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Posted (edited)

Made a bunch of progress on the IMS Vaiola. It’s my first 1/100 MH build and it’s way larger than those 1/144 kits I’m used to. I have three more 1/100’s in my stash and trying to decide which one to tackle once I finish this one up. 🤔

 

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Edited by Papa Rat
Posted
23 minutes ago, Papa Rat said:

Made a bunch of progress on the IMS Vaiola. It’s my first 1/100 MH build and it’s way larger than those 1/144 kits I’m used to. I have three more 1/100’s in my stash and trying to decide which one to tackle once I finish this one up. 🤔

 

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Looks really great.

Posted (edited)

Getting closer to completing one leg.

Thicker, rounder, more shapely thigh:

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Whole leg:

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Still a little bit of putty and sanding to do, but getting closer.

Edited by Chas
darned predictive text algorithm!
Posted

Early Sunday morning l finished up the hardest PE for the Texas. The rear observation tower and radar screen. I'm glad I saved this until last because I had been dreading it. All the techniques I had taught myself and utilized up to this point came in handy to get this part finished up with only minimal stress... LOL 😂. So at this point I still have a lot of little diddly PE to finish up but it's all rinse and repeat stuff I've done before so it's just a question of making time to sit down and do it.. (42 - 50cal guns / quad 50s /baskets and such, and the two aircraft cranes) Other than that, it's down to dropping down a million little plastic parts on the deck and before you know it..... It's gonna be time to start painting this bad boy! 

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Posted

UPDATE:

Checking in- had to rush my wife to the hospital last Thursday via 911/ ambulance; she has AFib (Atrial Fibrillation) and COVID; the latter is especially dangerous, as Chemo patients are very susceptible to infections due to the number they do on the immune system. Currently, she's in ICU while they try to knock down the COVID and address the AFib; to that end, I needed to isolate from her to protect her from anything else (have seen her a couple of times in full gown, gloves and gear). It's delayed her next Chemo treatment, as they cannot give it to her while she has an active infection. So basically, just sitting at home with nothing to do aside from call her when she's up to talking on the phone. Not expecting her out before Christmas... and the house feels utterly empty. :(

Nothing for models; no materials or kits available to me (no good hobby places nearby within walking distance). Priorities are food, medicine and transportation (buses to/ from medical center). 

Thinking about masking taping the cat, but painting the critter would be hard as they probably won't like the tape.

(I find this puzzling).

Stay tuned...

 

Posted

My thoughts and best wishes going to you and the Mrs, @pengbuzz. Not much I can do but offer my support from a distance. And send a little something to hopefully give you something to occupy your time while she recovers and hopefully comes home very soon.

Thom

Posted
1 hour ago, Thom said:

My thoughts and best wishes going to you and the Mrs, @pengbuzz. Not much I can do but offer my support from a distance. And send a little something to hopefully give you something to occupy your time while she recovers and hopefully comes home very soon.

Thom

You've already been too kind, my friend. Appreciate your support no matter what form it takes. :) 

Posted
9 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

UPDATE:

Checking in- had to rush my wife to the hospital last Thursday via 911/ ambulance; she has AFib (Atrial Fibrillation) and COVID; the latter is especially dangerous, as Chemo patients are very susceptible to infections due to the number they do on the immune system. Currently, she's in ICU while they try to knock down the COVID and address the AFib; to that end, I needed to isolate from her to protect her from anything else (have seen her a couple of times in full gown, gloves and gear). It's delayed her next Chemo treatment, as they cannot give it to her while she has an active infection. So basically, just sitting at home with nothing to do aside from call her when she's up to talking on the phone. Not expecting her out before Christmas... and the house feels utterly empty. :(

Nothing for models; no materials or kits available to me (no good hobby places nearby within walking distance). Priorities are food, medicine and transportation (buses to/ from medical center). 

Thinking about masking taping the cat, but painting the critter would be hard as they probably won't like the tape.

(I find this puzzling).

Stay tuned...

 

Best wishes for you and yours. Hoping you can get a little cheer in these tough times. Definitely a tough thing to go through during the holidays, hopefully she’ll be out soon and getting well

Posted (edited)

Our thoughts and prayers to you and Mrs Pengbuzz!  Good things happen around this time of year, so I hope you get your fair share.  Thanks for the update.  

Some more slow progress (it will slow even more as the holiday activities pick up I'm afraid).  So much pre-prep work on this kit before I can even to the fun part of painting!  Ended up having to cut off and rebuild all the canard and rudder pins as they are so weak and don't go very far inside, so I had to glue up some solid plastic inside the holes to re-drill the holes so they go deeper and can grab better.  So many little things to do like internal braces because the kit just "squashes" the middle of the airframe when glued together or leveling up pieces so they sit flush, I hate work that you never even see when finished!

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Looks kind of cool with a much lower profile canopy or as a drone unit 😛

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So many gaps to fill and sand!

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masking the canopy inside and out (has the same internal black brace as the F-35 uh).IMG_8826_resize.JPG.ce6c7ce038470526248cb6a520cb3f5b.JPGIMG_8827_resize.JPG.315f9b2baf92501238146127eb087f92.JPG

More tiny masking!

