Bryn Crandell It's a bit of a beast to drive. Long and wide turns are a must. Overall a fun piece of apparatus to drive and operate. Agree on the undercarriage. you can make the engine look good but if you crawl under the truck it has a bit of road grime. Unless you have a chief that is a clean freak.

Donald Dickson II *fingers in ears* nananananaananananana I cant hear you Choppa.

Greg, burn...fire truck...I see what you did there. LOL

Bryn, I can imagine. The last truck I drove was 110' heavy duty Seagrave straight truck that was like 45 feet long. That took some wide turns. Not to mention the idiots doing the purchasing put 6V92s in them. For a 60,000 lb vehicle. Talk about a pig.

Choppa Nutta yeah but you can still read haha
anyhow that's nearly 30 tons !!
never seen a road vehicle that big ... I bet it took forever to stop ....

Donald Dickson II It took forever to get going. The engine I mentioned is severely under powered for that size vehicle. It was certainly a beast.

Donald Dickson II OK, so I found a pic (I actually have not a single pic of me when I was in the FD. Not one. Nor of the fire trucks I rode/drove) of the ladder truck I drove. That is it after it had been transferred to another station.

Choppa Nutta it's a beast indeed !! fire engines in the UK are much smaller
shame you didn't get any photos of you in it but I guess at the time one never thinks to take a selfie
(unless you're a self absorbed millennial of course )
You'd think that it might be an important design requirement for for an emergency vehicle to get to the emergency site quickly....

Donald Dickson II This was also before smart phones and digital cameras everywhere.

Here is the thing. We are not allowed to go blasting down the road. Most fire trucks are governed at about 70 or so. That being said, if they are properly powered, they can get to 70 really effing quick considering their size.

Choppa Nutta Yeah I was thinking more acceleration than top speed .... at least it wasn't horse drawn hey

Donald Dickson II LOL Greg. I DO have plans for one in the future. We will see how it goes.

Greg Baker Yes. Yes we shall...

Donald Dickson II OK, so got the fuselage together. Fit was great except the front bottom. Considering everywhere else it went together fine, I am gonna say I managed to screw it up somehow. The gap is filled with this super glue. I will sand it and go back over it with Mr surfacer and sand that. Love it when I make work for myself.

While trying to get the front to fit right, I managed to knock out the windows in the nose. *sigh* So Micro Krystal Klear to the rescue.

Donald Dickson II OK, mostly all together and first coat of primer. Now to go over it and see what more needs doing.

Greg Baker Did you recover the windows? It looks pretty tight to me... no gaps or flaws visible.

Donald Dickson II There are a couple you cant see in that one pic, but nothing major. The windows came out so so making them with krystal klear. Couldnt snag the plastic ones.

Greg Baker Does that mean there's something rattling around inside... I hate that...

Donald Dickson II No, they seem to have wedged somewhere thankfully. I have a couple where weights have come loose and those drive me nuts when I have to move them.

Bryn Crandell Watch this as well.

Donald Dickson II I am doing it the boring way. All closed up. I REALLY dont want to get into detailing the inside on this thing. That would end up being far more than I care to invest on this one. LOL

Donald Dickson II OK, so this was a quickie build before I dive into the C-17. I wanted to do something besides silver. In researching I discovered that the Russians really do not have much by way of standardization. So I went with a four color scheme similar to a few pics I found. I like how it turned out. But...

This kit is horrid. Fit is horrendous. Scale seems to be off from part to part. Parts are not numbered, but there are only two trees so its not hard to figure out. The decals, all 8 of them, are atrocious. And are destroyed by lacquer dull coat. Thankfully I tested it on one of the stars on the underside. The only reason I had this kit is it was given to me. LOL

All that being said, it looks like an SU-15 to me, and with a minimal amount of effort will look decent I think.

Timothy Heimer Not bad for a kit from Hell! But then your talent saved it!

Donald Dickson II Thank you Timothy!

Ekki Good result!

Cuajete For what this kit is, you've done it pretty well, Donald. Congrats!

David Thor Beautiful! Great results. And thanks for the info on the quirks of this kit, i still have the polar version in my stash.

Clifford Keesler Awesome result Donald, well done.@Gareth,, I am getting ready to start the Academy Sea Dragon and it has the option to build the rotors and tail boom folded.

