georgeusa

I am very sad about this news. I just found out this morning from a facebook post his daughter made regarding missing him for father's day. Also, thanks to Rick for sending me a message about his passing. I, too, have been missing from this fine forum due to health reasons from my back and neck limiting my already limited manual dexterity. When I first joined this website, Nigel took an interest in my builds and tried to help me improve my pathetic building skills. I remember with fondness his daily posts on his build progress that ended with how he prepared his evening meal and a picture of it. I know this incurred the wrath of the Moderators (sorry Mike), but they were great posts and revealed a part of him that did not come out from his builds. Nigel came to visit me in the states for a week a few years ago. I took him to every modeling/aviation site I could think of in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. He was so kind to my family and the memories of trolling through all the model shops and the interesting places he wanted to visit for lunch and evening meals are priceless. He will be missed. He made this token colonial very welcome to a great forum.

Not hardly! I got it for under $20.00. But I would be willing to sell it for a bargain £300 and throw in free shipping to the lucky buyer!

What a wonderful model you have made. I just picked up this kit off of an eBay auction. I only hope mine turns out half as well as yours. It really looks the part. I am very impressed with how well your James Bond figure turned out and how much you made him look like the man Sean Connery! Great build. Did you do a WIP?

Thanks Iain. I am really enjoying this kit. I have had it for a number of years, probably the year it came out! I have just never gotten around to putting it together. It has just set under my workbench in the next in line to build for a very long time. Now, I am sad I didn't start it sooner.

I don't know if this kit would win or the Airfix 1/24 Mosquito. I was amazed at how many ejection marks were on the rather new Airfix kit. If it wasn't ejection marks, it was mold seam lines. Of course, this kit has a few of the mold seam lines too. I have been comparing the AM Avenger kit to this one as I am working on it and I just think the level of detail out of the box on this kit is astounding. Why this kit isn't a bigger hit with the modeling community, I don't know. And, most of the time, the fit of parts and the way they are engineered to go together cannon be faulted; just the oaf that is putting this kit together causes most of the fill and sand problems!

Further work update on bomb bay/cockpit floor. Some of the various parts of the bomb bay received detail and weathering. After the weathering and detail painting, some placards and dials were added for a bit more interest. Regarding the effects used on the leather pouch attached to the cockpit wall, I think I may have goofed it up. I like the way it looks, but I think I reversed the colors. The lightened highlights are along the top of the pouch following the closure strap as this is the area that would get the most wear. That is fine for painted metal parts, but for leather I think the most used parts would be darker due to the oils in hands, etc. with the lighter sections being the least handled parts. I’m going to have to debate this with myself a bit more before I repaint the pouch. To one of the bomb bay bulkheads, a window was added. In this picture, I am not sure the use of a window is noticeable, nor needed. More on this later. The posts installed in the bomb bay get their initial base coat to prepare for some weathering to match the rest of the bomb bay floor. The two end bulkheads were added to the bomb bay floor. Now in these pictures, the window that was installed does feature prominently, so maybe it is best I did install what I originally thought was a useless part. While waiting for the glue in all the above assemblies to dry, I assembled the torpedo. There are very prominent seams where the two halves joined. Mostly, I think, my part in alignment of the halves. So, these seams were filled and set aside to dry. Trumpeter gives you the choice of a torpedo, bombs, or an auxiliary fuel tank to place in the bomb bay. I decided a torpedo would be best for this model, but any of the options would work as the other two options are very well made and detailed. The last bit of work done for this session was to prepare the parts for the tail wheel assembly. Guess what, the bulkhead for the tail wheel has injection marks that show; what a shock. Those are filled and I still need to clean up the rest of the tail wheel parts. As always, all comments are welcome.

That is an novel idea. You are brilliant!

