BlrwestSiR

Looking good there Harv. Those turret doors looks like something that the crew jumps out of and yells "Surprise!!!"

The Tomcats splashed the Zeros. Great video Smitty and thanks for sharing it.

Martin, it's always a pleasure to return the favour and help you out. Very brief update. I have the PE floor added to the single seater so it's about ready for a coat of paint. I'm going to temporarily put the kits away as I'm going to redo my bench over the next couple of days. Hopefully things will be better organized once I'm done. Carl

Thanks for the tips Harv. They'll help me keep the frustration level down. Carl

Doing a bit of a reorganization of my bench so it's slightly worse than usual. At least it's only paints and supplies on it. I've moved the paint racks to the side of the shelf with my reference books on. According to FedEx, my order from Arttystation is supposed to arrive today which is what precipitated the reorganization. I'm hoping to end up with more bench space that I can clutter up

Well, the squirrels around me are coming out of hibernation so that makes sense. Nice to have such a fantastic reference source at hand. Not to mention Harv's generosity too. Carl

Really nice looking 262 Gaz, especially the mottling. Carl

I got a smidge more done. I continued working on the cockpit tubs. The single seat tub in the middle needs a section of the floor removed and a replacement section installed from the Eduard set. Hence the bunch of holes. Of course the Eduard instructions don't mention leaving a lip around the hole to install the new bits. I figured that part out thankfully before removing everything. So it may not be square but it'll be covered.

Sorry Bill, saw the Barker bit and thought that was it. Carl

Shows in stock at the moment. https://www.wheelswingsestore.com/wnw32608-wingnut-wings-1-32-sopwith-7f-1-snipe-w-barker-ltd.html

For all the grief the kit gets, it can build up into something decent.

Even better, it's a Griffon!

Welcome aboard Lutz! Can't wait to see how this kit goes together. I've got the Tamiya one in the stash so never got around to this one. Carl

Ok, so a bit more progress. I'm using the Eduard PE sets for the seats and cockpit. Needless to say, their choice of colour for some of the pre-painted panels is a bit off. They've got more of a Russian cockpit blue grey to them. So I've started slowly airbrushing over using the correct shade of grey. We'll see how that goes soon enough. Meantime, I did a bit more assembly of the front cockpit. Mostly this was the ejection seat rails and rear bulkhead along with a coat of paint. I've started shaving off the rear cockpit details as well. The kit intakes are fairly straightforward with a couple ejector pin marks inside that need filling in the trunking. Odds are you could probably skip this part as they're fairly buried inside the plane. Thankfully, the intake lips only need a quick swipe with some sanding sticks to clean up. There is a rough surface texture to them so the sanding took care of that at the same time. Finally, I got the engines closed up. Since I'm not planning to have anything open, these are pretty much done. Martin is working/ about to work on his own Starfighter and I was grabbing some spare bits I had to send his way. Which led to a second kit being out and about so rather than take the easy route and box it back up, I decided to add it to the bench. This'll be a single seat kit and I'm planning to do it as a JASDF F-104J. The nice thing is the Starfighter isn't a complicated kit, especially with everything closed.

Smitty, did you use any AM or is that OOB?

Really nice looking plane there Ernie.

The plating is not what I expected. It looks more subdued compared to the usual chrome plating you find in kits.

Sometimes the larger scales do make sense. The Takom Mk IV us supposed to be quite nice and I believe Tamiya make one as well. Carl

Really nice looking P-40 build. Thanks for sharing. Carl

A couple places up here in Canada have the Felixstowe in stock. Wheels & Wings had one and so did Great Hobbies. This being Canada though, the price may not be competitive with other places even with the exchange rate.

As the guy at the end says...

Umm, maybe more than one? I blame Martin....

Tony, the panels don't fit too badly. The gun access panel needs a bit of shimming on the single seater but nothing you wouldn't be able to do.

We'll, I just bought the Arttystation Symphony workbench so I guess that's on my shopping list. Carl

While working on the cockpit tub, I noticed something interesting. Italeri reuses the single seater tub on the two seater kit. They do make a specific rear tub wall though. Here's the single seat and two seat tubs side by side. The two seater is on the left as I've started modifying it. The two seater rear wall isn't as offset as the single seater. Which means it overlaps the side consoles. Here's what the single seater rear wall looks like: So it looks like the best option is to use some AM cockpit details to fix this.