SPA Modeler

Very nice touch on the auxiliary intakes. Quite convincing.

Thanks. It’s a little thing, but a big improvement.

Stikpusher wrote: ↑Sun Mar 05, 2023 1:21 pm Gary, your Hog looks great and that is some super work that you put into its' cockpit! Wow! Looks like you added a PE seat harness there... Mine won't have one of those, just paint work.
In a few days...

Thanks my friend! She turned out pretty well, except for the canopy support arms. I could never get them to sit vertical enough. Yeah, the seat harness is Eduard's set for the F-104. I figured close enough. But, they've never looked right to me, they don't lay naturally on the seat. I learned a bit about PE with those. Somehow, I don't remember posting that F-84F here back when it was built, maybe 8 or 9 years now?

I'm looking forward to seeing yours because I've never seen a less than stellar model from you. I expect this "Hog" will be the same!

Thanks fro the vote of confidence Gary. I'll do what I can with this one. I'm planning a NMF Hog, so it will be bright and colorful to some extent. Hopefully I can pull it off well enough with what I have here now.
Regarding the seat on yours, I know what you mean about the PE harness never draping quite properly. I do like the 3-D decals in that regards. There is not much PE out there for this kit, but if you were to do another, from what I've read, the F-84F used a seated harness that was like the seat used on early F-105s (go figure with being Republic products), so you could substitute that harness. BTW, not a bad idea to use a F-104 set.

So you can put Vallejo on top of tamiya? I would have thought Vallejo would be similar to pollyscale, which you can't put on top of tamiya... or is it the other way around?

See? That's my main issue with acrylic paints; I get quickly confused by compatibility between various brands and what thinner to use with each brand? With good ol' enamel, all I needed was some mineral spirits (jes' paint thinner to us old painters! ) and I was set to go. I'm slowly learning a little about acrylics; Saturday I tried thinning some AK brand paint with distilled water and that was a bust. Obviously, not the way to go...

cbaltrin wrote: ↑Mon Mar 06, 2023 8:03 am So you can put Vallejo on top of tamiya? I would have thought Vallejo would be similar to pollyscale, which you can't put on top of tamiya... or is it the other way around?

Well I did with zero ill effects. On Friday afternoon I applied the base coat of Tamiya acrylic thinned with lacquer thinner, essentially as the primer coat, and let it dry overnight. Roughly 24 hours later I airbrushed on the base colors with Vallejo Model Air and it all worked great together. And offhand I don’t recall ever having any problems with using Polly Scale and Tamiya together. At least not beyond the tip dry I occasionally encounter with some Polly Scale paints. The only problems that I’ve ever had was Model Master Acrylic over Gunze Aqueous.

Bruce, from what I've seen, the F-84Fs were fairly well maintained during their active duty USAF careers in the mid 50's, so I'm going for a brighter shinier NMF.... with some select panels in different finishes. I have some AK Real Color Aluminum that looks like it will do quite nicely for what I want. But I haven't decided yet if I'm going to base coat underneath with Gloss Black or not. But I've got some time to think before I reach that decision point...

I undercoat (when I do) with Model Master Olds Engine Blue. Makes sense to me as a lot of what we see in an aluminum surface is the reflection of the sky. Besides, some years ago I bought out all the paint that a hobby shop had that was going out of business so I have a lot of Olds Engine Blue (and Ford and Chevrolet colors).