More kits sitting on my workbench

Here are some pics of kits that I started but which ended up in the 'slow lane'.

• 1/24 Tamiya Mugen CR-X Pro, street conversion
• 1/72 Esci A-7D Corsair II
• 1/72 Hasegawa J7W1 Shinden
• 1/144 LS F4H-1 conversion
• 1/144 DML/Dragon Mi-24 Hind D
• 1/144 Revell A-10 NAW conversion
• 1/144 Revell MiG 1.44 MFI
• 1/144 Revell YF-22
• 1/144 Heller Mirage 2000-5F
• 1/144 Revell SA330 Puma
• 1/72 Hasegawa SBD-3 Dauntless

1/24 Tamiya Mugen CR-X Pro (cat.nr.2445), street conversion

I started this kit before starting the Tamiya Honda Civic, but with this CR-X kit I kept having bad luck. I used a can of Tamiya TS-41 'Coral Blue' (a.k.a. 'Leyton House Blue') to spray-paint the body. Unfortunately the paint on the bonnet picked up some dust. When polishing out the dust I polished through the paint coat so I had to respray the bonnet. Again some dust ended up in the paint coat but this time I applied enough paint to safely sand and polish the paint.
Then the 'Mugen CR-X Pro' decals on the sides started yellowing, unfortunately there already is a clearcoat on top of the decals, I have yet to figure out how to fix this...
Fortunately not everything went wrong: I modified the exhaust from a side pipe to one that is street legal using brass rod and a rear muffler from a spare Tamiya Civic, I applied felt carpet to the interior tub and painted the white criss-cross pattern on the blue seats by hand (one done, the other still needs to be finished). As with the Civic I applied Bare Metal Foil over the raised Honda emblems on the nose and tail before painting the body, then polished the paint off of the raised parts of the emblems.
I do plan to finish this model but progress sure is slow.

1/72 Esci A-7D Corsair II (cat.nr.9057)

Painted, decals applied and clearcoated, this model is almost finished. However it turned out really dark and flat (the picture was taken in bright sunlight) and a bit boring compared to the other models on my shelves. Sofar the only things that 'break' the flat dark appearance are the white landing gear legs (which I still need to paint). I'm considering opening the LOX bay, which would add a splash of yellow primer, but I need to be very careful and precise with cutting its hatch open.

1/72 Hasegawa J7W1 Shinden (AP40 cat.nr.51340)

Another nice Hasegawa kit, I started it right after finishing the Hasegawa I-16.
I added some details to the cockpit, made a small cup with a vinyl ring inside and fitted that behind the engine face so I could fit the propeller after painting, replaced the pitot with one made from a cloth pin, and carefully enhanced the intakes on the sides. Since I plan to finish the model as the sole prototype, I used stretched sprue to blank off the gun ports in the nose.
I got as far as painting the underside when I had to give up the place I used for spray painting my models. Sofar I have yet to find a new place for that so this kit is 'on hold'.

1/144 LS F4H-1 conversion

The LS F-4E kit is accurate and is unique in offering wafer thin wings and tail fins so I really like this kit. After doing an F-4E almost straight from the box, I decided to try and turn another LS F-4E kit into an early prototype F4H-1 Phantom II. Sofar I modified the nose, the canopies, the engine intakes and exhaust nozzles, the main wheels (more narrow) and the wings (removed wheel bay bulges and scribed new speed brake outlines). One thing yet to be done is to carve a small NACA duct in the brittle layer of putty on either side of the nose.
I plan to finish this kit in the colors of the first F4H-1 prototype with red/white candy striped nose cone and thin dayglow orange cheatlines all over the fuselage.

1/144 DML/Dragon Mi-24 Hind D (cat.nr.4543)

I started this kit several years ago. It is a nice but somewhat basic kit. The kit has some shape errors around the lower nose and near the rear of the canopy, which I corrected.
I also decided to open the windows and doors of the fuselage and add interior details.
Whilst adding the interior details (from scratch) I found out that the fuselage is too short (in two places: between the cockpit and cargo hold and between the fuselage and the tail boom) and that the main rotor diameter is too small as well. Since I already finished detailing and painting the main rotor, I was not too happy about this.

I decided to cut the cockpit section off of the fuselage so I can add a plug and tilt the cockpit.

Waiting for: Decision time: In 2013 Zvezda released a much more accurate 1/144 Mi-24V kit, so do I carry on with converting this Dragon kit or do I abandon it and transplant its interior details into a Zvezda kit ?

1/144 Revell A-10 NAW conversion

Here's another kit conversion I started a very long time ago.

The Revell A-10A kit (cat.nr.4054) is an inferior Korean copycat of the LS kit. The fuselage and the engine pods are okay, but the fuselage below the horizontal tail section is missing, the wings have most of the pylon slots at the wrong places, the wheel sponsons and the wing tips need their shapes corrected and the wing needs a lot of work to fit the fuselage properly.
The simplified landing gear is completely wrong (even the sizes of the wheels are off), the engine exhausts are molded closed and the fuselage is missing all raised details and antennae that are present on the LS/ARII/MicroAce kit.

