thanks for letting me share about my LHS adventures for probably the 3rd time.
guess what i got at the LHS ??? thats right, a 1/144 shanghai dragon shake n bake F-14 dio. in the box are a base, a 1/144 F-14A+ , a fire engine, and 6 guys and a little control bunker. (wrong word, someone correct me) the moulding has some flash, and the engraving leaves much to be desired. however, its interesting nature and correct price (16 SGD) made me buy it.
im just really excited about this project, cos its gonna be
small
relatively fast
pretty darn good looking for such a small scale
looks to be stress-free (i hope)
my first ever diorama !
i will keep everyone posted with pictures if i can.
Whoa, thats gonna be tiny! You will have to share pics of it when you are done.
Sounds like a fun project. Hope to see some pics.
Regards, Rick
Reggie,
You should have lots of fun with this little gem! I know I did. I bought it about a year ago for $2.50 when Hobby Lobby was having a sale. It went together quickly with minimum filling and sanding (in fact, I don’t think I used ANY filler) and was a breeze to complete. I left off the landing gear and posed it “in flight” on an acrylic rod which I bent using boiling water. I then mounted it on a small base and I had a small brass plate engraved. I gave it to my dad who is also a plane nut. Cost of plane: $2.50. Cost of the base, rod and (ouch) engraved brass plate: about $35-40. The fun of giving this all to my dad: Priceless.
It’s a fun kit. Oh I just remembered. I did use putty but it was just to deal with the closed landing gear doors.
Best wishes and have fun.
Eric
PS. The “cockpit” was just a couple of open squares with blobs which almost represented people sitting in seats but that was as close as it got. I left out these things and painted the inside of the canopy (which is overly thick anyway) a mixture of light and dark gloss blue. I didn’t thoroughly mix the paint together. I purposely just sort of swirled the colors together so that when I painted the interior of the canopy it went on as different colored blue streaks. The end result was that it sort of looked like the reflection of a blue sky on the canopy. Came out pretty neat!
I’ve seen the kit your describing. I have the 1/144th dio of an F/A-18A Hornet launching off the deck of the USS MIDWAY. It’s a real nice addition to the collection. [:)]
My first diorama (if you could call it that) was rather similar. I picked up an old Hasegawa
1/144 Ki-45 (WW2 Japanese twin-engine fighter) for 50p at my local IPMS meeting - I don’t usually
build models in this scale, but in this case the kit came with an airfield revetment bunker, two
different support trucks, and some fuel cans. After painting (and adding a base to the revetment)
these made a very nice diorama, with the Ki-45 parked in the revetment and fuel cans being unloaded
from one of the trucks to refuel the aircraft. All it really needs is some figures, though! (there were none in the kit, and I’ve never seen any 1/144 ground crew for sale…)
I don’t know if there are any other kits in this series, or if anyone else here has built any, but they
could probably be used in conjunction with scratchbuilt buildings, etc. to create a more complete airfield diorama.
i have just finished gluing the fire engine, and also the main body of the cat. fit is poor, but so am i, for 16 bucks im not complaining at all.