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Sanding around the intakes and getting that tail serrated engine area to fit was a bitch.  But its starting to look more like a plane.

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After a lot more sanding with the spot Mr. Surfacer primer highlighting all the spots that still need more work, after a few tries/days, I get it pretty smooth to a point ready for paint.  This is my most hated part; sanding and more sanding, but I've learned the hard way that if I skip out this step and race towards the paint, the next step highlights all the mistakes.

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After I thought I had addressed all the seams and I sprayed everything with the primer - it showed me there were sink marks all over the place in areas not even close to the seams.  I hadn't seen sinks marks on models for 20yrs or on non American kits 😛  I don't even normally primer the entire model, but I am glad I did with this kit.  I ended up filling all the depressions with Mr. Surfacer 1000 brushed over and re-sanded smooth.  I think I got most of them. 

They have the colours reversed in the instructions, the light grey is called out as the Mr. Color number for the dark grey and vice versa - luckily I caught that before I started to paint.

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I should own stock in Tamiya Masking tape, I'm going through quite a lot of it - it really is the best stuff for not pulling paint up with nice sharp lines.  I then masked the Spinter Camo pattern which I love.

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Ended up a bit dark (a little too contrasty for my tastes from all the reference photos), but this ended up working out even better than I had hoped.  The next stage I was going to try to replicate that metallic sheen you see in all the newer stealth F-22 & F-35 greys.  This was going to be my test bed to lightly mist Alclad Dark Aluminum over the camo so both the lighter grey and darker grey gets the metallic sheen.  It ended up lightening the entire model and tying together the two greys really well.  Now I know to exaggerate the camo pattern on my F-22 & 35s.  The Alcad was the smallest metallic particles I could get in paint, and its not bad, works better on the lighter grey than dark, but really changes with the angle you view and with the light source.  Sometimes it looks too light, and sometimes it looks too dark - weird but its more like the photographic references.

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I was worried that the masking tape might lift the really fine misting of the Alclad, but luckily it didn't - again this Tamiya stuff is worth every penny!  Again more masking for the lighter carbon edges of the scheme.

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Can you tell I'm paranoid with overspray 😛

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I'm learning masking for these 5th gen stealth fighters are going to be a bitch!  I'm trying to paint most of the details on as there's a very limited decal sheet that was supplied, but also all the photo references has shown me a very clean aircraft with very limited data stenciling.

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After 2 weeks, here's where I'm at.  I've sprayed everything with a gloss coat in prep for decals.  I'm really liking the sleekness and lines of this aircraft, I thought it was kind of awkward but maybe because I've been looking at it for too long.

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Edited by wm cheng
Posted

That's nice and intense paint work @wm cheng. Really smoothed out the kit's faults.

Finally got the gear bay painted up, after the clear gloss coat ate the first white coat away. Had that happen a couple of times now, Got out the Alclad gloss to move past it.

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Now detailing the cockpit and getting it ready to be installed.

 

Posted

Didn’t post in a while.

Got new stuff for future workbenches. Hehe

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Finally got my hands on a Hasegawa VF-1D that is not sold for a fortune. I was always eyeing that ASF-X, so finally got a nice one :)

And on top, a Plamax Super Valkyrie. Fun fun.

I once read: building model kits and purchasing model kits are two different hobbies. I hope to have some more time to actually build stuff. Life is kinda busy at the moment.

Posted

I'm working on painting this 1:6 Nadia figure that our friend Tekering 3D-printed for me! This is like an older Nadia with a more mature body. Sexy! So far I've done her fleshtone, which is a mix of Tamiya XF-10 Flat Brown, XF-2 Flat White, and X-6 Orange. Tamiya's paints have a rather limited palette and do not include fluorescent orange, so I used regular orange. I only recently learned that there is a Mr. Hobby fluorescent orange color I could have added to the mix, but this looks fine enough as it is. Orange is pretty fluorescent regardless. (FYI: for doing fleshtones, fluorescent orange or pink is pretty essential when mixing your own colors.) I guess this print also had a Blue Water gem for her necklace, but that got overlooked when printing. No matter though; since I've decided this is an older Nadia, there is no Blue Water as it's been spent.

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In the back is the July issue of Model Graphix magazine. I somehow missed this issue this past summer with its big Macross article and cover, so I bought it online. It came today in the mail.

Posted

@wm cheng I guess what every 5th-gen fighter modeler has to realize is that it's much easier to paint & mask the light edges before the main camo than the other way around. I fell into the same pit when I built my J-31 😅

Posted
2 hours ago, SteveTheFish said:

I guess this print also had a Blue Water gem for her necklace, but that got overlooked when printing.

Actually, it got overlooked on the original 3D model.  The full-body version had it:

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However, it wasn't included on the headless version. 😒

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Strange, that. 🤨

2 hours ago, SteveTheFish said:

I've decided this is an older Nadia, there is no Blue Water as it's been spent.

Actually, that makes a lot of sense. ☺️

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