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After finishing my four-month, uphill battle with A-Model's M-50 'Bounder' supersonic bomber, I feel a need for something smaller, less-supersonic, and easier to build. Having an interest in pre-WW2 aircraft used for exploration or record-setting, I have selected this kit as my next victim: Mitsubishi's Ki-15 Karigane (Wild Goose) first came to the attention of the outside world in 1937. The Asahi Shimbun, a leading newspaper, was granted permission to buy a civil version of the aircraft and to use it for a flight between Japan and Britain, timed to mark the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The second prototype, registered as J-BAAI, was completed in March 1937 and delivered to the newspaper, which named it Kamikaze (a name that had not yet gained its association with suicide attacks). Pilot Masaaki Iinuma and Navigator Kenji Tsukagoshi departed Tachikawa Airfield at 5:12 pm on 5 April 1937. The route of the flight was Tokyo to Taipei and on to Hanoi, Vientiane, Calcutta, Karachi, Basra, Baghdad, Athens, Rome, Paris, and finally, London. Iinuma and Tsukagoshi caused a sensation when they landed at Croydon Aerodrome, London at 3:30 pm on 9 April, with a flight time of 51 hours, 17 minutes and 23 seconds, covering the 9,542 miles in just over 51 hours in the air at an average speed of 101.2 mph, a world record at the time. First up, some period photos of the Ki-15 Kamikaze: (Note the drooped elevators and deflected rudder in these pics Kamikaze's arrival at Croydon Aerodome, London on 9 April 1937 (note the exhaust stains on the fuselage and wing): Navigator Kenji Tsukagoshi (standing) and Pilot Masaaki Iinuma: LS's kit dates from 1976. Let's see what's in box: Good to see: A lot fewer parts than with the Bounder, and no fiberglass! Surface detail is nice, with recessed panel lines: I'm not so sure about the fabric engraving on the rudder, however. This doesn't show up in photos of the real airplane. Engine detail not-so-good. I'll have to see if I can improve on this: Our intrepid crew, sitting at attention. I think I'll forego these guys! Canopy is nicely molded, but on the thick side. Don't expect to see much interior detail (unless I decide to cut open the canopy). In any case, some polishing will be needed to remove the rough surface texture: Instructions look to be complete, if entirely in Japanese! Note the option to build one of two aircraft, J-BAAI 'Kamikaze' and her hangar-mate, J-BAAL ' Asakaze'. The decals look to be in good shape, despite being nearly 50-yrs old. I'll give these a protective coat before using, just to be on the safe side! There's very little aftermarket available for the Ki-15. This is what I've collected: A Yahu intstrument panel: and, these masks from Dead Design: Colors are overall silver, with blue trim and green interior. These are what are called out in the instructions: This should be a quick little project! Feel free to tag along . . . .

