Ah, yes. He wanted to be removed from here, so he was.
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I cant say i shall miss the somewhat inflammatory and accusatory nature of some of his posts when he got it in his head he was being attacked, but he was in general a nice guy and very knowledgeable about our hobby.
I hope he is ok as he suffered a great deal during Covid and i always hoped he would snap out of it once the world opened up again.
A shame either way, but the situation was excellently moderated in my opinion
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That was very well said sir and mirrored my feelings.
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My donor kit arrived. Need the pitot tube and various landing gear parts. Hate to sacrifice the kit, but it’s for a good cause. I think that the original was a Tamiya, but can’t confirm. Edit, ha just realized the the airframe number in this aircraft is only 26 newer than my dad’s, 680375 or 68AF375.
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Can you perhaps make a Phantom with the landing gear retracted as a ceiling hanger?
Great idea. We have all girls, but it’s time that we took those Barbie Dolls to Goodwill. 
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Ah, Special Hobby. Got their Viggen in my stash (God help me with masking that thing).
I almost got the Hasegawa F1C since they’re dirt cheap here, but wanted a CR or CT. I went with this one:
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LOVE this thread! @Clutch, I never even heard of the OH-1. Searching for it took me on an interesting internet dive.
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I heard through the grapevine they’re retiring this year, but haven’t seen anything official. This Aoshima kit somes with separated serial numbers so I can recreate the bird I saw an an airshow this year.
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checked again I am in the same boat … they call them Ninja for a reason it seems 
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Not a bad looking attack helicopter as they go. Certainly better than the new Indian one. But, man, if Bell makes the 360 everyone else can just quit making scouts! The more I look at her, the lovelier she seems.
The OH-1 is a weird bird. I think it was designed to fill a similar role as the Kiowa, but lacks any A2G ordnance at all. It only carries external tanks and 4x Stingers.
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Since my last post here, I have made actual visible progress. After 3-4 layers of aluminium paint on the bottom, I had a look at the outcome of the tape experiment.
Where the tape held, the lines were perfectly straight, but in places where there were wrinkles in the tape or recessed panel lines in the plastic, it seeped through very visibly.
It was clear that I could achieve much better results by improving my masking skills and fixing spills than with hand-drawn lines so that is what I went with to protect the aluminium in preparation for the blue layer on top. I am using “grey blue” here.
Taping the canopy is the scariest part., really trying to make sure the tape fits!!
After this, I realized that I still needed to fill the gap at the root of the vertical tailplane, and that it might be easier to do the black on the front first.
Eventually I did all that, masked some more and yesterday and today I finally put on about 4 layers of grey blue.
Love the color, but how did the tape hold it?
Badly. Looks like it is almost exclusively panel lines causing spillage this time. I took this pic after I had already started scraping some spillage from the starboard wing.
It did clean up pretty nicely after some scraping and re-applying paint.
Was pleasantly surprised at the canopy as well. It came out looking not nearly as crooked as the masking tape looked when I put it on. Just a little bit.
Now I just have to assemble the (already painted between layers) landing gear, add all the little pitot tubes, antennae, lights and other thingamabobs, don’t forget the missiles and fuel tank, then a bit of gloss coat for thd decals, then more gloss coat, then wash for weathering, and finally a matt coat.
Question to research:
- how to prevent spillage into masking tape on panel lines?
Lessons:
- masking tape > hand painting
- mask canopy pieces while in sprue using a fresh knife blade, take canopy dry fit seriously and modify parts for fit.
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Oh man that’s the worst when the paint seeps through!
I’ve had okay luck with running a toothpick (or something similar) to really make sure the tape is pressed down.
One of the many tedious yet oddly satisfying things about making models that I miss.
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Are you brush painting or airbrushing? The later isn’t near as prone to drips/runs/spreading if done correctly.
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I am loving this thread. Please keep updating it @Freak. Cant wait to see the finished model but the journey is epic
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That makes sense, I am simply doing acryl paints with brushes. Probably putting on too much paint per layer.
@speck I did push it down with a little piece of wood but most of it only after it had already stuck to the model. I will try doing that while applying it so it really goes down into the grooves.
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I was impatient and took some time before work to glue the first of the main gear assemblies in place:
What a nightmare! The strut that is in the middle, vertical orientation in the picture above is a separate tiny little part of about 6 mm length. Without it, the gear collapses so it is absolutely necessary. It is also near impossible to place correctly with or without the rest of the assembly in place. I ended up gluing in the rest of the assembly first, then very carefully trying to put this strut between the fuselage and the other gear strut.
Unbelievable that I eventually managed to do this with my shaky hand.
I lost its symmetric part yesterday and already prepared a replacement of the same length by cutting up some unused part from the sprue.
I am gluing these parts with Tamiya extra thin cement. Hope it gets through the paint well. Using Revell modeling glue might make a stronger connection but I was too afraid to make it all a dirty mess with glue strings and soiled surfaces
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You are really running into the greatest hits of modeling frustrations! (at least mine).
Out of all the the things not to be ‘vague’ about fit with on a kit, it’s almost always the gear that seems to have ‘wiggle room’. I wish they’d spend more time designing a nice, positive locating area cause if the gear is off even a little it looks weird, and you can never ‘unsee’ it.
Speaking of fit in general, I totally get why you’re using this kit but I wonder if you continue on if it’d be good idea to get something that goes together a little easier? Less puttying/sanding/scraping, more building/painting.
You’re doing a great job, this thread is tempting me to peek in the garage and see if any of my paint is still viable (although after 7 years the answer is probably no)
edit - forgot to mention, for clear parts (and photo etch stuff, and even just plastic) there’s this glue called ‘gator’s grip’ that’s pretty great. It takes a while to dry so you can move things around until you get it where you want it, and is strong once it drys up. It was good to have around for the times when you didn’t want to use the tamiya extra thin or similar.
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I never used masking tape. Always painted everything by hand with a brush. Taught me a fantastically steady hand.
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