Holger Kranich This Looks like a very ambitious Project! I´m looking Forward!

Martin o Welcome Holger! My last ambitious project took 7 years so you are def in for a ride

Holger Kranich Hahaha LOL!

Slavo Hazucha Wow, I do not want to miss this!

Patrick Hagelstein Oooooh nooooooooh!!!!!! The horror!!!

Patrick Hagelstein Wasn't it easier to further butcher up the FineMolds kit? It already has those panels as an option. Just thinking...

Martin o welcome Slavo and Patrick! As much as I felt bad for cutting into my most fav kit ever, I'd feel worse for cutting into Finemolds. Also the Hasegawa kit has a lot more resin accessories available and I like it more

Patrick Hagelstein Gotcha!

Martin o The testing decals are very difficult to position and tear/warp easily. nevertheless, the first test has shown a lot of fails. the stripe thickness is ok but length is wrong and the modex number is too big. a lot of other things are incorrect size as well, having me retreating into minimizing my effort (most of the generic stencils will probably not be printed and just used from the kit box). really hoping a second test is a little more successful so that I can print something less unwieldy. the academy kit is probably not the best for this either as the proportions are quite different from the data i am using

Spanjaard i love cats

Holger Kranich We all love Cats!

Martin o The decal sheet is almost ready for print. Sadly the star on the stripe is impossible to position so I am going to have them separate. That would be the last change. The decal test cat saw some more action and I tried some tests with the target Finemolds parts as well. All is fine now except for the stripe.

Patrick Hagelstein So, do the Academy one and FineMolds one line up that close to each other?

Martin o Well mostly they do, although if you are using panel lines as reference (which you probably are), there is a significant offset and also the fact that Academy is missing a lot of them makes things difficult too.

Patrick Hagelstein Check! Gotcha!

Martin o the stripes finally fit! calling the printer on Monday!

Martin o I finally managed to spray the hangar. With the basic details on the deck complete, I will be able to finally put the two pieces together and seal the deal with the elevator. Looking forward to starting with all the details, the kit looks pretty basic right now.

Norbert Steffens Hi Martin,

great. I'm in...

Martin o The deck is now on the hull. The details I am adding are mostly inaccurate, sadly. Gotta use up those PE parts. Putting the 1/700 crewmen on will be fun

Martin o After going mad several times from gluing the railings, the LSO post, rigging and stern lights are the last details separating me from the last and most anticipated build part. The small crewmen. The tiny metal sailors are overjoyed about hopping aboard their ship soon.

Martin o Casting the Trackers/Tracers. Depending on how they go I am thinking of replacing the Greyhounds entirely to have the scene more accurate.

C. B. Nice little ones excellent camo.

Martin o thank you

Chris Greathouse These tiny scale builds blow me away! Well done, they look great!

Martin o Thanks Chris. Currently casting 1/700 Trackers/Traders for my carrier so more tiny scale coming soon

Neuling Small and beautiful!

Martin o Thanks!

Greg Baker Yeah, very nice work. It's not easy to get such great results from 1/144 scale. You might consider giving the panel lines a bit of a wash. Maybe not 100% accurate for the scale, but I find it draws out the colours that are otherwise hard to see at this scale. Just a thought.

Martin o Thanks Greg. I did two layers of wash actually. it is more pronounced somewhere and less elsewhere. In the end I decided it looks fine. cleaning the excess wash was causing a lot of damage so I did not want to risk another go

Greg Baker You know, now that I look at it a bit more closely, I can see it. It's just the reflection off the light that makes it seem shinier than it is. I know exactly what you mean though... some parts more pronounced than other. That happens to me all the time. Great work though, I love 1/144 builds.

Patrick Hagelstein Hi Martin, I just read your review again. One thing I noticed is that you commented on the Fujimi airbrake protruding. That's actually correct and not many manufacturers get this detail right.

Martin o So you think it should not be sanded and rescribed? Interesting. Gotta check with the pictures

Holger Kranich Real nice comparison of the 4 kits. You really pointed out the pro´s and con´s. Glad to have the Fujimi and Hasegawa at home. But now i need the Fine Molds one. And lets see what Great Wall Hobby offers us in the next time. GWH seems to be a great deal. Will you expand your comparison with the GWH kit?

Cheers Holger

Martin o Thank you, Holger! I am definitely planning on expanding this not only with the new GWH which I will try to get ASAP but also the old Hobbyboss and upcoming Academy.

Holger Kranich Yeah, cool to hear that!
And btw, it was a great relief for me, that you share the opinion that the Hasegawa canopy looks ... weird, at least. Now i know that i am not alone.

Martin o Yes it is a cause of great anxiety for me as I am otherwise heavily biased for the Hasegawa F-14

Holger Kranich Oh i can imagine! I like the Hasegawa kit very much and have figured out that the Revell canopy fits quite good. A little sanding here and there...

Martin o Ah yes, the canopy is the only good thing about the Revell kit

Patrick Hagelstein Why? What's wrong with a WWI era F-14?

Patrick Hagelstein F-14A Combat Air Museum Topeka | Album by Hagel
This is a picture I took a while ago. Not as pronounced as on other airframes but you can see the raised trailing edge of the airbrake. Beware, it's only on the top one and only at the back.

Patrick Hagelstein Pictures 4 and 5...

gorbygould Nice job!
I assume you've left the swastika like that deliberately.

