Building Trumpeter’s 1/32 A-6E Intruder
Blame it on Desert Storm. Blame it on Flight of the Intruder. Blame it on my own predilection toward ungainly and ugly and fearsomely effective aircraft. Whatever the case, the…
Building Tamiya’s 1/48 P-47M Thunderbolt
At the very end of 2019, I set out on a return to 1/48 scale, in the form of both an HK Models B-17G (that...didn't fare so well) and Tamiya's…
Genre Variance
Our brains are weird. Or at least mine is. Let's explore a weird quirk where different genres seem to play by different rules. This morning I had an epiphany. I…
Pony Bash!
Over the past few weeks, the idea of Mustangs has been coalescing over at SMCG. I've been focused mainly on the Intruder, with a bit of increasingly halfhearted dabbling in…
Brilliant Engineering
I tend to go on at great length about engineering and fit of different model kits. Now, a lot of people tend to bundle these together. But I view them…
A Decade of Doogs Models
In mid-2010, nearly a decade, two kids, two dogs, and six jobs ago, I was restless. With our daughter's birth weeks away, I was casting about for something I could…
2018 – A Year in Review
2018 is just about over, and I don't see anything coming off the bench in the next few days, so it's time for the obligatory end-of-year post. What a Year…
1/32 F-104G Part 2 – Painting a Distressed Finish
The worst part about working on a 1/32 scale F-104 is contending with its shape. The combination of a long, cylindrical body and short, stubby little wings makes maneuvering the…
1/32 Italeri F-104G Part 1 – The Pre-Build
Two and a half years ago, I put the finishing touches on Italeri’s big F-104, which I’d built as an Italian F-104S ASA.
At the time, I was not particularly kind to the kit.
The kit has just enough charm to pull you through the early stages of the build, and once you’re closing the fuselage, you’re kind of committed. There’s a lot of grumbling about the trench-like panel lines and all…honestly those didn’t bother me that much. What did bother me was the sloppy molding, which left separation lines on every damn thing, the sloppy fit, which is easy enough to hide with massive pieces like wings, but becomes apparent late in the build when antennas and such are 1) tiny, 2) in need of cleanup and 3) too big to fit in their damn holes.
Now, for whatever reason, I’m in the initial stages of building another.
Does this mean that I’ve revised my opinion of the kit? Not really. If anything, it means I get to go into the build with my eyes wide open to the various issues that will have to be faced and challenges overcome.
With that in mind, I thought it might be productive to do a rundown of considerations and plans of attack. Not only to organize them for myself, but for others who may be tackling this kit in the future. (more…)
