DocRob

That fit looks really bad, Peter. Like the others mentioned, I would fit some styrene under the canopy, but it looks, as it is too wide also. If so you might consider cutting it in the middle with a razor saw. Luckily the top part will be painted and leaves you some liberty for filling gaps. Cheers Rob

Nice little discus thingy, Carl. Liked the movies as a kid, even though, they were not top notch, they possessed a likely unintentional humor. Cheers Rob

I finished the cockpit tub today. You have to be faithful, that a zillion of contact points fit, where they should into the fuselage and to the three deck parts. I test fitted a lot, checked again with the manual, but praise to WNW, the fit is excellent. The seat belts were added, after I mistreated them with pigments, washes and matte coat and the last bits and pieces went in. The inboard LMG can be added later, which I also tested. I prepared the fuselage halves with some fake rigging, made from 0,2 mm nickel rod with 0,5 mm aluminum tube glued to the ends and then Ca-ed into the fuselage. The fuselage got closed and left to dry overnight and I even didn´t forgot to snap in the trap door window for the fuselage LMG. Cheers Rob

The HGW belts were a must in my case, because I lost the supplied PE fret. Luckily there were not many parts on it. The interior decals will remain visible through the huge trap door in the bottom of the AEG. There is a tilting window, openable for shooting downwards with the LMG from the rear gunner position. When you look through the manual of the AEG, there are many pictures of nose dived planes. I´ve no idea, if this is because it happened so frequently or because of curios photographers. I can imagine, it could be difficult to land such a monster on an improvised field airport in nighttime. Cheers Rob

I pre painted the inside of the fuselage, where the decals went with Tamiya XF-17 dark blue (the color between the decals, a bit hard to pick up) and then gloss coated for the decals. Dark blue should be the base for the outer night lozenge decals as well, along with the only painted parts of the plane like turtle decks. The outer night lozenge camo decals are darker, than these on the inside and I will test, how they look on the named dark blue or gloss white, like I usually use, when I plaster WNW kits with Aviattic decals, but I guess the kit decals are very opaque. Cheers Rob

I applied the first batch of lozenge decals today. They went on beautifully on the inside of the fuselage and need to be flat coated then. Initially I wanted to assemble the HGW seat belts, but couldn´t find the heart in me to start. There are four pairs to be made for the captain/observer in the front cockpit, the pilot, the foldable co-pilot seat and the rear gunner. Interestingly these four stations were only manned by a crew of three on night missions often only two crew members. The captain/ observer crept through a tunnel out of the front cockpit for takeoff and landing, because in case of a nose dive, he would be crushed in the front office. Speaking of nose dives, to distract me from the seat belts, I even had a peek on the waves for surfing, but on this cold, grey, stormy day, there was no surf to speak of, so back to the belts. Well in the end, I assembled all four pairs and now my eyes are hurting . They are a bit simpler to build u, than the WWII ones, but fiddly as well. Again, it was helpful to fiddle the belt parts through the buckles, when these are still on the PE fret. On the picture, they havent received their brown oil color wash, which will be followed by a matte coat tomorrow. Cheers Rob

Thanks Martin, that´s where the fun starts for me, thinking about a fitting look for details like the seats, render a picture in my head and try to make the plastic look like it. Cheers Rob

Muchas gracias Peter and yes, even WNW was not perfect . I guess, they decided, these switches are too small to be produced with injection technology. Strangely, they supplied a decal, showing the places for the switches and casted holes into the plastic for them. Another thing, I missed is the typical complete picture of the cockpit in color, which was provided with all WNW kits, I knew before. Not a biggie, but a good reminder, where everything has to be placed. Cheers Rob

Nacelles will look good in the end, Scott. There are some complex shapes around, no wonder Revell failed like the original designers . Cheers Rob

I sometimes used CA on futurized clear parts and got no fogging. I always have a bad feeling about it, but it worked. Cheers Rob

