GusMac

Thanks Peter. Progress has been made as fuselage is together and wings are complete. Just working on the hideous fit of the airbrake, etc at the moment. Will post some pics once everything is tidied up.

Once again the weathering on this astounds me...

Hope you enjoy NZ Ivan, it is a lovely place. Have had some lovely visits to my relatives over there and the scenery is unbelievable. Like Scotland on steroids. They don't always help themselves with regards to the brain drain though. My line of work in Medical Physics barely exists in NZ due to what seems to be some bizarre hang-ups back to the Rainbow Warrior and 'nuclear' issue. Basically if you need a diagnostic nuclear medicine or PET image in NZ you're gonna end up going to Sydney or Melbourne as it just doesn't really exist there. They have radiotherapy but not the diagnostic imaging you need as a precursor to treatment. I've never got a straight answer as to why but it just seems a backwards mindset.

Are you substituting brass landing gear? All that resin might make the kit plastic ones groan a bit!

Some lovely stuff there and that photo gives a great idea of just how big that 'Leopold' is! You obviously have a lot of display space.

Looks great Gaz and I'm sure under paint it's going to look stunning. To my eyes it certainly looks more realistic then some of the decal type zimmerit finishes available now.

Probably yes. Apparently the German winter Olympic team got through litres of the low-alcohol version earlier this year as part of their recovery program after events. They reputedly got through a fair bit of the 'proper' stuff celebrating after wins as well!

Have a good one. Read a really interesting article recently claiming that German weiss beers are almost perfectly isotonic, so celebrate all you want. It's GOOD for you!

Ah, don't 'do' FB myself but glad to hear Ralph is still out there. Always worry when someone just 'disappears'. Too many of us are into the second half of our innings which makes you think bad things when people drop off the radar.

Stunning!

Interesting story and looks like a lovely kit. Looking forward to this...

Just seeing this thread come back to life made me think. Anyone know what happened to Ralph? He posted here regularly then just seemed to vanish.

Thanks Dennis. The Aires tub has excellent detail and seems to fit ok but the nature of the fixed sides does make some of the painting a little awkward just to reach stuff.

Thanks gents. Rob, that looks even more 'distressed' than most of the greek schemes! Hubert, I'd like to correct it but I'm not prepared to pay more than the cost of the kit for the Zacto correction set off eBay. If he reissued it I'd be right there but there seem to be insurmountable issues with casting the canopies.

What he said X2

That's the sort of idea I'm after. Not sure how exactly I'm going to do it but it'll be fun trying.

Yeah that's a nice scheme Martin as is the 'tiger' one also used for airshows but I'm going for a worn beat-up airframe to try and test my painting skills. Not sure exactly which yet but the Fox Two book has plenty of ideas.

So, just something to prove I have actually being doing some building recently and not just commenting on everyone else's. I'm not very good at WIPs as my bench time tends to be sporadic and I'm a crap photographer but anyway here's where we are. Everyone knows the kit and it's faults. I'm correcting some and ignoring some as it'll only be going in my cabinet and no-one else who's likely to see it would even have the foggiest what a SLUF is meant to look like. In terms of AM, I'm going with the following Fox Two books A7E/H in Hellenic Service which is great. Some lovely pics and inspiration. Aires cockpit set for the late A-7E Zacto correction set for the intake Videoaviation Mk82s which look stunning. I'm going for the full 'bomb truck' look so I hope I can do them justice. Eduard Brassin MERs AMS Resin wheels Icarus Decals HAF Corsairs set Eduard cockpit masks So here's the main components so far Joined the inner and outer wing halves before joining the upper and lower as every recommends. Cockpit and seat assembled and painted. The grey wash looks overdone with the flash but isn't so obvious to the naked eye. Zacto intake correction attached for the inner section and filed and sanded back doing my best not to damage the resin. At least the Greek birds have a mid green intake which should help to hide any issues better than the white of the USN aircraft. Some of the corrections I've made. These ones are just to have a try at using sheet and rod sytrene to adapt things. Added the ventilation system exhaust and opened up some of the grills on the avionics doors. Also added the exhausts, etc at the back for the starter and other things? Looking at the photos, I just realised that adding the PE for the chaff/flare dispensers now was stupid as it's going to make cleaning up the fuselage join a lot harder. Doh! Anyway, that's the next step. Shoehorn everything into the fuselage and get it joined up. Clamping up the front around the Zacto ring is what's worrying me but I'm hoping two part epoxy and a good 24 hr cure should do it. We'll see...

I'd love to do the US at some time Ernie. Maybe a plan for retirement. Given the number of different dialects and accents we have here just in Scotland, I'm intrigued by the number of variations there must be in a state as big as Texas.

(In)famous British comedian from the 70s called Dick Emery. Very much of it's time, like Benny Hill, etc.

Before I scrolled down I was thinking I'll need to post... exactly what Smitty posted! Weird minds think alike. Very cute pup though. Friends of ours have just got a Labrador pup and it's great. You forget just how soft and clean their coat is at that age befoer they venture into the big wide world.

Just looks beautifully worn in all the right ways.

Glad you managed to fathom the Farquhar reference Wumm.

Yeah, that's a good one Martin. Have had similar frustrations with some voice recognition software and I don't have a particularly strong accent! We actually use voice recognition at work for dictating patient reports and it works very well and learns pretty quickly if it makes the same error more than a couple of times. I once mistakenly tried to use it on one of my Indian colleague's log-ins - that didn't end well!

Doric H umour In a similar vain, here's a great one from the Scotland the What team emphasising the idiosyncrasies of the local Doric dialect up here. Basically anyone living outwith Aberdeenshire needs subtitles with this one....