Wall

bughunter
Nice representation of the original fighter!
May be this was the CMK kit?
Alliance Models is looong out of business. I have the 1:48 kits of that company and build one of it. They were all cast in this old yellow hard resin.
May be someone sells casts of old kits on ebay.

Dave Burgess Author
@Bughunter, well this kit WAS purchased from E-Bay, without box, without decals, and without instructions, so it's still possible it could have been in someone's stash for decades before being sold. However, I don't think it is, based on a photo I saw of the parts.

Robert Podkoński
And another fantastic plane. Congrats, Dave!

Dave Burgess Author
Thx Robert! eighty-eight down, only 17 more to build, and I can call this collection complete.

Robert Podkoński
👍

Vincent
Very interesting plane. Great work!

Dave Burgess Author
Thx, Robert! XP-58, XP-50, XP-49, XP-46, XP-43, XP-42, and XP-37 are now in progress.

Robert Podkoński
👍

Neuling
I agree!

Robert Podkoński
Fantastic!

Neuling
A nice one!

Dave Burgess Author
Thx. Turned out pretty well.

Dave Burgess Author
I was looking forward to this project: the Hughes D-2 (aka XP-73 / XA-37). First thing that amazed me was its size. The wingspan of this beast is almost the same length as the SR-71!

Unfortunately I ran into problems when I started attaching the wing to the tail booms and fuelage. That's when I realized that there was a slight twist in the center wing section. As a result, the left boom is not parallel to the right, sloping downward from the tail to the engine cowl. As a result the left boom engine is below the right, and the boom tail is above the right; very noticable when you position the hor. stab. Also, the cutout in the center wing section for the pilot compartment was a bit too wide underside, and when I got the best fit, it ALSO is not parallel to the booms, but slopes upward. I'm not sure how I'm going to fix this. I tried repositioning the pilot's section, cracking the center section in the process, but I wasn't able to shift it enough. Putting this project on hold until I decide how to tackle it. One of my first thoughts was to cut the boom off just forward of the wing, to repostition the engine, and just behind the wing to fix the boom height at the tail; then cutting the pilot section out of the center wing and repostioning it as well. That's a lot of surgery, and if not successful, will probably mean scrapping the project. My other though was to just finish the build, warts and all. Thoughts?

Ekki
Very nice work. 👍

Dave Burgess Author
Thx, Ekki

Michael Kohl
There is a bit of silvering of the decals. You might still be able to ameliorate it with a good wash of a strong decal softener this Solvaset. May I recommend a dark wash of the landing gear to bring out details and to tone down the stark contrast of pure white?

Dave Burgess Author
Thx for the suggestions, Michael. However, with the number of model kits still in my stash, and the rapidly shrinking build time left in my life, I only go back to work on models if something falls off.

Neuling
Yes!

Dave Burgess Author
Slowly working through my collection of Anigrand X-Planes kits. Next up: the Hughes D2 / XP-73 / XA-37 /XF-11; The plane nobody had a roll for!

Dave Burgess Author
I had this brilliant idea during Desert Stomr back in 1990, to build a collection of Desert Storm aircraft, Allied amd Iraqi. I started with the Free Kuwait A-4 and the EA-6B Prowler, before I realized there were SO many different aircraft involved that I was taking on to big a project, considering all my other collections, Still, I ended up building a couple before I abandoned the project.

Dave Burgess Author
I was intrigued by this camoflauge scheme when I saw it in the mid '80s. so I picked up a kit and built it, even though the subject didn't really fit into any of my collections at the time.

Dave Burgess Author
Built in 1990. Photos never taken, so here they are now. The most recent Tomcat I built in 2023 (Hasegawa) is a MUCH better kit. The Monogram kit is typical for '60s and early '70s kits. Just including it here for completeness.

Dave Burgess Author
Absolutely, Ben! My favourite 'silk purse out of a sows ear' project was my Minbari battle cruiser. When I contrast the quality of the kit with the final product, it amazes even me, and I built it! Check it out. It's in my Babylon 5 collection

Villiers de Vos
Very nice work.

Robert Podkoński
Looks beautiful! Fantastic job, Dave, as always.

Dave Burgess Author
Thanks!

Gordon Sørensen
Final results look great, Dave! Sometimes you just need to put a kit on the shelf to let the gremlins work there way out of it….

Kyriakos Vafiadis
Beautiful work!

Robert Podkoński
Great! (I am a bit jealous looking at your collection of prototype planes, Dave 😉 )

Dave Burgess Author
Thx Robert! Lots more to come! I'm looking forward to building the McDonnell XP-67 Moonbat,

Dave Burgess Author
Robert, I actually got the idea for the U.S.Fighters collection back in the early '80s when I got the Lloyd S Jones book from a military book club I subscribed to (remember them? Book of the Month clubs?) I started collecting all the models I could, but I gave up in the early '90s because there were so many gaps. When the late '90s and the internet came along, it was suddenly much easier to find all of the garage businesses selling vacuform and resin kits, and I realized I could get a much more complete list. So I started collecting them again, waiting for the time when I was retired and had the time and display space to build & display them. Now, at 71, I've been retired for 15 Years, and I have ever decreasing time to get them built, so I've gone into high gear to get them done!

