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Hi there I started this kit back in the summer and I would like to share some of my work with you. The build started a bit back to front by glueing the fin to the fuselage. The rason for this was to get the nose weight sorted before the fuselage haves were glued together. The joint was strengthened by square sections of Evergreen plastic rod. Weight was added under the cockpit floor. With the wings and tailplanes taped together the balance was checked and it was found to be a tail sitter. The cockpit area was built and painted while some ideas were tried out. Side cosoles were made for both pilots and some red handles fitted to the centre console. The nose weight solution was found by scratch building a small container to fill the space under the forward upper turret. There are very few pictures of this assembly. Most pictures of restored and the single flying B-29 have the working parts of this turret removed beacause it occupies a large volume behind the flight decl. Using the Haynes Manual for the B-29 some plastic card was assembled and glued together to replicate the upper turret workings. This was painted black and with 2 silver stripes to represent the ammuntion boxes. On completion it was filled with fishing weights and the plane now was nose heavy. In place with the nose compartment. Some tabs were added inside the fuselage upper joint to avoid the joint splitting during the sanding and polishing stages later. The fuselage was glued together and some packing added around the edges of where the canopy was to be added. A few builds I have seen show the caopy to fuselage join and I wanted to eliminate that. The B-29 also has engraved panel lines above the cockpit for the B-50 that Academy sell using the same moulds. These lines were filled in. The pictures below show the results and how little of the upper nose turret weight compartment can be seen - basically nothing. These pictures also show the scratch built gunsight for the Bombardier stored on the Starboard side above the bomsight. Now fast forward a few months spent assembling the airframe, priming and polishing before painting with Alclad. The model was primed with Tamiya Black gloss laquer decanted from a spray can after first being primed with Tamiya grey primer to detect all the seams. After the black was left for 7 days it was polished and defects corrected followed by another 7 day wait. The wing centre section was painted with Alclad White Aluminium. The rudder, elevators and ailerons were painted with Alclad Aluminium. The rest of the airframe was painted with Polished Aluminium. First the complete undersurface was painted and lft for a week. To avoid the Alclad being lifted by handling the kit, the undercarriage and all doors were fitted at this time as well as the True Details weighted wheels. The plane was turned over and the upper surface painted with Polished Aluminium after the antenna’s were added. These were attached using Super glue which was allowed to dry and de-gas for a week with just the black gloss primer in place. I have found the super glue causes Alcled to go white so the glueing was done before the Alclad. Handling was not easy but at least the underside was complete and the model was standing on its wheels at this time. A thin coat of Alclad Chome was also misted over the model to give it a bit more of a shine. The decals were added and this is how it looked. I was really happy with the Rocketeer decals, the carrier film disappears completely. More to follow Regards Toby

Hi there I have been planning this build for a long time. MarkSH and The Real Mr Ed have privided the inspiration to get started. The NF-104A was built as a high altitude trainer for X-15 pilots even though only Pete Knight flew both planes. Chuck Yeager made an attempt on the world alitude record but experienced problems and crashed. The main chamges the the stabd Starfighter were: Rocket engine in the tail for additional altitude Reaction control thrusters in nose and wing tips Extended wing tips Extended intake spikes 7 ft long instrument boom on the nose Here is the start of the surgery on the tail for the rocket engine and the inlet spike extensios are already in place. The rocket engine was made from a Starfighter wing fuel tank just like MarkSH used in his NF-104A build a couple or years back in the Starfighter STGB. 2 mm of plastic card was used to increase the width. The rocket exhaust came from a Revell 1/144 Starfighter main engine exhausr. 2 lengths of Albion Alloy brass tubing was used to create the inlets. The wing tip extensions came from the wings of the same Revell 1/144 Starfighter that gave up its engine. The long instrument boom was a 1/72 Master B-58 Hustler nose probe. This was built into the nose using Milliput to keep it in place. It has been found to be very solid. Here is the assembled fueslage complete with the rocket engine. A simple jig was made to get the RCS nozzles in the right position along and around the nose cone. This will be a shiny NMF build using Alclad Polished Aluminium. Learning from The Real Mr Ed, the wings will be left off until the Alclad is done. The last few weeks have been spent getting a smooth black shiny undercoat in place. Some long curing time has slowed things down abit so the next pictures will be coming soon. Regards Toby

Here is my model of the F-15 Streak Eagle Time to Height record holder. This started life as the Hasegawa set with the Streak Eagle nose probe and decals in the box. A few changes were made to the set as it was built to be a closer replica to the record holder in addition to using the extended nose probe from the kit. These changes were: 1. Over the shoulder video camera added behind ejection seat port side to view the instrument panel. 2. Additional antenna fitted under the canopy. 3. Front nose gear door fiited in the open position when on the ground. This was done because the plane accelerated so fast that the gear doors did not have enough time to cycle from closed to open and then closed when taking off. 4 HUD removed. 5. Cannon opening closed off. 6. Main air brake reduced in size. Other than that, all that needed to be done was complete the build and paint it. The Hasegawa set comes with a full decal set for this plane with the old off white colour Hasegawa used to have. The colour guide in the instructions was all black and white so something had to be done. These are lots of pictures out there of the Streak Eagle and they all show different colous for the same panel. I guess this is to do with the relative position of the sun. Microscale’s Streak Eagle decal set was bought was well. The decals were ‘white’ where they should be as well as thin. The placement guide was still in black and white though. Rocketeer decals bought out a decal set for this kit that came with a colour guide in colour that made sense when looking at the internet images. This set was used for the build and the painting guide. I am a big fan of Alclad 2 for NMF finishes so some experimenting was done. A couple of good things about Alclad that came in handy here is that you can mix the colours in your airbrush, and change the tone of a colour by misting a different colur over the top of it. Some experimentation was carried out as shown below. Copper, Brass, Pale Burnt Metal, Titanium Gold, Magnesium, Aluminium, Dark Aluminium and Jet Exhaust are some of the shades used, mixed and misted. Anyway, here is the plane in its multi coloured glory. There were about 15 different colours, mixes or mists used during the build. The Rocketeer decals were fantastic. Regards Toby