HWR MKII

well my wife suprised me yet again and came home with a 1/72 scale MI abrams. she said that it would look cool with the defender in some sort of scene. im fresh out of ideas for it right now since i have been working on an overload of projects yet again. another 1/16 tiger,a 1/16 sturmgeschutz IV with METAL tracks, the 2 72 scale hummers,1/16 scale 69 and 72 dodge chargers and a 1/35 scale sturmgeschutzIII with crew, motor and crumbling wall. the 69 will be the general lee once the body is worked out. do any of you guys have any ideas on how i could incorporate the abrams into a scene say on an 8inch by 10 inch finished piece of wood with some sort of groundwork. im torn between urban combat or lightly forested.

my wife got me a 4 pack of these pods and a gulag in 1/100 scale for christmas. i think your wash looks perfect on the pics. it gives the pods that unmaintained war weary effect one would expect a zentradi vehicle to have. i cant wait to get mine.

the tail spine isnt so bad. it gives the acft more avionics space and 4 more slots for anti missile countermeasures giving it room for 8 mods of chaff/flare instead of the usual 4. the cft package is a gross afterthought though. there are alot of ways they could have streamlined it a bit more. they are huge compared to the wing tanks it carries and look like they could only be used realistically in a long distance transport situation. they look too big to be combat worthy. i know they were designed to be used in combat but it doesnt look like the fighter can manuver as well. at least the CFT package on the 15 E allows it to carry 12 more munitions and has components for other systems other than fuel. the CFT also is capable for use in dogfighting but the 15 has room for it. on the 16 they look like the equavilent of putting a huge coffee can muffler tip on a ford escort. it may look cool and serve its purpose but is it really needed or could it have been done better? the F2? isnt that the mitsubishi that looks like someone too the tail of an F4 and put a different airframe on it? i remember seeing some pics of it somewhere but i cant remember now. time for a yahoo search.

it looks like the 16 has some kind of growth on its back that the crew chief doesnt know how to remove.

there are worse companies than italeri. esci being one of them cant even get the hood of a hummer or the geometry of a LAV- 25 front end correct where italeri does. lately if tamiya does offer something new it is 100% theirs and newly tooled. in the past they have shared molds with italeri like the 25mm bushmaster hummer but lately they have done nothing but their own stuff.

it doesnt have to go on the back burner so to speak. youd be surprised what 10 to 15 minutes of work a night could do. thats about all i have to devote besides weekends and sometimes i dont even have weekends. by the way what is your new job?

well i went and got a nice pair of revell germany 1/72 scale hummers to go with the defender. perfect memory says that the first defenders rolled off the assembly line in 2000 so it fits. now i just need some people. i plan on doing something on a test range looking site or one being used on an exercise.

shin i dont have any pics of that. they dont load them like that unless they are deployed and usually the common load is typically 4x gbu 12 on stations lc and rc 3 and 6 a JDAM on the centerline and wing bags. the bunker buster you guys speak of is the gbu 28 and is 2 2000 lb BLU 109 bombs welded together with a gbu 24 guidance unit and a gbu 10 fin assembly. its mainly loaded on station 5. you could also load up 12x 82 bomb body munitions on the CFTs and 3x 84/109 bomb bodies on the pylons. actually the only place i have seen the cft on the 16 is in pics. i havnt seen them used in the field. maybe the uae countries use them for long distance travel and take them off when they get to their area of operation.

either way the exar kun affair happened before KOTOR. lucas arts has also tied it into the clone wars with the game by the same name. anakin talks to a holocron of ulic quel droma who was exars second who was also betrayed by exar and his betreyal also started the mandalorian wars mentioned in KOTOR. the remaining mandalorians who followed ulic started it i guess the facts behind that are kind of a grey area but from some of the info its that event which started it .got the graphic novel upstairs for the exar kun sith wars. i want to see some pics of anakin on the reassembly table after his fight with obi wan.

i did some research and unfortunately tamiya does not offer a 72 scale 14. too bad. one thing to try is mix and match parts from hase and fujimi like the fuselage from hase with the compressed nose gear and flaps from fujimi and see what results happen.

actually the israelis have been putting the dorsal spine on B models for decades. and the "external goodies"like the CFT packs are removeable. i still dont know where the E/F designation is coming from i have never seen an AF pub with them in them and i was stationed at the main depot where these mods were installed on all export F16s. the spine in particular is mainly put on D models. rarely you may see a prototype pic of the C model with it but i hav not seen any in service. ive talked to israeli ground crew and saudi ground crew who havnt even seen it. right now the saudis and israelis make their own so those may be the E/F models your talking about but any country we sell our old ones to get refurbished A/B models(you can tell by the thickness on the base of the tail on the A models)with block 50-60 avionics and engine upgrades on them.

