Young Miniatures British Tank Commander Touch up

Here it is, I brightened up the face to give it a much higher contrast and deepened the shadows. The highest points are highlighted by using a 10% sail colour.

To give it variation in tones between the outer coat and the intermediate being darker/ Was given a glaze of German Chocolate Brown.

Young Miniatures Chosin Few Finally Done

After 3 long years of laying it aside, I am sorry to have procastinated. Its finally done.

Taken with ISO 400 on F4 at 1/20 secs on my trusty idiot resistant Canon G15 on my table with a Tamiya paint stand and 1200 grit 3M sand paper as background.

Hope you enjoy the gallery.

Have a happy Lunar New Year.

Mobile Electric Power Plant

In order to complement the Tomcat, I looked for some carrier accessories that can be used. For the base, I had a friend who made for me the framework and the base with an acrylic cover of 27"X28"X12" cover to protect the 600 man hours Tomcat from dangerous onlookers at the competition in a shopping arcade in March.

To make the deck surface, which is a tough and rough polymer, I mixed felspar with enamel grey paint that I used to make my table tennis table and dabbed it on.

Surface while its wet looks patchy and worrisome. However the texture is quite pleasing to me.

As it dries, the patches starts to disappear. The enamel needed time to cure, so I set it aside at my factory work bench and come back to it only 4 days later.

After 4 days, this is the surface I took with my Galaxy phone. Nice and tough. It is even resilient to drilling.

I found the Skunk Models mobile power plant. Ordered it from Luckymodel and is pleasantly surprised that the kit, though, very costly, had 2 sets in it! The assembly though is crap. As they wanted the vehicle to have flushed edges, they orchestrated all parts to be joint by mitre edges. This is a nightmare as the plastic is not even straight, To make matters worst, the gates are made on these edges that inevitably breaks when one attempts to cut the part and sand it. So, there is a lot of patch work to the had with this kit. And the picture depicted in this kit is in white. Nehhhhh....I went online to look for this photo and what I came up in Google was this.

So, I went for the yellow version with some wheels and bumpers in white to create a better contrast and beauty to it. The wheels are a tough fit as the joint to the axle is flimsy for a heavy double tyred hubs that were solid in plastic. Tape was used to make sure they stayed inline.

The sub assemblies were given solid black treatment from Tamiya spray can in Matte Black.

Yellow shades are given.

While everything is drying out, the frame was puttied up with the stuff we used to muck up the deck and after 4 days, it was ready to be motor sanded and with the edges and splinters removed and set aside for power sealing and sprayed in grayish blue tones that I used for the table tennis table surface.

The instruments are not included in the decal sheet for some reason. Its a shame as the kit cost the same as a decent 48th scale Tomcat! I had to hand paint everything. I went to Miniature Hobbies for get Lee to look for some suitable decals. We came up with the 72nd STORCH aircraft stencils. So, I mod some of those and got them onto the dials and then added needle hands later to make the dials a little bit more interesting. Details are then highlighted and the top surfaces had anti slip treatment from Tamiya Pavement Texture paints. 

The details were added and washed, chips were added and toning of the darkening of the lower portions of the vehicle has been executed. However, the vehicle upon completion, looked a little blend. Its not busy as it should be, so, I went to look for some accessories at Miniature Hobbies again. They had a new monthly shipment that arrived. Prying open one of the crates, Lee came up with this.

Friendly neighbourhood Meng, the first name of my brother, another modeller, the igloo ice boxes looked good.

Test fitting the igloo on the vehicle looked pleasing after 1 hour's work. I later added in the carrier handles in white and the whole box was washed and tone and glued on to the top surface using Kristal Klear.

Posing with the completed Tomcat is quite pleasing.

Gallery 1/32 F14B Tomcat

Here goes ladies and gentlemen, A gallery of the finished Tomcat.

1/32 F14B Tomcat finally done

4 weeks of slogging and its almost done. I have completed the model only to have Mark, MCON's reigning champ telling me the AIM9L tail fins are not black as per the instructions in the dreaded Trumpeter ill fitting kit but grey! I have to snap and break them off the rails and then painted them by hand and airbrush and re weather the tail fins to make it stick back looking correct.

The missiles are sitting on the rails now with tape on them and hopefully, they will not fall off.

After salting, the wings are patched up with dark grey patches and highlighted new paint repairs by using lighter tone of the base coat. Then the whole model is glossed over with Gunze gloss and then the decals applied and re matted over with Gunze Matt very diluted.

The model was pin washed with Tamiya washed both brown and black.

The cock pit needed retouching and the resin seats are finally fitted in with plastic carded bottom to sit in the groove caused by 2 rails on the deck of the cockpit tub by Trumpeter. Decals are applied and later a light wash of grey and brown were given to tone down the decals to make it blend with the surroundings. The ejection handles overhead were taken from the kit and the original Wolfpack fragile ones were discarded.

The model preping for the canopy to come one with the mirrors and locking jaws. Which I took time to weather them with grey and silver and then washed with black again to accentuate their 3D profiles.

Step platforms were added and the ladder too, along with the suicide door below. Bombs were added only to have Mark telling me that those are only used on the F117, so, I threw away the JDAMS which I took 8 hours to mask, spray, weather, decal and powdered with pigments, Followed by the GBUs that were also given 8 hours of work only to be thrown away again in preference to the smaller 500 lb Paveways. Sigh!

Canopy finally on and adjusted to be centrelined and glued in place and set aside to set for 2 days.

Weapons all loaded and ready!

Phoenix got on with the sidewinders (tail wrong colour due to Trumpeter's mistake) and bunker busters. 

Final pictures of the finished model below. I hope you guys like it.