1/48 Revell F-105F

[Bill L2]

Looking very good. That is a tough scheme to do.

[Rob]

Quick update: it's been a long time since I've posted any progress on this, but here goes (no pics yet, i'll have to do that later):

1. The friggin nose pitot broke off....again.  Shouldn't known better than to put that on too early in the build, but you know how that goes...you get all jazzed and spun-up over making progress and before you know it, you've added too much too soon

2. The exhaust petals are all painted and weathered.  Hit 'em with an oil wash a few nights ago.  Interior sections are flat coated and I "buffed" the outside surfaces for a semi-sheen, and so far, I'm pretty happy with it.

3. The Bu No. has been fixed on the forward fuselage near the front cockpit.  On this 105-F, the data stencil appears just underneath the front canopy...the only problem was that the decal silvered pretty badly.  So I gently picked it apart w/ a new xacto blade and shot a new flat coat over it this afternoon.  No more silvering, so that's done.

4. Tail decal on the left side also silvered.  Picked that apart and shot a new coat of flat on that, and that's fixed too.

5. Punched a couple of holes under the fuselage for the MER rack; I should be able to mount that without too much trouble, BUT it's going to wait until I get the main gear on.

6. Speaking of gear....this is going to be tough.  Turns out that the dihedral (sp?) is off.  By a LOT.  The net result is that the landing gear, when inserted into the holes in the wings, is causing the landing gear to take on a pigeon-toed appearance.  So I'm in the process now of boring out those holes a bit and shaving microns of plastic off the pins of the landing gear legs in an attempt to correct the alignment.  This could very well kill this project, we'll see.

7. According to the decal sheet I've used for this aircraft, it suggests that it should have that yellow-ish sealant all along the cockpit glass.  I masked off all the clear parts (after already having painted the SEA where it needed to be on those parts) and hit it with Testor's yellow, cut with a little light grey to reduce the intensity and to give it a somewhat faded look to match the weathering I did for everything else.  So that's done.  But I need to fix some decals that got torn up in the process.  Easy to do though.

8. And finally, I have the Legends resin seats for this bird.  Pretty nice moldings.  Both are still on the casting blocks, but it should be quick-ish work to get those ready for the 'pit.

I'll try to get some more pics taken and then I'll post 'em when I can.

[lgriffin]

That looks great, Rob!

Lee Griffin

[Rob]

Since some of you guys have been posting, I figured I might as well jump on the bandwagon here.

So this one was a real dog.  I really like the look of the Thud, but damn this kit fought me all along the way.  I'm finally at the point where the SEA camo is just about done.  Upper surfaces are set, now it's the lower fuselage that needs some paint.  According to the after-market decal sheet I have for this aircraft, it's supposed to be heavily weathered, so I beat the hell out of the paint job by using various tones for the greens.  I base coated with tan first, so since that was all masked off, I'll need to go back and beat up the tan areas too.