Landlubber Mike

Nicely done! I love the look of the Dorniers - I've been thinking about adding a 217 to the stash but love they way you built this one!

Hi Ernie, I'll put my name in. I'm still a bit new to the plastic arena (only in the past year) so don't have much I can donate at the moment. Certainly happy to contribute in any way I can though, if even in future years. Many thanks and happy holidays to everyone!

Very well done! Great job! I love the diorama setting with the bike, etc. Clever use of the Ikea turntable, what a great idea!

That's a nice looking ship! When I got back into models, I started with wooden kits because I didn't like the old insert tab A into slot B and paint by hand with those tiny Testor's enamel bottles. Then I found out about how much things have changed in the last 30 years with PE, airbrushes, etc. Now I've got a few in the stash (mostly IJN WWII ships). I'm working on a 1/700 IJN destroyer at the moment with a full PE set that is doing its best to make me go blind or crazy or both.

Love a clean workstation - doesn't stay that way for very long! Noticed the ship on the edge. What is it? Looks interesting...

Hmm, the thought of picking up the Mustang IV and having one open and one buttoned up did cross my mind.... Right now i have the P-51D, Skyraider (navy), Raiden, Shinden, and Do-335 single seater. It's odd how some auctions you can get ridiculous deals with no bidding competition, and others, just the base kit and no AM go for crazy prices. I've managed to scoop up a bunch of Z-M kits with almost complete Z-M AM for prices around (and often times below) kit retail. Z-M aftermarket can add up quickly, so I look for packages that are mostly complete. I wasn't planning on doing the Shinden, but it had all AM and the full paint set for something like $90 and free shipping Figured it would be a good intro to the Z-M system. That looks like a really cool Eduard set. I have one of the Eduard P-39 Airacobra limited edition sets that I picked up for something like $30 - Eduard does a really nice job with them. Otherwise, I've been picking up the Royal Class sets when I've found them for good prices. Eduard can get pricey too if you decide to go with the Brassin upgrades.

Hey Phil, like you, I got almost a complete package on eBay for a relative steal (paid about kit retail for all the PE, wheels, gun barrels, etc.). I did end up adding the fuel tank attachment set and the propeller attachment set. I debated getting the oil tank exchange set like you have and/or the engine maintenance set in lieu of the fuel tank attachment set. Might still add one or both, who knows. At the moment I'm working on an F4F-4 Wildcat with an Aires conversion set that allows you to show off the engine compartment, and am now thinking that showing off the engine on the Z-M Mustang would be pretty sweet. Lot of cool add-ons for this particular kit for sure. I'm still fairly low on the learning curve, so I probably won't start mine for a couple of years in order to be able to do the kit justice. Among [too many] other kits in the stash, I have the Eduard P-51D Royal Class box in 1/48 with a bunch of the Brassin upgrades which I probably will do first I think.

I'm in for this one - I picked up the kit and extras earlier this year and will be watching with a lot of interest. No pressure

Awesome work Kevin!

Fantastic work! I love the diorama setting. Did you use decals for the wood fuselage panels or paint? Either way, looks amazing!

Wow, this is incredible work. The bed is so lifelike it's amazing. Well done!

Very cool model and diorama. Love the base you used for the scene, looks really cool.

Looking fantastic, very nice job!

Looks great, nice job!

Very cool plane, the wings have a very interesting shape. Nice job on this one!

Wow! Such beautiful work, amazing! I just looked at your website and you do amazing work. Love the lines on this plane by the way - very cool!

