Mural

Dave Burgess
The subject of this album is NOT the F-16 in the foreground (ship #6); it's the F-16 in the background (ship #7). Thought this would make a good flight line forced perspective shot (1:48 F/G, 1:72 B/G)

Mr D
Very nice Dave, the Exhaust work it great , Nice kit done well 👍👍

Dave Burgess
Thx. Read my comments about the L/G and decals. It was a bit of a pain (especially the decals)!

Mr D
That's the trouble adhesive can just go to powder in time.
I'm hoping that the 33yesr old numbers on my current Beriev project will be useable??
What do you use to stick them down with in the end ??

Dave Burgess
I waterslide them into place, roll a q-tip over the decal to squeeze out any water trapped between the decal and model surface; then I hit them with a strong setting agent, like Microscale's Microsol, or Solvaset. After the setting agents have done their job (3-5 hours), I look over the decals for trapped bubbles, creases or silvering, hit them with another splash of decal setter, and work out any blemishes with a pin or #11 Exacto blade. Once I'm happy with the decals, I'll over-coat the model with either a gloss coat or matt coat, depending on the required finish. For gloss coats, I just brush on a liquid floor wax (Pledge/Future). Once the top coat goes on, the decals never lift (at least not in the 45+ years and 400+ models since I've been following this procedure).

Dave Burgess
A had an old bottle of Testors clear lacquer. Tried airbrushing it on the sheet, but it needed a much thicker coat, so I ended up brushing it on, full strength. (BOY does that stuff stink! Ended up wearing my respirator!)

Mr D
Thanks Dave, l purchased some new soviet stars for my Current Beriev project, but couldn't find numbers the same, so I'm hoping l can use them ?
There from the 90's
I'm going to paint the red stripe.... So will use the decal stripe to experiment with see what to expect or what l can do to make useable.
Cheers Dave... Cracking S-sabre 👌

Ben M
For my next project i have tentatively I was going to try making my own decals. I've also used stsdecals in the past.

Robert Podkoński
Good job as always, Dave!

Ben M
Looks great. You dechromed it?

Dave Burgess
Nope. Just hit it with Alclad Black primer and Alclad Mainframe Aluminum.

Ben M
I built a plated kit a while back, it's a bit frustrating 😀

Dave Burgess
Yeah. the problem with the plating is that it's so thin that it gets scratched off too easily, the liquid cements themselves will remove it, and sanding the seams does as well. Plus the decals don't adhere very well so you have to clear-coat it before applying them. I know some people will drop the trees in a bleach bath to remove all of the chrome, but that just sounds like too much work to me! Most of the time, I just avoid buying them, unless it's the only available option, They usually add a few dollars to the kit as well - another reason to avoid them. Besides, these days there are LOTS of good metal finish products available on the market.

Dave Burgess
Finished this in 2019. For some reasonn, I gorgot to post the pics, so here they are.

Guy Rump
Very impressive, really like the collection. 👍

Harald Besold
Yes - I can agree with Guy's words. This collection is very impressive! Thank you for uploading the additional photos.

Dave Burgess
So the collection is now complete. There's just one more model to do, but it's a what-if project because the T-Birds never flew the P-51 Mustang. There's a nice decal set for it, and I have the P-51 kit, but with the Canada Post strike on at the moment, not much point ordering it. I'll probably do it in January, Just one more thing to do - take a 'family' photo, and change the collection banner.

Mr D
Very nice... Very smart scheme 👍👍

Dave Burgess
Gonna have to modify the LG a bit. This old Hasegawa kit molded the landing strut and hydraulic oleo in one piece. There are two mount points in the wing, one for the strut and the other for the oleo. Unfortunately either they made the strut too long or the oleo too short, because if you cement it into the two mount points, either the gear lean too far forward, or too far inward. I'm going to nip the oleo at the strut, straighten the struts, and then re-attach the oleos to the struts only a bit lower. I can't leave it the way it is - the aircraft looks bow-legged compared to my other F-105 (Trumpeter).

