Canute

EG, the black gloss or a dark grey gloss undercoat works well. I like the steel over black on the exhaust nozzle. Looks familiar to me. Great job showing your testing, too. 👌 I have a train buddy who was a master at doing the various shading of natural metal finishes, when he was an IPMS maven. He liked working with the various Alclad shadings. I think you may need several shades of the paint Carl references and apply panel by panel to get the variations you seek. I've read this technique on several aircraft modeling sites. Carl, are these paints or dry pigments you apply over the base coat?

Kevin has the key, a gloss undercoat. Which metal paint are you using, EG? Canopy glue should be good for the PE. I haven't used TG for PE. I have used it for gluing styrene to wood. The canopy glue is like a thick white glue that dries clear and has some flexibility after it dries. I've glued PE running boards to plastic freight cars. Better than superglue, which can get brittle as it ages or gets cold.

Going to look good, OC. Starter units were always at a premium. Never enough to cover all needs.

Got some spring clamps to hold that together? Keeps the bands off the seams. It's a big model.

Carl, Jack Northrop in California, had flying wing designs in the late 30s. He started building on a government contract in 1941, about the same time the Hortons were doing similar in Germany. A couple of 1/3rd scale N-9Ms were built during the war as proof of concept, flight testing and flying trainers. The first bomber, an XB-35, flew in 1946. A jet powered version, YB-49 was flown in early 1949. Whether Northrop or the Hortons were first is hard to call. The Hortons got contracts for airframes about the same time, so it's a tossup. We definitely learned stuff from the Hortons, but for reasons known to the Dear One, we scrapped the whole program in the early 1950s. It took until the late 80s to resurrect the Northrop designs and build the B-2. Whittle (UK) and Ohain(Germany) developed the jet engine simultaneously. I think there was some acrimony as to who was first, but I think they finally agreed to a simultaneous start. Now, the rocket program was definitely grabbing all the German designs we could.

The Wrights were early systems engineers, not so much by schooling (they were bicycle mechanics by trade), but by figuring out they needed something to do something else. They developed a crude wind tunnel and figured the engine they wanted to propel their airplane didn't exist yet, so they reached out to a friend to develop a lighter weight engine for the Flyer. Read "The Bishop's Boys" for more insights into these 2 gentlemen. The Flyer turned by wing warping, not ailerons. The aileron concept was developed in the UK in the late 1800s, but the French applied it to a glider a year or so after the Wrights' first flights. Since wing warping put more stress on the wing structure, ailerons took over as the primary means of roll control and coordinated turns.

Safe journey. Hope the weather is good to you.

Maybe a tiny dot of Tacky Glue first to get it in place. Then flow your CA/superglue into the joint. Have some little squares of paper towels to blot up any excess CA. I've tacked styrene bracing into a resin car with that, then flowed the CA into the joint. Really need it with the older "flat" kits. Need square corners if you want the roof and floor to fit in. Trapezoids don't work too well. 😉

Yes, it does. Aftermarket in this scale would be overkill. And the kit maker did such a nice job with their moldings.

OC, nice presents. I like your dio concept. Definitely need those erks about.

Always try to model from your pictures. Directions aren't always right. And the part molds/prints aren't always right, either.

Yep, cut 'em out, dip in Future/Pledge/whatever that stuff is called today, paint and install.

Nicely done, Grant. The wiring is top notch and that dash is superb.

Wouldn't surprise anyone if they had ashtrays in those older jets. They did in the transports I rode in. Cockpit's coming along nicely.

OC, never was one for them. I gotta find a couple of pix of me or my jet. Maybe in my slide collection.

Thank you, EG. I just need the flight manual to keep the myriad of facts straight for y'all. I'm pretty free with telling some combat stories, mostly the funny stuff. The serious stuff I only tell a very limited few folk. Flying stories are usually funny stuff. I was very fortunate flying, never jumped out of a jet for any reason. Broke a few, but made safe recoveries.

I flew with a guy who ejected at a high rate of speed. He was grounded for months, but eventually did get to fly again. Multiple waivers for stuff, like the special boot for one leg shorter than the other. Great guy, too. I forget what he was flying when he bailed out, but I knew him at Eglin, in Phantoms. The MB seat drogue chute was on top of the seat in the F-4 to slow and stabilize the seat. There was a barostat that senses a set altitude and we would separate from the seat with our seat kit and parachute. Think the altitude was 11,500'. Below that altitude, we just separated and the chute deployed. You guys are going to make me drag out my flight manual to check all this stuff.

The right hand picture looks better to my old Mark 1, Mod 1 eyes. The headrest is more brick red, the safety gear looks more correct red and the green gear looks right, too. I can't believe the seat cushion is so fluffy, for lack of a better word. Every seat I ever sat on or looked at in a fighter was pretty hard. The seat kit, dark green box under the cushion, always amazed me how they stuffed a 1 man raft, with a gas inflation bottle, a ruck sack full of gear and an emergency locator beeper radio into it.

I stand corrected then, EG. Too many old war-stories about that jet. Thank you. 😀

The Mr Color is solvent based, so will have an odor. Don't tick off the Admiral spraying this stuff. However, it looks really good; I'm going to give it a try. Rye Field have a number of M1 Abrams kits, too, if you're so inclined.

Nice, Jack. Fire it up!

We had a T-33 seat we were strapped into, when I was in pilot training. It had a ballistic charge to propel us up some rails to about 50 feet or so. Got all hooked up, assumed the position with your helmet pressed into the headrest and pulled the side handle. POW up the rails and get lowered back down. That was it in 1970. I did para sailing, pulled behind a truck for land parachute training and an AF Twin Merc cruiser off an AF LCM in Biscayne Bay for water survival training. We did a lot of other egress training, as it was termed, when we got into the Phantom. Yeah, it's very aircraft specific. Although, nowadays, at least, the ejection seat used by most of our jets is the ACES II. I flew that twice, about 40 years ago. Much easier to strap in due to no leg garters. I'll explain. The Martin Baker seat required a number of connections via straps to the seat. Calf, thigh, butt(seat kit), lap-belt, parachute risers, plus comms, mask and g-suit. The leg stuff kept you from flailing legs, the butt clips were to keep you and the survival kit/one man raft connected. Since the "chute was built into the seat, you needed those. Proper upper body position was via the overhead handle rings or the one between your legs. Preferred was the one 'tween your legs, but on takeoff, that one would be hard to get at with the stick back into your lap. Again you had to assume the position. There is/was always a risk of compression injuries to the back, getting fired out of the cockpit. The seat started with ballistic charges sending you up the rails. A 6' lanyard, attached to the bottom of the seat, fired the rockets to shoot you up and way over the tail. I had one guy get a flail injury to his shoulder, due to his loose helmet coming off, flinging his arm back and chipping the end of his should bone. He was grounded about 3 months. The fatalities were usually due to ejecting outside the seat capability (too fast, too close to the ground in an unusual attitude). The F-104 was designed as a high altitude interceptor and the seat fired down. I think the B-58 did a similar ejection envelope. I believe the first one the Europeans got had these seat and when the need to bail, since they were flying low... The G model they ended up with had a normal upward firing seat.

Cripes, the detailing in this kit is downright superb. What next? And you finish is flawless. 👍👍

All too true, OC, but you must be able to see the goodies. At this and larger scales, we can see them. If you did this at 1/72, your sanity would be questioned.😉

Cool jet, OC. I'm in, too. And your MB seat looks good. It's almost too new, you need to ding it up a tad more with the alu,👍