BlrwestSiR

So what are you going to do when the Tomcat I sent you shows up?

I did some more paint work last night which was basically post shading the model. I'm masking off the odd panel and then spraying a slightly darker grey to break things up.

Thanks Peter! The coaming lights were the hardest to sort out. The rest are going to be much easier to install.

Glad to hear you got a clear coat to work for you. The fuselage looks fantastic. Almost like an evil whale or shark.

Rob, this particular aircraft had the lower Mk108 cannon replaced with a pair of Mk103s. The Mk103 has a much longer barrel so they stuck out. I can't find any reason why they did it but I thought it looked different enough to do.

This would be great. I was just looking at the Model Monkey bits for the Beaufighter. It's beautiful stuff but if you get them all, it's easily 4x the price of the Revell kit if not more.

Rob, with those engine pics, I thought I was looking at museum reference photos. The engines look amazing. Very nice work there. Tamiya now make semi-gloss and flat clear paints so you no longer need to mix your own.

Okay, I was really not happy with the colour I had painted the fuselage. So I grabbed something different and started over. This time I went with Light Ghost Grey. For the engine louvers, I wanted to keep the undersides black so I put the louvers in place to act as a mask. I then found Fur in my seat. The canopy is now black as well.

Dune Ornithopter in 1/72! Just announced by Meng.

Is that aimed at me or Vince?

Thanks for sharing. Some great looking models. Those 1/8 Corvettes look absolutely huge next to the more typical 1/24 cars.

Time to try my hand at lighting a model. I'm keeping the lighting simple. First up are the lights just below the cockpit. The plan is to drill out and mount them to the outer pair of tubes/protuberances on this panel. It turns out that the tubes were slightly smaller than the LEDs I'm using so Plan B was cut them off and replace them with styrene tubing. This way I can mount the LED from behind and they shine through. Both now done. Next up was drilling holes in the cockpit coaming for the wires to pass through. The wing lights are up next.

Rob, they were the kit decals which are by Cartograf. Not sure if I got a bad sheet but I'm going to use some artistic license and leave it as is. I was also getting a reaction with the decal softener in that the paint was melting. That was a first for me. So rather than risking things I'm calling the decals done.

Great work on the loadout and gear legs. The fuselage is coming along nicely too.

Meantime, the Me 262 is getting closer to finished. I started on the decals and that went sideways. The stencils started to curl up and the silvering was absolutely nasty. So I ended up removing most of the them. I had to do some paint touch-ups as a result. I'm probably going to just leave it at this point. I may look at the 1 Man Army stencils if I decide to revisit this. I also added the landing gear doors and the drop tanks. Lastly, I removed the masking and fitted the canopies. Well, test fitted them anyways. They're going to be in the open position.

Jeff, Peter I'll try to find them and let you know who made them. If I recall, they're a Japanese company but a quick search around my bench and I can't find them. I did find B-25 parts, Tse Tse Mossie parts and Kingfisher parts though.

Jeff, I definitely drink more beer than Scotch or Bourbon. Much more approachable and there's so much good beer out there these days.

Mill St Barley Wine. Brewed by Mill St Brewery in the Distillery District, Toronto. 11% ABV. On the sweeter side, definitely something to be sipped. Full bodies, a great after dinner drink It's usually only available aright before Christmas. This is the one from 2015. It can be cellared so that's what I do. There's been a couple beers that have sadly been one offs and never made as regular items. One was Black Oak Brewery's barrel aged Dark Cherry porter. This was made to celebrate the opening of their Toronto location. I went with some friends and we figured we would get the odd ounce or two sample cups of their beers to try. We were wrong. They were handing out full pints for free. Thankfully none of us drove but the bike ride home was eventful. Another one was from our neighbourhood brewpub called Indie Ale House. They made a raspberry cask ale exclusively for someone's wedding called Punch Buggy. They sold the leftovers in the pub after the wedding. It was absolutely awesome but try as I might, I couldn't convince the owner to make it again. It took way too many raspberries to make it. At least I got to have some.

That's a blast from the past. One of the beers I drank when I started drinking in university. That and Upper Canada Dark Ale A radio station here pulled a prank on the owner John Sleeman once on air. They gave him a selection of beers to blind taste test. One of them was from his brewery. He jokingly slagged them all until they told him one was of the beers was his. He got so pissed he pulled their advertising budget from the station. The DJs had to kiss up big time.

Last night Martin and I discussed the camo on the 262. Going through my references as well as Martin's we came to the conclusion that the nacelles needed some corrections. It turns out the plane I'm doing still exists and is in the Australian War Museum. So based on pics of the airframe as well as period photos (not all were helpful there) I broke out the masking tape. A quick spray of green over the tops of the nacelles... ...and done. This is probably a better match now.

Peter, I picked up some PE guides a few years ago. They're to mark the centre of a tube precisely for drilling them out. Let me see if I can find them. I haven't used them so can't say how easy they would be to use.

Wow, 3 of them. You're as bad as me with Spitfires. I had one and I think I lost it in a move.

If you don't mind small scale, Accurate Miniatures did a 1/24 Grand Sport Corvette model. Pretty much like the pic above but a road racer so you'd have to find a suitable interior.

Nice start to the paintwork. That airbrush tip looks interesting and is a great idea to help get consistent results. For sealing over the decals, maybe try a few most coats first before a slightly heavier one to prevent the clear from melting the decals.

Paint looks stunning. Beautiful gloss to it.