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Hi all ! Thanks very much for my acceptance in this group build . As discussed with modelling minion , I'll start posting my WIP today but I actually started my build a few months ago. So , don't think I'm a fast builder since I'm a very slow builder indeed . The model : As usual for most of our kits , let's start with the bang seat . My A-4F his equipped with an Escapac IC-3 ( black in this case ) and I will represent it with it's security on ( pilots call it the headknocker !!!! ) in other words with it's headknocker out ! Details of the seat : The headknocker : Since I'm a DIY adept and , that I'm quite found of some scratch building , I started from the Hasegawa seat . Some more details of the top part of the seat with the security stuff hidden behind the head knocker . That's all for tonight !!! Thank's for passing by . See you soon for the next step .

After 2021 (link) newsletters, the Hasegawa news for January 2022. Source: http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/month/202201/ V.P.

My latest completion the Hasegawa 1/72 McDonnell Douglas RF-4B Phantom II, I used the Reskit 3D printed Engine Intakes on this, a bit of surgery is required for them but I think they are worth the effort, Aires engine exhausts an Eduard Etched brass in the cockpit. I used the kit decals and finished with MRP and Tamiya Lacquers 1/72 McDonnell Douglas RF-4B Phantom II by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr 1/72 McDonnell Douglas RF-4B Phantom II by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr 1/72 McDonnell Douglas RF-4B Phantom II by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr 1/72 McDonnell Douglas RF-4B Phantom II by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr 1/72 McDonnell Douglas RF-4B Phantom II by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr

I opened this kit, eager to make a start on it. Imagine the ugly surprise when I checked the sprues and found the main gear struts to be broken. I repaired then with UHU Plast and CA. Colours used came from the Revell Aqua range. They were 40 Blacl Green, 91 Steel, 59 Duck Egg Blue, 15 Matt Yellow, 48 Sea Green, 08 Matt Black. Naoshi Kanno was one of the aces of the 343 Naval Air Group. He graduated flight school in 1943 and waa posted to this unit soon after. During his service with the 343rd, he would achieve 25 kills. Kanno disappeared on August 1st 1945 near Kyushu, Japan, while on a mission to intercept B-24 bombers escorted by P-51 Mustangs. He was posthumously promoted to Lieutenant. Anyway, here are the photos.

Back in 1990 when I was made redundant for the first time I had a bit of spare cash so bought a few kits including this. It has been in my stash ever since though apparently at some time I opened one of the bags and painted the 22 Rockeyes in OD - the yellow stripes will no doubt be a pain but at least it has them - the original version must have just pre-dated their weapons sets I guess which is good as I would have had to buy four of set II which would have cost at least as much as the ruddy kit, though having said they do not provide any air to air missiles and refer to the weapons sets for them - strange! The kit dates back to 1984 and was a modified release of Hasegawa's original F-15A or maybe their later C, but in 1988 they changed the parts and that is the boxing I have. I built the C I bought at the same time a couple of years back and it still has the early style of exhaust nozzles with the outer casing, but this has been modified to the later "exposed" type which look like they could be a bit of a fiddle to build - as Tim is building the very same kit I will be interested to see how he gets along with them! I expect this will be an OOB job, but I have said that many times before then changed my mind!. Pete

This will be my entry for the 'special schemes' section of this GB. The Hasegawa kit looks pretty nice in the box, it's a special edition that gives you 2 kits and the decals for both the blue and yellow aircraft. I will be doing the blue one and maybe if there is time the yellow.

This is my entry for this group build. It will be an Israeli F15C from the Hasegawa kit that I bought about 1988-9. The kit decal sheet is for USAF aircraft, but I have an old Cutting Edge decal, which also details the airframe differences and an equally old Microscale decal sheet for the stencils, which on the Israeli aircraft were largely unchanged with just a few in Hebrew. As was typical for Hasegawa kits of the period, there are no weapons, and so these have been separately sourced as shown. The Pythons will need new pylons, which I think are going to be scratch built. There is a Dream model etch set that will tart up the cockpit and ejector seat quite nicely. Been on my to-do list for a while, and now seems a good time.

