One of the more bizarre “wonder weapons” to come off the German blueprint boards during WW2 was the Triebflügel by Focke-Wulf. It was to be powered by 3 Pabst ramjet engines developing 2,000 pounds of thrust each. When taking off, the rotors would be angled to give lift in a similar manner to a helicopter. Once the aircraft had attained sufficient altitude the pilot would tilt it over into level flight. The rotors continued spinning in level flight, maintaining 220 rpm at the aircraft's maximum forward speed. To land, the craft had to slow its speed and pitch the fuselage until the craft was vertical. Power could then be reduced and it would descend until the landing gear rested on the ground. The Triebflügel made it to wind tunnel testing but that’s as far as it got. It was calculated out to have a forward speed of 621 mph and a service ceiling of 50,000 feet. I decided to have some fun and think “outside the box” and make mine appear as though it’s a war weary Triebflügel featuring the Luftwaffe light blue RLM76 as a base for the splinter camouflage.

155mm self-propelled howitzer of South Africa done in acrylics. Kit by Takom in 1/35. This weapon platform features stabilizing hydraulics towards the front and at rear and is able to fire 2-4 HE rounds per minute at a range of 41.63 miles.

The He219 was a twin engine WW2 night fighter featuring various radar arrays. Advanced features included cannons mounted to fire at an oblique angle, the first steerable nose-wheel on an operational German aircraft, and the world's first ejection seats on an operational aircraft. Armament consisted of two MG 151/20 cannons mounted in a detachable fairing under the fuselage, two 20mm 151/20 cannons in the wing roots and two 30mm MK 108 cannons in the upper fuselage mounted at 65° for attacking aircraft from beneath. It had a crew of two and was powered by two Daimler-Benz V-12 engines each producing 1,776 horsepower giving it a top speed of 420mph at 23,000 feet.

Japan’s WW2 fighter interceptor Shinden of which only two prototypes were completed just before Japan’s surrender. The 2,130 hp Mitsubishi (Ha-43) radial engine and its supercharger were installed behind the cockpit and drove a six-bladed propeller via an extension shaft. Engine cooling was to be provided by long, narrow, obliquely-mounted intakes on the side of the fuselage. Of the two prototypes produced one flew a total of 45 minutes before the war ended and ended with one prototype being scrapped and the other shipped to the US for testing by the US Navy but of which never flew again. I decided not to depict Shinden as a prototype and instead to use it as basis for it being thrust into actual production. She sports a bare metal finish with typical hastily applied dark green camo and an antiglare panel. No decals were harmed in the making of this build - all markings were airbrushed.

I decided to go back some 40+ years and re-visit some kits I had when in high school and got lost to the time of history when I went in the service 2 weeks after graduation. Re-purchased the kit and dove into the same Matilda kit I had back then rubber band tracks included! So here’s to the good ol’ days with yesterday’s kit using today’s techniques and supplies…

The “nothing special” run-of-the-mill simple Tamiya Wildcat. This was my first attempt at multi-layered chipping which is a 9 step process (or at least my method is)…

My first posting here of the McLaren MP4/6 I made a while back. Just thought I’d share…

Greetings everyone. New on this forum. I’ve never posted here before though I’ve posted on other forums before for decades. I know the rules differ from site to site but what are they here concerning the posting of build pics and swastikas? I know in another site I post they’re not allowed and must be hidden as a spoiler alert or, simply mosaicked out (blurred, etc.). So what’s the rules here. Pardon my ignorance I searched but couldn’t get the answer perhaps I’m looking in the wrong place. Oh, also is it okay to have your own website (non-commercial) posted within a post like I did here or is it a no-no? Just wondering. Thanks in advance.

This is the brand new 1/48 UMA AV-8B Harrier II Plus, and I believe the first subject from this new company. While I cannot make a definitive statement to its accuracy, I can say that it seems UMA went the extra mile to try to present as accurate a kit of the most modernized Harrier that they could and they include a lot of options for the builder. The fit is excellent for the most part and the engineering breakdown of the parts works very well. Kit options include 2 different 1-piece engine intakes (one with open bleed air doors and the other with them all closed), clear canopies with and without the det cord embedded, optional up or down flaps, gun/ammo pod or strakes for the bottom, and full or depleted chaff/flare dispensers. The cockpit can be built 3 different ways as the kit provides traditional side consoles and a main panel with molded in details that can either be painted or have the appropriate water-slide decal applied over them; but also includes smooth surfaced side consoles and main panels designed to have the included 3D printed color cockpit decals applied to them. The kit also has a very small set of PE parts (without frets!), masks for the clear parts/wheels/engine intake, and polycaps for securing the tail planes and engine exhaust nozzles. Decals are provided for 3 Harriers, all belonging to the Blacksheep of VMF-214. The decals are some of the best I've used with minimal clear edges and in some cases no clear interior connectors, making it a challenge to apply some of the smaller stencils. On to the rest of the pics! These are the main subassemblies.... there are plenty of inserts for them but they fit very well. All of the parts seen here practically "click" together and all along natural fuselage seams. I needed no filler on any part of the kit. If you're looking to do a modern AV-8B.... this may be the kit for you! Critiques, comments and questions welcome as always! Gil

