1 72 Macross VF-1X Atmospheric Booster Step by Step Modeling Guide by WM Cheng

1/72 Hasegawa VF-1 + Booster step-by-step... By W M Cheng November 18, 2004 –July 19 2007

(Extracted from the www.MacrossWorld.com thread) Hi all, With some free time on my hands, I've decided to start a new project - another VF-1 for the incredible resin Atmospheric Booster that John Moscato sculpted and Rob & Jesse has brought to our light of day! I thank them for their efforts - this is one of my favourite mechs of all time. With the launch rail on the way, I thought, I should finish something for the launch rail to support. I will breeze through the VF-1 construction (as its old news now - and won't bore most of you who followed along my initial VF-1 step-by-step that's trapped on the old boards now). I'll just highlight some of the key things to look out for on the kit for reference and hopefully answer some of the questions I've been getting on basic construction techniques and seam filling. OT - who is the moderator for this particular group? I've been trying to ask someone who has the power to pin - to please pin up my "Links to Step-by-step..." post - which I'll update whenever I start a new project. I spend half of my time answering PMs by just pointing to one of my older threads. PLEASE, what do I have to do to get something pinned around here?! (Ok, enough rant... onto the model)

I have chosen the VF-1S - I intend to do Hikaru after he took over Roy's VF-1S - which I believe is canon. However, I might modify the booster colours, as I don't think white would be all that interesting.

As most of you probably know, sprue cutters are pretty invaluable to model building, and are as important to me as my x-acto knife. I keep the flat end of the cutters towards the model side and try to cut with as much excess plastic as I can away from the part.

The extra plastic sprue ensures that you don't accidentally nip away at the actual piece itself. It’s always easier to trim away excess than to fill in a hole or depression.

I then use a really sharp x-acto knife to gently cut away the excess sprue - go over the piece a few times is better than cutting it in one hard press - it makes a cleaner cut. Place the edge right on the cutting mat so that it can't bend backwards or down and break off - you want a clean cut.

Now there's that unsightly gap that must be filled - since this area will show when you swing the wings back.

I cut some extra styrene sheets to fit into the area in front of the wing pivots.

Now I “guk” up the entire area with some Tamiya putty, there are some injector pin circular depressions and seams all around that must be made smooth as this area will be seen when the wings are swept forward. I'll let the putty dry for tomorrow and glue a few of the parts from the next steps together - and call it a night.

Yes, the first few items on the links list (the ones with an star beside them) are on the old boards currently unavailable (however, Shawn may be able to retrieve them at some point). Unfortunately, I have no back up of them - so they are lost to me too. Here's one side sanded down - yes, I might of over done it on the putty, but I rather over do it than find out that I missed some spot. When I am done, you can see there isn't a lot of putty left, just enough to fill the cracks and circular injection pin depression. You don't have to pay too much attention near the pivots as the gear mechanism hides most of this area.

My sanding tools: a tub of water (extremely important as this acts as a lubricant so the tiny plastic particles don't gum up your sandpaper), the red is 600grit and the grey is 200grit wet/dry sandpaper on a plastic sheet backing, use an old toothbrush to work away any trapped sanding debris from the fine engraved details, and a few rubber holders (they come in various profiles that help hold the sandpaper to get into tight places - like sanding blocks, I got these at a fine woodworking/hardware store). I start with the 200grit to get rid of most of the putty, and work up to the 600grit as a finishing paper before its ready for paint. The 200grit might be a bit rough for the Hasegawa plastic - its quite soft, and takes scratches easily - you might want to start higher at 400 in light orbital motion to avoid lines.

Here's a close up of the affected area. That piece in front of the pivot is pretty important and damn near impossible to get to after assembly. The biggest thing that ruins these types of swing wing aircraft models is looking into the wing cavity and seeing the hollow plastic.

This is probably the most sanding you have to do on this kit. This piece is fairly finished now, I will add some fences inside one I determine that my wing sweep angles are with the booster attached.

Getting back to my fuselage - you will notice that I use the Testors orange tube cement on major seams - and I apply liberally so that the "melted" plastic/glue mixture actually oozes through when you press the pieces together. This ensures that you get a good bond, and that if there are any little cracks in the seam - its filled in with this glue/plastic ooze. This is one of my ways to reduce the seams to fill afterwards. Often, this is enough for me to let dry, shave down with an x-acto knife the excess - sand, and apply a bead of Mr. Surfacer 500 to the seam, let dry and sand again - and with luck, that should be enough work to completely eliminate the seam. I will have to let this dry before I can do anything else.

I've started to paint the seat and pilot as I require the cockpit to be fully completed and sealed in before I start sanding away at the fuselage (otherwise all the wet sanding particles will get inside and ruin the detail of the cockpit. The interior and seat is painted Tamiya dark grey, while the seat cushion is dark green and the head rest is tan (from the Perfect Memory marker sketch) and the pilot I've chosen to leave the white the plastic as the finished color, and added the black under the helmet and shoulder pads (the decals do not cover these) and neutral grey for the backpack and front suit controls. Once dried, I will paint silver in the visor, followed by a clear coat of Tamiya transparent green - it gives the visor a bit of shine when it catches the light and more depth looking at it than just the black decal strip. The pilot still needs a dark oil wash, with some details such as the black stripes picked out with a fine tipped gundam marker. Oops, you can see I forgot to eliminate the seam running up the inside of the leg - I did eliminate the seam everywhere else with a x-actor knife, lightly scraping along the seam.

Hey LTSO, how thick is the pro-weld, I am already using the Tamiya liquid cement - which I think is great, but I want a thicker gel like glue that doesn't evaporate so quickly as liquid cement. This will be Hikaru's VF-1S (actually Roy's Skull Leader, but he died, so Hikaru took it over) at least that's what I believe is the proper timeframe when they take Max & Miria's baby up to Britai? Please correct me if I'm wrong. I think it will be Skull 001 with the yellow & black markings but with Hikaru's name in the pilots stencil on the canopy. I think I will do the boosters in shades of grey/blue kind of like the fast packs but lighter. This pictures shows the modifications required to make the Hasegawa kit with the gears up. Notice I used some sheet styrene to bind together the gear doors (the edges of the gear doors just aren't enough area for the glue to get a proper bond). Additionally, I added stripes to the inside of the gear wells to act as a shelf to support the gear doors when laid in. Luckily the gear doors, when glued together is just a hair larger than the opening, when the glue dries, I will sand down the edges to get a perfect fit.

The other side of the doors.

yes excessive putty can damage your kit, I haven't ran across this problem in years. I mostly ran across this a long time ago, when I tried to sculpt something out of the putty, but as long as you try to keep the layer of putty thin, and allow it to dry before adding another layer, it shouldn't be a problem. Sometimes, when you leave the putty in the tube a while, a whitish ooze separates from the grey putty - this is exactly like styrene cement - this is the putty's solvent, and this is the stuff that will attack your plastic if it’s not properly vented and allowed to dry. If it separates, try to mix it back into the grey putty. I've also found that if the putty is too dry, you can use liquid cement and that will "thin" out the putty as well - almost to the consistency of Mr. Surfacer. But treat it like solvent cement, don't apply too thick a coat, or it will eat away at the plastic before it can properly cure. I applied a liberal amount of putty to certain parts of the valk, but they are relatively thin layers, just spread over a larger area - and I haven't had any "melting" problems yet The Tamiya putty is much better, finer to sand for bigger gaps. Better yet, the Mr. Surfacer is great for smaller seams. Wherever you find Gunze/Mr. Color products, you can find Mr. Surfacer. There are two grades (that I know of) a Mr. Surfacer500 and a Mr. Surfacer1000 - the later being finer and more viscous for smaller seams and finer sanding.

This shot shows the corrugated "fencing" I put in (with styrene bought from a local train hobby store comes in sheets) so that you don't see into the fuselage. I originally fitted the Valkyrie against the booster packs to get a tracing of the swing wing's inner most swing extents to get the line to glue these styrene strips to. I was too cheap to use the PE parts that Hasegawa provides for this area.

Hmm, the new boards handles attachments differently now (is there a way to get it to show like the old way - instead of clicking on them and having them open in a new window?) or do you guys prefer this way? Anyways, the arms are show below, with the left before the sanding (a little overkill on the Tamiya putty - but there are some severe elevation differences sometimes especially with flat parts) and the right after sanding (you see most of it is sanded away, but there are a few sink holes that remain) (ohh, I like this multiple attachments)

Here's the gun pod - originally glued together last year (with excessive glue so that it oozes out to fill in minor seams) plus I "painted" Mr. Surfacer 1000 to make sure it’s all sealed in. I intend to use that Alclad metalizer here, and it’s very unforgiving - any blemishes and it shows!

Here's the same seam after sanding (notice that I took most of the Mr. Surfacer off – it’s almost used as a marker for me, especially on white plastic of how far I still have to sand down to the seam). I'm using the Hasegawa PE micro saws to "re-etch" the circular panel lines that have been lost due to the sanding

Here's the nosecone forward fuselage - the part I spend the most time sanding. The nose seam has to be perfect – it’s the thing most people (including me) see first on the model. I followed the same technique as most of my other pieces - put a little more than needed tube cement on the seams so that some of it oozes out (be careful to not put too much - otherwise the cement may continue to melt the styrene and cause sink depressions) and paint the seam with Mr. Surfacer 1000. I sand down until the entire seam disappears and that you can run your fingernails across the seam and it’s perfectly smooth. I then washed the assembly, decaled the pilot and cockpit control panels and gave both a bit of white dry-brushing to highlight the details (I did a dark wash last year that picked out the crevices). I'm not going to go overboard on this, since I intend to keep the canopy closed, and with the distortions in the canopy, not real details can be seen. Ok, I've started to cut corners on the cockpit... I rather spend the time on detailing the rest of the Boosters. And yes I know, it’s the wrong pilot - I'm a bit impatient, and I've really been wanting to see this Booster kit on my display shelf for over a year now - so I thought if I corrected the pilot for the TV-version, that itself could take a week or at least a few days - plus sculpting such small collars is not my strong point anyways. Plus I like the DYRL pilot suits so much better than the disco collars!

I thought I'd dig out the pieces required for the legs and do some pre-assembly to see how this thing all comes together to fit with the resin Boosters. It was so nice for the captain to provide us with the forward intakes so nicely casted already assembled without the seam. I intend to wash all the resin pieces soon (before I work with them) but I need to go out and by Comet first – it’s a good idea to scrub all resin pieces with a toothbrush and Comet & detergent to remove any mold release agents that always come with resin kits.

I just couldn't resist - I had to piece something together before I could leave the table for today! its looking good so far... I still intend to make the Valkyrie removable if I can help it - well see if that's possible, but so far its seem as though the Captain has made such a perfect fit that I might not need anything - friction my

just do the trick. We'll see when I get the legs together – there’s a large chunk of resin I have to remove to get the legs and feet into the Boosters. Plus there's a bit of clean up on the Boosters themselves (my cast had a few bubbles in the vents and forward part of the Boosters that needs to be filled and sanded first)

Closing the rear landing gear doors - there's no right way to do this, I've done it differently on every one of my models, but with each one, I use less and less re-enforcing. I always glue the doors together first with a styrene strip in behind for reinforcing, since the actual edge of the doors isn't enough meat for the glue to properly work with.

