beauties in the galleries. Unfortunately I'm another that failed to get my build over the finish line in time, but I'll continue to post updates here. Thanks once again fellas, it's been a blast

I'm pretty certain one of them will be another Phantom variant , it's been a while since the F-4B was released and Tamiya released the various Tomcat versions on approx 2 yearly intervals, so it could well be another F-4, the easiest option would be an F-4N but that wouldn't require that much of a modification and couldn't rightly be called a new tooling, so maybe it's a thick wing version, a J or C/D?

Hi Our Ned, I think you're misinterpreting Dave's comment, I'm pretty certain he's not talking about the undercut of the superstructure on the port side but the projection on the starboard rear face of the superstructure, as it happens AA has incorporated it in his mods, but Dave's point is that it isn't present on Batch I ships.

The AS sprays are if my memory serves me right a synthetic laquer, whereas the XF paints are water based acrylics, so X-20A will not work. You shouldn't need to thin decanted AS paint anyway, it is by its nature already thin enough to spray, you should have no problems spraying it over Halfords primer, I've often used Halfords primer under Tamiya spray bombs, just build up the colour gradually.

I've ordered from them (1/48 F-102 decals), yes the shipping is expensive, but as I ordered 4 sheets in my head that's only $7.50 per sheet. I find that shipping costs from the US and Canada are generally much higher than what we expect in UK & Europe

Great start, I agree, field applied, the demarcations probably wouldn't have been perfect.

Lovely build of a great subject in a colour scheme that really suits it. I have this one in my future build list too using a set of Speed Hunter Graphics decals that includes a few ADC grey a/c, this one from the 57 FIS, along with 2 from Michigan ANG and 1 of Oregon ANG.

Sorry guys, this one is not going to make the finish line, progress has been negligible over the last few weeks, life has just got in the way, as it so often does. I'll keep plodding away with it and will post it in RFI when it's finished.

Wow, you can certainly see the family resemblance, but then you realise just how big this would have been.

The Revell kit is a rebox of the earlier Dragon kit, they also did an Ark Royal (circa '91) and an Illustrious kit with the flight deck extension for'ard, you might be better looking for one of those as the Illustrious kit in particular has extra parts for the later fit but also included lots of the original parts. Unfortunately all 3 ships differed considerably over their lifetime, and noone has ever kitted the octagonal rear mast carried by Ark in her later days.

Nice one Crisp, Googling "Elephant Foot Lashing Point" brings up some images that combined with your description gives a good idea of what it involved, I dont think the exact type is shown, but I can understand how it would work.

Summer and family life is making sure that progress on this one is pedestrian to say the least, but as we're away for a few days next week, I wanted to get some more done before we go away. So this morning whilst it was still relatively cool, I managed to get the next step done, only one step, but what a step.........wings are on: Finally beginning to take shape, you will see that the cockpit is still not in, that's because I'm still not 100% happy with it, I'm going to give it one last go and then it's going in whether I'm happy with it or not. Luckily Monogram designed the kit so that the cockpit drops in after the fuselage is together but before the wings are on, I'm happy that i can get the cockpit, weapons bay and nose undercarriage bay in even with the wings in situ: Looking at the box of parts left to fit, they're rapidly depleting: Just a few more parts to finish prepainting, the engine nozzles, ejector seats, and that goddang cockpit and probably a wash in the undercarriage bays and on the undercarriage itself. I haven't decided if the crew will be installed or not, if I do fit them I'll probably replace one with another left over from a Hasegawa Phantom, just to have some variation in pose. More updates once we get back from London next week.

To be honest Marc, I'm not sure, I'm only just finding out about the Noise Reduction Fairings myself. Just to confuse things Airfix included an EDSG over White scheme in their original 1/48 RN Buccaneer kit, and that kit also had representations of the Noise Reduction Fairings, so was the research at that time wrong, or did some a/c have the fairings and the white undersides? The only thing I am certain about is that the under nozzle fixtures need removing as they were added with the Chaff/Flare launchers later.

The kit is obviously set up for an RAF release, hence the chaff/flare mounting plates under the jet nozzles. There have been no announced plans for it to be released this year so I suspect it will be either for next year's announcement or maybe even beyond that depending on their other plans.