Dave Burgess
L/G sorted out. I had to break them off, separate the hydraulic oleos from the struts, then re-attach the struts and oleos separately. Decals were a challenge on this kit. the (light blue) backing behind the decals (the substance that makes the decals slippery when wet) had deteriorated to the point of a powder that stuck to the underside of the decal. The only way to remove it was to slide each decal, upside down on my workbench (glass) surface, brush the decal with a paintbrush and water, then pick it up with a pair of tweezers and place it right side up, back on the decal paper (which also had to be washed off).. Fortunately the decals themselves were robust enough that they held together through the process. If I'd had to do that on the T-38, I'd have a pile of crumbs instead of a decal! Oh, the joys of working with old kits! Still, it turned out well

Ben M
My solution has been to scan the old sheets and if they shatter/are too much of a hassle, I print new ones via sts decals. I recently purchased some decal paper for my printer and next time I'll try making my own. I have cut out simple ones from scans with my cricut to make masks to paint the markings, another option.

Dave Burgess
The problem there is that MANY of the decal nufacturers print on light blue paper (intentionally, I think), so that if there is much clear carrier (like around letters), the printed decal sheet has a blue tinge. You can play around with the image to get rid of that, but it usually changes the colour hues of the images on the sheet. I did that very thing with all of these T-Bird sheets, and the results were disappointing. Also, the print 'thickness' is much less than the silkscreen, so that unless you're printing on white decal paper, the model colour tends to show through. Printing on white is not really an option for lettering (like 'USAF').

Dash Rendar
Looking really good!

Treehugger
Haha Revell with a 1:72 kit, are they feeling well? 😄 Ofc, this must be an old kit.
This is one of some other kits I've always wanted to have.

Dave Burgess
It (and the Babylon 5 space station) were released in 1998. Tough to find now, even on EBay, and they want silly-bugger prices.

Finn
Cool

Mojo DeVirus
Wow !!!

Dave Burgess
Mojo DeVirus: Can't WAIT to get to the Battlestar Pegasus!

Dave Burgess
First photo in the album is a forced perspective shot. The subject of this album is actually the F-16 (plane #7) in the background (1:72); The foreground F-16 (plane #6) is the 1:48 kit I completed a few weeks back.

Villiers de Vos
Very nice work.

Dave Burgess
Tiny little model - one of my smallest. But since it's in 1:72, I can compare it to a lot of my other models (SF included) for size comparison.

Curatorm
Very nice model 🙂 As seen in the movie "A new hop" ^_^

Dave Burgess
Curatorm, yeah, I think I saw that film. I believe it was funded by a group from the Seventh Day Advent Hoppists 😉

Dave Burgess
I took this one on as a one day build challenge, after watching Adam Savage (Myth-Busters) slap it together in a one day challenge. His guest was the actor who played the engineer in the BSG reboot. He put the kit together in an hour or so, then hit it with a couple of rattle cans (2 min), and voila! Took me back to my youth when building a model was a single day's entertainment, and it turned out pretty well too!

Spanjaard
wow, impressive! quite some thought put into it, but certainly worth it.
impressive collection too 😉

Dave Burgess
Thx.

Spanjaard
cool idea with the open bookcases!

Mr D
Looking good.. nice job 👍

Villiers de Vos
Very nice work on this iconic subject.

Spanjaard
very nice!

Villiers de Vos
Very nice work on this unusual subject.

Spanjaard
quite a collection 🙂

Villiers de Vos
Very nice work.

Dave Burgess
Ben M I didn't have rivet problems with mine: I built the Project-X vacuform 1:72 Thunderceptor, No rivets on that kit. It also provided a 'butterfly' tail option, which I did. The butterfly tail was installed after the second prototype crashed and the tail of the aircraft destroyed. It's in this collection. I assume you have one of the vintage XF-91 kits (Lindberg 1:48?). If it was mine - I'd sand off the rivets!