the F16 right now is C(one seater) and D (two seater). the block number designates the avionics packages and engine modifications. worked them for 7 years. now im on the 15 E talk about weapons overkill. max possible load out of 15 500lb bombs and 4 A2A missiles. never heard of an E or F model 16 they must be israeli or tiwanese upgrades.

do a copy of the camo pattern the airforce wanted to use before the uniform test failed. do a google search for new airforce uniform and you should find pics of it. its a good urban scheme.

enjoy that box art and preserve it too because it may be the last time you see an F14 in that paint scheme again. sad really. makes me want to find a copy of the final countdown and do a model of an F14 A. im thinking tamiya 1/32 scale. Doesnt tamiya also offer a 1/72 scale 14D now?

actually they went to the master/apprentice rule after the whole exar kun affair,which KOTOR happens after. its mentioned in the loading screens. revan and malek hepled defeat exar in the storyline in the game along with a couple hundred other jedi.

actually its good practice to dis assemble every airbrush if possible to clean it no matter what type. it promotesbetter air and paint flow. plus if you just spray thinner or alcohol through it you could still leave a build up somewhere inside that will come off and contaminate your finish. testors aztec airbrushes are notorious for this since you cant really dis assemble the tips to clean them.

i understand that but KOTOR is about as canon as lucasfilm CAN get is what i was trying to say. just like everything else it fits in very well and ties in with other stories that have been written,but doesnt affect the movies at all. again i think thats about as canon as lucas is able to get.i know he doesnt fully accept the expanded universe but he hasnt really done anything to throw the movies and books off track with each other.

congratulations LTSO. maybe you could get some old one piece macross VF toys and make a mobile for above his crib. again congratulations!

the F15E is a dedicated 2 seater and in no way a trainer. so i guess that the VF-0B and VF-1D should be considered the macross version of that acft. excellent model by the way. the color scheme is striking and vivid. i know its difficult to pull off a good white paint job and keep it clean like you did.lets see some more, maybe a build off between you and WM kind of like the great biker build off just macross.

why not just delete non scifi posts like the how would you? post. its about how would you redesign the air force of your country. doesnt seem other anime or scifi to me. get rid of those and youll have a cleaner closet.

as far as i can tell anakin dismembers dooku and thats where grevious steps in as the lightsaber weilding badass. all that happens in the beginning where the emporer is being held "captive" by the seperatists. then the movie continues on from there to set up episode 4 with luke and leia being dispersed at the end, basically episode 3 ends 18 or 19 years before a new hope.

i think KOTOR would have to be called as canon as lucasfilm will get. it refers to the exar kun wars which are mentioned in many novels. i just hope that the screen isnt so cramped with detail that its difficult to follow the space battles. i have seen a few movies where that happens. kotor is origional. the character you play as turns out to be darth revan. its the best plot twist since "no.. i am your father"

heres the other one not to derail the thread. this is actually the second paint job it has had the other one yellowed out after a while so i stripped it down and reshot the paint.

its the same camera but its winter here and good light is impossible to find. the good clear ones were taken using sunlight on one side and incandescent lighting for filler but all i have now after 2 pm or so incandescent is all i have to take pics with i am having no luck with cameras lately. the only way i could get really good pics is to take 35mm pics with a real one and get pic cd's made. i do have a few pics of my ED209 on cd so i will look for them and try to post soon. that kit is getting really rare since horizon basically has disappeared. the model itself is the exact same size of the stop motion character used in the rear projection composite. i took one pic that looks really good out in the parking lot of my dorm in ft lauderdale florida when i was in college. it looks like the thing is standing there guarding the cars. i have to find it. WM thank you very much. i hate digital cameras i may go the slower more expensive route of 35 mm pics from now on. i have had so many camera problems with this project that im about to give up. this cam is a 2 megapixel as well i have tried adjusting the resolution and pic size but nothing seems to help any. i think i have gotten the camera to work a little better though look at my destroid defender paint up in the how to section. its right below blackaces beautiful gundam build.

the vics look good. is that huge thing a skyhook above coruscant? hmmm. i almost thought lucas didnt like using expanded universe stuff. the pic with the battledroid is good too. i have noticed in the past that lucasfilm will heavily modify the look of a pic they post to keep you guessing. there was a pic of boba and jango that was around when epi2 was being made that had been heavily posterised in photoshop or some other photoediting program.