Avenger Strike Fighter (Part 7)

Well as I mentioned in an earlier post, we had family from Russia visiting over the last 2 weeks.  It was quite an eventful time, especially as my knowledge of the russian language includes only the words for different "foods".  Of course their knowledge of English or German was about the same, so I had a lot of conversions through my daughter.

To that end I've had 0 time for gaming, but I did find a few minutes to do some painting.  The results of said time can be seen below.

Red is the standard color that all Pilots in VF-8455 wear.

Green is the uniform color worn by all Navigators assigned to VF-8455. Not shown is yellow for the flight-crew, and orange for all gunners.


In 5 days I'm off to the states for a conference, I'll be visiting "Cisco Live" San Francisco, can anyone recommend any gaming stores out that way?  I won't be bringing anything along to play, but I'd be interested having a look see, and I'm definitely picking up a few models.

Avenger Strike Fighter (Part 6)

Well it's been almost a month since I put up any progress regarding my Avenger, so I thought it's about high time I did so.  For those that may not have seen it, here's a link to Part 5.  I haven't done much on the exterior other than get 80% percent of the engines painted black. There's still a lot of detailing left to do.

 You can see that unfinished engine on the right, but also the weapons mounted on their hard points.  The lascannons are fixed, but the missiles are attached using magnets so the load out can be easily changed.

Here's the crew.  I filed off about 3mm's on the back of the pilots seat, and 2mm's on the gunner.  This gave me more room in the cockpits.  Heads were swapped (I've always been a huge fan of Robotech) and green stuffed, and I found that they both sat a bit to high for my liking.

Once I got the files back out, I shaved off about 2mm from the bottom of the seats and everything fit much better.

I didn't really like the pose of the Navigator/Gunner, so repositioned his arms, and will add the extra stick to his left arm.  The idea is that the rear gun is then controlled over the joysticks and not by hand.  By shaving off the rear of the seat I also gained more room for him as well, but still didn't like how the rear gun was taking up so much space.   So...

I removed the rear of the gun..  I suppose I'll just say that the munition feed comes up through the bottom of the ball joint.

Well that's it for this week.  We've once again got company from abroad, so I don't think I'll have much "hobby" time in the coming weeks.

Avenger Strike Fighter (Part 5)

Just a quick, short, down and dirty post today.  Work is really busy right now as I ramp up into a new project, so I haven't had the time to do much else.  More will come soon I hope, but I just wanted to put up the recent progress.

 The first layer was done with an air brush, but I did the 2nd layer by hand.  My airbrush skills aren't quite up to snuff yet, so after trying it out on some paper, I decided it was safer to use a brush.  :)

To be honest, the more I see how the black pre-shading came out the more pleased I am with it.  As I mentioned in an earlier post I had never tried that before and was a bit weary at first.  Looking at the how the it's come out so far I like it.

Something I also learned was that I have to be much more careful applying Masking Oil In someplace it worked perfect, and in others...  well not so much. 

till next time...  maybe I'll have the thrusters, nose, and have started on the detailing by then.

Avenger Strike Fighter (Part 4)

Well I got home a bit early last night and was able to get a bit more hobby time in than normal.  I painted up all the angels / plates / recesses prior to applying the first layer of color.  This is something new for me, but I had seen it done on a number of model airplanes, and thought I would give it a try.  Basically you highlight all those parts in black, ensuring to get down into the crevices and rivet holes (I missed a few...). 

 

Once you've got that done the idea is that you would apply a base coat, (here I applied a grey base coat to the fuselage and wings, but will spray the engines black at a later date) and after that you color in the dark edges.  Tape off the areas you don't want to get any paint and there you go. 

  As you can see above I forgot to take a picture of the step before this, as the model is now taped off for the blue sides, and no longer for the bottom.  In the pictures below you can see how the pre-shading came out under the grey paint. 

 It's a bit lighter than I would have preferred (or the grey was darker) but in the grand scheme of things I can live with it and it wasn't very hard to do anyways.

Now, it's on to spraying the next color on the sides of the fuselage and vertical stabilizers.

Avenger Strike Fighter (Part 3)

 

Here she is 95% finished.  The only thing that is missing are the hard point weapons under the wings.  As I stare at the picture writing this, I do believe that the mini-gun is just a tad bit off-kilter. Hmm, maybe I do still have a bit to do yet. 

Test fitting the cockpit parts and the canopy's. I was a bit worried at first because the front canopy was warped, but a bit of hot water cleared that up in a jiffy. I'm thinking about reworking the defensive stubber though. The ammunition belts at the rear of the gun pretty much block the gunners entire control panel.  Not sure how I'll do it yet but I've got a few ideas. 

 Start of my Green Stuff work around the engines.  Twas a pain in the arse to get in there with Liquid Green stuff.  Especially that Liquid GS is a bit old, and not what it once was.  Does anyone know if you can use a bit of water to bring that stuff back to life?

 Not only can you see my horrible green stuff job, (no it's not finished) I really had to pack it in there and trying to clean up the leftovers wasn't easy.  It probably would have been easier to use real green stuff and not liquid GS like I tried at the beginning.  Oh, and as I started to say, now you can see the start of the interior color.

I read a hobby/modeling magazine here (art of Modelling) and they had a Mig-21 painted up with a "Sky Blue" interior, and just sorta fell in love with the way it looked.  That means though that mine won't be Sky Blue, and it won't look as sexy, but it'll get the job done.

And last but not least, as I mentioned in the last few posts, I've been working out of a box in the living room these last few weeks.  Well now that my family has returned to the frozen tundra just south of Lambeau Field, I was able to put my desk back together, which of course enabled me to clean it off.

Now my table is all ready to get filled up with Imperial Guard goodness, and I can get back to a little hobby time!

Avenger Strike Fighter (Part 2)

Well she's coming along just fine, here she is after 2 nights of work.  We currently have company for a bit (till the end of the month), so my "Man Cave" has been converted into a guest bedroom.  This of course means that I'm having to build this out of a box so that it can be cleaned up and put away every night...  It may take a while to get built..

Up until this point everything is going ok, but it's going to need a bit of green stuff in the end.  The wings and engines were really a pain in the butt, and there's plenty of gaps where they connect. The 2nd problem I've had is that none of my normal Superglue is holding for crap... It's taking sometimes 15 - 20 minutes to dry to the point where I can support it and let it sit until everything is fixed in place.  At this rate I'm about ready to go out and buy new glue.

Oh, and in the above pic, the pilot and co-pilot are just sitting in there.  I won't be gluing them on until the end.  And the Avenger cannon fell off, about 30 seconds after snapping the pic... damn glue.

Aerial Support

Imperial Naval Squadron VF-8455 "Nomads"

Imperial Naval Squadron's VF-8454 "Shadowhawks" and VF-8455 "Nomads" have been assigned to the House Villeneuve Trader Fleet* for nearly 5000 years. The Shadowhawks are equipped with the Fury Interceptor while the Nomads are equipped with Avenger Strike Fighter "ASF-Mk3a". 

After a day or two of cutting and sanding down all the "flash", I finally got her all washed up and as you can see all I have to do now is wait till tomorrow and the assembly can begin.  Outside of the standard weapons I'm thinking of magnetizing the 2nd pair of hard points so that I can either equip it with missile launchers or with Hellfury/Hellstrike missiles. 

As for a color scheme, I've been thinking about something like this. Not that I'm great with an air brush or anything but I think it would look pretty good. 

Image found on the Internet

* More on this at a later date...