Ben M
Yes I have the Lindberg. It's got more rivets than a WWI tank. Not sure if I'll sand them off or go with a "vintage" build. I recall when I built it when I was a kid I brush painted it testors red metallic enamel.

Dave Burgess
I'm calling this completed, for the moment. The model is missing the two exhaust cans. I bought the model about 10 years ago, but never checked the parts until I started building it a few weeks back and realized they were missing. I've contacted Arnold from Anigrans and he is sending two replacements. One I've received and attached them, I will do a complete photo-set.

Dave Burgess
Mr D. Don't confuse my model (1:48) which is about 7" long from some of the shots of the studio model which I included in the album. That one is somebody else's and yes, it's 4-5' long!

Mr D
AHH ok...🤣 I thought it was big in photo....need big display cabinet 🤔

Dave Burgess
It was just good fortune that I got THIS one! I've wanted a model of this for decades - didn't even know ther WAS a model. This popped up when was browsing EBay around 2016.
P.S. The entire 26 episode season of UFO is available on Youtube

Dave Burgess
Skyhiker. Interesting story behind that (from Gerry Anderson himself). Gerry needed backing from a U.S Network in order to make season 2 of UFO. But the network executive wasn't interested. Apparently he was fed up with all the Earth based science fiction series being peddled. Gerry persisted, until finally the executive said he would ONLY produce the show if it had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Earth. When Gerry suggested that they base the entire series on the moon and didn't do any Earth based scenes, that STILL wasn't good enough. Then Gerry suggested that in the pilot, they have an accident on the moon that blows the Moon out of Earths orbit, the executive finally relented, and Space 1999 was born.

Peter Hardy
I got this one in my stash!

Ekki
Great work!

Dave Burgess
Thx. Another addition to my U.S.Fighters collection. 72 completed; just 31 more to go.

Dash Rendar
Awesome, well done!

Dave Burgess
Thx. Working on the Mk.II version with lighting and lots more details

Dave Burgess
Updated photos (better lighting)

Dash Rendar
Great build, well done!

Torsten
Awesome build and pant job 😎 😎 😎

Dave Burgess
Updated photos (better lighting)

Dave Burgess
Updated photos (better lighting)

Dave Burgess
Updated phtos (better lighting)

Dave Burgess
Updated photos (better lighting)

Hans-Jürgen Haag
Extrem Nice!👍

Dave Burgess
Pictures updated. They were originally taken before my hobby room renovation, and the lighting was very poor. The new pictures are much better lit.

Łukasz Gliński
Nice, I love that livery 👍

Lorraine Lin
Following

Robert Podkoński
Taking a seat too.

Dave Burgess
Decals were a bit of a bugger the blue ones are pretty fragile, even when softened with decal set. They cracked in a few places on the 'Eagle's wing'. I was able to match the paint to the decal and hide the problem areas. Turned out pretty well.

Alberto
Great finish 👍

Dave Burgess
Decals only

Dave Burgess
Thanks, folks! I've got another one upcoming in the next few months - gonna take the Execuform 1:72 XP-54 Swoose, and convert it into the XP-68 Tornado. Vultee was going to upgrade the engine to drive contra-rotating pusher props. The project neverr left the drawing board, and the XP-54 project was canceled.
It involves a) working with the very BASIC Execuform kit, and modifying the fuselage to include intake scoops in the fuselage above/behind the canopy, and modifying the vertical stabs to a more rounded appearance. First tho, I have a number of Anigrand resin kits to complete in this US Fighters series.

Villiers de Vos
Fantastic work.

Dave Burgess
Interior completed with photo-etch. A few touchups to be made. Wings & tail surfaces attached. Just need to mask canopy then we're ready for airbrushing.

Dave Burgess
White primer and gloss white applied; Waiting for a few days for paint to cure properly before beginning decalling.