Time for an inbetweenie! - Zio's Fiat CR.42 "Falco"

The External tank of my shuttle build is going steadily and well, but I was desperately in need of some direct result. And there's one designer who made just the right models for such a job: Fabrizio Prudenziati. His models are always such a joy to build. This time I chose his model of the late 1930's biplane Fiat CR.42 Falco. A little harder than most others, because it doesn't have an instruction sheet accompanying the model. But when you 've built more than a dozen of his models, you get the hang of it. This time no difference, with just a three-view of the plane at hand, it all worked out fine.
Here's a pic of the finished Fiat, the build pictures is after the jump.

Clear Skies, John.

Today, I was saddened by the news that one of my paper modeling friends passed away on April 11.  
John D. Jogerst, known to the paper model community as Yogi or Retired_for_now, was the person who welcomed me abord when I logged in for the first time on Papermodelers.com, the forum I joined ten years or so ago. John was a prolific paper model designer but remained very modest about his creations. He shared them with the community and many of his models are still available for free at Jonathan Leslies Lower Hudson Paper Model Gift Shop. In the time I started out in this hobby, I often made his models. They were well-designed and were easy to build. I have helped him test building four or five of his designs and I improved some of them with detail sets. We often emailed in those days and I considered him a friend, although he was living far away and I knwe almost nothing about his life and we would never meet. In his emails he often told about how he spent his time as a retiree in his community, Having fun with school children playing with his stomp rockets, donating his models to local museums and lovingly calling his wife "she who has to be obeyed", which I always found funny, him being a retired USAF colonel.

When he started to visit the forum less frequently, I sometimes emailed him to check up on how he was doing. He told me he just was enjoying his free time and found other things to keep him occupied.  I remember him as an eloquent and intelligent man with a kind and positive attitude.
The news of his passing really struck me, although we never met. 
Clear Skies, John.

Space Shuttle Endeavour with ET and SRB's in 1/96 [Part 6]

So right after posting the last installment, I took a long and hard look at the tank and decided it wasn't good enough by far. I carefully disassembled the cone from the ribbed intertank section and tried to do the same with the large part. That didn't go entirely well and I had to throw that part away. I could save the end cap, though.

This is what I ended up with after the demolishing:

And then the re-assembling started. I was a little worried that it would put me back at least a week. But did it? no. Well... read the rest. Then you 'll know.

Space Shuttle Endeavour with ET and SRB's in 1/96 [Part 5]

Now that the orbiter is finished, it was time to build the external tank. There is no single to-go model to base your build on, there have been at least six or seven variants of the external tank. And they sometimes even varied between one mission.
Now my intention never was to be 100% accurate. Moreso, I think rivet counters might not like my builds. I might have said this before but I like to build my models to look realistic but above all, they have to look good. They do not necessarily have to be 100% the same as the real thing but they got to create the impression they look the part.
Here is where I am now for those of you who are in a hurry, The rest of the story shows how I got there. 

It sure does look nice, huh? Why don't you read the rest of the story? There's a nice cliffhanger.