I'll be attempting to do justice to this kit, once the build gets underway: I really like the look of the Japanese graphics, let's hope the decals work well! It will be a straight OOB build (seems to have some resin exhaust nozzles), with the addition of some paint masks.

Two Hasegawas for the price of one. I've just finished building two 1/72 Hasegawa kits, the Kyushu J7W1Shinden and the Ki-44 Tojo. Both nice builds, barely any fit issues, though the Ki-44 needed a little more filler that I am used to with Hasegawa kits. Both were OOB, though I used peewit or dead design canopy masks, eduard seat belts, little lenses lamps for the nav lights and for the Ki-44 a Yahu instrument panel. Paints were Tamiya and Mr Colour, with Halfords black primer rattle can. The J7W1 is a most interesting plane, a pusher design with canards, but only ever flew as a prototype. It does have a very large 6 blade propellor, which if the stalky tricycle gear, canards and rear location of the engine didn't make you think hmmm, that's interesting, I suppose the propellor would. The plane itself is also quite large. Effectively, straight out of the box, plenty of nose weight, brush painted, using the paint scheme from the box for the kit. Here' tis. The other one of the Hasegawa pair is the 1.72 Ki-44, a quite stubby little plane, but this one was most definitely not painted in a scheme from the kit box. While checking my only reference on Japanese planes of the pacific war, by Rene Franrillon, I came across a profile of the Tojo; Intrigued, I thought I'll do this scheme, as I'd never seen anything before to suggest that Japanese night fighters were painted all black. Logic suggests they ought to have been, and surely the effectiveness of the black overall scheme somewhat reduced by the white bands for the hinomarus. While I know where the errors are, and anyone with experience of Japanese aircraft will see them, for once, I don't think I've done a bad job. I strayed Mr Colour White primer for the bands, then brush painted over two coats of Tamiya flat white for the bands, then used Tamiya flexible tape for masking the bands, and was absurdly pleased with myself that apart from a couple of tiny dots, there was no bleed of black onto the white. The yellow leading edge bands were a little awkward to mask up, but I managed, and I traced the red tail flash from the profile onto tamiya yellow tape and that didn't come out too badly. Outside of the yahu i/p, eduard seatbelts and dead design canopy masks, I used some albion alloys slide fit brass tube for the pitot, as the moulded on pitot I inadvertently broke off. Side by side, the difference in size of the Shinden and the Tojo is obvious.

Having finished a Revell FAA F4U (bloody over-complicated thing!) and my Sword Gannet, I took a few weeks off to contemplate what was next. Thought I'd take longer to think about it, but I went up to have a tidy of the 'bench' and whilst I was there had a look at the stash. Narrowed down to the following candidates.. I was very close to doing the lifeboat but the recent Top Gun hype has put me in a bit of a US Navy mood, so the Phantom won out in the end. That poor Lightning, it keeps getting so close to the top of the pile, only to be cruelly denied. Maybe next time.. Rather than the Sundowners on the front, I'm doing this as one of the alternative schemes, inspired by the lovely, well thumbed, volume Such a good book! Obligatory sprue shot (although I've hidden most of it!). I'd shied away from this for a while because I really didn't fancy painting the gloss white undersides. Now I have an airbrush I don't have that excuse. This will be a test, though, as I've so far struggled to get decent gloss finishes with the airbrush. Have tried pledge and Mr Color GX112 but I never get the high gloss (and smooth) finish that I really want. Always ends up closer to Satin and a little rough feeling. Any tips most welcome! Not much achieved so far, just a few bits painted. Since the white and grey is hard to brush I'm going to break with tradition and spray the cockpit, wheel wells, intakes, drop tanks etc. I don't normally get the airbrush out for small things as I spend more time cleaning it that actually painting, but I think its necessary this time.. Wish me luck! Al.

