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yardbird78

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Everything posted by yardbird78

  1. That pre-shading should show up well under Alclad. I am anxious to see how that turns out. Darwin
  2. I am definately looking forward to seeing your "H" finished. Your work has motivated me to pull out an AMT "Early G" model I started about 6 years ago and got to the painted stage before I totally screwed up the paint job. I got so unhappy with it that I just shoved in the corner and let it collect dust. I dug it out a couple of days ago, shoveled off the dust and debris and then stripped off all of the old paint. After some battle damge repair, it is about ready for the paint process again. This one will have the NMF over white finish with GAM-77/AGM-28 Hound Dog missiles and will be gear up/in flight. Darwin
  3. Houston, Thanks for asking. I finished the "Blue Tail Fly" Panther early last month and posted a build summary in the "Ready For Inspection" section. See this: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=66573 One quick shot for here. Darwin
  4. Nice work commemorating a tragic event. You should dedicate it to the memory of the stewardess who was sucked out of that large hole. Darwin
  5. Is this mini-GB just for 135s or for any SAC bird? Darwin
  6. Stunningly beautiful work, especially on the bomb bay. That is truly spectacular. Darwin
  7. NASA originally had NB-52A "Balls 3" and NB-52B "Balls 8" that they used for many years for launching the North American X-15 series as well as several other air vehicles. Both of these aircraft were retired several years ago and replaced with a B-52H that was painted in standard NASA colors of all white with the two tone blue stripe down the side. If you Google Image search for "B-52H NASA" you will quite a group of nice photos all three NASA BUFFs. Darwin
  8. Spectacular work on your BUFF. Your attention to detail is superb. I don't mean to be critical, but since you are putting so much effort into this model, I thought that you would be interested in this engine information. The TF-33 engine pods in the AMt kit are very much undersize and poorly shaped. BUFF Master Designs, available from http://www.greatmodels.com/ are much more accurate and commensurate with the amount of work that you are putting into this model. Engine set: http://www.greatmodels.com/~smartcart/cgi/...m_num=BMDR72014 BUFF Master on the left, kit on the right Kit version on top, BUFF Master on bottom
  9. Thanks for the lead on the photos. They were VERY uselful. Darwin
  10. Today's building time was devoted to work on the canopy. The resin conversion kit included a vacu-form canopy for the two seat F model. It has a raised frame, but no other details. I used a 4mm piece of C channel plasti-strut, cut off one flange, tapered it to match the canopy bottom frame, twisted it to match the frame contour and epoxyed it in place. The plain cross brace came in the mod kit, but needed some detail. The front of the full scale brace has a rather elaborate mechanism of guide rollers, cams and latching pins to lock the canopy in the closed position. I duplicated most of that with various bits and pieces of plastic & wire from the scrap pile. I still need to add the two latching hooks on each side, some handles and mirrors. Darwin
  11. The last update showed the work on the outboard pylons and this one will show the inboard ones. There was no material to work with at the start so I had to come up with something different. I appropriated the anti-sway braces from the Monogram F9F-5P Panther kit and installed them in recessed areas that I cut under the pylons. The port lower wing panel fit fairly well, but the starboard one had a huge gap on the fuselage end. I filled it with a .040 shim and now it fits about like the other one. I attached the Legend AM resin tail cone and the vertical fin. Both required extensive sanding and fitting. The Legend tail cone and the kit tail cone were considerably different for the afterburner exhaust. I couldn't find any photo evidence to prove either one, but I think the resin version is closer. There is a variable exhaust to the AB plus the external eyelids similar to the plastic piece, but the AB exhaust is further back inside the fuselage. All F-100s have a rather prominent bulge under the top of the air intake for the AN/APG-30 Fire Control Radar. The kit does not have anything for this feature, so I added it with Bondo body putty. Darwin