Then I glue the doors to the side of the leg that has a portion of the door round over - this side is more important than the other side because it’s pretty crucial to get that reveal seam as smooth as possible. I add some liquid cement to the backside to fill in the gaps.

The forward doors are a little bit trickier. I used to just shave back the bump behind the door to get a nice flat door that will lay in flat against the leg opening - but that often hampered the mounting of

the green/red leg lights later on. So I decided to cut away the leg portion of the mounts and allow the forward doors to seat in complete with the light housing. However I still have to cut the support leg off each of these forward doors.

Here's a shot of the two leg halves with the gear doors glued in. The doors are not correctly molded to the curvature of the legs themselves - but it’s nothing that a final sanding won't cure. The forward gear doors are left off until the two halves of the legs are glued together, they still needs to be shaved down a bit for a better fit. And I can't glue the two halves together until I spray and finish the feet/afterburning cans.

a lot of scrubbing and washing the pieces with comet I have two big bubbles right at the same spot as yours where the boosters contact the avionics hump on top of the fuselage too. Additionally, I also have quite a few bubbles ruining every one of the thin delicate members around the three vertical slots that I have to fill and build up again (argh! ) And yes, I too have a gap between the two mating surfaces around the edge. I don't think any of these is a big deal yet, I intend to try my hand at filling them with some crazy glue and baking soda. OK, airbrush starting up. Safety first! I've wanted to build a proper vented spray booth for years now, but in the meantime, I'd make do with a facemask. I've been spraying with my airbrush for years without any kind of protection, but January 16th of this year, my best friend Dan Lee died of lung cancer at the age of 35. He never smoked a day in his life and led a very healthy lifestyle. However, we've been building models since high school - and breathed all kinds of crap into our lungs - we were young and invincible! He was convinced that it must of been the chemicals we've been breathing in; especially, lacquers which is an organic compound and highly toxic. So in lieu of a proper spray booth for now, I implore you to use a proper facemask. I used to use the filter paper mask that goes over your nose and mouth, but it didn't form a tight seal around the face. After consulting with our scenic artist, he swears by this mask from 3M which I highly recommend. There are replaceable filter cartridges on either side for organic compounds filter 6000 series. So please, even if you have a spray booth, it might be worth considering this mask as well. Especially when we spray not only lacquers but the Alclad metallizer stuff with real metal particles in a lacquer suspension - double whammy!

Ok, enough preaching (modeling is already a dying hobby; we don't want our modelers to be dying themselves!) Here's a shot of the foot/nozzles, make sure to carefully sand the sprue attachment points with a fine 600 grit paper, these Alclad metalizers are very unforgiving and any scratches and blemishes telegraph through

The Alcad Steel works wonders on the gun pod! I've also got a different shade of Alcad called Jet Exhaust - it looks like burnt iron. Which I'll try later on when this coat of steel dries - I'll use it to shade the tips of the nozzles.

Here I hand brushed the rear exposed portions of the leg in flat black (the gloss is because I took the picture before the paint dried) When assembled it will help with the illusion of depth when looking from behind and seeing around the leg portion of the nozzle. I am spending time here since I plan of being able to separate the Valkyrie from the booster - I suppose you can skip some of these steps if the Valkyrie never leaves the booster since you won't be able to look up the tailpipe if it has got its leg stuck in the booster.

Thanks for tuning in... I take my photos with an old Nikon 990 digital, on macro mode with as small of an aperture (high F-number) as lighting permits. I try to get in tight, and this digital allows me to get within 2cm of the subject. I did lots and lots of scrubbing, mostly with Comet and a toothbrush, then some detergent to get it all off during rinsing. It’s very important to always scrub all resin kits, there are always release agents to help the resin "pop" off the molds that will resist paints or worst, interact with the paint coat years afterwards.

Here I tried the "Exhaust" colour from Alclad - I like it a lot, usually I do it with a very thin coat of flat black, but I have to clear coat seal that in, since the light dusting of black is easily scratched or pulled off with tape. But this Alclad colour adheres to the undercoat of steel much better, plus it’s slightly brown - bronze metallic in itself - much more convincing as burnt metal! I tried to spray where I think which parts look best burnt, mostly around the tips and that joint – be careful not to overdo it, it’s nice to see the differences in the metal finishes. Don't worry about the injector pins inside the cans - you'll never see them. The good thing about building a few of these Valkyries is that you learn where to cut corners

I aged the gun pod the same way (yes I choose steel instead of the grey because I thought it was cooler). This is before using a black oil wash to pick out the panel lines and vents.

The afterburners now get a thinned down flat black wash to pick out the raised details. (You'll hardly see this unless you are looking right into the tail cone with a strong light)

Best way to trim off the excess resin sprue is with an exacto razor saw

Now you glue the resin intakes to the thigh part. I used crazy glue for this bond; regular styrene cement wouldn't work due to the dissimilar materials being bonded. Fortunately, the Captn' provided us with the "Super" parts needed to bend the legs/engines at the knees without having to purchase a Super Valkyrie to make with this Booster. He even assembled them for us, unfortunately, he missed a few injection pins holes on the inside of the intakes, which is a real pain to sand out after the intakes have already been assembled (so being the lazy sod I am, I left them)

Before gluing the leg halves together, I thought I'd be smart and mask the black portions and the feet/nozzles off first. It is possible to mask all this after you glue it together (which is what I've been doing up till now) but I think this make a bit more sense.

Make sure when you glue the legs together you don't miss this crucial piece (since its inclusion is only on the Super Valkyrie Hasegawa instructions) - it was nice that the Captn' included a resin substitute for us. This allows the thighs to attach the legs at the proper bend angle at the knees. It would help that one has built a super Valkyrie before embarking on this kit (even though we are just using a regular Valkyrie fighter kit to make this).

The legs are now together, again I used tube cement for strength and I used enough so that it oozed out the seams so I can sand them down later. I also used the tape to keep the pieces together and the gear doors properly aligned. Now remember to glue in the forward gear doors (the piece with the blue/red light) it required a bit of additional sanding around the edges to fit into the leg properly.

A close up shows the before and after of the sanding. You'll notice that there isn't much Mr. Surfacer left after sanding. It serves as a kind of marker to know how far I've sanded down to. I think I might paint a coat of Mr. Surfacer 1000 over the seams again to make sure - I hate to find out that I didn't sand long enough when I start painting - plus since this will be white plane, I intend to skip the priming stage on the Hasegawa kit (however I will prime the resin boosters). Anyone with any tips on filling resin part gaps with crazy glue and baking soda - I've been told that's the easiest way to go for minor bubbles and such, but I've never actually done it before. Any help or suggestions or links would be appreciated - do I add the baking soda to the crazy glue on the part, or pack the part with baking soda then add the crazy glue or do I mix up the mixture on a card somewhere to apply with a toothpick?? I'll experiment on the boosters and show pictures when I get to that stage - which is next...

I've sanded smooth the gear doors, but there are still panel seams between the doors and fuselage, I think it’s more important to make it look smooth and consistent first, then re-etch the panel lines if necessary, or even draw them in with a thin pencil to be sealed by a clear coat later. Thanks for the tip on the Mr. Base White, I'll look for it when I get to a hobby store next. I'll still try the baking soda and crazy glue thing, I think the baking soda makes the crazy glue less hard - just wanted to learn a new thing or two. If it doesn't work, I'll use my old Tamiya putty, and I'll still use Mr. Surfacer for the small bubble stuff. But when I post the pictures, you'll see my booster requires a little more re-construction than just seam filling. Starting on the actual resin booster kit itself - now I'm going over it with a fine tooth comb to visually inspect it for flaws and work to be done (instead of the blinded gee Wow! filled with glee that someone actually finally tackled one of my favourite subject mechs) and there are indeed some work to do (even though the Captn' did a fantastic job sculpting this baby, the casting leaves quite a bit of cleanup work. My particular cast has bubbles which break every intermediary structure within the 3-slot vents (which makes them very weak). Secondly, there was a bubble on both tips of the forward booster where it mates to the top of the Valkyrie, which needs to be filled, shaped and re-contoured to match. Aside from various seam lines, the forward intake is going to be a bit of a surgical clean-up too, since the yellow resin is quite hard and brittle compared to the white stuff. Maybe I've been away from resin kits and have been spoiled by beautiful Platz white resin or Hasegawa styrene for too long, but all this work is a bit surprising.

I would need to drill out these leg/engine ports to allow the legs feet tips of the Valkyrie to slip in.

OK, that baking soda mixed with crazy glue idea to fill in certain areas was a complete bust! - Failure. I don't get it, I tried mixing a bit of baking soda with the crazy glue in a plastic bowl, and the baking

soda caused the crazy glue to instantly solidify - all I got was clumpy lumpy bits of dried crazy glue. I tried all different consistencies, but I couldn't make it work in the end. However, the crazy glue (as mentioned by Valkyrie before) is really hard - which in this case works to my advantage - I need to majorly reinforce those intermediary struts in the 3-slot vents before I can properly file them down to proper shape - otherwise they'd just snap while I was sanding them. So I tried to fill them with crazy glue, but the bubbles where actually too big to just fill in with crazy glue only, so I decided to add some baking soda to the holes, tried to pre-pack them with the soda, then I added the crazy glue to the outside. This seemed to work, plus the struts were strong now (hopefully able to withstand the sanding and shaping by the files)

In these photos you can see the clear (milky clear) bits are filled with the crazy glue / baking soda mixture. I added a lot more excess than I needed so I could file away the extra crazy glue. I don't believe I could of used my traditional ways of filling here (although I haven't used epoxy putty yet) since these flaws are too large for Mr. Surfacer, and the resin in these tight cavities would not provide enough tooth for the regular Tamiya putty to adhere too. The regular Tamiya putty actually includes solvents in the mixture to slight melt the surrounding plastic to create a better bond too, the resin won't react this way, so the regular putty could just pop off and would not provide any strength for the delicate intermediary struts. As you can see the openings themselves are quite rough, I'd need to use my flat files for the sides and my round file for the tops and bottoms later on. I will allow these crazy glue fills to cure now

Ok, on to the tips, the reconstruction was actually too large to just pack with baking soda, I just did it in layers, applying crazy glue, then dipping it into baking soda, then applying crazy glue on top of that - and built it up in 4-5 layers till I filled it beyond the shape I want to file down to. The good thing about using crazy glue is that it dries almost instantly allow me to work on it right

away - instead of letting the putty dry. You can see in this photo that the main central intake may take a bit of work trying to get those two resin sprue connections out of this crevice situation

I'll leave the booster to cure for a little bit, the crazy glue is actually warm to the touch while curing, that's when I know I've used a lot to fill all the flaws. On to the engine bells! Man, I don't know what kind of resin these are made of, but its pretty weird, some bits are quite soft and flexible, while others are a real *&$%$@#! to sand. These shots show some of the typical seams (2 each per bell) that I need to get rid off. Man, after so much sanding, I barely made a dent!! What are these things made of?! I've never dealt with this material before. The entire engine bell deforms under the pressure of my hands holding it to sand, but the seam refuses to go away! I started to move down the grit ladder from 400-200-100 now...