#20/2022 After the 109 Emil, here´s my dad´s second Luftwaffe subject this year. Hasegawa kit, which comes with an early style and for this version wrongly shaped ETC, took a correct one from an older limited Hasegawa 190 kit. Also this kit has only the late style wheels, took spoked ones from the sparesbox. Eduard seatbelt used, EZ Line for the antenna wires. Fuselage decals are leftovers from the ProModeler 190G-2/3. The cross and triangle applied on the left side were slightly damaged, had to do some paint touch ups. Camo done with MRP RLM74/75/76. For my dad the RLM74 was too much greenish, therefore he mixed it with some more grey. Brake lines done with plastic rods and lead wire, landing gear retraction wire with fishing line. Build thread here https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235113852-mickey-mouse148-focke-wulf-fw190a-5u3-iisg1/ Model shows a 6.Staffel, II. Gruppe, Schlachtgeschwader 1, in Poland around January 1943. DSC_0001 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0002 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0003 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0004 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0005 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0006 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0007 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0008 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0009 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0010 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0011 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0012 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0013 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0014 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0015 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0016 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0017 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0018 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0019 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0020 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0021 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0022 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr

"Never merge with a Squalo." - Note found on the NATO TLP (Tactical Leadership Programme) bulletin board at Albacete In the 1980's, Italy decided to begin replacing the venerable F-104, and to its credit, it required three aircraft to do so: Tornado for strike, AMX for light attack, and the F-20 as an interceptor. Called 'Squalo' (shark) by its pilots, the F-20 protected NATO's southern flank for two and a half decades while quickly gaining a reputation for dogfighting prowess among allied air forces. This build represents an F-20M in a commemorative paint scheme and typical QRA configuration in its final year of service before being replaced with the Typhoon.

Hi all, Here's the latest in my Fleet Air Arm jet collection, Hasegawa's aging 1/48 Phantom FG1 with plenty of modifications. This build took six months and there were plenty of additions; Quickboost resin ejection seats, with the ejection handles made from 0.3mm wire Alleycat seamless intakes Master pitot tube and AoA indicator Eduard Brassin Sidewinders and Sparrows ResKit wheels Xtradecal Phantom FG1 decals and stencils The following improvements were made to the kit; Blemishes in the clear parts removed, polished and treated with Klear CAD modelled and 3D printed fuel tanks (the kit ones weren't great) Some minor detail added to the cockpit (gauges and wires) This was my first attempt at completely airbrushing a I used vallejo acrylic primer and Hataka red line Extra Dark Sea Grey for the top, beneath, I started off using Hataka red line white, but soon switched to Tamiya acrylics. The red and white tail decal was the wrong size, so that is airburshed too, the omega symbol was carefully cut out from the decal sheet and applied. Weathering was done using Mig Panel Line Wash as well as oils for some staining underneath. Varnished with Winsor & Newton Galleria Satin acrylic. Molotow liquid chrome was used for the chromed oleos, and this gives a much more realistic finish than using paint - the metallic paint to the aft of the fuselage is Mig's Bare Metal acrylic collection - very chuffed with these. I'm really pleased with this build, it was rather challenging and took quite a few months - I've learnt an awful lot about airbrushing and various weathering techniques - it really does look incredible in my display case with the rest of my Fleet Air Arm jets (Attacker, Sea Hawk, Sea Venom, Sea Vixen and Scimitar). I'm excited about having the Ark Royal Phantom and Buccaneer pairing complete in a few more months.... Thanks for looking, now on to my new Airfix Buccaneer Cheers Ben

This kit, bought from Kit Rescue at IPMS Avon show earlier this year, costing £10.

After a long pause, finally time for a new 190. Gonna do one of the early Jabos with the Mickey Mouse emblem.