"Mad City Modelers", my local club, is having a group build with the them "The Year You Were Born". Having just finished my Red Baron F-104, I decided to stay with the century series and build a F-100 Super Sabre, which I'm claiming qualifies because it's first flight was on May 25, 1953. There are quite a few 1/72 kits of the "Hun", all of which have faults. Unsure which way to go, I posed the question to fellow BM'ers in this thread: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235110863-help-me-decide-172-f-100d-—-trumpeter-italeri-or-other/ and received a lot of very helpful advice. My first inclination was to use the Trumpeter kit, but given the amount of work that is needed to correct its inaccuracies (poor nose shape, and too narrow in the fuselage around the cockpit) and the fact that I'm under a deadline (just 6-weeks to finish), I decided instead to go with the old ESCI kit. Key items that need to be addressed there include: Open the nose inlet and add an intake trunk; replace the kit's rudimentary cockpit with Aires resin; add an Aires; add an Aires afterburner can & engine nozzle; and drop the wing's leading edge flaps. For markings, I want to model an aircraft of the 79th Tactical Fighter Squadron (the "Tigers"), as my former father-in-law flew flew F-100s with the Tigers in the late-1950s (based at the time, I believe, at Woodbridge, England): ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My first task was to sort through my stash and find any kits and aftermarket items I might bring to bear for this project. Easier said than done, as my stash is pretty extensive: (And, that's just my airplane kits! I've a whole other set of shelves for my ship, space/sci fi, armor and automobile kits) Here's what I came up with: Four F-100D kits in 1/72: A bunch of aftermarket: And (to my surprise), some potentially useful resin upgrades: The Blackbird Models wings are drop-in replacements for the ESCI & Italeri kits, and come with the leading edge slats "dropped", which is the normal on-ramp condition for F-100s. The XMM intakes are intended for the Trumpeter kit and are designed to "correct" the poorly shaped nose (more on this topic, later). My going-in plan was to somehow squeeze the XMM nose & intake trunking and Aires cockpit into the ESCI fuselage: However, when I compared XMM's nose with that of the ESCI kit, I found a serious discrepancy: The top-to-bottom height of the ESCI inlet measures out to 7.5mm (very close to the 1/72 drawings in Bert Kenzey's "F-100 Super Sabre in Detail & Scale" book. The height of the XMM inlet opening is just 6.5mm. (Apparently, XMM's only correction to the Trumpeter kit's nose was to round off the overly-square lower corners of the inlet. The resin inlet's height is still undersize ☹️ ). On to plan "B" . . . I opened up the front of the ESCI fuselage: and stole the inlet trunking parts from my Trumpeter F-100 kit: The Trumpeter pieces fit pretty well, but I did have to do a bit of carving on the ESCI plastic, especially around the rear of the nose gear bay: I also had to sand down the alignment pin on the starboard fuselage, just behind the nose: The intake trunk has long tabs on both sides that fit into slots on the inside of the Trumpeter fuselage. The slots aren't present in the ESCI kit, so I had to sand down the tabs to get the fuselage to close. I also ground down and flattened the top of the trunk to make room for the Aires cockpit: Aires provides two pages of instructions for assembling their F-100D cockpit set, but their only guidance for installing it into the fuselage is "Thinning of the plastic parts and dry fitting of the assembly needed!" And, by "thinning", they mean paper-thin -- to the point that light can be seen shinning through the plastic! After an hour or so of thinning and dry fitting, I eventually convinced the resin cockpit to fit: My next challenge was to make Trumpter's intake trunk, designed for an undersized nose inlet, to work with the larger, more accurate ESCI nose opening! For this, I stole a trick from @TheRealMrEd 's excellent F-100C build, in which he had replaced Trumpeter's too-small nose with an ESCI piece, and "adjusted" the Trumpeter trunk to fit. Here's a link to Ed's build, which I highly recommend to anyone building the Trumpeter kit: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235016447-the-best-172-scale-f-100c-i-can-build/ Following Ed's approach, I glued the Trumpeter pieces together, but only applied glue at the rear (leaving the front of the trunk unglued). I then temporarily installed the trunk into the ESCI fuselage, and taped the nose piece into place. Next, I used mini-alligator clips to force the upper and lower parts of the intake trunk against the top and bottom of the ESCI nose opening: and carefully glued scrap plastic "wedges" into the gap between the top & bottom trunk parts, taking care avoid getting glue onto the ESCI nose: After the glue had dried, I removed the trunking: and sanded/ground down the wedges into shape. I filled and puttied the gaps behind the wedges, and gave the interior of the trunk a few liberal coats of Mr. Surfacer 500. Here's the result of my work: There's some touchup needed, but that can wait until after the intake trunk and nose inlet are finally installed. I have a couple more items to show before this progress report is done: I assembled the Aires afterburner can & nozzle, and test fit them to the fuselage: I also test fit the Blackbird Models replacement wing. The fit is very good, with just a small gap (easily fixed) on the bottom (just behind the nose gear bay). I'm still undecided about whether to use the resin replacement, or instead use Trumpeter's wing. Since I've already stolen the intake trunk from my Trumpeter kit, I might as well take the wings, too! That's it for Day 1 of this project!

