I painted my B-52’s wings, but forgot to cover them! Now I have to strip them! How about everyone else?
Seems this topic comes up once a month or so. Well, it’s been a while, so what the heck…
- Didn’t wait long enough for the metalizer to dry on my P-38 before I started the buffing process. Dissassembled the plane and rebuilt it. Darn thing never fit together like it did the first time after that. Monogram part replacement to the rescue.
- Then there was the recent brain fart of painting top half of the wings on my SB2C white intead of the bottom halves. I have the Family Guy marathon on Comedy Central to thank for influencing that one. Easy Off oven cleaner came to the rescue there.
and… - Painting the bottom of my P-40 Tigershark Tamiya Sky Blue. I highly doubt any man, regardless of how comfortable he is with his manliness would be caught dead flying a war plane with a belly colored as such. P-40 has become victim of cat attack and since then retired a testing subject.
Back in the 80’s while at Seymour Johnson I built an F-4 model and at that time the only model paint I could find was the little bottle testors. Needless to say, they didn’t have the colors I needed. After a couple of botched attempts at trying to mix the colors it hit me as I was walking out to a jet one day, “all these F-4s have the right colors on them”. So I took a walk over to the paint shop and they were nice enough to give me all the paint I wanted. Thinking I had this project by the tail I got home and started painting. This is where the trouble started, no one mentioned to me that “real” airplane paint is just a tad bit less corrosive than battery acid and its not to well suited for an itty bitty plastic model. When I woke up the next morning and went to look at the kit it went from an F-4E to an F-4 Droopy.
Hey Quags,
Back in the day the Brits flew P-40’s, out of 212 Sqdn I believe, with Tan and Brown uppers and Azure Blue undersides. Its actually a pretty nice looking scheme. I’m thinking about it for my Trumpeter P-40.
About twenty years ago, I built Monograms B-17G. Super detailed the interior, painstakingly painted the instruments, super detailed the bombbay that I had opened up, scratchbuilt the R/T compartment and waist gunners positions, detailed the heck out of the tailgunners position. Glued the fuselage halves together, waited three days for the glue to set up. picked it up on the third day to lok it over and THEN I noticed that I had left out the tail gear. I never did finish that model and I haven’t done one since.(B-17G that is). Man you talk about being seriously PO’d, that doesn’t even begin to describe me. I couldn’t get the fuselage halves apart without destroying all of my work. Ah well, at least it was a learning experience!
Opening the box on Modelcraft’s F82E. Still not done and probably wont be either.
buying the trumpeter t-72 motorized
Where do I start?
I had just finishedcleaning up the fusalage seams and adding spreaders to the lower fusaage of my 190D so that it all fiited perfectly to the wing, when I dropped the lot. This from a height of about 5 and a half feet onto the kitchen floor!!![banghead]
Result: split seams, tear in the fusalage behind the cockpit, knocked off stub for aerial mount, and lost one of the spreaders!
Oh, and wasted a weeks work!
Karl
Nothing to do with aircraft, but I decided to do a Vietnam diorama about 12 years ago, including an M-107 and M-109. Built trenches, trees, craters from balsa and putty. Then made a whole revetment from tissuepaper-sanbags (one by one, good for your zen experience). Did a really good job( I thought) of airbrushing my first two models and placed them on the dio base. I then went to the lhs, to find some suitable soldiers to populate my masterpiece, placing the dio on top of the bedroom tv. I noticed the weather getting pretty windy on my way back, but thought nothing of it. When I opened the bedroom door as I returned I found the dio on the floor with the tv on top of it (total writeoff of course, this was a BIG tv[:D]). Turns out the storm had kicked the window open, knocking the tv off its stand… The whole dio got binned of course[|(]
Man, too many to list, just like everyone else I’m sure.
Glued fuselage halves together forgetting to install interior/engiles/etc, take your pick.
Most of my mistakes come from not reading the instructions carefully enough. So many times, I’d just skip a step for whatever reason. I wouldn’t even notice it until a few steps afterwards, usually by which point a major part of the kit would have to be disassembled to fix!
Buying a Polar Lights kit… nuff said.
Frank
Just opening the box at times is a big enough screw up !
But best has to be thinking I could use maskol on the enterprise 1/350th deck on the flight markinbgs !
how naive one can be, others include thinning Tamiya paints with humbrol enamel thinner, painting the missoiuri deck and wondering what the hell was happening ! replacemnt parts don’t you just love em !
Just opening the box at times is a big enough screw up !
But best has to be thinking I could use maskol on the enterprise 1/350th deck on the flight markinbgs !
how naive one can be, others include thinning Tamiya paints with humbrol enamel thinner, painting the missoiuri deck and wondering what the hell was happening ! replacemnt parts don’t you just love em !
When trying to wash off a “wet” coat of Future that started to pool, I washed off ALL the paint by accident.
I once bought a 1/72 Italeri B-25 kit really cheap (actually it was the Navy B-25 verson), and i was so exited to put it together, the very first thing i did was to cut the wrong waist window out. i figured no one would notice if i just put the window in, and found that the hole was too big for the window. It’s all spare parts now and my only consolation was that it was a cheap kit. [:o)]
Still the same… (would take a lot to beat it though! ) I tried to use molten lead to weight the nose of a 1/72 ESCI A-4F Skyhawk… I was about 12, so bear with me!
When trying to wash off a “wet” coat of Future that started to pool, I washed off ALL the paint by accident.
Didn’t have any clay so I used green Squadron putty to hold the lead weights in the nose cone of a F-4. I was about 14 at the time. The putty held the weights in place perfectly. I glued the cone on and set the plane on its tail to dry overnight. Needless to say, the next day the cone was a shriveled-up lump of melted plastic.
That was a hard learning experience since that model cost me alot of money.
Back in the erly 80,s I bought a monogram kit.
Thats a mistake if you ever saw one[:D]
Lets see… that one? no. maybe the other one? nope. Oh, here’s a good one:
Back in the early 80s I had one of Revell’s 1/48 air combat series models (thats two planes in one box that you can pose dog fighting if you like) I had the Israeli F-16 and Syrian MiG-21 combo kit.
I had just finished the F-16 (poor by my current standards, but my masterpiece back then) and was very proud of it. I was working on the MiG and got to the point of dropping the seat in, but where was it? I looked high and low, saw the F-16 seat all nice and spiffy on the bench and kept looking on the floor for the MiG’s seat.
“Hey, wait a minute” I said to myself, “The F-16s done and the seat ain’t in er’” I hesitantly peered through my finished F-16’s canopy to see a very nicely finished KM-1 seat! Do you think I could get it out without irrepairable damage to the 16? Yeah, right!
Then one day I opened up Hobbycraft’s 1/72 Sukhoi Fitter. I should have stopped there, but ohhhh noooo, I had to be an idiot and TRY to build that abomination.