Greetings from Italy. Just finished the Hobby 2000 (Hasegawa) Henschel Hs 129, a nice and enjoyable kit. The built is basically OOB. I just cut away control surfaces and flaps plus a bit of Aftermarket using Eduard internals and seatbelts. Instead of the usual Tamiya colours, this time I decided to go for Gunze and I have to say they are excellent stuff. Enjoy pictures and please feel free to comment. Cheers Andy

Time to jump in! Due to work/illness/travel/life/winter I haven't done much modelling of late, so this should be a good motivation booster, and hopefully a worthy (if modest) contribution to the GB. This is a really neat little kit. Mine has a little bit of flash, but looks like it will build up really nicely. I'll do it out of the box, hoping for a relatively quick, fun build. My subject will be an Okinawa-based 207 Squadron jet, wearing a (trial?) blue and grey air superiority scheme from circa 1984, using the kit decals. Colour pic here. Something I learned doing some reading on the weekend, 207 Sqn's tail markings featured the Southern Cross, with Okinawa the only place in Japan from where it is visible. (Wikipedia says the squadron disbanded in 1986 with the retirement of the F-104J.) Few aircraft could fly faster and higher than the aptly-named Starfighter, making it perfectly-suited for service with the JASDF, which almost uniquely among F-104 operators used the type largely as an interceptor - just as Kelly Johnson intended. My build won't set any speed or time to climb records, but it should be fun! Gerard

I had 2 Hasegawa/Revell 1/48th Phantom FGR.2 kits. I just completed the Revell kit as a green/gray camo jet with 23 Squadron circa 1975. Next up is another FGR.2 as a Falklands-deployed 23 Sqd jet in the later gray camo. I bought the kits second hand, one of which included a lot of aftermarket sets. Included were the Aires FGR.2 cockpit set, Aires engine nozzle set, Aires RAF Phantom wheel set, a True Details SUU-23 gun pod, and a set of Airdoc RAF Phantoms in Germany decal set. For this kit I plan on using the cockpit, nozzles, and wheels. The kit instructions are for the original boxing I guess, but the kit box is a newer release. I will use the XtraDecals 23 Squadron History decals for a Falklands FGR.2. Kits decals for the stencils. On these kits, one of the first things that I do is glue the underwing cover plates into the holes where the FG.1 catapult hooks would go. Much easier to align them from the back side. I then glue the wing top pieces on. I also glued the nose cone, external fuel tanks, and the kit SUU-23 gun pod together. The True Details gun pod has some nice features, but the vent slots near the nose were messed up, looking kind of rough. There are a couple of sink marks on the kit pod, but they will be easy to deal with. This is the first time I will try to cram the Aires cockpit set into a kit fuselage. I've searched the web for hints and clues on how to make this work and have found some good advice. First off was to cut the main parts from their mold blocks. Circled in red is the air refueling door, also glued in place. One requirement for the Aires cockpit is to remove all interior fuselage molded on detail and the air refueling probe well bump on the inside of the right rear cockpit sidewall. Once removed, with a Dremel tool sanding bit, I also glued the outer door for the AAR probe from the inside. In this kit, since it was pre-owned, many parts were removed from the sprues, or the sprues were cut down. The AAR door was attached to a part of the sprue, but was otherwise loose in the box. At some point it got bent so has a small section that sits proud of the fuselage side. Easy enough to sand it flush later. This will be a slow starter with the cockpit. Ugh.

Finished this kit yesterday. The model came with bonus resin tyres from Hasegawa, which also came with the regular plastic ones. I used Revell Aqua colours and several brushes to complete this aircraft. The original kit decals were completely unsuable, cracked beyond redemption. Luckily I was able to count from my spares box to complete this paint job.

Hello all, After almost 6 months of work, we finally finished our SBD-3 Dauntlesses. This was a group build with my dad, who built the aircraft flown by Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky, I built the aircraft flown by Richard Halsey Best “B1”. We used the 1/72 Hasegawa kits that were re-boxed by Hobby 2000. We replaced the dive brakes with Eduard photo-etched and added detail to the cockpit using the Eduard set too. My kit is pretty much out of the box; to see if it would add any value my dad did some other modifications to his kit: he replaced the kit canopy with a RobTaurus vac-form canopy, scratch-built oil coolers and machine guns, model master gun barrels, photo-etched bomb racks, Brassin bombs, scratch-built bombing view window, reskit modified resin wheels (smoothed out) and scratch-built window air flow deflectors. Both kits were painted with AK real colors acrylics (the underside colour was corrected). The decals are a mix of the ones from the Hobby 2000 reboxing, Aeromaster decals and some other spares. We had a lot of fun building the dauntlesses (but it was quite complex), so we hope you enjoy looking at them. Comments welcome! Underside of McCluscky's aircraft. Underside of Best's aircraft. Last picture.