Its weird that some bits are so soft, while others so hard, like the 4 little engine fins - on one bell they are like gummy bears, on another bell, they were so hard and brittle that one broke off before I started even sanding it!! hmmm... Well, I finally remembered that I bought a dremel contour sander a while ago thinking that it would ease my sanding chores (I hate sanding the most out of any process in model making!) but I never used it since because even on the lowest setting, it ate through my styrene like butter. But with this crazy resin, it just might work. So I used the 100 grit sanding film and went to town on these bells. After quite a bit of work, it’s started to smooth out the seam - only after it wore away at my sanding film to the bare plastic!!

Ok, that's another thing to add to my next hobby store shopping list; Tamiya polyester putty (I assume its epoxy putty), Mr. Base White, and slow slow-cure cure gel crazy glue... At least now I think I'm on the right track with the sanding (I thought I wasted good money on this sander up till now...) so I switched to some industrial strength 50 grit diamond sandpaper instead of the sanding film - and finally it's working better on some of these bell seams. At least now I'm getting rid of the seams instead of my sandpaper tooth! I think I need to work my way back up the grit ladder to 200 to smooth out the rough sandpaper marks, and probably coat it with some Mr. Surfacer before the primer since I want to use the Alclad metalizer on the engin engine e bells and they need to be absolutely flawless for the metal finish. You can see that the bell deformed from just me holding it with my fingers and thumb.

Thanks Sar - sure Talc powder, yeah I have that lying around at home all the time... NOT. I'll look, but I'm not too keen on trying it again... Maybe the polyester putty though. However the areas I used the crazy glue are strong. I've tried to shape the nose of the booster, and it seemed to work out pretty well - I used a combination of file and sand paper, just be careful of the surrounding resin. The crazy glue is hard, however, this resin is pretty hard too, and there doesn't seem as much of a hardness difference as I would of suspected. Back to sanding...

Ok, another 3 hrs of sanding (Man! a whole day of sanding mostly to get the engine bells in shape!) and working my way up the grit papers. Some of the rough scratches are out. One of the bells are quite soft, you can see it deform under my finger pressure just holding it for sanding. I hope this doesn't cause problems later on when I'm painting with flaking paint. As long as I'm gentle, I should be able to bend it back into shape before I start priming.

I need to re-scribe all that great detail the captn' originally put in - that was lost due to the sanding. Some of the seams were so deep that when you sanded them smooth, the bell no longer had a round shape - so I had to feather the sanding on either side of the seam (which was a lot more difficult than it sounded with this weird grey elasto-resin). I used a pin-vise to re-drill some of the larger bolt holes. The hasegawa P.E. razor saw to re-etch the circumferential lines, and a sharp tweezer point to re-press in the tiny rivet details.

There was a weird crazing of the surface after I sanded it, it was like there were lots of tiny cracks you can see it as white lines in the above photos. I've never seen anything like it, and was sure if they were indents or raised areas. Just to be doubly sure, I hand painted two coats of Mr. Surfacer 1000 over the all the sanded areas. Additionally, you'll notice that all the little fins at the end of the engine bells are also painted too because they all have some divots and holes in the middle of them as well Not exactly smooth sailing, but after a day’s work, it’s done! I hope to sand down smooth the painted Mr. Surfacer (hoping that it should fill in any sanding or hairline cracks which I have missed)

and they should be ready for a full coat of primer. You can see the bell on the right is by far darker than the rest - this is the soft one. In fact each bell seems to be of different hardness (varying by its grey colour, the lightest on the left is the hardest, with the darkest on the right being the softest) Not as far as I hoped to get today - the engine bells proved that there was still a lot more clean-up than originally thought. That’s it for tonight. I hope to finish up and prime the bells tomorrow and start clean-up on the actual booster parts themselves, with the 3-slots detail taking priority. I think I might cover them in a metal mesh, and build some kind of engine detail that can be seen though them.

With that great news. I concentrated on the three remaining engine bells, sanding the Mr. Surfacer 1000 smooth - careful to feather it back into the rest of the bells and continue the Captn' great surface details across the seams which have been coated.

I started filing down the 3-slot openings. Naturally I started with the one in the best condition first - it turned out pretty well. I used a flat edged file for the straight bits and a cylindrical file for the ends of the lozenge shaped openings. The only thing now is that the resin is a bit un-even and thick around the openings, I might carefully dremel out some resin behind the openings to thin them up a bit since I'm planning on putting "engine-gak" back there. You can see in the left photo in the background one of the 3-slot openings mess before I filed them out.

Here's some before and during shots of finishing out the 3-slot vents. Luckily since I wasn't going to use the opaque vents that the Captn' thoughtfully provided - I didn't have to worry too much about making the vent slots larger through the sanding process. In fact, I wouldn't mind making them a bit larger to show off the gak inside. They are a bit of a mess to start off with, but with sanding (argh!) they started to shape up. I also used a dremel and routed out the inside of the vents to make them thinner and made the thickness more consistent (be very careful if you intend to use a dremel like I did, it will sand away at the resin like butter, a very light touch is needed here, or you'll eat through all the vent struts)

I found these metal meshes lying around (I must of picked them up a few years ago at a hobby store - I think I was going to drill out the vents on the super-fast packs gun rear section and replace them with these). You can find them at most local hobby stores - these are for model cars engine parts. I thought I might back the vents with this mesh.

Now for the engine gak... I had a brain-wave! Why not use the un-used rear landing gear bays - its already got molded details with wiring. We have two from this kit which I made the Valkyrie with the landing gears up, and I'm sure I can dig out another two from another Valk that I've made with the landing gears up too. That’s 4 bulkheads, but I want to lay them horizontally - so I might make up the rest with some extra parts like missiles glued side by side and extra landing gear struts.

I found some extra missiles lying around from an old 1/100 AMAI kit - but they could really be anything (preferably round and cylindrical) and started gluing them up. I was going to go to town detailing these areas up, but I noticed that the mesh isn't all that transparent (which is good) so with some proper painting, maybe this will be all I need. I am going to make one up to see how it works before I start on the rest of the 3 bulkheads. Here's a shot with the bulkhead taped behind the 3-slots. Yeah Brett, this proved to be a lot more clean-up work than I expected - I am much farther behind than I thought I would be by now.

I also noticed that if I were to put the bulkhead right up against the mesh - I don't see a whole lot, but if I set it back away from the mesh, I start seeing more of it - so I added some bulkhead ends to stand it off from the booster shell so it sits a 1-2mm away from the mesh. The second shot shows some preliminary painting. I painted the entire thing flat black as my basecoat - as well as painting the interior around the 3-slots flat black. Then I mostly dried brushed some metallic grey, medium grey and a spot of white to bring out the highlights. Then I added two spots of

yellow just for interest. I'm not sure how far to take it, I still want it to look dark and grungy, but I need to exaggerate the dry brushing so that something will show through the mesh.

It’s pretty dark in there - but you see it better in person, it’s really hard to photograph what you see. I've had to artificially over expose the shots to get some of the detail to show up - but they show up

much more strongly in person (too strongly for my taste - but this is before I put the mesh in front of it). I didn't dry-fit the mesh yet since the bulkhead engine details are still wet - I'll let it dry first. I don't want to get any paint on the real metal mesh - I think the real metal finish of the mesh makes the model look more realistic. Now I have to start worrying about whether to paint the booster first, and install the engine gak and mesh after all the painting is done or carefully mask off the 3-slot vents? I think I'll like the edges of the 3-slots to be black and only have the exterior grey colour on the outer most surface - not sure yet which is the best way to do it.

I couldn't find the extra rear leg landing gear bulkheads to my other "in-flight" Valkyrie, (ideally you'd need four of these pieces - 2 for the outside and 2 for the inside vents) so I thought I'd keep the good ones for the outside, and fabricate some simpler bulkheads for the inside vent slots. Since you don't catch much other than some silver highlights through the metal mesh, I took the lazy way out and just stuck some stuff onto a styrene sheet. Which I'll paint black, and silver brush some highlights onto.

Ok, back at work on the boosters... Try as I may, I couldn't get the forward intake between the boosters to look smooth; it’s a really tough area to sand down, especially the back surface.

So I thought I might find something to hide this area. I didn't use that trapezoidal vent for the rear tail section of the Valkyrie, so I thought I'd put it in this slot to cover up the mess. It kind of fits, since its like the rest of the super Valks, when the tail section flips up and around to rest on top of the Valks chest piece. I had to sand down a bit of the resin booster slot and the styrene plastic part to fit. I also fitted some extra corrugated styrene strips that I cut to fit into the two sides and the centre of the trapezoidal vent (too lazy to sand out the two injector pin marks inside this vent, I also glued a strip of the corrugated styrene inside it as well)

I thought I'd add a little extra detail to this top portion - it looked a little bare...

I just cut some thin styrene sheets into these shapes and glued them down. I then took my pin vise and drilled some small holes in it for detail.

I wanted to bulk up the rear valley between the two top boosters a little - I thought it might look better a little beefier when we got closer to those massive engine bells. For those of you who have the VE-1 Elintseeker Hasegawa kits - you're in for a treat of spare parts after you've finished the kit. These arm armour parts are extras from that kit - since it has a modified piece for that drop down sensor/antenna array. I thought that these pieces were nicely molded, and had a slightly sloped profile that might fit nicely to the boosters with minimal alterations. I wanted as much surface detail on these boosters to tie them together with the Hasegawa fast packs, since I wanted them to look part of the same language. I intend to decal them and paint them like the fast packs later on. It seems more consistent in the Macross universe than the white boosters shown in the episode

Oh, gawd! What have I done!! I really opened a whole can of worms now... Under the category; "WTF was I thinking..." I decided to drill out the holes for the Valk's feet on the lower portion of the resin boosters I guess I wasn't paying attention to the instructions of tthe he resin booster kit, but I built the entire feet assembly, all three pieces and painted them. I was thinking that I wanted to have the Valk pretty intact so I may be able to detach them later on... hmm I'm now not so sure it was such a great idea. According ng to the instructions, you only really need the "shin" of the lower portion of the feet, and I assume everything else is hidden - then you don't need to hollow out the feet holes. Well, I tried to hollow out the feet holes, I didn't realize that there is actually a fair amountt of resin that has settled into this area, and I am trying ing to root out 2-3" 3" thick of resin! I started by drilling smaller pilot holes with a dremel at the four corners. Then I took a larger drill bit and drilled out the centre. Did I say it’s

a lot of resin...

to dig out?! I was almost choking with all the dust in the air - then I remembered

my mask... hmm, I'm sure fine resin particles isn't great for the lungs either I felt like a dentist, switching to more of a grinding stone bit to try and hollow out the hole - I slipped a few times, so I need to re-build out the opening. But this was much more work than I thought it was going to be (I'd do it as per instructions and leave the resin in and just modify the feet construction to not include the last two pieces next time...) but I'm in for the job now, since I've damaged the opening and I've started and opened this can of worms.

