BlrwestSiR

Paul, it's a very nice kit that's for sure. The option to swap the exposed engine for a closed cowl is a nice touch.

I think I ordered it last June. I had almost forgotten about it as for some reason, Lucky sent the rest of the order earlier but not the P-40 even though it was in stock at the time.

I finally got my GWH P-40 kit that I ordered from Lucky Model I don't know how long ago. I'll be doing this in RAF desert colours when I get to it.

Some very nice tools there Paul. I agree that Dspiae tools are generally very high quality.

Your work looks so clean and precise there Rob. Nice choice on swapping out the braided line.

This also arrived today.

Go big or go home: I can't believe we got this less than years after we got the RAV4 but our needs have changed.

I don't think it's a re-boxed Trumpeter kit. Das Werk partner with Takom to do the moulds for their 1/16 kits so I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case. I think it's more coincidence that they're coming out at the same time. Yup, full RC but you still need a radio, batteries and charger. The original Japanese release came with a radio though.

What blue did you use for the transmission Mark?

I had to do something similar when I did my CF-104D. I did a NMF one though.

There's also a price difference. So far the Tamiya is around $1,200 CAD, the Trumpeter approximately $400 from China and the Das Werk one $279 on pre-order from a Canadian shop. The Trumpeter one is also a 2A6 while the Tamiya and Das Werk ones are 2A7 versions. Of course the Tamiya one is a full function RC kit less radio and batteries.

And here are the Leading Edge instructions for the 1/48 sheet. https://www.scalemates.com/kits/leading-edge-4820-caf-cf-104-starfighter-camouflage-scheme--282164 Carl

I'm not sure if this helps or not but on the Scalemates page for the Belcher Bits CF-104 decal sheet there are instructions for the same camo scheme. https://www.scalemates.com/kits/belcher-bits-bd6-canadian-cf-104s--1007328 Scroll down the page to find the link.

😆

Hey Paul, Tamiya is reissuing their Honda City Turbo kit. Perfect for the Motocompo.

The Silk Cut Jags had a great paint scheme. That's for sure. My favourite of the Jags would be the XJR-8 with the rounded down rear fenders.

Paul, I have the same sets of masks. They work great for masking IP dials like you said. If you're careful, you can even re-use them a couple times. For dials that have a different coloured ring, put the circle on the dial face, then go up a size and put the square part around the outside of the dial.

The 956/962 had so many different livery options: Rothmans, Newman, Coca Cola, Lowenbrau, Jagërmeister, etc. Not to mention the constant evolution of the design: short tail, long tail, separate tail. Plus throw in the Group C and IMSA differences and it's almost like the BF109 of race cars. Then there's the last LeMans win with the rule bending Dauer LM: a racecar version of a roadcar converted 962.

Great looking build Martin. It makes for a nice comparison to the more typical.V-1.

Ugh, I found more wing mods that needed to be done. The PR IV used the later style round oil cooler found on the Spitfire V series and not the semicircular ones on the MkI and II. First thing that came to mind was getting a Kotare Va kit and swapping out the oil cooler from it. Checking the instructions on Scalemates, the lower wing doesn't change between the two kits, just the oil cooler. So that was the expensive option plus having to wait for the kit to arrive. I then decided to look into Plan B. This was to take one from the intended base kit, the Revell MkII. That kit kit has a MkV circular oil cooler instead of the semicircular one that it should have. Having a Revell kit in the stash, plus a Barracudacast correction set, I pulled it out to see if it could work. All glued together. After some tweaking, I got a decent enough fit. I also finally filled in the shell ejection ports.

@DocRob, here's the reamer that I use. It's made by Hudy from Slovakia i think. They specialize in tools for RC cars and are part of XRay and Serpent. Both of those are high end RC car brands. They're very nice works of art and I've have a few of them.

And the mounting bracket is just too much to put together. Some of the tabs to hold the brackets together are small than the attachment nubs that hold the part to the PE fret. They look nice but I can't pull it off. I'll use what I can. Onto the camera openings. Here I cheated a bit. I have the templates from the Alleycat PR XI conversion left over so I used those to mark the ventral camera ports. They're offset from centre so I had to tape the fuselage and main wings together. Using the guide holes on the template, I drilled a starter hole for both camera ports. Then I used a reamer to open them up to the correct diameter. Here you can see the doubled up thickness on the forward port. This is from the way the kit parts are designed. You can see it from the topside. I decided to cut away some of the excess material and hopefully I won't have fit issues down the road.

Calling this one done:

Nothing quite like a Victoria Day weekend smoked turkey. A new tradition?

Okay, the camera mounts are fiddly! There's a bunch of very tiny parts. The instructions were a bit unclear so I finally broke down and pulled out the recommended reference book, the old SAM Modellers Datafile. With that, I figured out how the mount goes together. I think. Here's the oblique camera mount/gimbal. The frame goes around the camera, and the two other bits are just the start to the mount. Not sure how I'm supposed to a) get them together, and b) have the stay together. We'll see I guess. Here's the resin camera bodies. The set contains 3 different types, F8, F24 and F52 cameras.