More detailing and adding of pre painted parts took place, before closing the cockpit tub. WNW has a great photo in the manual, which shows the bomb release switches in the observer station, but added none in the kit. I used Albion Connecto brass parts for this. I cut the crosses to size and glued them into the switchboard. Later, I added cables for each of the switches. That´s how it looks now: Now it´s time for the seat belts, where as usual the HGW instructions for the paper and PE belts has some errors. It´s always the same with HGW, they have some great products, others are a complete fail, but the manuals are always wrong. I closed the cockpit tub, but not before checking, it fits into the fuselage, which it seems to do, phew. I haven´t added the steering wheel, because I can´t find my PE-fret, where some tiny parts have to be added to the steering column and I hope, I can find it in time. I toned down the backside of the seat with smoke pigment, because my oil color woodgrain looked too new for my bird. Then I simulated the decks for fit and what remains visible. Cheers Rob

Very nice paintjob Phil, glad you´re satisfied finally. There were times, where I feared, you might bin the Mustang. Cheers Rob

Wow Carl, I have no idea about anime, but your freestyling conversion looks great. Nice scratch work and like PW said, everything fits design wise, hard to achieve, I guess. Cheers Rob

Cockpit and nose cone look really good, Gus. I hear you on the templates, masks are the way to go, life is to short for self inflicted pain like this . Cheers Rob

Nice seating, hard to believe, it´s 1/72, Mike. I had some issues with missing or broken parts from Eduard over the years, but their customer service always sent replacements. Takes some time, but they never let me down. Cheers Rob

Thank you Paul, I love to work with oils for leather. This time I wanted a dark brown look and worked through the different shades from near black in the deepest folds to a bit highlighted base color on the parts with most exposure. After I sprayed on the semi matte coat, the effect was less visible, too less for my liking and I thought about, how to improve it. Used and worn leather has different patches of shinyness, depending on the wear and tear and I thought, the 4000 grit sandpaper did a good job representing this. Finally I dabbed some metal wax bronze onto the knobs with a toothpick. Cheers Rob

Thank you Mike, I hope a lot of the detail will remain visible through the openings in the turtle deck. I have lots of fun, applying wear and tear in convincing unity, at least, I hope so. I already spotted some details on the pics, which need to be adressed. Cheers Rob

It starts to get cozy in the front office. It´s time to add the numerous details and it´s a good idea, to follow the manual with the progress. Guess how I found out. I had to wiggle one bulkhead in, because I glued the sliding pad too early. The seats are oil painted on sand yellow and accentuated with toned variations of the base color. After a coat of flat, I had a semigloss finish, which was treated carefully with 4000 grid sandpaper, to remain glossy leather patches and some worn dull areas. On most of the metal parts, I applied a very slight rub of iron pigment with a cotton swab, a technique, I use very often to enhance the metal appearance of these parts. Somehow it looks right scale wise. There was a lot of detail painting in places and I used CA mostly, as it´s not so thin to spoil surfaces and bonds well, even with painted surfaces. Cheers Rob

Ok, mine are a bit older, but only some years, stored in their bag with the protective sheet on top in the closed box. To be fair, they behaved well, after the long soaking time, but I never experienced that before. Cheers Rob

Hehe Peter we are exactly on the same stage with our builds, but somehow, I have an inkling, that yours will be finished first. It´s strange, how long these Cartograph decals need to soak. I dip them into warm water with a drop of detergent in it and place them on a wet sponge. These needed three minutes at least to be movable, which meant, I had to alter my usual workflow. Cheers Rob

Thank you Martin and Jeff, there are kits, which due to their design and quality invite to do a bit more detail wise. Cheers Rob

Love it Jeff, your conversion worked out perfectly and the result speaks for itself. Like Peter, I learned a lot about American trucks, phew 18 gear transmission... Always good to see something different here. Cheers Rob

These paneled NMF job looks pretty real PW, I hope your plan works out and the black spine definitely will help. I experimented a lot with metal schemes over the past month and found Tamiya LP1 gloss black to be the perfect primer. It´s perfectly glossy, thinned with two thirds of leveling thinner has a thickness, next to none and is very durable. Cheers Rob

Very nice, Peter, wouldn´t have seen, it´s 1/48. When I have plain black parts, like Ip´s, I mostly give them a very light wipe with a cotton bud, which I before dabbed into Uschi van der Rosten´s iron pigments. This is not too shiny and breaks up the plain surface a bit. Cheers Rob

I´m not an expert, when it comes to Phantoms Chris, but have built the Kai Phantom (-J) from ZM in 1/48. If I remember right, there was a page in the manual explaining the differences between the -E and -J model. The Ip´s where definitely different. Cheers Rob