mustang1989

You are tha man!!! Oh my .....holy...............you gotta be................that looks great!!!!

I got the itch to build another Pacific Theater warplane in the future off of this build. I have an Aichi D3A1 "Val" dive bomber in 48th scale in the stash but have also considered Eduards Hellcat Profipak in 1/48 scale. Hek I think they have that in Royal Class too. I dunno what it's gonna be but it will be one of these two for sure!

I don't think I ever saw this one either!!! Cool!

And stuff like that is awesome dealing with the first sentence. And ashamed on the next sentence. I feel your pain Jordan!

Heya Joker! Don't worry about that. Just throw something in there no matter how good or bad you think it is and have fun. Thats what it's all about right there.

I'm looking forward to seeing you build this Mark! I don't know why we like to build, "The Bad Guys" stuff sometimes. I mean there aint nothin' like a good ol' P-51 Mustang, Huey or Blackhawk helicopter or Sherman tank , but the "other guys" stuff just draws some of us like a moth to a flame. It's got to be curiousity that draws us to something different. Models like the one you are building here just looks cool! Keep it coming, Joe P.S. Just a thought but we could start a small group build here in All the Rest with the Fw190 D-9 I'm going to build and the Hind that you are building for starters. I dunno what we could call it yet , maybe the "All the Rest" Group Build? I'm starting up on the D-9 coming up on the 1st of January. Interested? I suppose we could run it by Harry and then start a GB feeler to see if anybody is interested.

I have NEVER seen that! Wow! Cool post!

David:Thanks Dave! There are certainly flaws but overall I'm happy with it. Expense was low on this one consisting of $5 for the Monogram kit, $10 for the Hasegawa kit, about $7 for the PE stuff, $12 for the squadron letter/ number decals and the ammo belts were free. I think I did manage to spend about 12 bucks on Vallejo acrylic paints for it too. Everything but the paint was bought about 15 years ago. The ammo belts came from a fellow modeler from another forum as a gift. Even the EZ line that I rigged the aerial antenna with was a free sample from Bobe's Hobbies in Pensacola, Florida. All things said I got off light at around $46 or so total. I usually spend anywhere's from 70- 300 bucks building a kit so this was a break from the usual. I had to lean on the paint job pretty hard due to the fact that I didn't open any body panels. Mark:Thanks Mark! I built one of these when I was 12 and I'm with you. On that kit I didn't paint the upper surfaces as they were molded in blue. I didn't paint the prop, wheels or rear gun again due to the fact that they were molded in black. The bottom I painted some makeshift enamel grey with a worn out Testors hand brush. I literally swabbed the paint on and used gasoline as thinner!! I was as happy as a lark though. It was the first of many Monogram builds that I built as a kid. Thanks for the kind words buddy.

Well folks you can stick a fork in this thing because this thing is now done! Just had to install the PE gun belts and that wrapped her up! The following pics were taken this morning and I shot the first pic or two with the pilots sliding canopy installed and then opted to shoot the remaining pics without it. In about a month I will procure a vacuform canopy and replace the kit supplied part with a more accurate scale thickness piece. Here goes: a small comment about the next picture. I took this one with the purpose of showing the model/ replication of 22-C-14 after it was first loaded onto the carrier Independence. I tried to get the paint scheme as close to this bird as possible so I'll have this pic and then following that the actual pic of the plane(which you all have seen here already but not right next to one another). The now so obvious thing that sticks out to me like a sore thumb is the fact that there is actually only one roundel on the upper wing surface on the port wing. I aint going to worry about it now. If this would have been a build for extreme accuracy I wouln't have been very happy. Pictures offer great help in modeling I continue to find out. and then finally the cockpit with most of the upgrades from Hasegawa's SBD-4 kit, Toms Modelworks and PE ammo belts for the rear flex gun: All in all this was a fun build for me. Accuracy was really only there in the paint and there are flaws throughout the build that I would normally take care of. With fun in mind I mixed accuracy with original Monogram intent,however, none of the features that I wanted to work in the beginning of the build work in the name of getting things to fit right and proper so I left alot of Monogram signatures on the aircraft such as the copyright year on the elevators, part numbers in the middle inside portion of the dive flaps and the incorrect centerline bomb and bomb strut. I would like to thank all of you have encouraged me and looked in on this WIP throughout. I'm going to be taking the month of December off from building for the most part and in the meantime will catch you all up to speed on my Fw190 D-9 and then take off full speed ahead in January on that. That build will be for accuracy! Thanks again guys, Joe

I usually get all of my stuff from Squadron, Sprue Brothers and Hannants. Every now and then if I need something really quick like tools or airbrush supplies and limited paints I'll go ahead and hit Hobby Lobby up. It's a true shame that the LHS we had here in Corpus folded up right after I first moved here around 15 years ago. Bummer!

