Landlubber Mike

Nice pickup Rob! Those decals look pretty sweet. By the way I have you to blame for my growing MFH stash. There was a 1/12 Eagle Gurney-Weslake on eBay that went for under retail yesterday. I think the seller mislabeled the ad so it probably didn't attract much attention. I was looking at a different auction, and just happened to take a look at the seller's other auctions and couldn't believe my luck.

Very sorry to hear this Hubert. Thoughts and prayers to you and your family. Best wishes.

Geez Ernie, I was wondering what happened to you. Sorry to hear about everything life threw at you, but glad you are on the other side of things now.

Oh good, glad you found it. Sorry, I wasn't online yesterday and didn't see your post until this evening. Hopefully that helps!

Martin, if you haven't already build one, that cargo truck is a very very nice kit. I am just about done building one for one of my Hs 129 dioramas and it went together perfectly. I think I've only built one other Tamiya kit (the F4F years ago, but that was cut up with a lot of AM), but after working on the cargo truck OOB, I can see why people swear by Tamiya's fit quality. I originally had a SOL Model resin kit of the truck but there were a ton of fit and other issues to the point I pitched it and broke down and bought the Tamiya. EDIT - I see on the what's on your bench thread that you already almost finished yours. Very nice!

Hey Chris, hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. Great work on the kit - very cool subject. I've been staying away from Vallejo primers, mostly because I work a lot with PE and I find it doesn't adhere as well. That being said, I do use their Gloss Black as a base for their Metal Colors line (usually, after first priming with Mr. Surfacer for a solid base coat and to look for imperfections) and sometimes use their other primers for areas where I don't need a perfect base coat, like cockpit interiors, etc. When I use Vallejo, I do thin it - usually only a drop or a few drops per their instructions - using their thinner. 50/50 seems like quite a bit. When the bottles get chunky I pitch them. For the airbrush, I had similar problems with mine spitting when I first started. I do two things - at the end of a session, I'll run some lacquer thinner through the airbrush like you do. I also use one of these nozzle cleaners as a physical means of removing any gunk. I find that no matter how well you think you clean the airbrush, Vallejo tends to leave a very small amount of residue that builds up over time. Forgive me if you know all this, I just thought that I would pass along what works for me.

Wow, I could feel the stress levels rise as I was reading your post. What a brave approach, but it worked out fantastic in the end. Well done! That's so odd that only those portions of the decals reacted that way.

Wow, that's looking fantastic Rob! Glad those decals laid down nicely - I think I have the same ones. I'm just about done building a Revell VW Flower Power Samba bus for my daughter, and the thick Revell decals were incredibly frustrating to work with. Came close to making me rethink buying any kits where you need extensive use of decals.

Fantastic subject Rob, nice! I picked up the older JPS kit a while back. The seller had included a lot of the same AM you have, with the exception of EJan parts for the DFV distributor, etc. instead of the MFH kit. They look pretty similar. In researching the kit, I heard people had some problems with the nose which doesn't seem to ever fit correctly. Maybe they fixed it on your version. Do you know what you are going to use for the black paint? I saw that Zero does a Lotus Black, but saw that Plasmo on Youtube just used Mr Color GX2. Looking forward to your work on it!

Wow what a great diorama! You do such amazing work, a big inspiration!

Great start! Sometimes I feel like the reward for the time spent on detailing a cockpit that will never be seen is minimal at best.

Great subject Chris! Another big one for the shelf!

Amazing job my friend! I’m sure very satisfying with the extra work you had to put into it. Congrats on a great model!

I have this kit with full boat AM in the stash with the various Pontos, Veteran, deck and other upgrade sets. If anyone might be interested, send me a PM. With the upgrades, it's a really stellar kit. I just don't know where I would put it. Looking forward to your build Kevin!

I have to try Tamiya's LP line. I got their gloss black for undercoating metallics. Seems easier to find than the Mr. Color Ueno Black that I've used. I feel like the longer in the hobby you are, the more you realize there is to learn. Thanks for sharing!

Welcome back Chris! That model must be massive! Cool that you are building it for a friend.

Would you take the same approach for paints and clears other than from Zero paints - i.e., like colors and clears from Tamiya and Mr. Color? Those definitely don't run as hot, but I do like the idea of the multiple coats that help level things out. I've been working on trying to build a "flower power" VW Samba Bus T1 for one of my daughters, and had a bit of a time trying to paint a decanted Tamiya blue color for the body. A big part of it was that the plastic parts didn't have a clean edge to be able to mask properly, so there was a lot of touch ups required. Other problem was it seemed I would get a different shade of blue between sessions, but after multiple thinner coats, the panels seem to all have hit the proper shade. I finally got it straightened out, but I might try the multiple layered coats in the future. It's nice with planes and other subjects where you can hide paint defects with weathering, etc. Much harder with cars where you generally want a pristine finish!

Just catching up with your log Rob. Nice job! Coming along quickly and excellently per your usual! Thank you for sharing your painting process. Just to confirm, you do the multiple coats with added thinner percentages for both colors and clear coats? I haven't quite figured that out yet, but seems like a good approach versus trying to get the color down in one coat. This is probably especially helpful with colors like reds, yellows and blues that may not reach the full color on a single coat.

Looks like something out of Mad Max. Really cool subject Rob, nice work!

The Roma is a really interesting ship color wise. In case you haven't seen it, Plasmo did one in 1/700 that is spectacular as per his usual:

Cool little project. Ugly looking thing, but in an interesting way with some cool details. Nice job!

Looks like a fun build. I saw someone else refer to these kinds of builds after a long build as a "palette cleanser" - maybe that will get your mojo back up and running.

Very cool - i have a few of the Royal Class boxings, was close to pulling the trigger on this one. Looks really good and with good options on decals.

Thanks for posting these pictures. Great models for sure! The best of ship class is amazing - that wire tower structure in the middle really is incredible and sets it off from other models.

Wow, nice haul for sure! Was that the one in VA Beach? Is it there every year? Once my kids are out of the house, I'm going to try to make it to a show. By then, hopefully the stash will be a little smaller so I won't feel as bad adding to it.