I found it easier later on to also work from the inside hollowing out material - just be careful you don't do too far and create a hole into the body of the lower boosters. The really long and tedious process of finishing the holes with a flat file is what I have to look forward too tonight. The resin is still pretty tough, and my files are pretty fine - so it may take a while, but hopefully when I'm done, the Valkyrie will be removable.

I added some styrene to reinforce this area so that I can re-sculpt some of the opening profile that I lost when my dremel slipped I was going to file it down smooth, but I think I'll leave it raised like an attached panel for some interest, maybe add a few rivet details to the ends. Another shot below shows a test fit with the Valkyrie legs.

Just couldn't resist fitting everything together to zoom it around the room for a bit!

There's this gap here that’s been bothering me, it’s supposed to be there, but it just seems a bit big with nothing inside. I'm not sure yet, but either I'd fill it with machinery gak or close it up, or maybe I'll just leave it alone. I want to get to the painting stage first... When the Valk is removable, I think I can always come back to address this portion later on. Plus with the entire thing finished it might not be so bad. You can see the clear tip at the end of the resin piece where it meets the Valkyrie - I started hunting for all these little broken bits or bits with bubbles in it and started filling them in to sand them prepping the boosters for priming today.

I then went over the boosters with Mr. Surfacer 1000 looking for any small imperfections, bubbles or details I didn't want. To the Captn's credit, he included some fine details on the boosters that will match nicely to the Hasegawa kit, but there were two details that I am choosing to omit, the "refueling hatches" on one underside of the booster and some diagonal ladder designs which did not cast well. I also decided to make something of that main lateral line separating the two halves, instead of trying to sand it smooth to mate both the top and bottom halves, I thought I give these edges a bit of a chamfer (sanded the edges at a 45 degree in) so when they mate, it will form a V-groove - hiding the slight mismatch of the top and bottom curvatures and creating an additional detail line laterally across (which will form the top part of the black line on the line art).

Thanks to the Captn' so much - I just received his replacement for my "squishy" engine bell!! Yay! Boy, this one is fantastic, there's only one seam!! and it’s really minor, the resin is easy to sand, and all of the little four fins are intact and flawless!! Wow, as you can see, it only took a little sanding, and it’s done! I'd painted a stripe of Mr. Surfacer 1000 to be sanded away just to be sure. I will prime this along with the boosters this afternoon.

I'm gluing in the fine metal mesh from the inside, be very careful that the crazy glue you use is fairly thick, otherwise, the thin stuff tends to run into the fine mesh and clogs up the holes. Once the mesh is in, I also crazy glued the completed bulkheads with the engine detail - I must admit, I went a little overboard here with the details, you see the details (more so in person than these photos show) but not as much as the effort I put into them ) Oh, well - maybe a more transparent mesh, but then the scale might be too big, if the openings are larger. I also painted the interior of the bottom portion of the booster, just so that when you look into the feet holes, it appears black and dark, and just in case you see through the mesh, I don't want any resin peeking through.

I crazy glued the halves together. You need to file down a bit of the mating surfaces to get a nice flush fit. The main lateral seam worked out well as a detail line. I just couldn't resist piecing it all together.

I also gave the overall booster a bit of final sanding. I drew in pencil the size of the Macross Kite (from a 1/48 decal set that Anasazi made for the Yamato Fast packs - which I think is pretty perfect in terms of size) which came out to 15/16" (0.9375") or 23.812mm to get an approx. idea

I drew this circle so I can place putty to eliminate the main lateral seam at where the Macross Kite symbol will be. I put tape at the two ends, and filled it with Tamiya putty, we'll see if this holds onto the resin - if not, I'll resort back to crazy glue again.

I then cut little strips of Tamiya masking tape and filled in the meshed portions. I will paint liquid masking fluid around the tape to get a nice seal between the mesh and the resin struts. The masking tape just allows the masking fluid to be removed easily afterwards and prevents the fluid from "soaking" through the mesh to the other side too much. Since I also want the black sides to the resin struts, I thought this was the only way to preserve it while I painted the rest of the booster.

Ok, I think I need some help here with the liquid mask... This booster just doesn't want to be primed... I let the liquid mask dry overnight so that I could get a fresh start to the priming today, but I found the liquid mask to have all dried, cracked and peeled. I don't get it. I usually use Microscale MicroMask liquid masking, but my bottle is like 8yrs old, and the medium has turned to jelly-like consistency - I couldn't get it to thin with water, it just broke up into little chunks, so went out and bought Mr. Hobby Mr. Masking SOL (thinking if it’s from Japan, it must be better! ) - This was last year, and I've haven't used this new stuff since (but how different can it be?). Well, it’s also a thick goopy mess, so I thinned it down with water (is that right?) to a paintable consistency (at least the Mr. Masking seems to thin down - but a lot of bubbles formed). Should I have not thinned it down with water? But it was too thick to apply. What should I use to thin

down masking liquid? What masking liquid do you guys use or recommend? Have you seen this happen to liquid mask before?

I gooped some into the rear engine ports since I want the crazy glue to actually adhere to the resin instead of paint on the resin after I've painted the booster - I'm a little wary of this small connection point since the engine bells are a little on the heavy si side. de. I may have to pin it later on, but I hope not, since I might want to play with the placement of the engine bells, maybe splay them out a bit more. I just mixed up another batch of the Mr. Masking SOL and gooped it onto the pre pre-existing existing cracking surface, e, hoping that this batch would tie all the previous batch together so they pull out in one lozenge shaped chunk after painting. Wish me luck. I'll have to sand those puttied areas down when the masking liquid dries, I just don't want to get a bunch of san sanding/putty ding/putty dust into the wet liquid. Cross your fingers and wish me luck...

A final test fitting before priming... Hmm, the liquid mask cracked again, but I thought, there was so much in there, that the chance of the several layers of crack being on top of each other allowing the paint down through to the mesh to be highly improbable. I want to chance it and prime the sucker I’m starting to get excited about the upcoming steps...

I hope I can get all the liquid mask out of there – it’s s mostly sitting on those thin strips I cut out of Tamiya masking tape anyways. You can see the crackling more with the primer on it. I'm thinking I will go out to get more liquid mask tomorrow and re-apply apply over this just to be sure. In the meantime, are there any recommendations of types of liquid mask? Is there a way to thin Microscale Mask?

It's been so long since I airbrushed (over a year year!

) And I made a real stupid mistake - I airbrushed

at too high a pressure. Sometimes you get a really rough su surface with flat paints or primer – it’s s because the pressure is too high, and the particles are drying before they hit the surface, and starts to build up a finish like sandpaper or fine hairs. It takes a bit of practice getting back into the flow of airbrushing, airbr and pressure is a finesse thing. I forgot that the primer required a much lower spray pressure. I am using the pre-mixed AlcladII primer - I love this stuff. But it uses 12 12-15psi, 15psi, and I left my compressor on 2020 25psi for Tamiya acrylics. Oh, well, nasty lesson - but it’s s not too bad, it forces me to perform a step I usually am too lazy to do anyways. You should polish the primer with 800grit sandpaper anyways regardless of finish; it creates a much smoother base for the paint. Now I have to sand do down wn the roughness on the areas where I sprayed the primer at too high of a pressure - luckily and sands down easily, and creates a really nice surface without having to re re-prime it.

I use Windex to clean my brushes and rinse out my airbrush – it’s a lot cheaper than the thinner. I wouldn't have been able to soak the mesh since I painted the engine details behind the mesh in Tamiya paints - I did try painting the mask with Windex, but it didn't do much good - like you said, you have to soak it. The rest of the priming went really well, and the sanding/polishing worked well to save the rough areas. Luckily a quarter of each of the engine bells is mostly hidden (portion which faces each other towards the center) so I can mark off which side of the bells are not perfect and face those inwards. I'm going to let it sit until I can get some masking fluid tomorrow. I have to work on getting rid of the seam on the canopy next, and start priming and painting the Valkyrie legs next.

I was going to weather and detail both the booster and Valkyrie at the same time using the same materials - so I have to get my Valkyrie now up to the same primed state as the boosters. I realized I hadn't sealed the cockpit in yet, so I have to work on getting rid of the seam on the canopy. As most of you know by now, there is a seam running up the middle on the outside (thank god!) of the canopy which was a process of a 3 part mold which allows the canopy profile to bubble out realistically like modern fighters. I'll briefly outline the steps involved... Always be gentle here, the clear plastic is much more brittle than the styrene and won't stand up to

too much pressure (I always try to hold it from behind with my fingers supporting the underside of the bubbled canopy). It’s always better to understand (you can keep going if need be) than to sand too deeply and scratch the canopy too much (just more finishing/polishing work later on). 1. Clear canopy with seam 2. Lightly sand with 800 grit (careful to just sand the seam portion) 3. It looks horrible now... but it has to get the worst before it gets better - now move up to 1200 grit and sand a little bit more (in a larger area) 4. Finally, I move up to 2000 grit and sand in an even larger area (careful to always overlap the sanding areas with a finer grit film) It should look uniformly foggy at this point with no visible swirls or lines. I usually double check the work by dipping it into water from the underside, the part where the water touches should appear absolutely clear (if not, even future won't hide the scratches).

5. Some people skip the next step and jump right to coating it with future floor polish at this point but I add another step here. I use Tamiya rubbing compound (kind of like toothpaste) and polish out the fogginess in the canopy. I usually use a piece of cloth (preferably lint-free) or paper towel and

polish the entire canopy. I do this even on canopies that have no seam (or require no work), it gives a shinier more polycarbonate like appearance and makes the canopy appear "brighter" 6. Lastly, I dip the entire thing into future floor polish. Make sure that you are in a relatively clean and lint-free room (which is near impossible for my basement work area - but I do this before I sand or airbrush for the day). Make sure there are no air bubbles trapped - keep dipping it back in if there are imperfections on the surface (worst case - you can strip it with windex and try again - I think its the ammonia that strips it off). I usually hang it to dry at an angle so that the excess Future builds up in one corner and I would occasionally dab that corner with a paper towel to soak up the excess. You don't want a bubble of excess future to gather at the corners, they turn milky over time. I usually put my work lights on it to help speed up the future curing. And no sanding or airbrushing while the canopy is drying (in fact I leave the room all together to stop debris from being kicked up into the air)

Future is not a necessity... it just help helps s out, but if you don't use future, then the only way to eliminate the fogginess ness is by using a rubbing/polishing compound like Tamiya. I merely said it was like tooth polish, but I don't mean to use tooth polish instead Like Stamen said, I'd hunt down the Tamiya stuff, its purposefully for plastic models and worst case, order it online. David is absolutely right; when you get as good as he is... you can skip a few steps and use fewer levels of grit sandpaper to do the job. However, it’s s been over a year since I built my last model (it (it’s s kind of like starting over again...) I need a few models to get back into the groove of things before I feel confident enough to start skipping steps. Sanding clear parts is a feel thing, a and thus is hard to explain - but once you get the feel for it, it’s s no different than any other opaque part (I just wanted to try to alleviate any fears or the stigma behind scratching and repairing clear canopy parts) All of the tips given is good advice... ... but just remember that different things work for different people. Basically the long of short of it - get the canopy to a foggy state (no visible lines or scratches), then to eliminate the fog do one of the following; 1. Buff with a rubbing/polishing compound and rag until clear (i.e.;; Tamiya compound) 2. Dunk in Future Floor Finish (which turns the fogg fogginess clear) Or be extra cautious like me - do both I don't think there's a danger of over over-sanding sanding "through" the canopy (unless you're using 50 grit gr paper or a file! ) but the danger is pressing too hard and splitting or cracking the brittle canopy. Remember the clear parts are much more brittle than the styrene pieces. And I don't know of any repair that will seal in a crack all the way through a clear piece. the liquid acrylic (Future) seeps into all the microscopically fine scratches (which refract the light giving the foggy appearance) and in effect, flattens the surface of the canopy - filling in all the tiny dents and imperfections. That's why hy I dunk it in water to see if it goes clear, since the water does the same thing (it just doesn't stay) Now, remember to let it dry overnight - at least 12 hours before you touch the canopy, or you'll get impressions of your fingerprints on the future coat. Always remember that there is a coating over your canopy part now, and if you're not careful, you can scratch it off or etch it away. Future is susceptible to ammonia based products such as blue Windex or Humbro masking fluid - keep these away from the newly Future’d canopy - and handle it gently. I prefer to glue it to the plane (which seals in the inside surface) right away as soon as its dry. And I paint a coat of liquid masking fluid to the outside to seal/protect the outer surface too. This is the canopy glue I use (it (it’s s very much like white glue) it dries completely clear, and its somewhat flexible when dried which is great when the canopy doesn't perfectly match the fuselage. I've also used white glue - which works very well.