  12. I took the giant leap and glued the upper and lower fuselage parts together. Since they are resin, the glue had to be either CA or epoxy. I am super allergic to CA, but the epoxy takes too long to cure, even the 5 minute variety. I have to have a fan blowing across my face while wearing goggles and an organic vapor resipirator. Even then, the fumes sometimes get to me. Anyway, I glued one side from tail to landing gear, then the other side the same amount, then one side from LG to nose, then the last forward fuselage section. The upper wing has to go in the upper fuselage prior to joining the two fuselage parts. I had the whole join line sanded & filed to a pretty good dry fit, but managed to get a fair gap in a couple places while glueing. Since I was using CA anyway, I just applied a bead to the joint, hit it with accelerator and then sanded it smooth. I have rescribed some of the lost panel lines, but need to do some more. I played around with the outboard weapons pylons a little bit. The stock kit part has some blob under the pylon that is supposed to represent the ordnance mount and the anti-sway braces. It looked like crap, so I modified it by carving away most of it, drilling small holes through the flanges, inserting a piece of fine wire and glueing a 1 mm disc to the bottom end. The picture shows the before and after, with the after having just one adjusting thingie installed. The discs were punched out with a .039 dia Waldron punch & die set. The remaining seven discs are those little white dots in the center. Darwin
  13. I finally got enough work done on this thing to make it worth while to take some pictures. Nose intake part from the kit attached to the resin upper fuselage and the AM seamless intake trunk attached to that assembly. The gray nose piece was too wide and shaped wrong for the fuselage, so it took quite a bit of shaping and sanding to get that right. The face of the intake trunk shape does not match the back of the nose piece, but I couldn't come up with any way to fix that. I will just have to live with the difference. The recessed troughs for the guns would be too shallow to allow the bullets to exit with hitting the aircraft, so I elongated and deepened the left one. The right will get the same treatment. The two instrument panels, pilot on left, GIB on the right. I painted the panel black, repainted some it gray, dry brushed the instruments and then filled in the instrument faces with several coats of Future. The instrument panels with the cockpit tub. Darwin
  14. The leading edge slats on the F-100 and a couple of other North American Aviation planes were what was called "free floating". They were not hydraulic actuated, but rather opened or closed on their own in flight according to airspeed and G forces. Gravity pulled them to the down position when on the ground. The mechanics had some way to "lock" them in the up position when doing phase inspections or other long term maintenance procedures. - The 1/72 AMT kit of the F-100F is the same as the Italeri, but I don't know which came first. The Italeri D model is identical to the F except for the fuselage being extended and of course the dual cockpit. Darwin
  15. Thanks for the comments. I am normally an Air Force person, but building a couple of Navy birds was a refreshing change of scenery. Now it's back to the F-100F Misty FAC. Darwin
  16. This kit went together very well with excellent parts fit and only two issues. The fragile nose guns must be installed prior to closing up the fuselage and the two inside ones stick out quite a ways. Of course, I broke them off while building the plane and the carpet monster had them for a snack. The upper nose from the windscreen to the tip had a rather large step that had to be filled and sanded smooth. I used Alclad II, Duraluminum for the basic finish with Polished Aluminum for some panels and Burnt Iron on the nose. Model Master Gloss Sea Blue went on the empennage. The decals are from Repli-Scale sheet # SP-001 and they went on quite well. This sheet does not contain the word NAVY for the aft fuselage or the round warning circles for the tip tanks, so I had to use the ones from the kit decals. The carrier film was very milky when applied and I had to use several applications of Micro-Sol to get rid of it. The ordnance is from the kit and I used strips cut from a yellow decal sheet for the nose stripes. The story of The Blue Tail Fly is quoted fromSquadron Signal, F9F Panther/Cougar, In Action # 1051. "The Blue Tail Fly was a unique combination of two different F9F-5s. Both aircraft belonged to VF-153 aboard the USS Princeton. The story of The Blue Tail Fly goes that a Lt Richard (Stretch) Clinite was flying an experimental natural metal finish F9F-5 when he was hit by Communist flak and tail section of the aircraft was badly riddled, but he managed to get the Panther back aboard. In the meantime, Ens William Wilds, Jr. brought back a heavily damaged standard Glossy Sea Blue finish F9F-5 with its rear section intact. After mating the two airframes, The Blue Tail Fly was born. It flew 12 missions in that configuration before being returned to the States for rebuilding." The Blue Tail Fly with an F9F-5P reconnaissance bird. Both are 1/48th Monogram kits. The three builds that I have completed since the first of the year.