I started the conversion by cutting a hole in the fuselage for the rear cockpit and inserting new rear bulkhead and side walls. The rear cockpit fairing was cut from one half of a drop tank (the remains of the drop tank can be seen in the pictures). Finally I added lots of putty to build up the raised rear cockpit sides and to fill the gaps between the rear fairing and the fuselage.

The tail fin extensions were cut from thick plasticard, the tips of the tail fins were cut off along the scribed panel lines.

I separated the windshield from the cockpit transparency and plug-formed the new canopy as a single part.

Waiting for: donor landing gear, if I'd steal the gear from an LS or ARII kit, then why not start over and use that entire kit ?

1/144 Revell MiG 1.44 MFI (cat.nr.04028)

I happily started this kit, completed the cockpit, sharpened the edges of the twin main intakes and added some strips of thin plastic at the rear of the fuselage to improve fit.
Then I found some pictures of the real thing. The more I compare the kit to those pictures, the more serious differences I notice...
I still have to decide what differences to tackle (some, like the shape of the forward fuselage cross sections require major surgery)...

1/144 Revell YF-22 (cat.nr.04016)

Another 'stranded' kit, just like the MiG 1.44 . While building the kit I noticed that the fuselage of the kit is much more shallow than the fuselage of the real YF-22, so in side view the kit looks oddly squashed.
'still have to decide what to do as the fuselage is not easy to correct due to the slanted sides. Actually, the Trumpeter 1/144 YF-22 kit (cat.nr.WP01331) is just as bad as far as the fuselage shape goes.

1/144 Heller Mirage 2000-5F (cat.nr.79907)

This is a bit of a sad story: the 1/144 Heller Mirage 2000 kit isn't very accurate but when trying to improve the kit I based the changes I made on an inaccurate 'Aviation News' scale drawing, so now I'm working on redoing most of the changes.
Apart from that the actual Mirage 2000 wing is quite thick in the center near the fuselage while the wing in the kit is just as thin as a Mirage III wing, to correct this I plan to apply a web of plasticard ridges and then add filler.

1/144 Revell SA330 Puma (cat.nr.04047)

This kit just happens to sit at the bottom of the pile for no real reason, it is a nice kit that looks very much like a scaled-down copy of the Airfix 1/72 Puma.
What I did sofar:

• move the collective lever (part 3) for the righthand seat to the lefthand side of the seat,
• use a fuselage halve as a guide for fitting the forward bulkhead (part 4) to the floor,
• replace the rotor shaft mounting ring (part 13) with a soft pvc ring so the main rotor assembly can be fitted afterwards,
• add details to the main rotorhead, replacing the thick control rods with ones out of stretched sprue (picture shows before and after),
• cut some engine exhausts out of a thin plastic drinking straw.

To do:

• remove horizontal frame member across the front center window (looks like \-/ now, should look \ / )
• add a pair of pedals to the pilot and co-pilots positions
• replace the vertical aerials on part 44 with fine nylon fishing line or stretched sprue

Notes:

• to display the cargo bay doors in the opened position, sand down the windows for the doors (parts 25) or replace 'm altogether with some clear plastic card or with Kristal Kleer. At 1/144, clearance between the open door and the fuselage should be about the thickness of a sheet of paper.
• do not fill the seam on top of the engine covers (running from the air intakes to the rotor mast) On the real thing this is the seam between both engine covers and this gap can be several cm's wide. On the vertical part of these covers, in front of the rotor mast should be a square hole in each cover (see box art).
• The particle filters (parts 37) have plugs that move forward when the engines are running at low altitudes. For a powered down version you need to drill a 0.9mm hole in the front of each particle filter about 1mm deep (compare the picture on the side of the box with the box art).
• By deleting parts #18, #37, #44 and #47 and fitting the rear lower window #17 you can do an early RAF version (or many others) with just a little additional work: removing the square intake on top of the cockpit roof (part 36) and opening up the engine intakes (also part 36) and removing some blade aerials from the fuselage halves.
• For a Desert Storm version, do not fit the full complement of seats in the cargo bay. In the Gulf, most Puma's were fitted with a long-range fuel tank in the forward section of the cargo bay: a big green drum mounted lengthwise on its side (scale size about 4mm in diameter and 11mm long) replacing both seats #10 . On most Gulf pictures I've seen, Puma's had at most four seats fitted (for this you need to cut up seats #9, or just fit the single seats #10 back to back in the rear of the bay).

In the meantime Humbrol added a shade of orange (nr.46 Matt Orange) to its enamel paint series that looks exactly right for the spectacular 2005 Tiger Meet scheme of RAF Puma HC.1 XW231 in Revell kit nr.04047.
The lower fuselage of this scheme was painted in an off-white color, a bit more cream-yellowish in hue than the white lettering on the engine shroud.

1/72 Hasegawa SBD-3 Dauntless (AP29 cat.nr.51329)

The 1/72nd scale Hasegawa SBD kits are nice, but the canopy and dive brake flaps can only be fitted in closed position, which makes it hard to put the model in a realistic pose. I bought an Eduard set for depicting the dive brake flaps in opened position and to add some details to the cockpit interior. Read on...