That is great that you had a good Christmas! You have a good friend and his family.
I also have a few “presents” on order and waiting for them to show up.
First off, I ordered the 1/32 Hasegawa F-104G/S Starfighter:
It has not been shipped yet, so I have a while to wait for it to show up. Along with that I ordered a conversion kit from C&H Aero Miniatures. I will use it to convert the kit to a F-104D Starfighter:
And for stencils I will be using these from DACO Products:
I also ordered the Czech Model 1/32 F-80C:
I will be converting this to a RF-80A using the conversion kit from True Details:
Along with the decals from Super Scale International:
Hey guys, good to hear everyone had a pretty good Christmas. By the time I got home from work everyone had already eaten and opened gifts but still got to spend a little time with the relatives. I got my three nephews a couple of little Italeri 1/72nd quick build Shermans and put them together at the dinner table. With some trepidation I gave them a spray can of olive drab to go paint them outside - thankfully they didn’t make a big mess! Not a big celebration but I think it went pretty well.
Nice haul there Ken, good to see Santa’s been good to you this year- you must have been really good! I wish Czech Model would come out with a new F-80 in 1/48th too, I may have said I’ve been on a bit of a Korean War kick lately and would love to see one.
BTW: Anyone heard anything from ScorpionMikey? Seems he just dropped off the forum- haven’t seen hide or hair of him.
I am assuming that you do know about the new 1/48 Hobby Boss F-80A? But of coarse the F-80C was the aircraft to see service in the Korean War. Hobby Boss is supposed to be coming out with that version sometime soon.
As far as ScorpionMikey, I just assumed that since he had his own Group Build going, he was too busy with that to visit ours. But you are right, he has not been on this forum since March, 9 months ago.
I did some Google searching for ScorpioMikey, and he’s all over the net as a modeler and a gamer. He is also active at britmodeler and largescalemodeler, Also see him in several other modelling forums. Maybe he just didn’t care for FSM forum?
Arrival!
All this fun!
Thank goodness they included this handy guide! I was at a bit of a loss!
Can’t say when this will be built. I keep telling myself that I should try to finish at least one of the other “in progress” builds looking down at me!
In the meantime, I’m off to reboot this thing! I “sees” my camera, but doesn’t see the files on it. Plus it’s telling me the camera is hooked up whether it is or isn’t. Had to plug the card into a reader to get these pictures uploaded! Technology! Sheesh!
Jim
Post note Reboot did the trick! All seems normal now!
Jim: Looks like a really nice kit there. And nice for them to explain to you how to cut the parts off the sprues!
Ken: Ahhh, no I hadn’t heard about the new Hobby Boss kit- I’ll be looking for the C when it comes out.
Thanks, I hadn’t checked around the internet, guess Mike was one of the guys who left for the other forums in the great shakeup. I don’t remember him mentioning being upset about anything here though.
Hey Ken, I got a Tamiya M3 Lee Med. Tank along with other assorted modeling goodies. I’ve already started doing my research on this one as I really like the odd ball design of this tank. I’m examining Squadron’s Lee/Grant walk around that was part of my goodie bag. The German half track is currently stalled as I’m waiting for some back ordered AM stuff. May put it on the back burner and start the Lee if my patience runs out. I’ll post some views of the half track thus far in a few days.
The Lee? Seems I remember reading about oddball tanks. Didn’t it have two turrets, or a side turret or something?
Yesterday was all about tedious! I worked on the jammer pods that hang under the Growler. Each one takes 10 decals and 4 photo-etch parts! Not to mention painting in the exhaust port in the back and an air inlet in the front. The PE set provides 4 different options for the metal grills that represent the xmitter area on the pods and only says"See your references!" I didn’t really find a whole lot in the way of references concerning the ALQ-99 pod, so my references say, “pick whichever set you want!”
I made a photo with the center pod (complete) on the bottom and the two outer pods with just the decals done on the left side for the other two. You really can’t see the decals too well, because they are low-viz markings… guess that’s why they call them low-visibility!
Also found another picture for Ken during my search, of the EF-111A Raven, which carries the ALQ-99 in a canoe faring underneath the fuselage in the bomb bay. Another look at that open rear gear door: You can also see that there is a gap at the back of the rear gear bay door that was necessary because of clearance issues when the gear would extend and the door opens backwards. Kind oddball engineering: if it don’t fit, cut it away! This could of been another one of Berny’s criticisms of the 111’s landing gear.
By the way, am I looking like a 'Vark head again?
Well sadly, I had to relegate the Crusader to the stash dept. as I don’t want to start any new projects until I can call the Growler done. It’s just amazing all the tedious little things that need to be done when you think you’re in the home stretch!
Yeah the M3 Lee/Grant was a big boxy vehicle with a small turret on top with a 37mm gun and a 75 mounted in the lower right hull fixed to fire forward only. Pretty effective in open areas in the desert but not in Europe.
Mike: Tigerman is starting a North Africa GB first of the year- your M3 would fit right in you want to cross-post her.
Jim: I’ve been tempted to leave off the stencils you can hardly see so many times. Somehow I always end up putting them on though.
Yes, and how many of us are also guilty of adding those parts inside a project that no one will ever see once the fuselage/hull/body is closed up, but we do it anyway? Guilty here!
Cliff and Jim: thanks Cliff, for the tip on the GB. As for the set up of the Lee/Grant it seems the powers that be at the time realized a 37mm main gun wasn’t going to cut it against the Germans and opted for a 75mm. Since the engineers only had 60 days to work out the details they decided to work off the existing M2A1 as their “frame” That and no turret ring available to accommodate the bigger canon resulted in it being mounted in the sponson. Even though it was never meant as a permanent fix it did serve our forces well in N. Africa and until the Sherman came along it was really all we had.
I learned some new facts today! Somehow, I always thought of the U.S. and WWII tanks as being Shermans, Shermans, and then more Shermans!
Finally looked up your tank and learned much more. I read how the US in 1939, had a grand total of some 400 tanks in their inventory and lagged behind in both design and production! Look forward to seeing your work!
I also learned other things as well today as I began to assemble the missiles for the Growler. The instructions say to paint both overall white and to paint bands of either bright blue or yellow. I quickly found out that white would be correct for the AGM-88 but the AIM-120’s should be FS36375 with the seeker head being white. As far as the bands, bright blue would signify an inert load for either the warhead or the motor. Why would I send my Growler into battle with ‘dummy’ weapons? The correct bands would be yellow for a live warhead and brown, not yellow for an active motor! I’m glad I did a little research on this.
I knew the M3 was a jury-rigged design to get a 75mm into the field as quickly as possible but not all that much beyond that- thanks for the info!
I’ve seen footage of US Army field exercises just before the war with soldiers using brooms for rifles and civilian cars driving along with placards reading ‘TANK’ hung on them. Still astonishing to me that we went from that to supplying gear to all the Allied powers in a few years.
Good information about the band colors on those missiles. I knew they had significance to the state of the missile, but did not realize that they also showed the state of the motor!
