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It's interesting to see the price difference as well as availability. If I make it to the Nats, I should bring some down for you. I wonder why they're not available in the US. Tamiya in Canada is brought in by a small (?) distributor, while you have Tamiya America in the States that's owned by Tamiya itself. I've picked up my Tamiya thinner for $9 on sale, usually $10 a bottle, while the big bottle of Levelling Thinner is now $18. Plus those prices are Canadian so more like $6.50 and $14 USD respectively. Gunze doesn't go on sale often but Tamiya does. And absolutely, shipping costs are something that can't be ignored any more when ordering. But it's not always easy to consolidate everything into one order. I wish more places do what HLJ does. They'll hold stuff that you've bought and paid for, for up to 60 days. Then you can keep adding to it and ship it all at once. So you get one bigger shipment rather that several small ones.

It's like hitting the jackpot if you can order everything for a project from one place in one go. That's yet to happen for me. It's usually place an order for some stuff from one place, another order elsewhere or later on and hope it all arrives when I want to start. But shipping costs are making that an expensive option. Then throw paint and supplies into the mix. Just today I was hunting around in my paints for a colour I needed. I think I have around 500 different bottles of paint (not counting multiples) and I found two in the colour I needed. Yes, I really should consolidate on a couple paint lines and stop buying all over the place. As for Mr Color Levelling Thinner, it's gotten a bit thin on the ground here too but still available. More importantly though, it's gone up in price almost 50%. So with the last few sales at my LHS, I've stocked up on Tamiya thinner with retarder (their version of Levelling Thinner) and airbrush cleaner. Again, I'm happy to have a well stocked Hobby shop in my city.

Peter, the detail in this kit is really impressive. So far, the fit had been very good. But I've only made the ejection seat. That being said, here's the assembled ejection seat which I've used 18 parts for. Every one has gone where it's supposed to and I haven't had any fit issues. I still have to add 1 more plastic bit, plus 3 PE ones and the 3D printed belts and cushion.

Thanks Martin! Hopefully it lives up to expectations. So here's the 3D seat harness that's part of the detail set. After cutting away the safety cage, I noticed it had the seatback and cushion moulded with the harness. Which meant I had to pry off said parts that I had just glued to my seat. Thankfully I got to them in time. With the 3D harness in place. It a perfect fit. Painting it will be a bit of a challenge but that one part replaces just about every step on Page 2 of the instructions. That being said, the instructions for assembling the harness are suitably detailed and show you how to fold the PE bits and where they go.

Onto to assembly. The first two pages cover the ejection seat. Yup, lots of tiny parts. The second page is almost completely devoted to the seat harness, so I'll see how that goes as I have the 3D printed one. Thankfully there are detailed colour callouts for everything which is nice. The first couple (five actually) parts are together which form the seat base. More to come.

Okay, the Su-27/30/33/35 Flanker family has to be one of the purtiest jets ever built. Sukhoi got the basic shape right from a looks standpoint. No idea on the rest but she's a looker. Except when camo'd as a crater. This is Minibase's first kit release. It came out a couple years ago and I got it shortly after being released. A different company, Tan Models had announced they were going to do.a 1/32 version which would have been 1) huge, and 2) awesome because huge, but sadly wasn't more than vapourware so I was happy this was announced. The other option for an Su-33 in 1/48 was the Sol conversion using the Academy kit as a base. I remember one of the shops near me had it in stock and I'd look at it but it wasn't cheap nor an easy conversion. Anyways, back to this kit, they've done a nice job in the packing. It's a full box but carefully packed. There's an inner lid of sorts. You can build the the kit in either configuration, with wings, tailplanes, vertical tail and stinger folded or unfolded. The flipside of the inner lid has more artwork. Finally the sprues. The blue box has the missiles in them. They're one piece with all the fins attached. Some truly impressive moulding techniques there. For my build, I picked up the Minibase detail set and some paint masks. The detail set has 3D printed burner cans, landing gear, seated pilot and seat harness.

Peter, that's a fabulous start you've made on the kit. The cockpit looks exemplary between Miniart's moulding and your paint and assembly skills. To me, Miniart has been known for small, potentially fiddly parts but great detail and overall fit. Their armour kits are fantastic and what they're probably best known for.