Basically, I'm prepping for a overall coat of white primer - to make sure all my seams are sanded and sealed properly. At this point, I sealed in the canopy and protected it with some liquid mask (which I can peel off at the end of the airbrushing. I've also glued on all the delicate little antennas and the vertical stabilizer fins to the legs. You want to glue all these bits now since I want the solvent-type cement to actually have styrene to styrene contact (for some strength). You don't want to glue to paint or solvent, since the connection will only be as strong as the paint is to the styrene. I want to get everything white first, then see if there is any need for repairs. If the white primer is good (I intend to use a thinned down Mr. Surfacer 1000) then I might be able to get a coat or two of Tamiya white in there. Leave those hip bulges out for now, since I have to paint the accordion detail behind it in metalizer steel first. I hope to get to a coat of Alcad metalizer steel for the hip bend accordion thingy, the intake shields, the arm doors and the engine bells and back end of the boosters by the end of the day today.

So I went out and got this Mr. Base White 1000 primer. I'm so glad they finally made one in white instead of the grey - it makes painting white planes easier (since the grey requires so many coats to completely cover it). However, maybe I thinned it down too much (50:50) it doesn't cover as well as I hoped, it gives a great smooth primed surface to paint on - but you need many coats to completely cover any nonwhite marks.

I thought I'd also get the head lasers ready for painting at this stage now too. It looks a lot cooler if you drill out the ends of the lasers. I started with a fine/small bit for the pin-vise - the trickiest part is trying to center the bit in the end of the antennas/lasers. Start very gently all you want to do is getting a dent in the middle of the lasers. Then, once you're satisfied that you are reasonably centered, I then move up to a larger sized bit. You don't need to drill too deep - just 1-2mm depression is enough to give the impression that it’s a hole all the way through. Here's a shot of the finished product before the metalizer paint.

I'd thought it might be good to mask some areas off - from the primer so that when we glue these bits and pieces on, we have styrene to styrene contact - instead of gluing to the paint.

Well... yours truly was either too eager to get the sanding over with or I've just been out of the loop too long - but after the primer, it revealed quite a few seams that I should of paid more attention too. Luckily it is primer and not paint - so it’s sand able. I started by painting a strip of the Mr. Base White 1000 over the seams that I want to re-sand - it will act as a Mr. Surfacer to seal and build up the seam for me to sand down Argh... I hate this (but nothing is worst than a stupid seam...)

While I'm letting that dry - I thought I'd go ahead and start painting some of the pieces with the AlcadII Metalizer Steel as a base coat. I didn't mask anything off yet - I'll mask the greys on top later. But I was maybe planning on doing several shades a metal and trying some burnt metal type effects (since there is so much area to the engine bells - it would add more interest to them)

There's a great article; Heavy Metal Flankers (Painting weathered bare metal finishes) by Paul Brown over at; http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/ Go to Tool 'n' tips section - its under bare metal finishes. Great site! I was thinking of experimenting and doing something like this real Flanker photo(but much less weathered or used)

Of course his model is 1/32 scale which is much bigger - I want to try to reproduce some of his effects in our much smaller 1/72 scale. I think it gives a good reference guideline though.

OK, I had a little time last night and this morning. The first thing was to get the Valkyrie up to snuff. I had to do a nice white coat over the entire thing. I did it in several lighter coats. Every once in a while I'll get fluff/lint caught on the surface of the drying paint

(I guess I need to vacuum my basement!)

- I'll let it dry, and then very lightly sand that area with 2000 grit sanding film to remove the fluff/lint (and slightly around the area). Then re-paint over the affected area until you can't see the repair.

The Tamiya acrylic white (Flat) covers better - however, you can't sand it - where as the Mr. Base White is at least a little bit sand able if you're careful. I have to find a decent white primer! I didn't know you can clean it with alcohol too, why can't you clean the airbrush with alcohol too?

The long strip of black on the wings is a toughie - just use lots of water and don't apply any decal softeners until it’s in its final position. I apply it with lots of water and play with it until its down and blotted out (press deeply with a paper towel so that it sinks into all that nice engraved details and rivets on the wing), then apply some decal softeners or solvents over top and around the edges before it's dry and DON'T TOUCH IT! The colours I plan to use... I start off my masking the rear portions that I've already sprayed with Alclad Metalizer Steel. Then I spray the entire thing with XF-18 medium blue - this will form the base colour that I will work from (it’s the same colour I used for the fast packs on my VF-1A super)

Now onto my next colour - I've decided that I would like a light shade on the top panel (like the white area on the Max & Millia boosters in the screen capture). I am going to try to make the boosters go from a light grey (portions close to the Valkyrie attachment points - to minimize the abrupt contrast) to a darker shade towards the engine bell end of the booster. I use the good stuff (tamiya masking tape - yellow thinner tape) on the edges where I want a straight line. I follow the Captn' scribed line o on n the outside faces and try my best to interpret the line on the inside faces (I will learn to scribe my own panel lines soon - but this isn't the project to learn on I use the regular masking tape (light tan) stuff for all the other areas that aren't important.

).

I then carefully spray the lighter XF XF-19 19 Sky Grey onto the intended areas. Always spray away from the taped edge to get a nice sharp line. And try to spray lighter so that the paint is almost dried when it hits the surface - you don't want the paint to seep underneath the tape. Also if you spray towards the tape, you could get a bit of under spray underneath the taped line.

Next I decided that the raised areas on each of the booster humps were going to be another shade of grey. I decided on XF-53 Neutral Grey.

Again I taped off the areas using the good Tamiya masking tape for the edges and the cheaper stuff all around. Be careful with the flat paints (especially unsealed Tamiya) it’s a beautiful thin coat, but very delicate to scratching. Just handling the boosters and taping and masking I accidentally scratched off a few sections of the basecoat. I'll go in and repair it later.

Well the main three shades of grey are on it now. The sharp line between the front sky grey portion and the main body of blue/grey was a little too strong in contrast. So when I returned with the medium blue to fix up some of the scratches that occurred while I was handling it during the masking - I also decided to spray medium blue over the areas where the different greys were delineated to soften the contrast between the colours. Keep in mind this is still the basecoat. I still need to feather the greys from a light to dark from front to back, apply some post shading weathering effects and generally lighten the tones so they tie together more. But overall, I'm pleased with the results.

This is the stage the Valkyrie is at - its ready for some shades of off-white and greys - I plan of doing a darker version of the white (yellow & black) Roy's colours with more shades of grey and more weathering so it ties into the greys of the boosters a bit more. It will be Roy's plane after Hikaru took

it over - so it will have Hikaru's name on the canopy rails. Now the flat finish on the boosters is still pretty fragile and doesn't stand up to much handling especially if you have any nails. I will spray the entire thing down with a coat of Model Master Acryl (it’s actually a lacquer) semi-gloss clear coat to protect the finish. The semi-gloss will make the entire booster appear darker (kind of like its wet) but I have to keep in mind that it will be flat and lighter in the end. I just couldn't resist a dry fit! I plan on spraying a lighter grey to work all the greys together a bit more over the clear coat, and start to weather and delineate some of the panel lines on the booster once the clear coat is dry. I have a final bit of sanding to smooth out some irregularities on the white Valkyrie and a final coat of semi-gloss white (I mixed 70:30 flat white: gloss white) to get a semi-gloss that is more durable than flat paint, but have some of the covering characteristics of flat paint.

Spatula, don't be discouraged, the wing tabs and sprockets become misaligned all the time, exactly what Grayson said and you have them back in order! When you attach the wings, it will never do that again. Try to leave them operable - you'll be happy you did in the end. Which lights dropped? The wing tip or the two wing root lights? You can always file a new light from the clear plastic sprue that the lights were attached too. If you're sanding is good, you can glob on some gel-type crazy glue where the light is supposed to be and file back down to get the proper profile (careful that the crazy glue is harder than the styrene). I usually use white glue to glue the clear pieces on. Ok, I just sanded any little imperfections left and re-coated the Valkyrie with its final coat of white. Then I sealed it in with the ModelMaster Acryl semi-gloss clear coat. No pictures of that - just a boring white Valkyrie for now. Probably will start some patches of grey on certain panels with some post shading tomorrow. I concentrated mostly on the booster for tonight. After I got the base coat of colours down, I started to weather it, with a reverse post-shading technique, mainly where ever I would normally shade dark, I used a lighter Sky Grey to pick out the leading edges of certain panel lines. I also sprayed a very light gradated overall coat of Sky Grey from the front to the rear - blending in the various shades of grey (the idea is that the front gets worn a bit and is lighter) also to lessen the contrast between the booster and the Valkyrie. I want to add interest to the greys so that there are no solid patches of colour - always some type of variation. I got out my old VF-1A super as a guide to the weathering and colour range for the booster. Lastly I sealed this very delicate light misting of Sky Grey in with ModelMaster Acryl semi-gloss clear coat again. I plan on a dark oil wash tomorrow to pick out some of the details.

OK, I'm on to masking for the metalizer steel portions that couldn't be painted separately. It was great that the Captn' provided the resin cast of the modified intakes - however, since it was molded in once piece (which saves construction and sanding) the intake covers couldn't be painted separately. Additionally, I didn't use the Photo-etched parts for this kit (which would of made painting them separately a breeze). So I have to mask out all the white around it leaving only the intake cover leafs exposed to the metalizer. Now with hindsight, it would of been easier to paint the portion metallic steel or grey, then mask it off and paint everything else white - but hindsight is 20:20! oh well... I've gone a little overboard here wrapping up my Valkyrie like a mummy, but I hate overspray especially on white! Again the yellow is the good stuff - the Tamiya masking tape, and the rest is the cheapo regular masking tape after I stuck it to my jeans first to get some of the stickiness off.