Robert Podkoński
That's a great plan, Dave. I will keep my fingers crossed 🙂 I have a similar idea. After I got the book on X-planes, I want to build all of them - or at least all manned ones...

Ben M
Loudest aircraft ever built, could be heard 25 miles away.

There's a recording on YouTube

Dave Burgess Author
Yeah I've watched it. And they thought sonic boom was a problem!

Robert Podkoński
Great job!

Ekki
Excellent work.

Dave Burgess Author
Thank you! I'm quite pleased with this one, particularly with the canopy fit and frame painting. The canopy was vacuform, which is quite often difficult to fit, and the frame is usually not very well defined. Fortunately this one fit reasonably well. As for the frame, I did it in two stages. First, I created a canopy frame out of masking tape using what I could see of the frame by holding it close to my lamp. With the frame mask in place, I then masked the 'glass' between the frame before peeling the frame mask off. Looks like I nailed it 'cause the frame looks brilliant! Then I used Micro metal foil adhesive to tack the canopy to the model, filled in any gaps with a couple of coats of white glue, and once it had cured, went over the glue with a fine brush and a bit of gloss black. Then a coat of Pledge over the canopy and I have really clear canopy I can actually see through!

Dave Burgess Author
This is the first OLIMP resin kit I've built, and I must say - I'm impressed! There were a fair number of parts, and they were ALL crisply molded with a TON of fine detail. Even the small parts like LG struts were extremely well molded. There was virtually NO warping, a problem I've found with a lot of cast resin kits, particulary large ones. I was initially disappointed seeing a vacuform canopy, as they often don't fit well, and it can be very difficult to mask the frame as it's usually not well defined. However, the fit was very good, and I addressed the frame issue by first creating a frame using masking tape following what I could see of the frame, then masking the glass, before removing the frame tape for airbrushing, One of the really nice things about the vacuformed canopy is how clear the canopy is after a couple of coats of floor wax.

The only flaw I found was that the hor. stab roots seemed to have a small dihedral, in that they fitted flush to the vert. stab with a slight dihedral. It was only after I'd painted the bird and was checking the interwebs for photos, that I realize that the actual a/c had NO dihedral of the hor. stab. However, I wasn't going to try removing them and risk breaking them, so my plane has a slight dihedral of the tail surfaces, All-in-all, a fantastic kit! If the other OLIMP kits are anything like this one, I'm looking forward to it. My next OLIMP kit is the Lockheed XP-58 Chain Lightning

P.S If you're going to build this model, USE LOTS OF NOSEWEIGHT! I thought I'd used enough, but I just barely used enough. With all that resin at the stern of the aircraft, the model is pretty tail heavy. I JUST hit the balance point. If I put it down with the nose wheel touching the surface, it'll stay there, but just a little downforce on the vert.stab, and the model rocks back onto its tail.

Dave Burgess Author
Too tall for my backdrop!

Ben M
The moon lander is amazing. Love the space stuff.

Dave Burgess Author
Ben M, Yeah, I was particularly pleased with the way the LEM turned out. The shading technique I used to hilight the shadows and bright sunlight worked better than I thought, particularly when I also light the model from a very low angle. I also tried to duplicate the 'gold' foil using the (crumpled) gold wrapper from a chocolate bar. Chocolate was tasty too!

Ben M
What variant is picture 1?

Dave Burgess Author
The Saturn V launch vehicle for the Interstellar Ranger, from the S/F/ movie Interstellar. They provided two 1:144 Rangers plus the stage to fit where the Apollo C.M would normally be. I'd already built the 1:144 Saturn V, so once I'd assembled the Interstellar Ranger stage, it was just a matter of removing the C.M and popping on the I.R stage

Treehugger
Nicely done! 🙂

Dave Burgess Author
@Trehugger Thx! It'll look even nicer when I've finished my scratch-built (correct scale) MLP and I can ditch that toy-like launch platform that Revell provided!

Spanjaard
looking forward to that

Dave Burgess Author
North American's entery into the Penetration Fighter competition. The YF-93 was a beefed up version of the F-86 Sabre, with a more powerful upgraded engine. As the desination suggests, the YF-93 received a production order of 118 F-93's, but the project was ultimately cancelled and only the two prototypes were delivered.

Dave Burgess Author
McDonnell's entry into the Penetration Fighter competition. The project was cancelled, but ultimately work done on the XF-88 resulted in the F-101 Voodoo

Brian Powell
Cool subject, and challenging build. Well done!

Dave Burgess Author
Thanks. Anigrand resin fills in a lot of collection blank spaces with their unusual choices of subjects, but they do require some work. For example, a LOT of sanding needs to be done to get even a reasonably smooth surface, and the molds lack crispness in many areas. However, they still turn out reasonably well. I was eagerly awaiting this project for a few years, along with the F-108 and XF-109. Now, they're all completed

Dave Burgess Author
Built the shuttle a couple of decades ago (before joining ScaleMates). Posting it now.

Łukasz Gliński
Nice, I love that livery 👍

Dave Burgess Author
Łukasz Gliński Thanks. I've got three more on the build list with the same livery: The CH-135 'Huey', the CH-146 'Griffin. and the CH-149 'Cormorant, all in Royal Canadian Air Force SAR colours.