This is the brand new 1/48 UMA AV-8B Harrier, and I believe the first subject from this new company. While I cannot make a definitive statement to its accuracy, I can say that it seems UMA went the extra mile to try to present as accurate a kit of the most modernized Harrier that they could and they include a lot of options for the builder. The fit is excellent for the most part and the engineering breakdown of the parts works very well. Kit options include 2 different 1-piece engine intakes (one with open bleed air doors and the other with them all closed), clear canopies with and without the det cord embedded, optional up or down flaps, gun/ammo pod or strakes for the bottom, and full or depleted chaff/flare dispensers. The cockpit can be built 3 different ways as the kit provides traditional side consoles and a main panel with molded in details that can either be painted or have the appropriate water-slide decal applied over them; but also includes smooth surfaced side consoles and main panels designed to have the included 3D printed color cockpit decals applied to them. The kit also has a very small set of PE parts (without frets!), masks for the clear parts/wheels/engine intake, and polycaps for securing the tail planes and engine exhaust nozzles. Decals are provided for 3 Harriers, all belonging to the Blacksheep of VMF-214. The decals are some of the best I've used with minimal clear edges and in some cases no clear interior connectors, making it a challenge to apply some of the smaller stencils. On to the rest of the pics! These are the main subassemblies.... there are plenty of inserts for them but they fit very well. All of the parts seen here practically "click" together and all along natural fuselage seams. I needed no filler on any part of the kit. If you're looking to do a modern AV-8B.... this may be the kit for you! Critiques, comments and questions welcome as always! Gil

I'm making plans to attend next year's Nationals. If you want to display and enter a model, do you need to plan to be there the entire time? I'm making travel plans.

HI ! Here another project I been working on the side , using the old OLIN / LINDBERG/ PEGASUS kit I The plan is to do 2 versions...If you like to view the complete WIP on this one I have set -up an GOOGLE page , just follow this link : https://photos.app.goo.gl/PHiSWZwEPTxCbNr77 Enjoy ! Jmarc

I ordered the Osiris Models (now no longer operating) Matilda flail. It was very nicely detailed, amazing in some respects actually if you look at the chain flails, but the Matilda used in the kit was one of the very earliest ones with the armored co-axial M/G and the different exhaust system. I couldn't find any photos of the use of these earlier vehicles, so I went on the hunt for an ESCI Matilda, it being the most readily, if rare, 1/72 version of the later mark vehicle. I finally tracked one down (no pun intended) and set to work adapting the Osiris flail mechanism to the ESCI kit. It fit quite well actually and took minimal work with only the addition of the support beams to the sides of the Matilda being necessary. I did need to add the lane indicators to the rear however, but these hadn't been included in the Osiris kit either. One other small addition was the flail operator. He is a modified seated figure that has lost his arms and legs but he now fits in the rather cramped space. One drawback is that the commander figure from the ESCI kit has a face more reminiscent of a chimpanzee than a brave warrior.

Staying with the horror theme a little longer, Fr. Damien Karras the troubled priest from the 1973 Exorcist film went on the hobby table. The character was played by Jason Miller who sadly passed away in 2001. As a sidebar his son is Jason Patrick of Lost Boys fame! The kit is in 2 simple parts - the bust and the base. Looking it over there was only the slightest flash line in the hair, which was easily removed. The sculpt IMO is a freeze frame of when the demon enters the priest, saving Regan. I was surprised that looking for a screen grab of that part of the scene was harder to find than I thought. With the black priest garb this is going to be an easy paint up. I start as usual with my "pinkle" and red base coat to the skin. While that was drying, my plan was to make the name plate a tarnished bronze. I saw a tutorial where the tarnish is painting in first and then the metallic is dry brushed on later. So lets see... Then the bronzing... Next up is the face colors, and despite him looking very pale in that last image, I felt he needed a little coloring as the first skin application. The priest garb is simply black, and then I added some black gray as a highlight for the shoulders etc... V's Pale Flesh was added to the face and then with the outline of his eyes sculpted it, I added a little Agrax Wash to the round divots and then a greenish yellow to the irises once the Wash dried. The final need was taking my stylus tool and with a dip into black made the pupils. He was finished. He can now join his partner Fr. Merrin who was previously done. Thanks for looking. (apologies for the bad pic...)

