SPA Modeler

That's one big ass bird, stik!

Sweet bird Carlos! That is one sharp looking model. I noticed a little "fuzz" still on the front of the ALQ-131 pod, but overall this is really coming together well! Enjoy this!

Blacksheep, it is one big ass bird indeed. I am going to leave off the outer wing panels as long as possible just for room on the bench. I already have them assembled and they should be attached by now, but...

Mark, there is some fuzz there indeed... good catch. I'll see if I can brush it off. My new phone camera is excellent for these macro shots. That photo is way bigger than the item... lol. Those openings that I created are pretty damn small...

Note to anyone planing to use a Trumpeter ALQ-131 pod on their build and improve it themselves- open those areas before hand and add any strip styrene then. In hindsight, the same changes can be done far more easily at that point.

Also a review note at this point- alignment engineering. This kit fits together very well, but can easily be mis aligned in the fuselage to wings and front & rear fuselage joins. I am finding that it is better to glue sub sections together, such as the upper rear fuselage, leaving the lower center unglued, let that area set and dry, then attach the wing assembly. Test fit assemblies to find the best approach to remove or reduce gaps later on.

Good info in the review notes. I might even try that some with a few of my smaller scale birds.

Great tip, stik! I never thought of doing it that way.

My main task today was to get the rest of the sub assemblies completed. And the main landing gear struts really concerned me. They are molded in hollow halves, which in my view, compromises their strength to support such a large model. So I took some aluminum tubing that would fit inside each other to create some reinforcing struts to fit inside.







and I began construction of all the things that will hang off this bird

drop tanks



inner pylons and boarding ladder



Sparrows, Shrikes, Standard ARM. and ECM pod



landing gear struts and main wheels. you have weighted and un weighted types to choose from



begun work on the afterburners



outer wing panels



and the nose gear door, which presented a problem... as you can see here, the mold release pin marks were quite noticeable on the outer face and filling and sanding those away removed a good amount of the raised rivet detail.



Thankfully for another project I had some Archer rivet decals on hand so I will use these to replace the lot detail. They are not an exact match for the lost detail, but they look better than how it looks with them sanded away...



more to come in a day or two...

Thanks Stuart. I think I'll be working on seam clean up for the next bit, now that most everything is attached to the main airframe except for all the little parts that I will save for last,

Now you're going to hit it out of the park. Lovin' it just by scrolling through the pictures!

Thank you for the vote of confidence on this project. It's coming along mostly as I intended...