Vince Hoffmann

PetarB, Your model was very inspiring to me, I really like what you did with your kits! The whale was some spare decals from my decal collection box... I believe it may have been one of the free sheets I got when I went down to the Santa Clara IPNS Nats a few years back. It's actually a WWII nose art, but I don't know which aircraft it was intended for.... probably a cargo plane I don't know how soon I'll get to finishing the transporter, I've got some paying model work to get done and one more model to finish up for Wonderfest.

Thanks guys! I really enjoyed building this model and I'm looking forward to finishing the launch vehicle in the next few (hopefully) weeks. I searched through my decal collection for quite a while before I found what I thought was the perfect nose art for this beast!

The Valkyrie and booster is complete, except for some chipped resin at the pointy end of the booster. I think this happened when I set the whole assembly on its nose to allow epoxied engine bells to cure in place. This should be an easy fix and minor paint touch up. I tried a blue/grey combo on the launch arm, but it's a bit dark for my taste. I'm going to repaint everything a lighter shade (not too much lighter) but enough so that the detailing doesn't get lost in the shadows of the paint. I pulled out the launch vehicle the other day and looked over the parts. Very nice casting with very few bubbles. Most of the flash to be trimmed comes in the form of giant pour lugs. It may appear in the pictures that both models are painted light grey, but the booster is white and the Valk is light grey

Thanks Maxtype I really love the blue crawler paint jobs I've seen (I believe PetarB did the one I'm thinking of) and I was considering the same. I'll consider the olive green/green scheme. These types of transport vehicles are well behind the lines so there's no reason for fancy camoflage... but it would be neat to see one that way, perhaps the tan/green/black jungle scheme.. but that's definitely not mimimalist! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:M901-TOW-latrun-3.jpg

After some light weathering, the two are starting to come together...

Booster is painted, decaled and ready for weathering. I think it's fairly obvious that my paint schemes are non-canon

Hey folks, longtime lurker, first time poster here. I read the rules section, but please let me know if my image attachments are not done the way the moderators like. I thought I'd share what I've been working on lately. This Valkrie is an older Hasegawa VF-1A demonstrator with decals cannibalized from the newer VF-1D kit. Parts fit on the older model is marginal with a lot of seams to patch up. The Atmospheric booster is the Morr Models kit. Nice casting and the VF-1/booster mating surfaces are very nicely engineered. The launch arm is the Samauri monkey model with excellent casting and parts fit. These kits will all be combined with the launch vehicle. The Valkrie is painted in a blue/grey scheme with a very light burnt umber oil wash and dark grey pre-shading. The Booster pack is painted gloss white using a cloud pattern technique. More decals and paint will come later. The engine bells are ready for their oil wash. I haven't decided how to paint the launch arm yet... any suggestions?