I searched for this kit for some time as it is the only one I know of that is an injection molded plastic model of the Tiger before her conversion to a helicopter/command ship. It's a very old kit and there is a bit of flash and a lot of mold seams to deal with along with making sure everything fit together well. I drilled out the portholes and added the Gold Medal detail set and used generic doors and railings. I ran out of steam when it came time to rig her and since most of the rigging would be attached to a lot of those fragile PE parts, I chose the better part of valor and called it done.

I searched for this kit for some time as it is the only one I know of that is an injection molded plastic model of the Tiger before her conversion to a helicopter/command ship. It's a very old kit and there is a bit of flash and a lot of mold seams to deal with along with making sure everything fit together well. I added the Gold Medal detail set and used generic railings. I ran out of steam when it came time to rig her and since most of the rigging would be attached to a lot of those fragile PE parts, I chose the better part of valor and called it done.

I just completed the brand new Academy 1/144 B-2 Stealth Bomber. It's a very good kit with excellent fit, adequate cockpit, complete intake and exhaust trunking, optional opened wingtip speed brakes, fully detailed bomb bay and gear wells (which I left out since I was building this for my mother-in-law's shelf), and a choice of 3 bomb loadouts. The parts provided to close up the gear wells and bomb bay fit perfectly! Decals were excellent with a choice of 5 aircraft and the kit also comes with masks for the canopy and the wheels. I bent a length of clear rod in order to mount the model in flight on a simple base, using a concentric piece of plastic tubing cemented inside the fuselage as a socket. That's #14 for the year down! On to #15! Gil

I haven't built a B-17 kit in some 30 years and want to do the RoG kit but needed some practice so I tried this one. I forgot how big this thing is!! Tried to fix the wing dihedral with some success and used the engines from my Hasegawa kit to replace the Academy ones.....much better. Setting the bomb bay doors in the closed position was a challenge which I failed somewhat. The decals in this 'Nose Art' boxing were outstanding. Got me looking forward to building the Hasegawa and RoG kits now.

