DocRob

@Peterpools: This is for you, Peter, the rudder with the light tinted varnish on top. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, like I said before, rigging the wings was relatively easy and trouble free. Good preparation and a logical sequence is the key. The rudder seems to be a victim of light metering. The whole bat is dark as is the background and I had to tick the exposure up a bit. The rudder was sprayed white, than I applied 1mm wide Kabuki tape onto the spars and used a green tinted varnish over the whole plane, including the rudder, leaving the ´spars´ lighter than the rest. Cheers Rob

This is absolutely fantastic, Gus. The camo looks great, but what about the tail? Cheers Rob

I saw that info at their web site too, Peter. I will order my set soon and leave no chance for the scalpers. Cheers Rob

I haven´t used many of the special car paints, but have bought from Zero Paints, StreetBlister, Gravity and Number Five, like in this case. I hope they work fine. My car model supplier claims, Number Five is very good and normally they are available. Zero Paints, which are very good are on demand, which means some weeks of waiting along with the other ordered goods. Cheers Rob

Your cockpit looks nice and you blended the Quinta bits in very well, Peter. I plan to do a Razorback soon as well and already have the kit, but still have to purchase decals. This is what I am planning: Cheers Rob

Today, I received a packet full of car goodies. Carbon decals for the innards of my Tamiya Sauber Mercedes C9 from Studio 27 along with full body carbon decals for the same car from Scale Motorsport. I can´t get cured from the ´decal it completely´ plague. There is an antenna for my paused McLaren MP4/6 and colors from Number Five for different projects. Pink primer and GTO red for my MFH Ferrari, three jars of Cobra Blue for my MFH LM Cobra, WRC Dark Blue for my Crocker motorcycle and finally Spiderman red and blue metallic for my Yamaha superbike, also completely decaled with spider web. The cute Fiat 500 will serve for a conversion... ... for this tiny hill climber, which will be soon released by KMP Cheers Rob

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