Fantastic build Ernie. First one yet I've seen of this kit. Carl

Thanks Paul! I guess jumping around from project to project sort of keeps me going. It doesn't always work of course. I've got the Andy's Achilles in the stash. I'm still trying to figure out how to paint something that big before I tackle it so I can relate to your Sherman build. My folks' families were part of the Nationalist gov't that lost the Chinese civil war and moved to Taiwan as a result. That couldn't have been easy for them, same as for your Dad's family.

Still my favourite movie.

The paint needed a couple touch-ups. I wasn't surprised so at the same time, I did the fit of the wingtip lights, gun barrels and pitot. For the last two, I used a set from Master.

Some sublime work on the nacelles. Have you got the Wingleader book on the Whirlwind? There's a few pics of the moving nacelle section and linkages.

I just realized my HK Mossie suffered a similar fate. But that was due to my son attempting his first solo flight on a twin. Sadly, I'm 1 for 4 on completing HK kits. Only the Mossie has made it across the finish line but she didn't last long as per the above. The B-25s are long gone. The Lanc is still here but I need a big motivation drive to get her done. The M29 Weasel made me feel the same way.

Thanks! The kit has moulded on battle damage that replicates what was on the filming miniature. Thanks Peter! Here's the kit stand.

Time to get moving on this build. I broke out the masking tape and started on the upper sections. Then a coat of XF-24 for the Dark Sea Grey. Unmasked. Yup, it's nice to have things go the way you expect.

And done! Now to decide if I use this stand which isn't a perfect fit for the Bandai kit or use the kit one.

Time to finish this up. Just need to complete applying the decals.

This kit is absolutely over engineered. That wouldn't be a huge problem but Takom insists on these tiny instructions where you can barely make out the part and not always where it goes For example, there's a tiny PE bit that goes on the end of a cylinder on the top of the firewall. There's 4 in total. It's so small, they give 6 extras. Even then I lost 7 so I'm short one. Plus I have idea if I have them on right or not. Okay, rant over. I started work on the inner hull. The drivers compartment has a lot of levers to add. The backside of the firewall has additional details. At this point, I took a good hard look at my progress and hated what I saw. The tracks are a complete mess. The links don't line up. The road wheels and bogies have the worst alignment and angle all over the place. I haven't done this badly on running gear since I was 5. Originally I was going maybe do some weathering and muddy up the tracks to cover up some/all the faults but there no way to do that and make it look realistic. Best option would be to sink it in a diorama up to the waterline. Which doesn't help my cause as this was supposed to go inside an LVT. Anyways, I'm putting it back in the box for now. Best option is to try and find another one and apply what I've learned from this mess. Sigh.

What an excellent build. Thanks for the backstory as well. Mostly when it comes to the Devastator and the Battle of Midway, you just hear they were all lambs for the slaughter.

P-51B/C Mustang! By Eduard! This Spring! Good or bad, it's 1/48!

That's a great looking kit Paul. The Pegasus vinyl kits are works better than the old ones I built back in the '80s. Those were hollow, often badly deformed so you had to reshape them and hope they didn't collapse after assembly. Which they often did. Are you going to get any of the War Machine kits that Pegasus made?

I suspect they did it as the kit suspension wouldn't be able to take the elastic stress of rubber tracks. Most reviews I've read the reviewers broke the suspension arms during assembly. It doesn't surprise me seeing how they designed it. Usually folks complain when rubber tracks are in a kit but this time, it would have been the right choice.

The tracks and suspension are a real fight. I finally got the second side done. But it's nowhere near perfect. I had to remove a link, trim off some track teeth, sand off a few end pins. Ugh, what a pain. Guess I'll be breaking out the mud to hide some of those gaps. Takom overdid it in their quest for detail. The suspension could have and should have been simplified a bit. It wouldn't have hurt the overall look and would have made things much easier to put together.

Peter, It's like any other retailer (Costco, Sam's Club, etc) that has a membership. They figure if you've paid for it, you're going to want to maximize its use as much as possible. Which hopefully means you end up buying more from the one place rather than spreading it around.

I looked at this when I got the email from Sprue Brothers. Like several other members here, I don't order enough to make it pay off. Especially when postage to Canada is so high. Then again, shipping to Canada has made ordering from most overseas retailers a non-starter. Shops in Hong Kong and Japan along aren't too bad, the UK is a bit more and the UD is oftentimes the most. Oddly enough, the furthest from Canada is the cheapest. Australia seems to have some of the lowest shipping costs. Go figure.