My latest effort is the 1/48 Hobby Boss FJ-4 Fury. The kit has recessed panel lines and rivet detail, and average cockpit detail. Overall shapes and outlines appear accurate, save for one glaring error: the rear fuselage, between the trailing edge of the wings and the horizontal stabilizers, had a very prominent "dip" that shouldn't be there. A review of this kit in Bert Kinzeys' Detail & Scale book on the FJ-4 has instructions on how to correct this error, but I decided to live with it as is. Wing fold joints are included, but you must cut the wing tips apart yourself. Overall, parts fit is good, with a little filler needed at the wing roots and at spots along the fuselage and nose. The kit decals provide markings for two Marine jets, from VMF-451 'Warlords', and VMF-232 'Red Devils', but the blue in the VMF-451 markings are way too light. Hobby Boss offers kits of both the FJ-4 and FJ-4B, but you can build either variant from either kit. If you build an FJ-4, be sure to sand off the rear-most speed brake door on each fuselage half, and use the nose gear door without the antenna fairing. My references for this build were: Squadron/Signal Publications No. 103, FJ Fury in Action; Naval Fighters No. 25, North American FJ-4/4B Fury, by Steve Ginter; and the excellent FJ Fury in Detail & Scale, Part 2: FJ-4 and -4B Variants, by Bert Kinzey. Another valuable online source of photos and information was this web page on Replica in Scale: https://replicainscale.blogspot.com/search?q=fj-4 I wasn't happy with the barely-there kit instrument panel detail and how the cockpit consoles were represented, so I used an aftermarket cockpit set from AMS Resin. The kit seat is good, but lacks cushions and belts. The AMS resin seat wasn't that much better, but it did have a seat cushion, belts, and oxygen hose molded in. The kit has nicely detailed sidewall parts, but I couldn't get them to fit with the resin cockpit set. The AMS set also includes a detailed part for the area under the rear of the canopy, for which Hobby Boss provides nothing. The cockpit parts were airbrushed Model Master Acryl Dark Gull Grey, then details were hand-painted, and attached to the fuselage half. The AMS set also included a exhaust piece with flame holder, but it didn't fit well so I used the kit exhaust, and a length of styrene tube with the flame holder glued to the end to give the exhaust pipe some depth . The intake trunk fit pretty well but still needed sanding and putty to eliminate seams. The nose intake ring lacks the approach light at the bottom, so a section was cut from the intake and three small holes drilled, and painted Tamiya clear red, amber, and green. The cutout for the lights was then filled with Micro Krystal Klear. I ended up doing a lot of sanding around the intake to smooth everything out. Before closing up the fuselage halves, I added several large fishing weights to keep the model from being a tail-sitter. The fuselage speed brakes can be posed open, and have good detail inside, but I glued mine shut. The fit here was poor. The prominent vents on each fuselage side were too thick, so they were sanded down to paper-thinness, glued on place and faired in with Vallejo putty. The openings to these vents are also shaped incorrectly, but I didn't try to correct them. Airframe assembly went smoothly. Minor gaps at the wing root, nose and fuselage were filled with Vallejo putty, and Mr. Dissolved Putty. Wing fences are molded onto each wing, and were sanded to thin them to a more accurate scale thickness. Parked FJ-4's usually have a nose-up stance. The kit nose gear strut is a little short, so I added a one-eighth inch section of styrene rod to the top of the strut, and replaced the compressed torque links with a photo-etched one from my spares box. The nose gear fork was cut away and repositioned turned to the right. I added wire brake lines to the kits' main gear struts, and painted all the struts Tamiya Titanium Silver. Most of my reference photos showed that the main gear doors were often open when the jet was parked, but the kit doors had no detail on the insides. I used very thin sheet styrene cut to fit inside each main door, and cut lightening holes in them based on the photos I had. I also added rivets with a riveting tool along the door edges for added detail. One painted and highlighted with Tamiya panel line wash, they looked much better. All the gear bays were painted white, then the details highlighted with Tamiya black panel line wash. North American usually painted the entire inner surface of their landing gear doors red, but careful study of photographs indicated that Reserve jets had white inner gear doors, outlined in red. The landing light in the smaller nose gear door was painted Chrome Silver, and a wire added to the back of this light. The kits' wingtip pitot probe was too thick and inaccurate, so I built a new one with lengths of styrene rode and wire. The FJ-4 series has three fuel dump vents: one on each wingtip trailing edge, and another just under the fairing above the rudder. The wingtip vents are molded solid, so they were drilled out and sanded to shape. The tail dump pipe was recreated with a small piece of styrene rod drilled out and glued in place, then painted red. A small white position light was also added to the rear of the vertical fin fairing just above the rudder. I also added a missing vent on the left side of the upper fuselage, behind the canopy. The kit includes two drop tanks, two Sidewinders, and six Bullpup air-to-ground missiles, but the FJ-4 never carried Bullpups. The FJ-4 had long legs for a fighter, and therefore didn't usually carry drop tanks, either, so I left these off as well. I should point out here that the Navy flew the FJ-4B attack version, while the Marines flew the FJ-4 fighter version. Reserve squadrons often flew a mix of both types. I primed the model for painting with Tamiya White Fine Surface Primer. The paint scheme I chose was that of a Navy/Marine Reserve jet based at NAS Memphis in 1962. It was in the standard Gull Grey over White undersurfaces and control surfaces, but with the entire nose, tail, and forward half of the wings painted Florescent Orange. I used Model Master acrylic Flat Gull Grey for the topside color, Tamiya White Primer for the underside color, and Model Master Acryl Florescent Red (which is actually Orange) for the high-visibility color areas. Leading edges of the wings and stabilizers were sprayed Titanium Silver as well. After painting was complete, I gave the entire jet a coat of Future Floor Polish for a gloss coat, then applied the decals. No decal sheets existed for the jet I was making, but fortunately they are easily scrounged. The '6M' tail code, wing code, bureau number, and aircraft number came from AeroMaster and SuperScale letter and number sheets from my decal catalogs. The Navy/Marine Reserve service designator came from an old Testor F2H Banshee kit. The rest of the markings came from AeroMaster sheet #14193, 'Furies of The Fleet in Color, Pt. 2'. Once all the markings were applied, a final coat of Mr. Super Clear Matt sealed the decals. The final step was attaching the canopy, which led to the trickiest part of the build. Under the rear section of the FJ-4/4B canopy is a cylindrical object which isn't identified in any of my references, but I do recall reading somewhere that it's an oxygen regulator. A black coiled cable, resembling an old telephone cord, runs from this 'regulator' to the rear of the ejection seat. The cord is stretched taught when the canopy is open. It's very visible in photographs, so I recreated the cord by wrapping thin copper wire around a small drill bit, spraying it black, and attaching it to the 'regulator', which was then glued to the underside of the canopy. When dry, the canopy was then attached to the model. The Hobby Boss 1/48 Fury kits are a mixed bag: beautiful, crispy-molded and engraved parts that are flash-free with good fit, but with sub-par cockpit detail and a large 'dip' on each side of the rear fuselage that shouldn't be there. Still, a little extra detailing and work will reward you with a fine model of this very capable Navy fighter of the 1950's.

Favorite model when I was a kid. Had to re-do it. Enough said that you can't relive your childhood. Fought me all the way, but it's done.