DocRob

The big bat flexes it´s wings. Today, I finished rigging the wings and I´m happy to have that behind me. It was not overly difficult on the outer wings, but fiddly with lots of scissors and tweezers involved, always adjusting the light and try not to knock off or scratch parts. I loosely attached the rudder, but not the elevators. The tail will be last, as until now, it´s easy to set the plane onto some foam, bottom up. With about 60 cm of wingspan the bat starts to handle a bit awkward and it´s relatively heave, luckily quite robust. It´s hard to see on the pics, but the white rudder has spar markings visible. I used 1mm masking tape over the spars, when I sprayed the tinted varnished over the whole airframe. Cheers Rob

Thank you Kevin, the brown looks good to my eye, but is not absolutely correct. As it shows stronger on the pics, I won´t touch it up with marker, though. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, messing around with lots of tweezers and scissors cost it´s tributes, but I repaired a lot of the issues. The trailing edges, I will leave to the end and hope for a good idea. I may cut the loose decal fragments with a sharp blade and touch up with fitting paint. The Extra Thin dot got decaled over with fitting pattern. WNW supplied some spare decals luckily. Cheers Rob

If the US Air Force had known.... Cheers Rob

One side done . I finished the rigging with pulling all lines taught and add a drop of CA to the anchor points to secure everything. This part of rigging was much easier, than the nacelles and inner rigging. I had to fabricate new turnbuckle tubes, which is not the most exciting work, but now, I have enough for side number two. Cheers Rob

Like mentioned in the WIP, a truly fantastic outcome Peter. The Tomcat not only shows your usual quality finish, but the vivid scheme is absolutely beautiful. Makes me want to crack my -D box, but nooooo, these stencils . Cheers Rob

Thank you Pete, rigging the wings is relatively easy, like I hoped for. The mid area was far more complicated. I´m also happy, that wing and struts alignment worked so far, always critical with these type of builds. Unfortunately, the amount of repairs and touch ups raises. I knocked off some of the bombs and other parts, but nothing too hard to repair, but I have a little spill of Tamiya extra thin, which immediately ate through clear coat and decal. I will patch that with decal later, when rigging is finished. It´s not so easy to glue in struts with tensioned wings, without spilling. The completely decal covered surface is very fragile and I have to do something about the trailing edges, where the camo decals are a bit torn in places. Cheers Rob

Cute little bugger. The drybrushing of the cockpit let the detail pop. The camo looks great too. Cheers Rob

There is a lot of work involved, Carl, but in the end you will have a really unique F-15X. Cheers Rob

Thank you Carl, I´m indeed aware of the two side collets of the Tamiya pin vises. Mine took hold of a 0,3 mm drill bit a while ago, but seemed to be worn out a bit due to constant use of tiny drill bits. Cheers Rob

Nice haul, Paul, like Peter, I´m interested into the quality of the DSPIAE drill vise. I have the Tamiya one, not bad, but yesterday, I tried to hold a 0,3 mm bit with it and couldn´t tighten it properly. A 0,4mm bit worked. I once built a Prague Uprising Hetzer from Academy, the `B´ version on your sheet. It was a nice little kit and looked different. Cheers Rob

Today, I pre rigged one wing in about four hours, not too bad. First, I fitted all the lines to the eyelets, like shown above for the entire lower wing. Then I added the struts, where the inner ones had eyelets in their connecting stubs, which were also pre fitted with fishing line. With a pulling test, I made sure, all connections were ok. This is a step, where you want to make proper preparations, as mounting on the second side, the upper wing is more difficult, due to space limitations. I also made sure, that all the struts fit completely into the wing holes. In the next step, I pushed the lower wing onto it´s connecting tab, but still without glue and carefully slid the upper wing onto it´s tab, without breaking the struts. When everything aligned correctly, I glued the wings and upper strut connections in place. Luckily the fit is very good. Then I turned the AEG onto it´s upper wing and made the same loop and tubes like before with the upper wing eyelets. This is, where I am now. The fishing line isn´t pulled taut and CA secured for now, as this will be done in one flush, to maintain taut lines in the correct positions throughout. Cheers Rob

