I have two questions about this as I work on filing all the mold seams off the parts, which are many, seams and parts. 1. The kit would have you put this big "US ARMY" decal down the side of the missile, but I can't find any photos of the real missile with such markings. Are they correct? 2. Does anyone make a 1/110 model of the Mercury Redstone other than the old, now collector's priced, Revell one? It was launched from the same complex and might look kind a cool instead of the "C". I know you can get the Revell Redstone model as it was re-issued many times, but I believe there were some pretty significant changes made when it was used for the Mercury program, plus I'd still need the capsule.

For this build I am going back to 1/48 World War II aircraft. I will be building Tamiya’s 1/48 RAF Mustang III. For this build I will also be using Kagero Decals to replicate the aircraft flown by the Polish Pilot F/L Mieczystaw Gorzula of the 309 squadron based at RAF Andrews Field. This was the aircraft that F/L Gorzula shot down a Me-262 jet fighter on April 9th 1945. Starting off with the cockpit tub I detailed it with some photo etch pieces on the side panel, the rudder pedals, and seat belts. I also used photo etch for the knobs and levers on the instrument panel. I opted to paint the gauges as the kit decal for them did not line up very well with the gauge bezels. On the underside of the cockpit tub was also the mount for the radiator. This and the intake were painted with Vallejo Metal paint in duraluminum. I then worked on the fuselage halves. There are two vented panels on the nose. I decided to drill these out for a more realistic look. The interior was painted and detailed. The cockpit tub and intake were installed. I then assembled the fuselage halves. There are some areas that required a little putty but the halves fit very well together. I am working on the wings and landing gear bays now. You can see all the photos and details from the start in the build log at: https://davidsscalemodels.com/build-log/1-48-tamiya-raf-mustang-iii/

This decal is no longer in stock at any vendor, and I have not been able to locate this decal sheet at any show I have attended. Your help would be greatly appreciated. It is CD 72062: USAF C-130H "Guard Herks", and truthfully, I would be happy with having only the Savannah, Georgia ANG portion of the decal sheet. Please email me: jefboutin at yahoo.com THANKS!!!!

I figured it was time to get started on my "pledge model" for my local modeling club. Earlier in the year, I had chosen Lasso the Moon. This is a scene from It's a Wonderful Life, starring Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart. I enjoy it, and watch it a few times each Christmas season. Since it's been around since 1946, I'm sure everyone has seen it at some time. The model is a well made 3D printed kit by Nostalgic Resin, and depicts the walk home after George and Mary fell into the school's swimming pool (BTW the pool's real and still exists at Beverly Hills High School). This is the first real scene where they start their romance. The first problem I had was whether to do it in color or B&W. Due to the size I thought it was too large for it to be all in B&W, and soon after found a nice colorized image of what I needed - the clothes. The only problem I had with it was the sidewalk was warped, and no amount of heating kept it flat. So I quickly tossed it aside and got out a piece of sheet styrene. I also had a decent sized wooden base and tested fitted all the basing materials. Besides the sidewalk, it come with a section of hedge, a picket fence, and a pillar. Getting started, the pillar was painted gray, the fence white, and the hedge a green. It looked a little too plain so the hedge got flocked, I painted the picket fence and added some miniature rose bushes to fill the void, and the pillar was fine so it just got a coat of paint with a little dark wash. seems I never took a WIP of the base so we'll see it at the end. Now I know what's to be done with the figures it was just a matter of filling in the colors. Getting to the faces, Stewart's likeness was good, Donna's barely came close, but not being able to sculpt a likeness, I'll just add paint to this as well. My next decision was Mary's robe. I know it's white, but that's an awful lot of white and I didn't want to make her look like a ghost with a sheet. So being George's clothes were warm earthy colors, I tried making the shadows in the robe a similar earthy colors. No good... That just made her look like she rolled around in some dirt. So the robe was repainted and this time I took the palest blue to fill in the shadows. This looked better. and I was done. Thanks for looking. Sadly my roses were mostly hidden

I have a soft spot for some reason for British torpedo bombers. I've done the Swordfish, Albacore, Beaufort, Firebrand, Blackburd, Ripon and Vildebeest so far. This is the Esoterica vacuform Blackburn Dart, which superseded the Sopwith Cuckoo. As with all Esoterica kits, it is very well done and strut stock and some white metal parts are supplied. They even included white metal torpedo cart. There are decals for three colorful aircraft. I did mine OOTBag. My only contributions were a propeller, pilot and torpedo from the spares box. They give you a white metal torpedo, but the fins were covered in flash and they broke when I tried to clean them up, so it was easier to just substitute a plastic one. I also had to redo the cylinder heads as the kit white metal ones were just formless lumps. It's s bit rough, I know, but it fills a hole in my collection and it further proves that Blackburn produced some really unattractive, but quite functional, aircraft.

I've noticed on the Reviews site that several members have a bio and picture of themselves at the bottom of their respective review articles, and I'm wondering how to set that up? The "Log In" link does not work for me. Any help would be appreciated.

Fresh off of the workbench this is the 1/32 Trumpeter P-51D Mustang. The kit has a lot of options I decided to omit so as to "git'er done" quicker. Thus, I closed up the gun bays and left out the engine, making the needed adaptations to fit the exhausts and add gun barrels in the wings at the end. The kit comes with separately molded flaps, but they're not really designed to be shown in the down position. I had to grind off a molded in step under the rear of each wing root and then fill in a molded in step in the end of each flap, as well as cut off their original mounting pins so I could drop them. I opted to do the very colorful "American Beauty/Lovely Lila" flown by ace Capt. Voll. The kit decals include all of the striping but I opted to paint all of the striping myself. The rest of the decals I used were excellent and turned out to be one of the highlights of building the kit. If you're a Mustang purist, this kit has a lot of problems, inaccuracies, and irritating small flaws; so I can't recommend it since Tamiya and Zoukei-Mura have newer 1/32 bubbletop Mustangs that are most likely much better. Still, it's a relatively easy build and has indented surface details which most modelers like. On to the rest of the pics! Questions, comments, and critiques welcome as always! Gil