Hello fellow glue sniffers! I’m rollin’ in with another Shelf of Doom project.
Knocking out the F-16 was satisfying, and I’m enjoying working on my (15 year old!) F-4 project. Here’s the second oldest SoD victim in my stash. She comes in at 9 years old, to the day!
That was then. This is now…
Looking at things, I think this one will go pretty quickly. I see only two issues with the plastic. One, the prop has lost its counterbalances. I can live that. And two, the tailwheel is busted.
However, after about 5 minutes with a drill bit and some wire, things were looking up. (Apologies for the wonky depth of field.)
I don’t know why I put this one aside. Thinking about it, I can see a few things that might have put me off of it. Whatever the reason(s), I plan on getting it done. With the state of things, that shouldn’t take too long.
As usual, comments, questions, and criticisms are welcome. Feel free to drop your two cents into the bucket on your way out. I’ll be sure to post progress when there’s progress to post.
Fun to knock them off the list. I have two F-14s and a B-1B that have been sitting for 30 years and counting. That B-1 is going to be the centerpiece of my collection one day, I’m just going to have to figure out how to display that 3" wingspan.
Looks like she was in pretty good shape when you relegated her to the SOD.
Anyone who has built Monogram kits has likely built this one. It’s a pretty good kit for its vintage. Decent detail OOB. And when built, it looks like a Texan (or a fake Zero, if you will).
Where I live, near a CAF base, they have one of these birds that flies regularly over my house. I hear the engine, I run out to look hoping for something new … and it’s that Texan. So in honor of that bird and the nearby NFL franchise, I built this rendition several years ago:
I just couldn’t do another NMF or white-painted Texan.
Always great to see these old kits resurrected! If I recall correctly, Mono’s T-6 was one of their first kits to have an actual detailed cockpit, instead of a floating pilot figure with a peg in his back to affix to a partial bulkhead. That cockpit detail still stands up pretty well under that big greenhouse canopy!
Built one decades ago in my youth - but when they reissued it with markings for the old Glenview NAS, I had to jump on it - I grew up living about 5 miles away, and went to school with a fair number of kids whose parents served there.
Aggieman and gregbale, your T-6s looks great! Did you guys use the kit’s transparencies? I remembered that the canopy’s the reason I shelved this kit for 9 years. I didn’t want to deal with this…
I had some vacuformed canopies in the box with the kit’s parts. I modified some precut masks to get the frames painted. While I did that, I assembled everything that I could.
Once I got the clear parts done, I went ahead and finished this one up…after 9 years. Unfortunately, things didn’t finish as smoothly as I wanted.
It’s interesting to see how it held up over the years. The decals were not sealed, so some of them show signs of yellowing. The paint’s scuffed and chipped in places. The tail wheel needed to be reattached. The pitot’s gone missing. I can’t tell you about paints or finishes. It’s been too long. The final dagger in this build was of my own doing. I got a little bit of CA on the rear pane of the gunner’s port side canopy. When I tried to use some debonder, it crazed the plastic. It was literally the last thing I did on this kit. I’ll have to live with it.
I’d like to build another of these little kits. I think my skills have come a long was since this one’s inception. I’d like to see what I can do with one now.
Anyway, this one is off the Shelf of Doom and onto my display shelves. As usual, comments, questions, and criticisms are welcome. Feel free to drop your two cents into the bucket on your way out. I’ll be be moving on to another SoD project, fifteen years in the making. Oh, and my Hobby Boss A-6E. Stay tuned!