This is something I've wanted to build for a very long time -- 45 years, to be exact! In fall and winter of 1976-77 I was a freshly-minted Ensign attending the US Navy's Nuclear Power Training Unit, deep in the desert west of Idaho Falls, Idaho. At the same time, former Lockheed test pilot Darryl Greenamyer of the Red Baron Flying Service, also in Idaho Falls, was attempting to beat the low altitude speed record with a souped-up F-104 Starfighter he had built out of scrounged parts. On October 24, 1977, Greenamyer set a FAI Class C-1 Group III 3 km speed record of 1,590.45 kilometers per hour (988.26 mph), which still stands to this day. On February 26, 1978, while preparing an assault on the FAI altitude record using the same aircraft, he was unable to get the landing gear to lock before landing. As it was dangerous to land in this condition, he was forced to eject and the airplane was destroyed. Hasegawa has produced two versions of the Red Baron Starfighter -- one in 1/72 and another in 1/48 scale. There is also an old 1/72 ESCI kit (molded in bright red plastic!!!). For this project, I will be building the 1/72 Hasegawa kit, mostly out-of-the-box. My intent is to finish it in-flight over desert terrain, as on the box illustration. Let's see what Hasewaga has given us: Many of these parts will not be used -- some because they are not applicable to Greenamyer's civilianized Zipper, others because I'll have no need for landing gear. Molding is generally crisp, although there is some light flash on some of the parts: A clear sprue includes the three-part canopy, various lights, and a clear (?) instrument panel: The decal sheet, printed by Cartograph, looks very nice. But, I worry how well the large white markings will fit on the model. As a backup, I might try using the decal sheet to produce a set of masks with my Silhouette cutter (something I've not tried before -- if anyone has some tips for me, I'd really appreciate it!) Construction begins with the cockpit, as usual. The cockpit attaches to the nose gear bay, which is then inserted into the fuselage. I found the instructions a bit vague about where, exactly, the cockpit attaches, and my first attempt put the cockpit too high in the fuselage. The photos below shows how it should be done: Hasegawa thoughtfully provides a panel for the faired-over gun port on the left side of the nose, which fits perfectly: Cockpit in place, the nose halves are glued together: To close off the nose gear bay, I inserted Blu-Tack in the opening to help support the bay doors: The two door pieces are, together, too wide for the bay opening, so I sanded the long edges until they fit, and glued them in place. Not perfect, but nothing a little Bondo won't fix! As I mentioned earlier, the kit's canopy comes in three pieces. I'd much prefer a single-piece canopy for an in-flight model, so I "borrowed" a canopy from Monogram's F-104 kit to see if it will fit: Not too shabby! The Monogram canopy is a little short, and the front corners a bit too wide, but I should be able to make it fit! That's my progress after a couple evening's work. Despite its idiosyncrasies, I'm finding the Hasegawa zipper to be a nice little kit that builds up quickly. Maybe I'll have to get a few more for my stash haha!

When I was very young, building airplane kits using only tube glue and whatever decals were included in the kit (paint? who needs paint?), I remember reading in the newspaper about how the President had revealed the US was flying a super-secret, super-fast spy plane. Not long afterward, Revell released a model of the SR-71, which I bought from my local hobby store and quickly glued together. I built one or two others over the years, my last one probably some time in the 1970s. By then I had graduated to using putty and rattle-can paint, but that's about as far as my skills had progressed. Since getting back into the hobby over the past few months, I've learned a lot of new techniques on this forum and have been pretty happy with my last few builds. So here I am about to try them out on the 1/72 Academy SR-71A Blackbird: Aftermarket items that I plan on using are shown below: My god -- This is a big airplane even in 1/72 scale! Although the parts count is relatively small, I foresee a couple of challenges already. First, the wheel wells (especially for the nose gear) are much too shallow. Fortunately (?) the Eduard PE addresses this, but it involves building a new bay from PE; we'll see how that goes.... The second challenge is the paint job. What??? (you might say), it's all black, what could be easier? Well, black can be notoriously difficult to make look right, and after viewing some photos of the actual aircraft I've found that the Blackbird typically had a heavily weathered appearance. Judge for yourself from the pics below: In my last build (Italeri's A-6E Intruder, see the RFI here: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235027369-a-6e-intruder-italeri-172/ ) I focused on learning how to realistically weather modern US Navy jets, which are in theory gray overall but in reality have many different shades of gray (50? LOL!) due to weathering, sun bleaching, anti-corrosion touch-ups, etc.). I'm thinking I can use these same techniques on the Blackbird, but with black instead of gray. Wish me luck!

