Landlubber Mike

I'm a little late to the party Rob, but man, that cockpit work is really incredible. Amazing job! Love your engine work thus far as well. Hope you're feeling better and enjoyed your trip!

What a fantastic model Sasha! Amazing job! I also really like your display base for it.

Yeah, they make it way too easy to spend money in this hobby! I bought my first Me262 on eBay loaded with aftermarket, then found some of the other CMK conversion sets and added them, so ended up buying a second. The CMK conversions are 4111 (A-1a/V056 fighter conversion), 4112 (A-1a/U3 photo conversion), 4113 (B-1A/B1a/U1 night fighter two seater conversion). I don't know if CMK is still making them, but you can often find them on eBay or some of the big online sellers. This is the Quickboost Jumo engine (48289) - looks like it may be discontinued, but has really nice detail Aires 4222 is a full detail set with two engines, cockpit, wheels, control surfaces, etc.: Not trying to make you spend extra money!

Hey neighbor! The great thing about this subject and the kit is that there are so many options with decals and other aftermarket. Almost too many! I couldn't decide, so I have two sitting in the stash that I'm going to convert to a U3 photo reconnaissance version (using CMK 4112 and AIMS 48D016 decals) and the other as a two-seater night fighter (using CMK 4113 and EagleCals #170). I tend to like to make life difficult for myself and not build OOB though. Another thing I'm going to do is show off the Jumo engines. Aires and Quickboost make a really nice full sized engine if you're looking to go that route. Lots of options! Looking forward to your build!

Awesome Kevin - great choice!

Great work Jerry! Love your choice of nose art 🤗

Wow, that looks really great Peter, nice job!

Nice job Martin!

Holy cow, that looks really nice!!

Wow Fran, Santa (or Kevin) came early for you this year. You must have been a good boy!

What a cool looking P-51! One alternative approach to the bolts that is sometimes used on the wooden ship modeling side is to drill all the way through, and then insert rod into them. Or, you can find appropriate sized pins, glue them, and then cut the heads off. You can get insect pins for pretty cheap which come in plenty of sizes. Not sure what is the easiest, but looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

I store them in my kits the best i can, otherwise have boxes marked for stuff that won't fit. I use the Notes feature on my iPhone to record every kit and piece of AM I have for it so I don't double buy.

Looks great John! Great paint and decal work!

Wow, that's really well done! And I thought I was going to go crazy working in 1/72 scale!

That camo is amazing! Are you using an airbrush for everything, or are you hand painting some things like the red portions?

Thanks Peter, really appreciate it. I rely heavily on an Optivisor for this kind of work!

Looks like a blast, have fun!

Looking really great Peter! Love that camo scheme!

Thanks very much Rob, really appreciate it! Getting me ready for the upcoming "in the water" group build 👍

Thank you Fran!

That's looking really great! Engine is fantastic. Hope you're feeling better.

Thanks guys, really appreciate it!

I have a 1/200 Bismarck in the stash, and I bought a bunch of Northstar figures for it. Lots of duplicates in the various sets, but they are fairly inexpensive if you can find them. One warning about Northstar - I've had bad experiences ordering from them. First time they told me they sent me "extras" as a gift. Turns out a bunch of the items I ordered they gave me the wrong item and substituted different figures. Then they apologized and said they would send me new ones, so I placed a second order (stupidly) and they never shipped it. So, I definitely wouldn't buy directly from them.

These I believe were from Ion Models - I bought them on eBay and from Freetime Hobbies. I also have figures from Tori Factory (bought from eBay - they came from Korea I believe) and Pro Studio (same thing). They are resin and pretty easy to detach from the plugs, and come in many different poses. I also have figures from Northstar - they stink! Much bigger than the figures from the other companies, and worse yet, they are printed way too close on the same plug so it's almost impossible to paint and remove them without busting them.

Thank you Gus, really appreciate the kind words