Here's a shot of it done - with the masking removed. It’s really not that dark - but because its highly reflective, it seem darker than it is.

I can finally add those little bumps on the side of the intakes - I keep worrying that I'd lose them. I crazy glued them in - since its styrene being attached to resin (actually with a layer of paint on top but I didn't think it matter too much since these bumps don't take much stress) Now, I thought while I still had the intakes as separate pieces, I'd drill out the bumps. It looks better as an intake or vernier thruster, so the hole adds some detailing especially when we come to the dark wash. Again, I start with a smaller pin-vise bit to locate the hole then work up to the bit of the intend

hole size. Here's a shot of the competed hole, you don't have to drill too deep.

Now I am masking the white portions off to do a dual tone light grey on the Valkyrie. I want to darken up the Valkyrie so it doesn't appear to stark white against the Boosters, but I don't want a grey plane, I still want it to appear essentially white. You can have quite a bit of latitude since eventually, the black lines of the decals are so stark - it hides a lot of tones of grey. I essentially want to subtly shade the Valkyrie from light to dark towards the tail at areas that are in direct contact with the Boosters (if I'm successful in the end - one shouldn't notice the shading too much - the Valk and Booster should look like they belong

)

My first past was really too strong - I went over some areas too many times. The contrast was just too much here; I should take my own advice; build up in layers! Well, not to worry, I just went over the entire thing with white again - this lightens the grey and evens the shading a bit more to my satisfaction. That abrupt change from white to grey at the chest plate area will be just fine when I apply the yellow & black stripes - you'd hardly notice the difference - that area won't be stark white hitting the front of the Boosters.

Wow! its late - I've just put on another coat of semi-gloss clear-coat to seal in the shading and provide a protective layer for my post shading tomorrow (in case I don't like the post shading, I can strip it back (undo) to this point). And I'll let it dry overnight without my meddlesome impatient fingers getting all over it!

Just piecing everything together for a look-see...

Just looking over that amazing Tenjin Valkyrie book for more ideas to darken the Valkyrie up (more patches of grey)

So more masking again, for areas that will get a coat of sky grey such as the area behind the swing wings, underneath the fuselage where the legs swing down, since they are exposed now (without the leg fast packs) and I found some neat light grey markings that Tenjin puts on in front of the forward intakes.

A shot of the grey patches with the masking removed...

Ah, since I'm slightly departing from the canon - I thought I'd make the leading edge of the main wings silver (like the F-14s) - plus I've seen some paintings of the Valkyries with this leading edge slats in silver. Man! I love this Alclad Metalizer stuff! - I sprayed it with Polished Aluminum. I masked around the lights - I wasn't sure what to do here, but I thought it adds a bit of interest. Lastly, I thought I'd paint the interior of the side bulges on the intakes silver, they seem to always be silver on the Hasegawa box art. And of course, I coated the entire Valkyrie in another coat of semigloss clear-coat to protect everything. I'm ready for my panel wash now...

I like them because they provide all the black markings and a lot of stenciling - essentially, you can just paint the whole thing white, and with the decals, get a really good looking model. There are a lot of other companies out there that gives very little in terms of markings on the decals. In terms of thickness, Hasegawa is slightly on the thick side IMHO, but its more forgiving to the beginner modeler,

but hides some of the fine engraving due to its thickness. While the decals are wet (you can re-wet them) I usually blot them dry with a paper towel while trying to press them into the panel and rivet details. I also use MicroSOL (a decal solvent) and MicroSET (a decal softener) when I'm applying the decals (they are tricky to use and can melt your decals into a goo-mess - so I'm not recommending them to a beginner) and these solutions will help the decal melt into the plastic/paint surface to look painted on. I will get to the decal part of my Valkyrie in a few days or so (if you can wait) In the meantime, you can get a decal softener solution, and dab it onto the already dried decals you have on (as long as you are careful not to touch or move the decal while the solution is on top of it) and let air dry. It will soften the decal and allow it to conform to all of the nice little rivet details. Be careful not to stretch the decal when you're putting it on. Good luck. I also go back over the decals with a very light controlled oil wash to pick out the rivets’ and panel lines. On the black portions, I go over them in a white/grey wash - so it shows up.

On to one of my favourite parts! The panel oil wash. As most of you already knows, this is a solution of thinned down artist oil paints with low odour varsol applied with a thin brush to all the cracks, crevices, rivets and panel lines of the model. I only use 3 colours, white, black and brown - I can mix all the shades I need with these. This thin solution seeps into all the engraved details - and after a little while, I wipe the excess off with a paper towel. I always start off light, mixing a mixture of white and black to get a very light grey - this will highlight all the rivets and non-moveable panel lines though out. I thought I might as well panel wash another Yamato 1/48 Valkyrie I received recently. (Some of you may know that it was my best friend's collection of Macross stuff all the way from when we were in high-school together - we had such a competition collecting this stuff... now I have doubles of everything... since he died - I hope he approves

)

As you can see - it gets pretty messy - there are dab marks all over the place, but don't worry, it all wipes away easily (especially since I sealed all the previous work behind a layer of semi-gloss clearcoat) Now I start adding other layers of oil wash - mixing each layer darker. The dark washes are in areas I think are moveable such as access hatches, or flaps and control surfaces. Lastly, I mix up a batch of pure black for the vents. I also mix up a batch of brown for areas I think hydraulic fluid may leak from.

I also apply the wash to the Boosters - but I start at a much darker shade so it shows up against the darker basecoat. Now all the nice rivets the Captn' put in will be shown.

Don't use model paint - I use artist oil paints. They can be bought from an art store in a tube. The main thing with the wash is that it must be of a solution that is different from your basecoat of paint on the model - so that the thinners and solvents from the wash does not eat or interact with the paints you applied to your model. I use an alternating sandwich of paints as I layer up my model so that each layer does not interact with the previous layer underneath it. I start with a lacquer primer on the styrene, then a Tamiya Acrylic paint surface, sealed with a ModelMaster Acryl (actually a

lacquer) clear-coat, then the oil paint wash - to be sealed with another layer of clear-coat. Be very careful that whatever your wash is will not take off the paint underneath. That will be disaster if the wash interacts with the paint below. That's why you can wipe the excess away afterwards without affecting your paint. I use a dark grey to pick out the panel lines on top of a light coloured decal and a very light grey/white on top of a dark decal. I waited half and hour or an hour - just so there's no shine/wetness to the applied oil wash. Here's a shot of them Valk after I wiped it down. Don't worry if you wait too long - you can also damp the paper towel with a little low odour varsol and it will take off any excess that may have dried. However if you don't wait enough, then when you wipe, you will remove all of the wash including the stuff in the panels. These shots show the different washes - I find that by varying the greys it gives a bit more life to the panels - instead of just a monotone wash over all the panels. You can see the flaps and spoilers get the darkest treatment - because they move. Even though the detail on top of the plane never gets opened, it is there just for the initial construction of the plane; so, it is much fainter.

The booster came out great - the dark wash added a much needed depth. (It’s too bad the photos don't seem to do this justice

)

The Yamato 1/48 VF-1A toy turned out pretty well too!

Some parting shots as I leave it to dry without my impatient hands putting fingerprints all over it! The next step would be to do light post shading over the panel lines and seal it in with a semi-gloss clear-coat. Ready for the weathering and decals!

So I managed to do the post shading yesterday... Man I need a new air brush, I think my 20 year old airbrush should be retired soon. It has no problems do the large flat areas, but the really tight fine control stuff seems to splatter ever so slightly now (although I checked the needle doesn't seem bent and the nozzle seems ok, it might be the mixture - but I'll chalk it up to age). Plus I've been dying to try a double action airbrush - I think I've finally outgrown my single action Badger 200! Basically I traced over most of the panel lines in a very thinned down sky grey on the finest setting - I usually spray like 1/2" to 1" from the model trying to make a pencil line with the airbrush. Its a little heavier than I usually would weather the Valkyrie, but I wanted it a little darker than normal to fit in with the Boosters and from experience, once the high-viz black stripes of the decals go on, you need a lot more than subtlety to fight with the graphics of the heavy black lines! Of course when I made a mistake (which happens occasionally) I wipe if off with a paper towel with a little windex on it - and since the layer below it is protected by the last clear-coat, I only "undo" this post shading layer. Then when I'm satisfied with the look - I seal this in with another layer of ModelMaster Acryl semi-gloss clear coat.

OK, everybody - I'm so excited, I just got the resin launch arm kit that Gundamhead and Jesse produced! and promised them that I'd drop this to start on their wonderful kit. It shouldn't take too long - and I will resume the Booster when I finish their kit (I already have a Max VF-1A Super ready for it). So here are a few parting shots of the stage at where I am for now. The Valk is ready for decals and the Boosters are ready for the black stripe to be painted on and decals as well. I plan on doing the engine bell metallic shading with all those shades of burnt metal at the end - that will take the longest. Join me over at the Launch Arm thread!!

Well, got a little time to get back to work on these Boosters. I wanted to experiment - learn to age/weather the booster nozzles like the SU-27 references I got from the tips section of ARC (Aircraft Resource Center). So I started to layer up the multiple shades of metallics I had lying around. First I masked off the nozzles starting with the bottom working my way up towards the front. I only had on hand four Alclad colours.

Using the Captn's scribed rings as a guide, I sprayed varying patterns as I moved forward - I masked the next section, trying to make a random plated pattern.

For the real anal freaks out there - I guess I should have applied a thin coat of Mr. Surfacer to seal in some of the resin surface imperfections, but I didn't mind it, it will give it a worn patina when I'm done with the weathering. I've been asking myself whether I should weather it or not, since the Booster is probably not a reusable piece of equipment, so the engine bells should look new. But hey, I've been dying to try out the SU-27 techniques, it’s more fun to weather, and it gives it a sense of scale. Now I took the last colour; Jet Exhaust and started to airbrush burnt markings and streaks and darkening the tips of the bell nozzles with this colour.

Now I will add the clear blue and yellow to various panels to denote different materials and various stages of burnt staining. I masked off a few panels, and I reused these masks in various places to get all the "random" panels. Then I thinned down Tamiya Blue Clear and Yellow Clear and lightly sprayed in the panels. I think I might have over done it with the blue, but the yellow looks convincing, although the panels might seem a little too random. However, I'll reserve judgment till after I weather it, I may need them to be a little overly contrasted or strong for it to show through after the weathering.

Now I've applied a thick black oil wash over most of the bell nozzles. It will seep into all the rivet and scribed details as well as provide a darker base for me to wipe away to reveal the metal panels below. I made the wash much thicker than I usually do, because I want some of it to stay behind (not just in the crevices). Now I'll let it dry over night (so it doesn't all get wiped away so easily).

I tried to wipe some more excess oil wash away today - but even after 24hrs, it’s still too wet (I guess I laid it on a little too thick) it just smears... a little too evenly. I wanted sections to wipe off while leaving other sections intact - when it’s too wet, it just evenly smears - so I just wiped in the airflow

direction so that the smear lines are in a single direction and I will have to wait till tomorrow. Hoping that it will dry more thoroughly - and I can remove some of it in patches.

