See the entire set of the 1/72 scale RC Nimitz aircraft carrier here.

Related posts:

1. 1/72 Scale Aircraft Carrier Decks for My Model Aircraft
2. My 1/72 Scale P-51D Mustang by Italeri
3. My Wrecked Hasegawa 1/72 Scale F-14 Tomcat

Some big mistakes I did while building this kit:

1. Scribed the panel lines too deep, and without a proper ruler (freehand)
2. My first attempt painting with lacquer paints left a lot of webby residue – I didn’t thin the paint properly
3. I didn’t spray a layer of clear lacquer before using the ProModeller weathering wash
4. I didn’t seal exposed seam lines properly, especially near the cockpit and on the fuselage / fuel tanks

Well, since my Harrier II kit from Hasegawa contained two Harrier kits, I guess I’ll have a second chance at building this.

Related posts:

1. Hasegawa 1/72 Scale Harrier II Combo Kit
2. Masking and Painting the Harrier ll
3. My New Hasegawa 1/72 Scale F-14 Tomcat

About the same time I completed my P-51D Mustang, I also “completed” my F9F-8 Cougar. This was another “practise” model kit so I’m pretty ok with the results. Although the model is off balance and the nose always gets lifted up, it was a real learning experience doing this kit. It’s wasn’t the highest quality kit, but i had a good time.

Some of the mistakes I made with this model:

1. Bad color mixing meant that many parts of the model were of a different tone that the other parts
2. Again, the canopy is fogged up, probably due the wrong type of glue
3. The yellow markings are all decals, and I broke many of them trying to fit the contours of the plane
4. I forgot to put a ballast in the nose, so the balance is way off

What I like about Hasegawa models kits though is the decals. They are really easy to use and not so easy to break, as compared to decals by Tamiya or Italeri.

Related posts:

1. Preshading and Painting the F9F-8 Cougar
2. Hasegawa 1/72 Scale F9F-8 Cougar and F11F-1 Tiger Combo Kit
3. Hasegawa 1/72 Scale F-4 Phantom Combo Kit

This is one of my first modelling projects with aircraft – the P-51D Mustang by Italeri. Although it looks pretty ok in these pictures, I know better. I made a lot of mistakes with this model kit, including:

1. Using the wrong combination of acrylic / lacquer paints
2. I fogged up the cockpit / canopy clear parts
3. I had to repaint parts of the model many times
4. I broke many decals and had to hide it with excessive weathering

But what the heck, it was a cheap model kit and this was supposed to be “practise” anyways. It was a good opportunity to use my airbrush on such a small model. It was so small in fact that I dropped it more than once which building it. The antenna was glued and re-glued many times.

But like I said, it looks not too bad in this picture, right?

Related posts:

1. My 1/72 Scale P-51D Mustang by Italeri

This is my new Hasegawa F-15E Strike Eagle modelled after the Iraqi Freedom versions. I’ve always wanted to own a F-15 model aircraft and the one by Hasegawa looks great.

The model kit itself is of excellent quality, good details and over 190 parts so you know it’s pretty detailed. I can’t wait to start building the F-15E although I don’t think I’m going to build it exactly as it is. The kit contains way too many weapons / bombs which I think draws attention away from the plane itself. I prefer to make it simpler.

Related posts:

1. My New Hasegawa 1/72 Scale F-14 Tomcat
2. My Wrecked Hasegawa 1/72 Scale F-14 Tomcat
3. Hasegawa 1/72 Scale F-4 Phantom Combo Kit

I never bought a Tamiya aircraft kit before, so I was pretty excited to get my new F/A-18E Super Hornet. The Tamiya kit looks to be of much better quality than most of the Hasegawa kits I’ve bought so far. To start with the plastic feels much smoother and solid. The seam lines are also very clear, with lots of details too.

The only thing is that this particular kit has very, very few decals. Still it looks like building this Tamiya F-18 model kit is going to be relatively easy. I tried dry fitting the parts and they all come together superbly.

No related posts.

A couple of weeks back I got two plastic clamps from Excel, which cost about $2 I think. Initially I thought it would be great to use them to hold two pieces together when I glued them.

However, I found them to be quite flimsy and I think it’s way better to use a tape of rubber band to hold pieces together instead of trying to adjust the clamps to do the job. I will probably used them as a model “stand” instead to hold models while I airbrush them.

Related posts:

1. Excel “Lite Duty” Hobby Knife

Since I was doing some work on my F-11 Tiger I decided to take out the assembled Harrier II kit and work on that as well. The Harrier looks much more difficult to paint than the Tiger, as it has three different shades of grey. The darkest grey (on top) was the most difficult part in my opinion.

I had to use Tamiya masking tape and actually draw the outline of the camouflage. Then i took the masking tape off and cut it accordingly. I read somewhere that with my Aztek A470 airbrush I can actually use a fine tip nozzle and spray the camouflage outline without masking tape. However I can’t seem to get it fine enough so I thought I better go with the masking tape idea.

Not bad for a first timer eh? The lines are pretty sharp but not as sharp as the earlier paint job on the Tiger. I made sure to blend the three colors better. Then I also had to mask off the rest of the model as I painted the tail fin.

I’m quite happy with the final result. Not the best paint job perhaps but much better than anything I have done before, especially considering this is really my third time using the airbrush on a larger surface.

Related posts:

1. Masking and Airbrushing My F-11 Tiger
2. Preshading and Painting the F9F-8 Cougar
3. I Screwed Up My Harrier II Kit :)

I now have more model kits that I can handle, including the P-51D Mustang, Black Hawk, F-9 Cougar, F-4 Phantom, F-14 Tomcat, Harrier II and a few others on the way. So I thought I’d better get on with it and really learn how to use my Aztek A470 airbrush and Revell compressor.

The F-11F Tiger kit I have is nothing to shout about, and in fact I think it’s kind of outdated as the panel lines are not recesses as in most of the other kits I have. This is old school model kit technology and some of the panel lines disappeared due to sanding and painting.

I painted the underside first with Tamiya XF-2 Flat White, which was the easiest part. The difficult part (for me) was painting the top part grey as this involves masking some areas. Also, the lines are not perfectly straight so I needed to cut the masking tapes accordingly to create it exactly as the kit said it should be done.

It took quite a while actually as I had to learn how to use the Tamiya masking tape as well. It became a pretty messy job and one thing I noticed was that the line between the white and grey was too sharp. Well, this model kits sucks anyway so I’ll just see how it goes.

Related posts:

1. Masking and Painting the Harrier ll

I usually buy only Hasegawa model kits, but the good thing about buying from LuckyModel.com is that for every purchase you also earn points, which you can redeem before checkout. In this case, I redeemed an Italeri 1:72 scale P-51D Mustang. So it cost me about $3 to get this kit.

I have never tried an Italeri kit before, so really I didn’t know what to expect. When it arrived the box was slightly dent, probably due to the shipping process. The kits was fine, however I found there is no plastic wrapping as most kits do. Instead, the entire kit, decals and instruction booklet included, was just plainly put into the box.

The quality of the plastic and the details were not bad though. This kit is my experiment, I want to try out a few things with it and see how fast I can build it.

One thing I don’t understand is why the kit says “F-51D Mustang” when it should actually be “P-51D Mustang”?

Mustangs are widely considered the best piston-based fighter aircraft, and the only thing that knocked it down was the invention of the jet engine. However, the aircraft itself is still popular and available today as trainers or in competitive sports.

Related posts:

1. My Finished P-51D Mustang
2. 1/72 Scale Aircraft Carrier Decks for My Model Aircraft
3. Hasegawa 1/72 Scale F-4 Phantom Combo Kit