Mikester

Santa hooked me up with the new airbrush I've been wanting and a new airbrush stand.

Beautiful!

The A/M companies have not been real big on supporting correction sets for Trumpeter. this one may be another example, I plan on getting this one, maybe add some thin plastic strips to close up the exhaust outlets a bit and sand the nose a to remove as much curvature a possible? How much difference between the E & F cockpit? Maybe adapt the E set for the Hasegawa kit to this one?

Really nice work!

Excellent, Dave!

Nice to see some discussion about a Trumpeter kit without all the hyperbole you see on some other sites! Overall, looks really good, I'm in. Are these markings appropriate for this kit?

Andrew, I'm in complete agreement with Drifter here: 2. Active Member is defined as anyone who has contributed to LSM by posting to LSM within the last calender year. I'm open to interpretation on this depending on Admin/Mod feedback, as we didn't really discuss this point. The whole idea here is to promote a feeling of Christmas Spirit and maybe get people posting more. So this may change based upon feedback. Being a member and being an active member of the forum are two different things entirely. My hope is that you'll become an active, contributing member here in 2019 and be eligible for next year's raffle but unfortunately we'll have to exclude you from the 2018 event.

$3.29 a gallon today, this is cheap for California....

Never, and his successor will be worse.

Most definitely! I've got a set of G-Factor gear, this one will have a about 3 pounds of resin tacked on by the time I'm done.

Really looking good, Rob. Love the cockpit work!

Well I haven't been posting much but I've been plugging along on A-4. Just about ready for some Mr. Surfacer 1500 Black. I had more trouble with the cowl on this one than the last one I built, with all the filling and sanding I did I decided to just go with some raised detail rather than trying to re-scribe it. I used Archer raised panel line decals, don't ask me why because just using some stretched sprue would have probably been easier. Also used some piano hinge decals since there was no detail on this part of the kit and there's some HGW raised rivets on the cowl as well. I replaced the rear control surfaces with some resin bits from the Montex set, allowing me to position them outside of the neutral pose. Still need to build an antenna mast and smooth out the elevators join but it's getting there.

I've been making sporadic headway on this. Truthfully it's just so big and with all the work that goes into into integrating the resin pieces into the kit I have a tendency to just lose interest and move on to something else. But, what I have done...there's a bank of instrument dials on the starboard side of the cockpit that I was never happy with so I redid these with some MDC decals and PE bezels, looks much better. Just about ready for the forward canopy section to be installed. I won't be using the vacuform canopy supplied in the conversion kit. I'm just going to go with the kit canopy with some Kristal Klear over the MG porthole. Not 100% accurate but I think it will look much better. The wings and nacelles are the biggest challenge of the conversion. The resin nacelles are big and heavy and I want to make sure they stay put once secured. I'm considering drilling holes in the nacelle and the mount and inserting brass rod to help support the weight, probably need to do some more thinning with the Dremel too to remove some of the excess and lighten them up. Still a lot of sanding and smoothing to go. Once I get over the wings I anticipate things moving along much faster.

That zimmerit work is off the hook!

I think a lot of people have abandoned traditional forums like this one for FB. It's convenient, we're fortunate to have direct hosting of photos here but many sites don't. I've talked to a couple of former regulars here who left their old regular forums simply due to the fact that they were tired of dealing with 2nd party photo hosting and didn't want be bothered with it. I still think these forums have a lot more to offer to serious modelers but people who may not take things as seriously find FB a good alternative.

I was wondering the same thing. Still see him on FB from time to time but he hasn't been here in over a year.

Came out great, John!

Daaaamn!

Cool project and welcome to LSM!

Ditched my iPhone for Galaxy S9 Note, awesome phone, love it!

AC! My wife's hometown!

Looking good, Peter!

I actually enjoyed doing my Trumpeter P-40, just watch the upper cowl it's a little tricky. Some aftermarket exhausts would be nice for it.