#1/2022 When my dad started the Aleutian P-38 last year, I thought wouldn´t it be nice if it had some company? So he built a P-40K. Sadly 1/48 decals for this theatre are rare and we didn´t want to do a usual tigerhead scheme. Finally found a nice scheme from DK Decals. Used the Hasegawa kit, EZ line for brake lines and antenna wires, seatbelts done with decals from the sparesbox, block tread tires from Ultracast. Had some problems attaching the rear windows. As most of the time my dad tried it first with Micro Klear. To avoid a visible bead, he only applied it sparsely. Therefore the windows fell out again. the he used plastic glue, which ate into the surface. Removed the windows again, sanded and polished them and tried it again with Micro Klear. Also had to do some repainting. All in all the rear window area doesn´t look that nice now. Painted the camo with Tamiya XF-53 Neutral Grey and a selfmixed olive. The DuPont painted replacement parts are done with AK Real Color Dark Earth and Dark Green. Build thread here https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235101865-aleutian-tiger-not148-curtiss-p-40k-warhawk-18th-fs343rd-fg-usaaf/ Model shows an aircraft of 18th FS/343rd FG, based on Amchitka Island/Aleutians in 1943 DSC_0001 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0001 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0003 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0004 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0005 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0006 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0007 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0008 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0009 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0010 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0011 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0012 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0029 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0013 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0014 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0015 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0002 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0003 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0030 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0018 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0019 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0021 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0023 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0024 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0025 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0026 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0027 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0028 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr

Another Phantom from me, a Hasegawa 1/72 F-4S Phantom II, Eduard etched brass used in the cockpit but otherwise finished OOB and using the kit decals which were quite thick and didn't want to settle, weapons came from the spares box, finished with MRP and Tamiya paints. 1/72 McDonnell Douglas F-4S Phantom II by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr 1/72 McDonnell Douglas F-4S Phantom II by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr 1/72 McDonnell Douglas F-4S Phantom II by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr 1/72 McDonnell Douglas F-4S Phantom II by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr 1/72 McDonnell Douglas F-4S Phantom II by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr Enjoy.

Hi all, built this as part of the F-5 STGB in a what-if ROCAF scheme. Decals are from Xtradecal, they're low-vis and are unfortunately lost somewhat in the grey scheme but the kit itself is fantastic. No issues with fit whatsoever and a nice level of detail for a small 1/72 kit, the ladders especially are a nice feature. And a few with my old HB F-5E kit in a ROCAF scheme... Thanks for looking in & check out the GB there's some fantastic builds going on!

Now that my USS Olympia build is winding down it's time for an airplane again. I grew up close to a Norwegian Air Force base housing the RNoAF 333sqdn P-3s, Hence I've always had a strong affinity for this plane. On Sep 13th 1987 one of the units P-3s collided with an Su-27 Flanker. This P-3 will be the subject of this build. The plane The incident as depicted on the boxart for a Trumpeter Flanker, incidentally my next build to join the P-3 on the shelf... The kit Got some aftermarket sets to add some detail. Planning on the plane being parked with the rear entry door closed but ladder attached, flaps down and bomb bay doors open. In addition I plan on recreating the damage to the props. I'll have the affected prop feathered with the engine covers open. Since I'm not planning on using the rear interior I'll use seats in the CMR set up in the cockpit instead. Well, at least all that is the plan...we'll see how it actually turns out. Ken

I can finally call this build completed. A few problems with the decals being brittle and breaking when sliding them into the model, but everything turned out ok in the end.