Gareth Windsor Nice Clifford, look forward to that. Generally speaking, most of the kits I've seen of Sea King don't have blade fold as an option (I've built the Fujimi kit and have the Airfix RN Search & Rescue and the Revell RN Tiger Meet Sea kings) which is why they don't look right sometimes when people do it. #1 blade down the spine and blades 2 & 5 either side of #1 straight back. It's #3 & #4 that are tricky as they rotate around 45° as they fold. The hinge would be quite flimsy too in a small scale. The Wessex (and I'm guessing the Choctaw as same airframes) needed extra support equipment fitted when they folded.

Donald Dickson II Wow, Choppa is so popular he gets credit for other peoples builds. LMAO But thank you Konrad! And David and Clifford as well.

Gareth, I have seen builds where they included the braces for the folded rotors. Evidently it was either good after market, or incredible scratch building.

Choppa Nutta Haha, sorry I just couldn't resist a cheap joke lol

Konrad Limmer Oh man...!
Of course it is Donalds one! Anyhow it is a great build

Choppa Nutta Yeah man, it is a great build

Donald Dickson II Thanks guys. And thanks for the laugh as well!

Ekki Excellent work. Well done!

Martin Oostrom We can't build in larger scales. Parts are too big for our hands

David Thor Such a crazy looking bird. Great job Donald!

Donald Dickson II Thank you all! I am humbled by your praise.

Martin, About to start up on a 1/48 H-34 Choctaw. For the same group build I did this one for.

Timothy, I swore I would not start doing them a lot. And I really AM trying not to do small planes like this in 72. But the kit had good reviews and was on sale...

David, I get a pregnant guppy vibe. LOL But a flipping FAST guppy!

Maciej Bellos Well done mate! Really shinny!

Gareth Windsor Another great job Donald. I may give the AK metals a go on my phantom when it's ready.

Łukasz Gliński It looks nice, the AK stuff gave a really cool result, but to be honest I wonder what happened to the air inlet part (pic 27). Thanks for the review anyway, good to know this kit is so nice OOB only . I have to consider buying me one as well.

Donald Dickson II Lukasz, thats my fault. I screwed up and had to hand paint that area as all the decals were on masking it would have been a nightmare. Im gonna fiddle with it at some point I am sure.

And thanks guys!

Łukasz Gliński Looks phabulous Sir, I like it

Konrad Limmer Very nice result Sir! Well done

perry w h leu Great job. I love it.

Donald Dickson II Thank you gentlemen!

Mike Daniels Looking good Donald. Always makes me think of 'Thuderball' the Bond Movie.

Ekki Beautiful! My favourite fixed-wing aircraft! Well done!

Donald Dickson II Mike, a number of people have said that on FB! LOL I need to re watch it because damned if I remember that.

And thank you both.

Clifford Keesler Very nice well done.

Donald Dickson II I did?????? Gotta check that....

Donald Dickson II Hmmmm, dont see it Martin

Timothy Heimer in the search enter skyraider and click on the pic. Earlier it was on the front page.

Patrick Hagelstein I saw it too! It was there!

Donald Dickson II Wow! I submitted it, but they never got back to me to tell me they were going to publish it. Thanks guys!

Timothy Heimer No problem! Keep up the good work and have fun!

Gareth Windsor Great build and well done

Donald Dickson II Thank you sir!

Donald Dickson II OK, so I started this on May first as part of a group build on the site International Scale Modeller. I have the Wolfpack decal set and seamless intakes.

This is an old and simple kit. It has its seam issues as you can see, but thats to be expected from a 30+ year old kit. The cockpit is non existent, but then you wont be able to see squat, so it would be wasted detail. I did a quick paint job on the pilots, not worrying too much about them as they will barely be seen.

As you can see, the exhausts are just holes. I used some brass tubing to make some rudimentary exhausts guts. Not fancy, but makes a world of difference IMO. Gotta do a little work with the bomb bay door areas and then on to painting. I have the colors in Tamiya acrylics and AK acrylics. I think I will use the AK as I have never used them before. Give them a go.

Łukasz Gliński Phabulous idea, have to watch it

Donald Dickson II Thank you sir.

Stefan Fraundorfer The Vulcan - yes! I'm in. I saw her flying at RIAT 2011 in Fairford. What a great plane.

Ekki Watching (my fav plane)!

Roland Sachsenhofer Wonderful! Yeah, I will watch and follow with interest!

Donald Dickson II Welcome gentlemen!

I got the underside painted last night. Have some more seam stuff to go back and do. And let me tell you, that is a LOT af area to paint with an airbrush. My finger was cramping by the time I was done. LOL