well I made some more progress now, and here's where I'm at as of tonight, I had to go back over the entire model with a coat of dark gull gray, the white panel shading was too stark, and overall the bird looked way too weathered, almost like a navy bird.

Here's before the extra coat of dark gull gray


Here's after












Thanks for looking!

Quite right, G. The JASDF do not allow dirty planes.

I have deeply immersed myself in the "defenders of nippon" book, and once I started diving more into JASDF subject, I realized that they really do keep great care of their birds, and they most certainly are not dirty.

After 14 years in Japan, if I have learned anything, it is that whatever the Japanese decide to do they do to the max, and that includes maintaining their equipment. Really going to be sad to leave.

G..... The Phantom is coming along nicely.... Will be nice to see all of the colors and markings on it. Of course, you have your pick of some rather colorful designs....

I like the toned down look on the gray. Enough change in tone to look used without looking like it is time to be scrapped.

Later,
Bob

Generally speaking, the Japanese keep their kit very clean, but not always...

That's not dirty; just badly in need of a trip to the paint barn.

But, yes, uncharacteristically un-pristine.

I think I would go with the clean version.... would hate to have to carry around a photo just to prove that they did get that bad at times...

I am calling my little Material Carrier completed... It was an interesting build as I have never built a model that could fit on a standard 3" x 3" Post-it note....



Am actually quite happy with the fire extinguisher.... as the kit one was molded with a D cross-section I figured that a scratch built replacement was in order...



Anyway, the completed model looks like this....







Not only is this the first 72nd scale I have built in 10-15 years but it is the most complicated one I have ever built. If I ever build the other kit that came in the box there are some changes I would make -- thinner window glass, etc.

However, I am actually pretty pleased with the way it came out -- you should have seen me trying to line up the cherry blossom on the front. I think it spun around 6 or 7 times.

Bob

I'm going to be doing this one for the campaign:

A 1/76 Type 74 MBT model kit is my contribution to this BG:


I started my build in 7-Aug:


Here is where I am for now:


And my build continues...

well here's where I'm at as of today, just waiting for the micro set/sol to cure and make the decals stick, then hopefully tomorrow night after work I can put the gloss coat on.









Thanks for looking.

well here it is, all done and buttoned up, just put the final touches on tonight, I had alot of fun with this group build, and look forward to many more!

I used tamiya and model master paints, and used CAM decals and a model master pitot tube.


















Thanks for looking!

G,

Your F4 looks impressive. I'm always amazed at the skill of you fly boy boulders. The paint job is quite impressive and give the appearance of a well employed aircraft. A lot of fun watching your build

Dave

That's one nice bird. Great job!
Take Care,
Don "Lakota"

Thank you boys! I appreciate it!

Hello all,
G. beautiful plane, makes a big impression.
I'm going to build the first ever Japanese, could someone tell me what exactly I should use colors. Tamiya said in a instruction only names without numbers.

that's really weird that there are no XF-color number call outs. Maybe just eye ball off of your references and mix according?

I don't get caught up in the color call outs, I look at photos and kinda just base line it from that. I can assure you I did not use the correct "FS standard" numbers on my Phantom, but overall I was happy with the outcome.

Time to start this baby!



I decided not to crop this image as there are all sorts of fun things happening on the edges! As you can see, I do NOT work in a pristine workshop! I dunno, it just seems to happen that I end up surrounded by chaos. I certainly wouldn't plan to do it this way!

plenty of room there! as long as you can have peace of mind, and sometime to melt styrene, then that's all that matters.

Well said! Yes, the act of modelling is way more peaceful than the act of tidying up :-)

Usually nothing else exists and time doesn't matter when peering through the magnifier. How odd that building war machine replicas should be so relaxing! (Well minus the value judgments it is all history, right?)

Here is my entry photo from Aug 18th


And here is my progress to date.

I had the Voyager photoetch set in the stash and used some of it. It has replacements for all of the hinges so you can make all of the hatches work but compared to the molded hinges the etched ones look chunky to me so I only used the ones on the top hatch covers. This is a very simple and well fitting kit, I always take months to get this far so this is a new record for me

Managed to finish the painting on the Type 2 Ka-Mi over the weekend. All the pictures that I have are of captured vehicles and none of them show an antenna so I left it off. The pictures also show a dirty waterline stain from their amphibious use and I tried to replicate that.




I have ordered a figure of an IJN tanker to man the hatch, it was in stock when I ordered it, packing the next day and is now listed a "pending" so it might be a while before a commander graces the hatch.

Chris I look forward to seeing your Ka-Mi with floats. I ordered my kit when it first came out and should have known that Dragon would have released the one with floats latter.

Nice build, Cam. I like the waterline touch.

Thanks for participating.

Other than Tamiya and dragon ,what other kits are out there ?