Cockpit innards update. With the pilot’s section of the aircraft done, construction now moves to the rest of the aircraft with some work on additions to the side walls and different electronic equipment. A section of the side wall with a control column and leather pouch is to be attached to the starboard wall. I attempted to glue it together, but a slight mishap occurred. What I built was this . . . All well and good, but some parts are missing. A rather small part shown in this diagram is supposed to be glued to the top of the part sticking away from the wall. To that small part, 3 photo-etch levers are to be attached. Problem is I pinged the part off into another dimension as I don’t have carpeting in my modeling room, I have tile. The part is nowhere to be found, and I can’t locate the PE levers either. So, the missing part and levers will have to be scratched, but I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do that. While I ponder this situation, I painted the base colors for the sidewall parts. After the paint dries, some weathering, highlighting and detail painting will be done. Oh yeah, and some sort of ingenious solution to the missing parts will be put into effect. (Anyone feel ingenious?) The topside of the bomb bay is the crew’s floor. I had given it a base coat of the interior color and was taken aback by the number of injector pin marks. I thought they would not bother me, as I doubt not much of the floor will be seen and there will be other items in the way of directly viewing the floor from the canopy glazing. However, I kept staring at the floor and just couldn’t stand it. Out came the correction fluid and the injector pin marks were filled. While that dries, along with the side wall base colors, I move on to the some of the electrical/radio equipment that will be installed, along with some of the pieces to complete the bomb bay interior. The various pieces that make up the electrical equipment are put together. This set of electrical equipment gets its base interior coat prior to joining it to the equipment bulkhead. It is then joined to the equipment bulkhead Another set of electrical equipment fits under the top shelf and it will be left off to allow easier painting. Now looking at the top shelf of electrical equipment, the part has notches where the wiring should go from the electrical equipment to below the shelf. There just isn’t any wire. This must be rectified. Holes are drilled into the backs of each electronic box so some suitable wire can be inserted. Then the boxes and wire receive their base coat of black. While that dries, I flip the crew floor and glue these posts to the bomb bay ceiling. And finally, the last step in this update was to fill the wonderful injection pin marks in the bomb bay bulkheads Detail painting, weathering and some scratch building will be next on the agenda. As always, all comments are welcome.

I don't think so as I have seen your work and usually am very envious of how good it is! Thanks for the thoughts about Mattie.