If you guys don't mind, I had some questions I was hoping you could help me with. 1. I'm not sure what you call the ring on which the engine is mounted (see below), but does anyone know or have any recommendations as to what color it should be? The inner side facing the firewall is white I believe, but I'm thinking the outer facing side should be some kind of metallic color. 2. The Aires set has you cut out panels in the cowl and replace them with PE and resin parts. I started doing that here: I cut out the panels along the kit part's panel lines. The Aires PE part doesn't seem to fit though. I'm wondering how it's supposed to attach. In the picture above, it looks like these PE parts are supposed to be sort of an under frame onto which the actual panels would be riveted onto. If so, should I glue it into the cowl from the inside? And if I do so, should I thin down the cowl from the inside to accept the PE so that it fits flush with the rest of the cowl? The kit plastic seems fairly thick, and possibly thicker than what a fuselage panel would be. I worry if I just glued the PE directly from the inside without thinning that the kit plastic would look too thick. 3. I plan on displaying this model with the wings folded. The Aires detail set has gun bay detail parts so you can open up the gun bays on the model. Would the gun bays ever be open on a plane if the wings were folded? I've seen folks do that on various models, but wasn't sure if that was technically accurate. Many thanks in advance!

Thanks everyone for the kind words! I've made some progress over the last couple of weeks. The kit is fairly simple and my guess is one can put it together in about a week. The Aires set is probably going to double the time building this kit, at least for me. I'm still fairly new to plastic models, and this is my first super detail set that I've worked with. Engine Here's where I am with the engine. I calculated that there were 90 individual pieces when all was said and done, including the resin detail parts and the individual rods that you had to cut and add (I used thin plastic rod) Thankfully the Aires set includes a PE ring containing all the ignition wires that made things fairly easy. At this point, I painted with Vallejo Metal Color Duralinum, and added a black wash. Still need to paint the ignition wires, rods, and center cap, add a little grime and highlights, etc., but I think the engine is looking fairly nice. Cockpit The cockpit components from the Aires set are really nice when it comes to detail. Here are some of the pieces after painting and washes: Warning! The fit of the cockpit set is terrible! Apparently others have had similar complaints, so this is not my typical case of user error. The instructions essentially have you build the full cockpit, then insert the consolidated cockpit into the fuselage. The parts fit together cleanly outside the fuselage, but when you try to fit everything in, you run into bad fit problems. The tub fits perfectly fine, but the side panels and frame for the seat are off. Am definitely glad I test fitted things in advance or I would have been in for a nasty surprise. Instead of assembling the cockpit completely and popping it into the fuselage, I'm essentially modifying and gluing things like the side panels, seat frame, and instrument panel separately into the top half of the fuselage, then will pop the tub into the bottom half. A little frustrating in that this stage has taken hours but I think I have a plan forward. Bottom of fuselage/firewall/engine mount area Between the Aires set and the Wolfpack wing fold conversion, there won't be much left of the original kit. First, here is what the kit provides for the bottom of the fuselage and wings: This is what you end up with (with the Aires firewall and landing gear support included). The wings come off to add the Wolfpack wings, and the front of the fuselage where the engine mount comes off for the Aires details. The Aires instructions leave a lot to be desired. For example, they suggest that this section of the build comes after the cockpit, but for a variety of reasons, especially with the poor fit of the cockpit parts, I think it's better to nail this section down first before installing the cockpit. Speaking of fit, the firewall doesn't fit very well - it's got two winged tabs on either side that make it too wide to fit into the fuselage without surgery to the fuselage. Since those pieces aren't going to be seen, I just went ahead and removed them. I still have to include the framing and fuel tank pieces, but I think I've finally worked out a plan on how all these parts fit together and things are coming along. For colors, I understand that the interior fuselage was painted Interior Green from the firewall back, and "white" from the firewall forward. I'm using Vallejo US Light Green for the green sections. Rather than use "white" I'm using Vallejo gray primer which actually comes out like an off white with a grayish hue. I think that would be a better base than white, I can detail with washes and white highlights as need be. Landing Gear Tamiya has you essentially assemble the landing gear as one piece that is added later in the build. Aires does it a little differently, with the bottom frame already attached to the firewall, and the top halves of the landing gear legs assembled against the firewall early in the construction. So, I needed to cut off the top halves of the kit parts, and drill holes into the tops to accept the Aires parts. Wasn't too bad, but the Aires instructions don't make any mention of this. I should say that while I've been critical of the Aires detail set, it's quite nice aside from the fit issues and fairly rudimentary instructions. The parts are very crisp and the resin used is pretty robust. I read a build log where someone used the KMC resin cockpit set for this kit and the resin was so fragile, the parts were crumbling during assembly. Not the case here, though you certainly need to be careful. I'm not sure if Aires offers this set anymore, but it does pop up on eBay here and there.

