MattBlack33

Great work, it's coming together beautifully.

Hi Tim, I did wait until it was dry. I wouldn't say it was fully cured, but dry to touch.

A nice bit of progress today. Primed up with Halford's enamel primer. It's the first time I've used this particular brand but it seems to have done the trick so I shall be using it again in the future. Following a good ol' priming I did a bit of panel line highlighting with Humbrol 129 rather than black. My plan was to go over the panel lines, then use Humbrol 28 in the centre of the panels to blend in the darker colour. Then, to bring the whole process together, go over the whole lot with a relatively light layer of Humbrol 28. Panel lines Greyed panel lines Before (Port) vs after (starboard) Finally, the first coat of light green is on. I didn't highlight panel lines on this coat, however panels are lit with the same colour with a hint of white added. Apologies for the picture, the light is terrible! I'll be Blu-tacking this up tonight for a coat of US tan tomorrow at some point. If I get it done in the morning, I may have time to do the dark green too.

Nice work! I'm at the light green stage with mine and trying to decide whether to use Blu-tac, tape or freehand the camo scheme. What would you recommend?

Loving the number of Thuds being built for this GB. Good to see you back at it Dag, it's coming along really nicely.

Just to show I'm actually doing something on this build, this is where I'm up to: You can see in the radome area how gappy this kit has been for me! There's a bit more tidying up to do, some more filling and PE etc. to do before the primer goes on. It's definitely worth the work though, it's a beautiful aircraft once it's all put together.

Big like!! Bringing back so many memories, although I remember painting the M117s by hand I'm sure you'll be fine, the black will be much easier to re-paint, I was more worried about the dorsal wing roots and how much of the camo scheme you might lose.

Looking good, Dave. I'm really enjoying seeing this one come together. Just a thought, but I remember the wings needing quite a bit of work filling and sanding wise. If it were me, I'd attach the wings first as it might get a bit hairy/frustrating later and could end up being more work in the long run

It still wants to rearrange your pictures *and* upload them to a Google server. It's really easy to turn these options off though if you don't fancy signing your snaps over to Google...

It's Picasa from Google. It's a fairly basic photo editing programme, but you can be quite creative with it. I've used the "retouch" tool to merge the edge of the tarmac of the diorama into the background and to hide the join, I also altered the shadow and highlight intensity. Finally I added the "Cinemascope" filter. I'm still messing about with it to be honest so thank you for letting me use your images! Here's a more 70s version:

Thanks, I've given it a quick go. Let me know what you think of them

Thanks for the kind words, guys. There's not much to report on this at the moment, I've been on with other things (including "real life"). One of the big changes is that I've removed the sandpaper concrete slabs and I am in the process of replacing them with plasticard equivalents. This is what the chap looks like stripped back, and with pre-weathering outer green coat. And a couple pre-strip to whet the appetite: What it might look like with the lights fully working...that canopy needs a wipe!!

Ah, the skies over York are quieter than they used to be. Used to get a lot of Linton on Ouse trainers (Tucano and Jet Provost) over us. I also remember seeing a lot of F15s at one time, once so low you could almost read the pilot's nameplate! That background looks more convincing than the photoshopped one, really great work! Do you mind if I have a play with the images see what I can do?

This thread is absolute gold! Thank you all for sharing your stories, and not to mention what's shaping up to be a great build. If you're looking for a co-author then I'd be (seriously) interested!

Yeah that'd be perfect! Certainly is useful living close to an RAF base for added authenticity. Are you enlarging the pictures yourself or are you going to get them printed out?

Might not be possible, but if you can get the whole ensemble down to an airfield, a shot through the back looking out with an actual base in the background would look amazing! The photoshopped image looks great as well. I used to be so good at using Adobe Photoshop (I had a "liberated" version back when I was a student) but I've forgotten most of it now. How did you find paint.net.

Now, now chaps! With a better half in the Army, I'm not allowed to even mention the RAF Regiment under this roof! Where does the rockape nickname come from? For anyone who's interested, I've found some nice images here: http://www.fourfax.co.uk/wpg2-2?g2_itemId=1198 I've found it incredibly useful and I hope others will too!

Thanks everyone, as always your collective help is very much appreciated! I should have some pictures tomorrow. There's quite a bit of filling to be done!

Thanks guys, I've had a look at some of the YouTube videos out there, gives a great sense of some of the activity and equipment. I did manage to find this image: There does appear to be a Tactical refueller in the vicinity of the Harrier hides so that's enough evidence for me to include one on my dio I'm planning to replicate something similar to this in diorama form!

Quite a bit of progress today, but no pictures until tomorrow as the light faded before I could get any! I bought a load of Vallejo paints to test out on this kit, but I'm not particularly happy with the tones or the way they airbrush. I've decided to go back to my safety So, my question to you knowledgeable lot, is what are the Humbrol enamel equivalents to use for the SEA scheme?

This is gorgeous. Brilliant finish, can never have enough Harriers

Ah that makes sense, Selwyn. I thought it was strange when I couldn't find any images of Bedfords and Harriers in the same room! Do any of you have any links, or any of your own images of Harriers circa 1980 in hides?

Airfix lied! It says they were used in the field for both Harrier and helicopters.

Hi all. I'm wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of pictures of the above being used to refuel Harriers in operational settings as I can't seem to find any online. Apologies if this has been discussed before, however a quick search turned up nothing for me. Many thanks!

Wonderful work as ever! Like Okdoky said, you could get some photorealistic pictures of your builds with some minimal tweaking.