Got the ammo belts painted and weathered some. Will be posting finishing pics by the end of the weekend.

That thing must be huge being in 35th scale!!! I saw a Mig-31 being built on another forum with that same green in the cockpit. I figured that must be the norm for those guys on interior color.

Today I'll get you all caught up on the cockpit. I had no in between photos to show progress up to this point but made up for it on the engine. I used alot of the PE I had left over from the Fw190 A-8/R2 that I had built earlier in the year so that made this whole operation a lot smoother. Here's the pics of the pit as it is now:

Dang Mark! That looks really good! Is that icky green what those guys really use on the IP? Who needs instrumentation lighting with that? lol Good work and good attention to detail!

lol!!!

A little closer look at that Aires update box so you can see what all is gonna be displayed here. This is gonna be fun!!

Well here we go. I've got some catching up here to do because this kit is already somewhat started. I'll take it from the top and slowly but surely catch up to the point that I am currently at. First off we start out with the basic fuselage halves before surgery: and then after partial surgery: and then after the whole bit of cutting to include the tail wheel access panel in order to display "guts" in the vertical fin. The cockpit is just started here. I'll get back to this in the following posts.

Just to show the enormity of this kit: This is a pic of the DB605 engine of my 1/24 scale Bf109 next to my 1/24 scale Dodge Challenger. In short , it's enormous!

Yeah those Trumpy kits are massive in the 1/24 th scale. The Bf109 K4 that I turned into a G-14, even though the 109 is a tiny aircraft in real life , was huge model to display. There's a couple of PE sets available for the 190 to include brass MG131 barrels and seat belts and a metal landing gear also. The 1/24 aircraft just take up too much room in the display category for me to continue building them, even though I loved building one. There's a story behind the 109 build but I'll get to that later.

I've gotta say Ira, with this amount of imagination on a ficticious build I'm curious to see what the "stuff that exists" builds are like (i.e. cars, planes, and stuff like that) They've gotta be good!!

Hey everybody. Things are starting to wind down with the SBD Dauntless build. I am currently painting the ammo belts and putting the finishing touches on the rear twin .30 caliber flex guns and thought I would use the time to post a WIP here for my next build. We'll be starting with a 1/48 scale Tamiya Focke Wulf Fw190D-9 and "supersize" it with an Aires upgrade set and a CMK landing gear set (the main landing gear struts are still too short in the CMK upgrade but am going to display the tail wheel strut and retracting spring in an open panel on the vertical fin). I also have metal main landing gear struts to correct the length of the kit struts and will be using the main landing gear doors from the Eduard A-8 kit as the Tamiya doors are also too short. Finally in the line up and not pictured are the MG131 and MG151 brass gun barrels from Master Model. The Aires set has a little less than 100 parts consisting of resin and PE. A guaranteed fun build. I've got about 3 references for this thing so this will be a fairly accurate replication. Anyway here's the base line start pics with the kit, the upgrade set and the decal sheet (because the box decals suck and the paint scheme is just too cool for the aircraft I want to replicate): Heres the kit/ upgrade set: and here's the decal set. I'll be going with "Black 10". I'll give more history details in a post or two. and here's whats probably the single best reference I have ever run across for these birds by Jerry Crandall. This is but volume 1 with 300+ pages. There is a volume 2 with just as many pages. Cant go wrong with ol Jerry!

This.............I do remember!! Good stuff Mike!

That aint NO lie!! lol

Thanks Julius! Just got the ammo belts in yesterday so that should tip it over into the 100% complete category by tomorrow.

Ha ha ha ha!!! Wooo hooo!!! LOL