Ok, there was a lot of talk about tubes, loops, eyelets, ... through the last steps of the build, so I thought, it might be helpful to explain my rigging process. I cut my ´turnbuckles´ from aluminum tube with the inner diameter of 0,3 mm, the outer 0,5 mm with a length of about 3mm. I roll a fresh blade over the tube until it splits. You don´t want to run into trouble with burr, later when you try to loop the fishing line through in the middle of a fragile spider web, so I use a 0,5 mm drill bit to remove the burr, holding the tube with a reverse action tweezer. I glued the eyelets into pre drilled holes into the wing, like here around one strut and for the ailerons with CA. I use Gaspatch eyelets for the structural rigging and Bob´s buckles eyelets, which are finer for steering lines. I orientate the eyelets for the easiest possible rigging. Maxima Chameleon fishing line is the weapon of choice, the brownish color looks ok to me and it´s monofilament. Now it gets serious, using one piece of tube onto the line and pass it through the eyelet. With tweezers, I pick up the end of the thread and bend it back to the tube and fiddle it through the tube for a second pass. Finally, I apply a drop of CA to near to the eyelet and push the tube onto it, holding the fishing line into it´s designated direction and cut the protruding rest with a scissor. Cheers Rob

An absolute stunner, Peter, from nose cone to burner cans. Everything looks so real on one hand and on the other, like made to please the eye, fantastic. Cheers Rob

Poco a poco, I still have to figure, how to get a magnetic tumble polisher to my island. Not so easy unfortunately, but this helps a lot with cleaning and refining the metal parts. Cheers Rob

I´ve seen the the FW16 on the MFH site. I could be tempted, but never liked the Williams too much. There is also a standing Senna figure included into the set. I have until the seventh of may to decide. Cheers Rob

Nice work on the seats and cockpit, Chris. The stenciling seems to be pure madness, I still have nightmares from my 1/48 Kai Phantom build. Hopefully the quality of the stencil decals is good and you have no silvering problems. Thorough prep work, like Peter mentioned is the key. Cheers Rob

Isn´t that called the Angel Share? Make it a double to counter evaporation. Cheers Rob

I got a melody in my head, whistled, taa, taa, ta, ta, taaa,.... Cheers Rob

Good to see you back on the Mossie, Bill. Cockpit and engines look beautiful. Seems to be a demanding kit with all these detailed sub assemblies. Someday, I will start mine. Cheers Rob

No probs with the intakes, Carl ? Cheers Rob

The Sparviero came out beautiful, you nailed the delicate camouflage, Kriss. I recently bought the `new´ Eduard boxing, which I hopefully start soon. Cheers Rob

Thank you for your sympathy, Hubert, mine will be a Sazerac or a Remember the Maine, just love the combination of rye whiskey and absinth. Cheers (literally) Rob

Today my third Model Factory Hiro kit arrived, a 1968 Ferrari 312. I decided against the same car with wings, because I like the undisturbed view at the beautiful 12 cylinder engine. Before I received the kit, I thought about riveting the whole body with tiny resin rivets, but after inspecting the resin part, decided against, as there are so many so close to each other, I would fear for the stability of the body. I think, this will be my first MFH building venture, to get a grip for the materials, specially white metal. I try to get a magnetic tumbler polisher to my place at the world, but until now without success. Also my Proxxon drill stand arrived, which will be a nice ´third´ hand for metal polishing and of course drilling with my trusted old Proxxon drilling machine. Cheers Rob

Got the center section rigging done. @HubertB, all the rigging threads are taut, sweet dreams . It was not easy to fiddle everything in place with different tweezers, using magnifiers, backlight and a lot of care not to break anything. Now I have to stretch my back and help myself to a nice stiff cocktail. After testing the stability of the center section, I decided, I could take a peek with the outer wings inserted. She´s a big bat. Somehow the wings disturb the view onto the more interesting middle section, but I will build her with complete wings anyway. Cut away outer wings is scheduled for my Felixstowe maintenance build. Cheers Rob