BlrwestSiR

Where's the squirrel?!!!

Jeff, it was scratch built. There was a couple brochures/booklets with the model, one had plans and the other was the history of the ship. Definitely a little known subject.

I asked him if he'd consider doing a Sherman Firefly. He said if there was one in Georgia, (where his research team is) he would. So maybe that will help narrow things down for future releases?

Martin, the show is always fun. There's a good turnout of vendors, the contest tables tend to be fairly full with quality builds and then there's the environs. You're surrounded by various aircraft, most in flying condition and that just adds to the enjoyment. Andy from Andy's HHQ came up this year. Of course we had some snow just in time for his arrival. I got a chance to chat with him briefly and he seemed like a nice guy. He raffled off the very first publicly available 1/16 M8 Greyhound and announced they're going to have a Canadian website soon. Hopefully that'll mean cheaper shipping for those of us living in America's hat.

One last one. Again, someone having fun with their entry form.

Ships.

There were a lot of cars but I wasn't able to get pics of most as the tables were quite busy. Here's what I did manage to get.

Sci-fi/fantasy looked to have a decent turnout and a huge variety of subjects. Macross A creative diorama showing a dogfight from Macross using the novelization of the fight as a base. Being Canada, we had to have at least one snowblower diorama. The losing entry when Canada bought the CF-18 Note the posters being put up by the Storm Trooper A cool MCRN ship from The Expanse. Apocalypse tank. A nice sized Mig-31 Dune spice harvester Fun entry form to go with the build. Some dioramas. I believe they were done by Alfred Wong who's a huge sci-fi modeler and has done masters for many garage kit makers. Hellhound gunship from Patlabor 2. One mean helo. Sorry it's out of focus. A couple Star Wars builds. 40K mech. This thing is huge. A fun racer.

Time for some armour There were a decent number of 1/16 builds including this scratch built Stug IV. Takom 1/16 Jeep with working steering.

More aircraft Met the navigator of this Herky Bird. He was hosting the tabletop gaming demo that my sons both tried out. Nicely done Swoose. It had working lights and props. Black Buck Vulcan.

Today was the annual Heritagecon model show held at Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. I went with my two sons and we spent the day there looking at the vendors' tables, the contest entries and the museum aircraft on display. Here's some pics of the contest entries. Overall, I'd say they was a great variety across the different categories and scales. Starting with the aircraft: Meng Apache Lukgraph Fly Hurricane Kitty Hawk Voodoo kit. HK Lanc Trumpy Avenger looking very pregnant Halberd Seahawk Nose presentation of the Dauntless. Lovely looking dorama Halberd XP-47 conversion

Nice start Rog and like Rob said, a great comparison between this and the Beemax kit.

Thanks! What work desk? Oh you mean my pile of tools that I keep within easy reach..

Perfect start Chris. When fitting the intake, don't worry about the step at the bottom. It's best to make sure the intake matches up to the fuselage as smoothly as possible. Any step at the bottom will be covered by the wing and won't be seen. You can thin the fuselage insides to tweak the fit to the intake but it's well worth doing as you can save a lot of sanding and filling later. One last bit of AM you might consider. AMS Resin did replacement vari-ramps. They'll fit the GT intakes (or any other brand's for that matter) and add a bit more detail. Hopefully B&B has the moulds for them if you decide to get some. Here's another pic I found from my last F-4 build. Good old mass production lol. Carl

Woohoo! Glad it arrived safely. If postage wasn't so expensive I would have sent the Tomcat box intact just to have some fun. As it is, the Cutlass probably isn't much more work than building a Tamiya 'cat.

The Cylon frisbee really doesn't leave much room for anything else on my bench. So I guess I best finish it before I go back to one of my other projects. With that in mind, I did the detail painting on the canopy. First I did the frames and panels in Light Ghost Grey. This was done freehand. The grey was then masked off and I sprayed the semi-gloss black. Unmasked. There are a couple stripes on each outer wing. I again masked things off and then sprayed them. I used Extra Dark Sea Grey for these. With both sides done.

Fur does her best to keep me in line. I'm probably one of the few modelers who has a cat in their lap while they're at the bench.

Wow, impressive re-do. Can't believe you got the glass out without it breaking.

Can't wait to see this build. MFH kits are crazy detailed.

Really nice build with your typical high standard of finish. And speed.

Thanks folks! When I first picked up the kit, I didn't quite expect it to be as big as it is. The hull just fit inside the box, not what I was expecting. Onto today's progress. Fur stopped by to check on the nozzles and gave her jab of approval. I used UV gel to glue the LEDs to the back of the nozzles. Then it was time to install them and close up the hull halves. All the wires have been run through to the cockpit, which there thankfully isn't one. With the canopy in place and on its stand. Getting closer to the finish line.

Well, if they're large scale which I think the site defines as 1/35 of larger or they're large in size and a scale model, I imagine the standard sections would apply. Otherwise, the non-LSM section would make the most sense for now. They're not horribly strict on things around here.

Really nice work Peter. The missiles look fantastic.

Continuing the lighting, I installed the coaming lights and ran the wiring through the panel and then the coaming. The panel was then glued to the coaming. I then glued the louvers to the upper hull. The mid sections were next. The next section was the rear of the cockpit. I did a test fit of the upper hull to the lower with the canopy in place. Lastly, I glued the vanes into the engine nozzles. The fit was a bit loose so I used a clamp to tighten it up.

Paul, sorry to hear about the CA spill. Any chance you can use debonder to clean it up? The CA shouldn't have done any damage to the plastic unless it kicked off thermally. I had that happen once when I put a dropper full of CA accelerator into the CA bottle by accident. The bottle got really hot and smoked. Then it hardened into a solid lump.