Ok, I added some pencil crayon silver to the edges of the scribbled lines – it’s pretty subtle though, the pencil was a little too hard to really bite, so it just really cleaned off some of the oil wash at those areas. It wasn't too bad, but it didn't work the way I thought it should. I sealed in the oil wash and pencil crayon and brown/black conte streaks from the bolt heads in with another coat of ModelMaster semi-gloss clear. Overall it’s not too bad, it was a little too heavily weathered (great for rebel starships though...) but when I placed it next to the blue/grey boosters it seemed too heavily used. So I gave the nozzles another dusting of Alclad Steel to brighten it up a bit, tie in all the bluish panels together and hide some of the darker weathering. I like the fact that you can just make out that the nozzles might be made from several different types of metals, instead of one big sheet of some non-descript metal - but it doesn't look patched together from junk.

Yay! Finally decals... I think I'll start with the Valkyrie first, then moved my way to the boosters. There's still a final weathering over the decals to tie them all together and a final clear-coat over the decals to protect them, the Boosters will get a final coat of clear flat and some dry-brushing before I actually glue the nozzles on. While the Valkyrie will get a semi-gloss final clear-coat and some light grey oil wash over the darker decaled sections.

It’s important to keep piecing together the various components so that you get a sense of how all the colours and weathering goes together. The blue in the engine bells picks up on the blue in the grey boosters. Can't wait to peel that masking away from the three meshed grilled portions! It’s like peeling the canopy masks (the best last steps)

First thing was that I decided to mask and paint the black markings; the triangular patch near the front, the longitudinal stripe and the front intake slots. I used a circle template to get the size of the UN Spacy Kite symbol and masked that off so the black stripe didn't show through underneath (even thought the decal is white backed - black is a hard colour to opaque out). I then drew the triangular pattern on a piece of paper and cut it out to use as a template so that I can flip it to get the other side symmetrically the same.

Then I used the good Tamiya masking tape to do the actual paint edge, followed by cheaper regular masking tape that I stuck first to my paints to remove some of the stickiness.

I spray lightly (in thin coats), especially when you want a crisp masked edge, it’s better to go light and build up in layers. Always spray from the masking side in towards the model, never spray against the masked edge - you don't want to drive paint under the tape. The airbrush took a bit getting used to after all this time. But I'm pretty happy with the results. If you notice the 3 vent slots are filled in with liquid mask from over a year ago - if you look closely, you will see that it has completely dried out and cracked so that it looks like the surface of the desert. This is my next nightmare to follow!! In fact these 3 vent details have been a thorn in my side for the entire process of this Booster kit. I decided it was time to remove the masking and expose the grill and engine detail work so that if there was any touch up to the edges of the vents that needed to be done during the masking removal, I could do it now before I get any of the decals down.

In the meanwhile, whenever I had to wait for anything, such as the black stripes to dry, I started to decal the VF-1 Valkyrie, I started by doing all the large black stripes on it too! Best technique I've found is to trim as closely any excess carrier film from the decals. Wet the area on the plane with MicroSET setting solution (normally this just breaks the surface tension in the water and minimizes bubbles - but for some reason it actually attacked some of the Hasegawa decals - I don't know why, MicroSET is usually pretty harmless). I slide the decal onto the model with lots of water, and position it to where I want it. Then I use a wet paper tower folder over a few times and press down hard on the decal careful to not slide it out of place. This forces the decal down and onto the surface of the model and into all the contours, panel lines and rivet details. Once you see all that amazing detail show through (I still think the original VF-1 is still one of Hasegawa's best molded detailed kits ever!) the decals, I would then dab a little (very little) MicroSET solution only over the areas that have the most details - this softens the decals up and allow it to conform to all the little nooks and crannies. Be careful with MicroSET, this is powerful stuff on decals and the decals should never be moved after MicroSET is applied, the decals will become extremely fragile and may pucker or wrinkle a bit, but don't worry, if allowed to dried undisturbed, the decals will eventually flatten out and look like they were painted right on the surface will all the fine molding intact. After all the decals are done, I would do a very light panel line oil wash over just the decaled areas (i.e. light grey over the black decals and dark grey over the light decals) to make the panel lines look uninterrupted over the decals.

ARGH!!!

The nightmare begins!

Ok, tip to any that care... do not let liquid mask dry out on your model!! Of course this doesn't happen overnight or in months, but over a year it can - especially in dry Canadian winters when you're workspace is beside the furnace. What should of been a 5 minute job and the joy of revealing work underneath (I've always love peeling liquid mask - it signals a stage where something that was hidden is finally revealed in all its glory, it’s quite cathartic - except in this case!) is now a 3 hour ordeal! The cracked bits of dried liquid mask flaked off in tiny bits, gumming up the fine mesh underneath. Also the dried mask intensified its pull on the painted vent edges underneath and pulled flakes of paint off with it as it came out. I basically surgically had to use a x-acto blade and needle-nosed tweezers to slowly pick at this stuff while trying to minimize the damage to the surrounding edges. Unbeknown to me, some of the liquid mask got underneath the masking tape over the mesh and seeped into all the tiny holes of the mesh – it’s what you see as some blue marks on the mesh, it’s not overspray, and it’s the remnants of the liquid mask. Does anyone know of a solvent for Microscale Blue Liquid Mask that won't also dissolve my paint around the vents? So the tedious task of removing all this crap now befalls me, it took 3 hrs to do these three vents, there are 12 in total - so I thought I would attack one each night for the next twelve nights. And that’s all I got in my 7 hours of Father's Day bliss! Hopefully I can sneak a little here and there, because I really want to finish this up before more damage occurs on it while just sitting on my bench! It’s the best part left which is all the decaling and weathering.

The colour scheme was to match my other VF-1 Valks with the Fastpacks, it’s a very similar blue/grey, I thought that this Booster was just another REALLY, REALLY big fastpack type of equipment add-on for the Valks. Yeah... believe me, I thought about doing something to cover them up and call it a day. But if you remember, I spent all that time hollowing out the inside of the resin cast so I could fit engine mechanical details behind the screen. What a waste of time that was! You can hardly see anything behind the screen now - I think the screen is a bit too reflective and the mesh too fine. I may dull it down or tone down the silver so we can see into the engine compartment a bit more, but only after I figure out a way of getting all the tiny bits of blue liquid mask out of all the tiny mesh holes first. Solvent is the way to go I think, if I can find the right stuff. I ended up just picking at it some more until I was totally frustrated - then I wanted to move on to decaling! I tried to do a dark / flat black wash over the mesh, so that any remaining blue masking residue became black or dark grey, it also toned down the bright reflective quality of the steel mesh and gave it a more scaled appearance. I used some of Anasazi's great decals - the correct size for the Space Kite symbol appears to be the 1/48 Yamato fastpacks kite. Along with tons of stenciling from my decal spares. The UN Spacy letters on the black stripes were from the extra grey ones Hasegawa provided with the YF-21 kit in grey - I then re-sprayed a light coat of flat black over the decals to further tone them down to a dark grey so they blended into the black stripe a bit more - I didn't want them to stand out so much. Before I decaled, I made sure that there was a semi-gloss clear-coat base for the decals to adhere too. Since the base is relatively dark with the end result being a flat or matte finish; this is a prime candidate for the silvering of the carrier film to show through. To minimize this possible end result, I used a smooth semi-gloss base coat (a glossy one would be better, but it may attract fingerprints), then I applied liberally the MicroSET solution to the surface of the model to be decaled. I trimmed as

much of the excess carrier film as possible, when I slid the decal onto the model surface, I pressed them down with a wet paper tower to remove any possible air bubble underneath. Once in place I painted MicroSOL over the all the decals to get them to lie flatter against the model. [Page 17 missing 7 pictures] Once all the decals were down and allowed to dry (very important to not futz with it when there is MicroSOL on top of the decals - I've ruined tons of good decals by playing with the model and touching or holding it in the wrong place!). I left it overnight to make sure. I then took a relatively soft mechanical pencil (lead 2B) and lightly drew in some additional panel lines, access hatches and details over the decals. I got this great photo-etched scribing template from Verlinden – it’s mostly WWII aircraft access hatch shapes - like lozenges, but it’s useful. I haven't got up the nerve to use it as a scribing template yet - I will someday. Using the airbrush again took a few tries at getting used to it again. Being away from this project for more than a year, I was feeling uneasy about the whole process. I had to redo a lot of the fine spraying (i.e. I sprayed some sky-grey and medium blue over areas so that they didn't look so flat, and accentuated some of the panel lines while tying in some of the lighter decal stenciling so that they look more painted in and didn't stand out with so much contrast. Then I sprayed a clear-coat on the entire model with ModelMaster Acrylic flat/matte finish. This protects the decals somewhat, protects the pencil details from smudging, and blends in the decal finish so it looks like the rest of the model. It also has an effect of lightening the overall finish of the booster (which is good since it mates up with a somewhat white plane). I established this matte booster on semi-gloss plane before with my other Super-Valkyries - so I wanted to follow suit - since they will be displayed together. The matte finish makes it more utilitarian IMHO. Once the flat finish had dried, I took a bit of flat white and did a light overall dry-brushing hitting the highlights of the model - paying close attention to the serrated grey hatches above and below. Together with the previous dark oil wash, and this lighter dry-brushing, I think it adds a lot more depth of the model (oven though the shape of the model is relatively flat on the sides). Overall I am very happy with the way it has turned out now. I spent way too much time and effort on those 3-slotted vents that I don't think it pays off in the end. You can hardly see the engine details I put inside the mesh (if I chose a larger holed mesh, then it would look out of scale). Now I think if I can get away for a hour in the next few days - I can't wait to attach the engine bells! [Page 17 missing 8 pictures] I couldn't resist just putting the Valkyrie onto the booster to take a look at! With the modifications I made to the Booster, the Valkyrie is now removable (which I suggest all to do since it make painting so much easier later on) the fit is rather tight and snug though (thanks to the Captain's precision sculpt!). The Valk isn't all the way in... it’s a really tight fit, so it’s in partially for now so I can easily take it out again. Can't wait to pin and glue the engine bells (maybe this weekend!) (P.S. I switched back to my old Nikon 990 camera - I just leave it collecting dust now that I have my Nikon D80 DSLR which is so much better as can be seen by the earlier pictures, the colour of the previous shots are so much more true to life - but the Nikon 990 still has better Macro and close focusing capabilities) [Page 17 missing 7 pictures]

One of the most anticipated steps - I get to finally mount the engine bells onto the Boosters. My only concern here is that they are pretty big resin bells and weigh a quite a bit. They mount via a ball-like joint on the boosters, and the actual glue contact point isn't that large - I'm afraid they are kind of like levers which can translate into a pretty large amount of force at the glue contact point. Luckily upon test fitting, the actual glue contact points are pretty well hidden within the recess of the booster housing - the plus is that we can put a huge goop of glue here without having to worry about what it would look like - the con is that all of those amazing details John had sculpted is pretty much hidden once the bells go on. I've decided to use 5 minute epoxy here and thought I should reinforce the connection by pinning it with a metal paper clip. I chose a pin-vise bit that was the size of the paper clip and found a relatively thick gauge paper clip what was serrated (otherwise I would rough up the metal with a coarse sandpaper) anything to give more tooth for the glue to hold onto - otherwise the smooth metal would just slid out of the epoxy once it cured. I drilled both sides in the centre, then did a test fit and angled the engine bells so they splayed outwards like the line art - the paper clips also bent to the right angle and will help hold the bells at the right angle for the glue to cure. I also took coarse sand paper and roughed up the engine balls so that there would be more tooth there for the glue to grab hold of too. I folded a paper towel in between the bells to keep them separated at the angle I wanted - test fit the whole arrangement with the upper bells (since they can be swiveled out much farther than the lower ones - the lower ones are trapped by the depth of the mounting socket so they can't be splayed too far without rubbing the outside edges of the lower half of the booster). Once I found that happy medium, I slathered on the 5 minute epoxy and glued the bells and literally held the bells and boosters in place in my hands for 5 minutes.