It’s about time for an update. Life has taken some interesting turns since my last update. A little over two months ago, at midnight, on a Saturday, I was trying to make it back home in time to meet my “favorite”, my sweet Mattie, who was coming home from a date. About 2 miles from the house, I came across an overturned pickup truck that had just rolled across the highway. When I got next to the truck and saw the front, black brush bumper, my stomach sickened as I knew it was Mattie’s truck. As I approached the truck, I was trying to think of how to tell her mother her little girl had died in a traffic accident as the cab was partially crushed, the front windshield was gone, one of the wheels had broken off and the frame was twisted. To my great delight and joy, I saw Mattie’s face looking up at me, panic stricken of course as she was going into shock, complaining about her leg hurting. She was alive coherent and had feeling in her legs; all positive signs. I knew her mental facilities were okay as the first words out of her mouth is it wasn’t her fault! She was twisted in her seat belt and her left leg was obviously broken. A county sheriff appeared on the scene and called in an ambulance and firetruck as she needed to be cut out of the cab. People make fun of me because all my vehicles are quite large; the smallest being a Ford F150 pickup truck. Mattie was in a F250 diesel truck and because of its size and the fact it was old, I feel that is the only thing that saved her from being crushed and killed. She had a compound fracture in her lower leg as both bones were through the skin, a complete break in her upper thigh region and another complete break in her arm. Three operations later, she faces a long recovery period, but she should be back to her old self with maybe a limp and a lot of metal fittings inside of her. I have modeled some as when I came home from the hospital I could not sleep; just couldn’t take the time to post, nor did I feel like doing so. That, plus my pictures were stored on Photobucket and we all know how that turned into a total debacle! I am in the process of restoring all of my posts’ missing pictures. That is a nightmare and very time consuming. On to the update. I did a miniscule amount on the Avenger and just a tad to the 109. The IdolM@ster offered mindless work with painting and decals so it got the brunt of the building. Prior to painting, the canopy had to be masked, always one of the chores I hate the most. Luckily, this is a simple canopy to mask and it was relatively painless. (Still, it took me a good hour and a half to mask two pieces. I am dreadfully slow at this part of the building game.) In addition to the masking, there are some pieces that need to be attached to the inside of the canopy prior to its attachment to the fuselage. So those pieces were painted and weathered. The canopy fit fairly well with just a bit of sanding and cutting to get it in place. After the canopy glue dried, the plane was painted in its bright pink base. The exhaust cans were painted and weathered. And the finished exhausts were attached to the fuselage. The kit has a great deal of white background; i.e., the nose and all edges of the airframe. Decals are provided to most of the white areas, but the nose needs to be painted. The nose is masked up with enough tape I hope to prevent any overspray. The first layer of paint is applied and an “Oh No!” occurs. I really don’t think I can get away with calling that very deep and large crease a panel line. So, more putty is applied, sanded, and another couple of coats of white is applied. (Pink is not a great background to cover with paint.) Now comes the only reason to build these kits, the decal schemes. Since this kit was designed for the Japanese home market, all the instructions are in Japanese and there are a few concerning how the decals should be placed. Since I have done a few of these kits, I know there are base layers of white and some sort of large swoops. On top of this goes an underlying theme layer, then the main theme of the particular kit, generally a large picture of the pilot character, followed by the last layer of stencils and details. Anyway, the first layer consists of large pink swoops that run almost the length of the fuselage and tail. The port swoop goes on first. Not a good sign that I break the first decal. I piece it back together and then get it into place. This is then followed by copious amounts of Micro Sol to force the decal to conform to the kit details. Generelly the decal must go over compound curves and sink into panel detail. I don’t know who makes these decals, but they are generally designed quite well and react nicely to the Micro Sol/Set decal solutions. For a 1/48 kit, I use about ½ to ¾ of a bottle of Micro Sol. As the first layer of Micro Sol is working on the port swoop, I lay down the starboard swoop. I am beginning to see a pattern here. Two decals, two breaks. Either my lack of sense of touch is causing me to be too rough with these decals, or they are more fragile than past IdolM@ster decals I’ve used. After a bunch of applications of Micro Sol, both swoops are in place and are nestling very nicely to the kit detail. Next up, the white borders are installed. After the base decals are beaten into submission, to hug the kit surface detail, the large signature decals are applied to the upper fuselage surface. These too, must conform to multiple compound angles even though they do not want to The upper fuselage surface is then besieged by a warren of bunnies!! Finally, a plethora of upper surface detail decals are put on and slathered with washes of Micro Sol. Almost every decal that was bigger than ½ inch broke when I was applying. Again, I don’t know if it is these particular decals, or my heavy-handed application. In the last picture, the bunnies on the canards have a decal placed on their ear closed to the fuselage with an X on it. At first, I thought this had some significance, but apparently now, as these same decals are on the starboard wing without bunnies. If someone knows the significance of these X ears, let me know. Anyway, here is the completed top fuselage decal scheme including the X ears (sans bunnies) on the lower port wing. Working around the plane, the decaling process proceeds to the port side of the plane. The white border on the tail must be put on as the first layer. Which is what I attempt to do. As I stated earlier, I have done numerous IdolM@ster kits and they all have had white borders done with decals. I have never had a problem getting the white decals to conform to the kit surfaces. Because of the design of the Rafale tail, trying to put a white border on with decals involves a skill level I do not possess. No matter how I tried to get the decals to conform with Micro Sol, it just did not look pretty. That left the option of painting on the border; which entails masking over existing decals, including the very large decal of the pilot character on the port wing. But, what other choice do I have? I mask the area to be painted. Paint is then applied and the waiting game begins. The tape is carefully removed and the damage done to the decals is negligible. The worst damage was done to one of the white decals and shouldn’t be too hard to touch up. The only other damage was one of the bunnies on the port tail lost an ear and a tiny portion of the main character decal needs some touch up. Otherwise, seems like a successful solution to a potential kit killer situation. I also discovered I missed one section to be painted, but that also can be touched up later. The decals to the port side are applied. I have an issue with one of the port decals; why is the inner paint of the oval tail decal next to the girl’s head tan rather than white? A similar one on the nose is white. Doesn’t make sense why the inner colors are different. I then went to the starboard side and made a significant dent on the starboard tail decals. On this side, I cut the decal for the girl’s hair bow as the decal hits the part of the Rafale tail that sticks out. There is no way to get the decal to conform to this extreme surface detail. I didn’t do this with the port decal and now I regret it. And this is where the fun stops and life begins again, with all of its chores and obligations. As always, all comments are welcome.

You are more than kind sir. Most of the credit has to be given to Eduard and how well they do their PE. The kit seat belts are so shoddy compared to the Eduard.

