ccoyle

Welcome aboard!

Welcome aboard!

Ah -- the sort of vessel "Lucky" Jack Aubrey would have been snapping up during his time in command of Sophie.

This is a normal feeling to experience. I felt the same way after Helene -- my house was untouched, as were most of the others in my neighborhood (young neighborhood = no mature trees to fall down and crush things), but all around us there was devastation everywhere. Glad to hear you are safe!

Okay, the fix turned out to be not nearly as difficult as I anticipated, and the second wing skin is on. I can now dry fit the structure to the fuselage and make airplane noises. 😋 NYEEEEERRRRRROWWWWW!

Haha! Hold that thought! The problem with wings is that there are two of them, providing the modeler with twice as many opportunities to screw something up. I'm working my way through a fit issue on the second wing skin at the moment. Stay tuned!

One of the problematic parts of the assembly process on the E-4 was definitely the wing, so that's something I wanted to 'get right' on this build. First step was to add the central ventral skin ('central ventral' -- catchy) and wheel wells. The wheel wells on this kit are really rather simple and posed no problems at all. The sort of 'antennae' looking bits are fairings/joiners that will wrap around the wing root and blend into the fuselage. Now this is a shot from the E-4 build. The part I've circled was supposed to have been folded upward to be the trailing edge of the wing, but that wasn't clear to me from either the instructions or diagrams, so I left it un-folded. 😬 Fortunately, it's on the bottom of the wing, so very rarely does anyone see it. Here's the properly done E-7. And here's the dorsal side of the wing, with tips yet to be added. You can see how one of the 'antennae' bits has been wrapped and mated to the wing skin. Now, you may have noticed that the wing skin consists almost entirely of a single skin. For anyone wanting to try a model like this, I've found it to be much easier and neater to not attempt to glue the skin on all in one go. Instead, I work in sections, starting at the wing root and working toward the tip, using the various bits of framing to align everything properly (I should mention that I gave the entire wing frame a light sanding before starting this process). You can see in the photos that everything has come together very well at the various junctures, e.g., wheel wells, radiator wells, skin edges and frames, seam between dorsal and ventral skins. This is a testament to the excellent design. There will be a less-glowing testament once the wing gets mated to the fuselage, but I'll save that for when we get there!

HMS Shawshank??

Great finish! Congratulations!

I have not been idle. The wing framing is complete -- all 71 parts of it. 😮

Yes, it is not cheap, but the construction method is different. Vanguard kits have a lot of laser-cut parts, but in the Shipyard kits, everything is laser-cut. As a result, there is almost no sanding to be done, other than smoothing the spots that hold parts in their frets. This also means there is no plank spiling to do. This makes Shipyard kits appealing to modelers who may not be able to deal with wood dust for whatever reason. So it's not really a direct competitor to Vanguard in the sense of being a choice between two POB kits -- it's more of a choice between two similar but substantially different construction methods.

Elevators completed. Wings are next!

Rik, your model is looking like it sailed right out of a painting by one of the Dutch Masters!

Great paint job! It does, though, kind of hide just how many pieces of PE you had to apply to the superstructure. I admire the skill and patience of anyone who can work with that stuff successfully.

Congratulations! I think that's a very handsome display.

Looks great!

Milestone moment: Empennage attached.

Work continues on the empennage. First I completed the rudder actuators. I used the dark aluminum pen from the Real Color markers set for these. Then we have the horizontal stabilizer framing (10 parts per side) and their skins. And the stabilizers added to the growing empennage.

You and a lot of other people -- who are all much older now and still waiting!

Agree! She looks pretty convincing.

I like them, so far. As I mentioned earlier, they're not exact matches in every instance. Some are better matches than others. The tan is pretty spot-on for the color printed on the model. The olive drab doesn't match the printed color very well, but as an edge color it hides seams decently. Very easy to use, of course.

I got the basic rudder finished and attached to the vertical stabilizer. I say 'basic' because I still need to attach the actuator rods. Just a dry fit for this shot.

She looks great! Congratulations!

The naming instructions are also pinned at the top of every build log category. For finished models, the word FINISHED in all-caps should be added immediately following the user name and set off by hyphens, e.g.: HMS Phlegmatic 1762 by jenny8675309 - FINISHED - Middling Models - 1:50 You can also add 'Finished' as a tag.

She looks very sharp!