Friday 20 December 2013

Academy Phantom, plus a fun day in the office!

Hello again and welcome back to the blog.

Last year I was very kindly invited over to Putte in Belgium for the BSMC show.  I had to work for my board and lodgings and did a demo which was fun.  They filmed it (for a live feed in the main hall) and have just put it on YouTube so if you want to see it feel free to watch.  Haggis on the telly!

Well, the Phantom is phinished!  The construction of the model turned out to be a bit of a chore to be honest, I don't really like this bit of the process anyway and this was a bit troublesome.  The cockpit was a bit of a nightmare to fit, the electronic bays were a bit of a struggle too and I was a bit surprised to find the plastic bits had fit issues as well.  The forward lower fuselage wasn't the best fit underneath, the intakes needed a bit of work and the metal tail areas were too wide!  Anyway, nothing that a little bit of old fashioned modelling skill couldn't sort out but it was annoying nonetheless.


But even though the building of the model wasn't all plain sailing, the painting and weathering more than made up for it.  This was a lot of fun!  I decided to incorporate lots of weathering based on the many photos I found of USMC Phantoms in Vietnam, the vast majority of photos I found had quite clean aeroplanes however a few got really filthy!  I needed to work out the best plan of attack and work out how I could recreate the effects I could see in the pictures as I wanted this to be as authentic and realistic as I could. Now for the tease bit, you'll have to wait for the Vietnam  issue of The Weathering Magazine to find out how it was all done!




Unfortunately, that's going to be it for modelling for a little while.  In April I've got a very important assessment at work, something which is going to take 4 months of serious study so modelling output will be slow.  I'll still be whittling away however progress is going to be drastically reduced.

Talking of work, below are some pictures of a 9 ship we did for a recent graduation.  The routine is quite good and whilst we're no Red Arrows it is great fun as you can see!









Ok, thanks for watching, listening, reading.  See you next week for my personal review of 2013.

Cheers,

Jamie

2 comments:

  1. Gorgeous build! Love the chipping on the nose cone

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  2. Jamie, I enjoyed watching the video. Thanks for posting it. In fact I've downloaded it for future reference. I'm also enjoying the Weathering Magazine and am employing some of the techniques you and Mig have demonstrated. Best of luck on your assessment and thanks for sharing your office with us. Dave

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