  17. Small update for this morning. I decided to let the fuselage sit for a little while and turned my attention to the external fuel tanks. The F-100 had three different external tanks, only one of which was rated for super sonic speeds. It had a capacity of 275 gallons and the USAF wanted a bigger tank, so they put a 28 inch plug in it to make it a 335 gallon tank. The Monogram kit comes with the 275 gal tank and I wanted the bigger one, since that is what was used in Viet Nam most of the time. I wasn't overly happy with the shape of the resin AM tank, so I took the kit tank, cut it in two at the factory splice point and inserted a plug to add .58 inch to the tank. The plugs were the pour stubs from the two ejection seats. It added .61 inches, but I figure that is close enough. The plug is about 1/8 inch too small in diameter, so I filled the difference with CA glue and Bondo filler. Darwin Top to Bottom: resin AM tank, original kit tank, plug installed and filled, tank pieces and plug.
  18. Really geat work so far. Those old Monogram kits can be made into some nice models. Darwin
  19. Fantastic work on the Hornet. The weathering is superb over an equally well done paint job. Darwin
  20. Spectacular work on that paint job. The rest of it too, for that matter. The RB-57D and F did a lot of reconnaissance work in Viet Nam and other places, but received even less publicity than the U-2 and SR-71. Darwin
  21. Today's update: I have spent a total of about 10 hours sanding, filing & test fitting the two parts of the fuselage. The bottom fit the wing saddle perfectly, but the sides of the top were warped in over 1/8 inch so they didn't fit the wing or the fuselage bottom. I cut a couple of pieces of scrap sprue to make spreader bars to hold the sides out where they belong. The intake trunk was too big for the front of the fuselage so the interior of both the top and bottom had to be enlarged. This was a VERY time consuming process of file, test fit, repeat, repeat, repeat and repeat some more until I finally got it right. This same file, test, repeat process was necessary for the fuselage joint and the wing saddle. Wing saddle in upper fuselage Upper & lower fuselage joint Air intake trunk fitted in lower fuselage Air intake trunk fitted in upper fuselage L-R, intake trunk, exhaust/afterburner, 335 gallon resin AM fuel tank, 275 gallon kit tank
  22. Really fantastic work on the RB-57. It shows great craftsmanship in the conversion and making all the parts fit. Darwin
  23. Moofles & Lieuwe, I bought both the resin conversion kit and the basic F-100 kit on ebay 2 or 3 years ago and I don't remember exactly how much I paid for them. IIRC the basic kit was $15-20 and the convervsion was somewhere around $40. I am building the two seater this way because I have the parts and don't see the point of buying one of the Trumpeter F models, especially at the price they want for them. A couple of the reviews I have read on the new Trumpy series of F-100s, both 72 and 48 speak rather unfavorably about some of the fidelity issues. Some of the shapes are off a little bit, but not enough to bother me. The 1/48 Monogram F-100D, while not perfect, has been rated in seveal reviews as the best "Hun" in any scale. Darwin
  24. I have removed the pour stubs and flash from the two fuselage pieces and have already spent about 2 hours fitting and sanding and they still have a ways to go. The cockpit tub doesn't have any locating pins so it is a by guess and golly as to exactly where it goes. The inside of the fuselage needs to be dug out for the CP tub to fit at all. Judging by what I have done and seen so far, this project is doable, but it is really going to require a lot of work. Darwin
  25. This will be an F model North American F-100 used as a Misty FAC by the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing at Phu Cat AB, South Viet Nam. It will use the 1/48th Monogram F-100D as a basis plus the C&H Aero Miniatures conversion set to make it a two seater. It will also include after-market parts for the seamless intake trunk, exhaust/afterburner set and 275 to 335 gallon external fuel tank conversion. This will be the first time that I have used aftermarket parts other than decals and seats. Darwin The parts at the starting gate C&H conversion parts
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