I basically repeated the procedure for the upper bells now. I thought I'd do the lower ones first - to get the hang of things and in case something went wrong, it’s in a less noticeable part of the model. The trick is to constantly eye down the back of the booster to make sure that the engine bells are evenly spaced and the glue doesn't cure while anyone bell is skewed since there aren't really any registration notches or marks and you can really glue the bells in whatever position you like. I personally like them splayed out. It’s good that the mounting point is so far deep into the booster, because I used a lot of epoxy to get these babies in place! I do love the way they look - the flat booster finish is a good contrast to the metallic finish of the engine bells and the bluish faint panels on the bells ties quite nicely to the boosters. I don't think I'm going to weather the engine bells with a burnt edge since I don't think they are reusable - but I'll may change my mind when the entire thing is done. Right now, they only have a dark oil wash on them. Having all four bells glued on does make the whole thing really back heavy - and I want to handle them with care. You shouldn't let it sit on the table since those four resin tabs on the end of the bells could bend or worst snap off over time. I guess my next build will be the launch rail - otherwise there really isn't a way to support and display this bird properly.

OK, I couldn't resist taking more pictures of it! (I've been waiting to see the engine bells on for months!) Plus now I test fitted the Valkyrie on as well - again it’s s not all the way in, but it gives the idea! In the second last shot (when the lighting is just right!) you can actua actually lly see into the 3 grilled meshed slots and see some of the engine compartment details! YAY!! Now I've got to finish the Valkyrie decaling... (So close...

)

I finished decaling the Valkyrie! Man, that's a lot of tiny little stenciling, but I love it. I didn't apply decals in the tail area since it will slide into the Booster and be hidden from view almost all the time

(except on the rare occasions that I would separate the Valkyrie from the Booster). I varied my painting of the Valk this time, I introduced as many grey/non-white elements to the white Valk to make it a little more interesting, the most notable difference is in the leading slats to the wings where I painted them silver (I quite like the look although not canon to artwork), I also painted the area behind the folding wings in a grey and light grey stripes by the top of the air intakes. The plane is actually more weathered and the shading is a little more pronounced in person, the photos tend to "white-wash" the plane out and make it a little newer than it actually appears. I have my older VF-1A there for reference to decal placement and comparison (hard to believe that was the first Vf-1 I've ever built!).

After the decals had fully dried, I decided to do an oil wash over them to tie in the panel line details over the decals - this is an essential step to make the decals look painted on, part of the model instead of laid over top of your paint. I used white over the dark or black stripes and a medium grey over the lighter areas of the decal such as the UN SPACY lettering or the yellow stripes.

I allowed an hour or so for it to semi-dry and I wiped the excess off with a paper towel - careful to leave as much of the oil wash inside the panel lines as possible.

After the excess oil was removed, I airbrushed a very light thin coat of white over the front leading edges of the black stripes of the decals to lighten them up and blend them into the paint finish, this reduced the stark contrast between the black and the white portions of the plane and weathers them a bit so they appear a bit faded towards the front of the aircraft. Once I was satisfied, I clear-coated the entire plane and protected the decals with a nice even spray of ModelMaster Acryl semi-gloss clear coat. This ties together the sheen of the decals to match the sheen of the paint and further makes them look painted on.

Now the part of the day I've been looking forward to (literally for a year!) - taking off the masked bits, the tamiya tape from the engine nozzles which were sprayed with a combination of Aclad2 metalizer gunmetal and burnt metal and the canopy liquid mask. Again, the same problems I had with the liquid mask drying up on those 3-slotted vents on the Booster body had occurred here on the canopy as well. The mask had dried up to the point where it wasn't coming off easily and started to break off in flakes - what should of been a 5 minute job ended up taking hours and leaving scratches and debris all over the canopy. Once I removed all the remaining bits of masking, I had to carefully re-polish the canopy with Tamiya Fine Rubbing Compound to get the sheen back to the canopy (the Future coating was damaged by the liquid mask either drying up or the rough process of removal). So let this be a lesson to all you, don't leave anything with a liquid mask on while you take a year break!

OK, finally buffed the canopy back up, and applied the black canopy frame decals (this is such a life saver from Hasegawa! - I hated painting canopy frames always!). Unfortunately all the photos make the plane look new and the black stripes so stark - I may try some shots with my DSLR next time. I'm just glad I gotten to the point where I could take all the masking off. I was a little afraid to find out what I had beneath! I was able to glue the head, laser antennas, and the gun pod on finally. All that’s left are the clear parts such as the wing root lights, nave lights on the wingtips, nosecone blisters and the leg chin lights. Also I want to go over the weathering a bit more and apply some dry pastel and graphite to the bird - similar techniques that I learnt to do from my VF-0S thread, but just not as heavy, such as light hydraulic staining from the flaps and vented areas. I got that "makeup compact" weathering set from Tamiya that I may try out on this plane if I get the nerve.

Lastly how could I not try and put the Valkyrie into the Booster pack?!! and off course zoom it around the room! I'm pretty disappointed with the photos, there are so many subtle details in the paint finish that doesn't seem to show through, I may shot it again with a DSLR or post larger pictures. I think a lot of detail was lost when I reduced the photos to something that I can post here easily. Well, it looks like I need to get cracking on the launch rail / stand next - there is really no way to display this bird without the stand, I don't want it to rest on the engine bells or risk breaking off those little fins at the end each of the engine bells (plus its so back heavy - the almost solid resin Boosters do add weight).

HWR MKII & Dante74 - I have the launch rail, gorgeous sculpt by the Captn' (which will definitely be the next thing I work on - when I can sneak some time in next) but the launch vehicle was just too expensive for me to justify its purchase. No offense to John's amazing work and effort, but I personally didn't like his interpretation of the line art (its just me!), I thought it was just a tad too tall, I would of preferred the vehicle to have been lower and wider - it would have been too much work to modify it to my liking. Plus it would have been $600 worth of resin if I added it all up - that was just too rich for this new father. I still hope to have a vehicle someday, maybe a scratchbuild.

Urzu7 1. Yes, I did the oil wash directly over the decals - but I wouldn't recommend it. Its because I've done this so often now that I'm beginning to skip some steps (just waiting/asking for something bad to happen!)

I would always recommend (even to myself if I had more time - you can tell that my time

is so precious now that I'm putting the model at risk to finish it!)

sealing in the decals with a clear-

coat before doing anything on top of them. If the oil wash didn't work, you could always remove all of it with a paper towel damp with some low low-odour odour varsol and the decals underneath should be still protected by the clear-coat coat (as long as your clea clearr coat doesn't dissolve with varsol - which

ModelMaster Arcyl doesn't) I don't know how water-colours will react to the decals or the clear-coat on the painted surfaces - my guess is that it would bead up into little drops - like water on plastic. I use thinned down oils since it flows nicely on glossy surfaces (never do an oil wash over a flat/matte finish - you'll never get the excess off) Oils are cheap, just get a tube of white, black and brown - don't spend more than $3-4 dollars each - it will last you years! You can mix any shade of grey, rust or white you need.

2. I just don't recommend leaving liquid mask on for years at a time, I usually leave it on anywhere from a day to a few weeks. As soon as the mask feels like dried rubber cement (which I secretly guess is the same stuff but cheaper!) you're ready to paint over it - and as with all masking, remove the masking as soon as your process allows you. You don't want any kind of adhesive to have to sit on your model or paint finish any longer than it has to. It gets quite dry in Canada over the winter, and my model bench is in the basement right beside the furnace, so I'm sure any moisture in the mask was sucked out over the winter!

I save my graphite (from the bottom of mechanical pencil sharpener) and its useful to add little streaks here and there. I has have what is called a rub stick or paper blender used in sketching, basically a rolled up paper stick with shaved ends that I use to apply the graphite and literally draw on the streaks where I think they would occur. I can also do a little heavier post shading on panels that would have to be accessed often that accumulates dirt from crew hands too. It's always useful refer to real-world aircraft photos and references for weathering.

Note that I start on the bottom surfaces first (although they would receive less weathering than top surfaces - they are less visible) because I always need to warm up to the technique (I always tend to start too dark) and when I get better and more confident, I move up to the more visible parts of the model.

The last time I was at a hobby shop, I picked up this Tamiya Weathering kit, its basically a compact make-up kit that allows you to rub pigment in the form of "foundation" cakes. It even comes with a spongy applicator, and its really easy to apply - and really easy to over-do it! Luckily it seems to come off with a little water and some rubbing. In fact, I keep a knead-able eraser handy (you can get them from art supply stores) - they're great because you can shape them into anything you need to lift up excess graphite or this tamiya weathering stuff.

The goal is to do a general weathering and spot up some areas of heavy movement on the Valkyrie. So, that it becomes less of a stark white contrast against the darker grey boosters and overall tie both pieces together (and experiment with using the Tamiya Weathering Kit.

Here are some initial shots at a higher resolution - I just threw a grey card behind it on my work bench (so the lighting isn't great - and its only my Nikon990). When we get a sunny day, I'll take it out to get some proper photos of it, probably with the Launch Rail whenever I get that built. Oh, yeah... I glued in all the clear pieces. They were painted with Tamiya Clear Red and Blue while still on the sprue (since the sprue connection points are all hidden when they are glued onto the Valkyrie. Funny, the wing root lights didn't fit as flush as some of the other Valkyries I've had, maybe the molding has deteriorated slightly (this is one of the later kits that combine all 3 versions, VF1S/A/J). I back the lights with the Tamiya silver chrome marker, so that from the front you see a nice reflective backing behind/under the clear red or blue (plus it hides the glue mark beneath. I used this stuff called "World's Best Canopy Glue" - its basically a kind of white glue that dries crystal clear and somewhat elastic-like - I bought it years ago, and its lasted me - good stuff. I use this to glue all my

clear parts. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out now. I love the non-canon colour scheme (I'm a canon guy - but the white was pretty boring - although Brett did an amazing job on it!) - which is based on my colour scheme for the other super Valkyrie's fast packs. It was intended to sit on the same shelf with the other Valks, so the Booster will be at home right there! Thanks for joining in... I'm so glad to finish this finally! It was so sad sitting on my bench for so long I hope I get some more time soon to start and finish the Captn' amazing Launch Rail to properly display this bird. Come on! I want to see more Boosters out there.

Happy Modeling! (and wear a good safety mask.)