Well, I am beginning the slow process of updating this thread. It took almost 5 hours to upload all of the photos to the new service (Flickr). What a beating. Apart from losing all of my photos, I had some personal matters to attend to. If you have been following my Gunthar Rall 109 build, you are aware of what happened to Mattie, whom I call "My Favorite". To sum it up, a little over two months ago, on a Saturday night, at midnight, I was trying to make it back home in time to meet my “favorite”, my sweet Mattie, who was coming home from a date. About 2 miles from the house, I came across an overturned pickup truck that had just rolled across the highway. When I got next to the truck and saw the front, black brush bumper, my stomach sickened as I knew it was Mattie’s truck. As I approached the truck, I was trying to think of how to tell her mother her little girl had died in a traffic accident as the cab was partially crushed, the front windshield was gone, one of the wheels had broken off and the frame was twisted. To my great delight and joy, I saw Mattie’s face looking up at me, panic stricken of course, as she was going into shock, complaining about her leg hurting. She was alive, coherent, and had feeling in her legs; all positive signs. I knew her mental facilities were okay as the first words out of her mouth was it wasn’t her fault! She was twisted in her seat belt and her left leg was obviously broken. A county sheriff appeared on the scene and called in an ambulance and firetruck as she needed to be cut out of the cab. People make fun of me because all my vehicles are quite large; the smallest being a Ford F150 pickup truck. Mattie was in a F250 diesel truck and because of its size and the fact it was old, I feel that is the only thing that saved her from being crushed and killed. She had a compound fracture in her lower leg as both bones were through the skin, a complete break in her upper thigh region and another complete break in her arm. Three operations later, and looking at a nice long recovery period, Mattie should be back to her old self with maybe a limp and a lot of metal fittings inside of her. I have modeled some as when I came home from the hospital I could not sleep; just couldn’t take the time to post, nor did I feel like doing so. What is so ironic is I have a reconstructed right inner ankle joint from a motorcycle accident 40 some years ago. The accident she had was also to her right leg. So, I can sympathize with her concerning the pain she is experiencing due to the reconstructive surgery and can help her with her recovery/rehabilitation process. She still is not able to use crutches as her arm cannot bear the weight yet, and her leg cannot have any weight placed upon it for at least another 2 months. Anyway, very thankful for her recovery and her doctors. So, now that my pressing personal trauma is now not so pressing, and I have learned a new photo posting program, some updates are due on this build. So, what did I do on this kit, I forced myself to finish the remaining seat belts for the observer, turret gunner and ventral gun station. In all, I made 5 seat belts over the course of about 2 ½ hours. I am abysmally slow at this PE stuff. But, at least they are completed and I can begin to finish up the interior work and close the fuselage halves. As always, all comments are welcome.

Small paint and photo update. I still have not done the seat belts. I must do them before I forget and permanently close the canopy. What I have done instead is finally complete uploading all the missing pictures in the original group thread (thank you Photobucket). The next step in finishing this kit should be seat belts, but, I started painting instead. I sprayed the base lower surface coats. When the base coat dried, it was quite evident more work was needed on some of the seams. So, putty, once more, was used on the underside seams and more sanding done. A second base coat was applied. This looks much better and will do nicely. Next up, masking the underside and painting the base upper coat prior to the camo being applied. As always, all comments are welcome.

Baby update today. Not a lot accomplished, but that’s because canopy masking was involved; something I loathe to do and am slower than molasses in December doing masking. So here goes; the canopies got masked I also assembled the propeller and gave it its base coat. Trumpeter color call out for the propeller blades is dark black green which I can go for. However, the color call out for the propeller hub is also dark black green. I am debating between leaving the propeller hub the dark black green color or painting it Nato black. Any suggestions? I also assembled the main wheels minus the rubber brake lines. I do not know if I will use these rubber lines, or redo them with fine wire. Up next, I must do the seat belts as I am about to close up the canopy! I am almost finished reposting the pictures in the original thread. I still have about a page and a half to go before all the pictures will be replaced. It is a whipping to redo them. As always all comments are welcome.

Looks like a very youthful Terrry Thomas. Yes, soon she will have the delight of never being able to go through court houses and airports without a body scan. I do believe though, she might be able to get a card from her doctor that details the metal parts in her body to ease the security process. Glad to have you join the view, hopefully it won't be too boring.