I think night fighters are sexy as Hell, especially German night fighters. So, here is what I have planned for my next build: Dragon's DO 335 B-6 Pfeil (Arrow) night fighter: modified to create the wide-span, high-altitude B-8 version using select parts borrowed from this kit: Here is the parts breakdown: I will also be using a small amount of aftermarket, in particular, a fret of PE from Eduard. Two fairly-well detailed engines are provided, but I will pass on those to make this a relatively quick build, and also to ensure I have enough room for the nose weight that will be needed. Thus, I began construction with the cockpit. The seat belts are Eduard "super fabric". Much easier to handle than the more common PE items. The pilot's office, nearly complete. All I need to add are the gun sight and the left side panel engine controls: The radar operator's tiny nook: Dry fit to check for problems: The gap forward of the instrument panel is correct, and will be visible with the canopy in place. With a bit of luck, I will be able to add more detail (instrument backs & cables) as in this photo: That's all for now!

Hello everybody! This is will be my first build in the "Vehicles" forum, so let me introduce myself. I recently returned to modeling after a few decades lapse, but during that time I never stopped adding to my stash. Most of my collection consists of 1/72 aircraft (where I have been posting up until now), but I also have a good number of automobile kits. Mainly 1960s GT and prototype racers (Ferrari, Porsche, Lola, Ford GT, etc.), as well as some Grand Prix and IndyCar kits (something to do with having been a teenager in the 1960s). But my all-time favorite racers from that era are the Chaparrals. Wanting to start off with a relatively simple project, I went through my stash and selected these two kits: Should be a quick and easy build, right? But, not so fast! Let's begin with Arii's 2C. I have read that the body originated as a slot car, to which Arii added a belly pan, wheels & tires, and interior from the Modeler's Chaparral 2D coupe. Looking over the parts, the major weaknesses (in my opinion) are the unrealistic and unauthentic injector velocity tubes, and incorrect tires/wheels. First, the velocity tubes. For the specific car modeled (#66 from the 1965 Nassau race), the engine injection looks like this: This is what's in the kit: Lame! So, it looks like I'll have to scratch up something better. To start with, I found some nice parts I can modify in this Fein-Design kit (another from my stash): But, not wanting to sacrifice those parts, I instead cast duplicates in resin: My success rate for getting a good copy definitely isn't 100%, but after a number of attempts I believe I have enough to populate my engine: I'm not done by any means... I still have to add tubing to the top & bottom of each part, and then install them onto my engine manifold (also "borrowed" from the Fein-Design kit). I'm taking a similar approach with the wheels issue -- duplicate in resin more authentic parts from other Chaparral kits in my stash. Here's what Arii provides. Definitely unlike anything I've ever seen on a Chaparral: My first attempt has been less than satisfactory, as you can see in the pic below. On the left are the 'master' wheels that I used to create a latex mold for my resin duplicates (seen on the right): Notice the resin intrusions between the spokes of my duplicate wheels. These are the result of bubbles in my latex mold: The solution is to make another mold, being careful that no bubbles are trapped between the spokes. Unfortunately, I've used all my latex and must wait for the postman to deliver a fresh supply. One more thing... The tires in the Arii kit look very nice, if you like Goodyears! But, I believe the Chaparrals were running Firestones. Can anyone point me to where I can find an appropriate set of tires? If I can't find any, my fallback is to try sanding off the 'Goodyear' lettering and putting a Firestone decal in its place. I'm sure many other questions will pop up, hopefully someone here will be able to help me sort them out. Follow the racing line! -Bill