Martin o thank you. yes, the cross is deliberate. I changed some other details too. like the paint scheme on the nose. hope it wont offend the historical accuracy crowd

gorbygould I'm not interested in historical accuracy. In my books, a good looking model is a good model.

Martin o yup, i see it the same way

Martin o Slowly progressing towards the paint. The metal underside is polished and while the surface is not exactly smooth, I will accept this state as the positive rivets are nicely visible.

On the other hand there is no surprise at the rivets being messed up where it will be most obvious - on the top. While washing off the carrier glue, I broke the rivets on one of the wings and now I am trying to salvage the situation using free lines. Sad but important lesson.

Whoever is planning to use the HGW rivets - they are beautiful and the carrier glue can be washed away with just a slow stream of water or a gentle touch of a finger. Do not use wet cloth like HGW tells you

Martin o Was left home alone for the weekend, naturally all efforts were directed to gluing and painting pieces of plastic. i started out by some preshading. Tried that for the first time ever and sadly, there is no noticeable effect. Will try on black base next time. also I confused RLM 82 and 83 causing me to have two layers in some places. Making the positive rivets to appear was therefore more difficult in those areas.

The undercarriage was a bit of a nightmare to position and glue, as was the propeller spiral.

Only the rigging remains on the todo list. That and replacing the wing root gun barrels which were lost. Probably gonna order some brass tubes to use in their stead.

Ben M Fantastic!

Łukasz Gliński Awesome work. I think we all salute your weathering skills

Casey Beckett Wow - that bird is beat! Impressive work!

Slavo Hazucha Very nice finish, holding true to the original. MiG-21's are just hillarious weathering objects Great job in 72-scale!

Martin o Thank you gentlemen.

Matthew A Wow

Martin o thank you Maciej

Martin o I am mostly done with the colors. There is some parts that hardly look perfect but I did not want to push my luck and risking ripping off what I already have so this is the state I will work with. All is sealed under a glossy coat for practical reasons, the plane will now be sprayed with flat finish and glossy parts will be highlighted using a brush. As could be seen, only limited use of washes was necessary (mostly on the underside). I will try to make a stencil for the nose number as it would have to be weathered as well and I do not want to waste a decal on that.

Slavo Hazucha This is most impressive, especially in 1:72! Do I get it right that you put on all color coats bottom-to-top, then sanded away through the layers to the desired level? What tools/grain etc... did you use - I need to do something roughly similar on a future build and this result is very convincing!

Martin o Thank you Slavo. It went: paint-scratching-sanding-varnish to seal. That was repeated for each color separately (light faded blue, dark new blue, light faded brown, light faded green, dark new brown, dark new green). The sandpaper I used was a worn 400 grit and new 400 grit. 400Grit is a little rough though, using 600 and a little patience could be more time consuming for better results I think. Great restraint will be needed and prepare to be fixing disasters all the time (now that I think of it, I am not sure about the grit numbers, I will check later)

Slavo Hazucha Thanks a lot, sounds like a few evenings spent in the cycle Good luck on the finishing steps!

Martin o the masking tape is off! Happy with the surface reflectiveness now. next stop are the stencil decals, hope they do not mess it up too much

Alec K Wow, impressive weathering .

Martin o The MiG is finished. Pictures in a separate slbum here:
Complete | Album by mnn (1:72)

Markus Schrader Cool project. Like it.

Roland Sachsenhofer Very very cool project and impressive modeling! I will follow for sure!

Predrag Ivanovic Awesome build report, those Eduard albatros are great,and so colorful that you could buld another after another and never get boring. Great project.BTW i started one(Revell reboxing) too and have one in stash (profipack), i glued lower wing before fuselage paint,that was my dilema. As I can see you did the opposite

James C Very impressive work!

Martin o Thank you everyone!

Predrag - I have glued the wings before as you can see in previous pics. I had to remove them later.. it is one of the disasters I mentioned in the album. Reattaching will be difficult.

Also I got the VIRIBUS UNITIS limited edition kit for Christmas so two more OEFFAG planes will be joining my circus.

The OEFFAG kits are also newer with a lot more detail. They look incredible!

Predrag Ivanovic Martin o.I didn't figure that, out i saw lower wings glued on D. III,and you are right, later pictures shows fuselage without wings.
One more question, do you intend to extend the main legs on Albatros D. V? I found that they are 3mm short.

Martin o there are a lot of other intricacies on the Albatros build. I also did not install the guns trying to save them from assured destruction during painting only to find that adding them later is showing to be quite tricky. So cool to keep an eye on that too.

as for the gear struts.. I still have time to decide. I found a few dubious references and I will scratchbuild new struts using that. If I do not like the results, I will use OOB

Martin o after a few attempts at different ways to rig the planes, I settled on a way to do it using hooks which looks very nice as opposed to the original way of curling the thread with superglue. I am not gonna fix the original results to kinda keep the learning process visible for everyone to see. Sadly the yellow Albatros will be the messy testing plane forever now. Hopefully the others that will follow will turn out much nicer thanks to the yellow Albatros sacrifice. I am gonna take some rest from rigging for a while though. Prepare myself mentally.

Melchior Heavy maintenance! I'm in!

Martin o Welcome!

Pierre Wanna see where that project leads!

Martin o Welcome Pierre! Me too!