Been slowly making progress on the Wildcat. I'd probably be halfway done with the build by now with the time I've spent if I was building this out of the box, but the Aires resin set is adding a ton of time. A bunch of time was spent taking the parts off the plugs (and some of the plugs are fairly thick and hard) and repairing some of the parts that had cracked. I'm not exactly sure why, but sometimes the CA grabs immediately, and other times, it just doesn't want to bond resin together at all. Also, the instructions are pretty sparse, and being not all that familiar with things like the engine, engine mounts, firewalls, etc., I've been spending more time looking online to figure out how things are supposed to work. But, it's been a fun learning experience. Cockpit The cockpit is going together ok so far. I painted the interior using Vallejo US Light Green, which is supposed to match "Interior Green" (ANA611). I added some of the cockpit PE details from the Eduard set - the nice thing about the PE set is that it is colored. I need to touch up and add a little highlighting and shading, but so far is looking ok color wise. Where I'm having issues is with the fit, however. The tub fits nicely, but the rest of the cockpit definitely is not plug and play! The seat, for example, seems a little too big so I might try seeing if the Eduard PE seat is a better match. The bigger issue is getting the side panels to fit properly inside the interior. They keep pushing up above the canopy line, so I might need to do a little surgery. Others seem to have the same issue so it's good to know it's not user error. Firewall The firewall is a lot more detailed than the kit plastic, but is 2mm wider at the horizontal line where those tabs are sticking out along the sides (well, one of the tabs snapped off). Not exactly sure what was intended with them, but I'll probably have to cut them off to get the firewall to fit properly. Next to it you can see the kit part. I ended up assembling the framing to it because I couldn't for the life of me figure out from the instructions how the resin framing and other components were supposed to fit. I found a log from someone building the 1/32 Trumpeter kit that helped immensely, so I think I'm good to go now. Engine Been slowly working on the engine too. There's probably 50+ parts when all is said and done. I stopped here because I couldn't figure out from the kit instructions which way the cylinders (think that's what they are) are supposed to face. Life Raft The Aires detail set has a lot of open panels to show off things like the engine, interior framing, and the life raft. This went in fairly easily. Had to cut the section out of the fuselage, then it was a matter of cutting and sanding back the base of the resin part so that it could slide up into area. A bit of CA and filler, and everything is looking good.

Wow, very inspiring work! I like the idea of cutting the wings to have a more compact diorama. Was wondering how I would store some of the wider completed 1/32 kits I have on the shelf, and this gives me some ideas. Great work!

Thank you Rob, that's really helpful info. Appreciate it! The Iwata Eclipse in my limited experience is a great all-purpose airbrush, but I picked up a GSI-Creos PS-290 a couple of months ago (0.5mm needle) which is great for spraying larger areas. Looking at your excellent pre-shading efforts, as well as some of the more complicated camo schemes, I'm starting to think I might benefit from a smaller airbrush for more detailed work.

Thanks Jerry for the warm welcome and the kind words. Really appreciate it!

Rob, many thanks for those pictures. I should have posted photos, but here is what I'm talking about - the bottom halves of the fuselage form a sort of raised keel at the centerline. I can't figure out if that is accurate, or perhaps that's just how the seam came together when I glued them.

Such amazing work Rob, wow! Can I ask what airbrush/needle size you used to preshade the areas alongside those 0.5mm strips? I have an Iwata eclipse with a 0.35mm needle I think, and have been thinking about getting a smaller one for fine detail work.

Thanks Martin for the kind words. I feel I have a lot to learn still, and a long way to go to approach anywhere near the models I see here. But, I'm having fun in the meantime and it's great to share with others in the hobby.