In a recent build of the ill-fitting Dragon/DML DO335 Arrow ( https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235034172-luft-46-dornier-do-335-b-8-high-altitude-nightfighter/ ), I totally botched the kit's multi-piece canopy and had to steal a replacement from a Hobby Boss kit in my stash. The Dragon/DML canopy and its Hobby Boss replacement: That left me with a nearly-complete Hobby Boss kit. Not wanting it to go to waste, I decided something had to be done. So here we are with my DO335 Reno Air Racer project! First, I clipped the wings and added a wingtip fence: I also squared off the horizontal and vertical stabs: I extended the height of the vertical stab with plasticard, sanded into shape: The Pfeil is a natural tail-sitter, and plenty of weight is needed to keep its nose on the ground. This is especially true of the Hobby Boss kit. I don't really know how much weight I added, but it's a bunch! A quick test fit shows the modified Arrow's racy lines (haha): Moving on to other details, I thinned down nose cowling's flaps which otherwise were a scale six-inches thick! I also de-fanged this warbird by grinding away the nose cannon. Otherwise it would make for some interesting racing! The kit's nose gear also needed attention. I cut away the molded-in wheel and mud guard, opened up the nose gear fork, and found a replacement wheel in my stash (formerly a F-4 Phantom main gear wheel) I enhanced Hobby Boss's bare-bones cockpit with a new seat, consoles built up from plastic stock, a new instrument panel, and an intrepid pilot from the spares box: With that done, it was time to attack the reason for this project -- the missing canopy. First, I made a resin mold from another DO335 canopy in my stash (yes, I have way too many of these kits): The 335's copious canopy framing isn't appropriate for a racing plane, so I gave everything a generous layer of putty: and after very much work, had a reasonably smooth mold with which I vacuformed a new canopy. Here's the result of my effort: That's as far as I've gotten so far. Not bad for a few evenings' work! Next up: Putting all the pieces together.

Just last February I returned to this hobby after a very, very long absence. To refresh my skills, and learn some new ones, I began by taking on this old kit: and, after a few trials and tribulations, managed to achieve a pretty satisfying result: The Phantom is by far my favorite aircraft, and having finished a few other projects over the past year, I think it is about time to build another Rhino. This time, though, with a more modern kit! I've found I can hardly resist aftermarket items, and have collected a few for this project: The particular aircraft I've chosen to model is a MiG killer from VF-114, the Aardvarks: using a sheet from Afterburner Decals: Assembly begins, as typical, with the cockpit and here I ran into my first problem. Not anything to do with the Academy kit, but instead with Eduard's pre-painted PE. The color Eduard uses for the Phantom's interior gray is completely wrong! Instead of dark gull gray (FS 36321), it is instead a light blue much like RLM 65 Hellblau. In the photo below, I show the kit's cockpit side panel painted with gull gray (top center), Eduard's light blue panel (lower right), and my first attempt at mitigating Eduard's error using a light gray wash (lower left): I finally bit the bullet and, using my smallest brush, re-painted the Eduard PE: Here are some of the PE-enhanced interior items: The cockpit goes together nicely, and with the Eduard detailing looks very good! (The ejection seats are installed only temporarily to check fit) The pilot's office: And accommodations for the guy in back: Checking fit in the fuselage. Note to self: Don't add the bang seats until after the cockpit is installed, else the cockpit won't go in. Here's a problem! Shouldn't be too hard to fix, though. Color choice aside, the Eduard PE for this kit is superb! For example, Academy's ejection seats are very nicely detailed, but the PE adds a whole lot more: I haven't yet decided whether to use the kit's seats (with PE details), or go with a resin aftermarket item. Stay tuned!