Having completed the Trumpeter 1:48 scale Talon T-38A In-box review I will now do a Blog build of the model.
This will be an out of the box build.



I will be building the Portuguese Air Force #2606 201Squadron version.

Tonight I have cleaned up cockpit tub parts and assembled seats and dry fit.
Instrument panels are nicely moulded but I will be using the decals which are also a good match to the real thing.










The dry fitted tub walls have the front canopy brackets on in the open position and the rear canopy brackets are in the closed position.

Next up:- clean up instrument panels and prime cockpit tub.

Cockpit is now ready to install:-

Richard,
The cockpit really came out quite nice.
Joel

Thank you Joel!
To show off some of the cockpit detail I am leaving one of the canopys open.
Thanks for stopping by.

After Step 1 is assembled:-

Step 2:- Cockpit, wheel wells are installed and fuselage half's are glued together:-





The two holes are for the travel pod which will not be used and will be filled.
As you can see there is some detail in the wheel wells.
A few things I would liked is more locating pins on the fuselage as care must be taken to align half's.
Probe on nose is prone to damage and should have been a added at the end and not moulded on.
Overall fit is good with little filler required.
Until next time!

Nice work on the cockpit. I was impressed with the detail, just too bad the seats are 1/50th scale. Nice how they set up the cockpit sidewalls.
Weird how Trumpeter under scaled the cockpit, but over scaled the airframe.

Curious why you didn't try to pick out the nice raised cockpit console and IP details, as I found the decals quite toyish and unrealistic. Since you used them, did they lay down ok over the raised and recessed detail?

Good call displaying the canopies open, as the Trumpeter made them squashed or too low in profile when closed.

Mike V

Hi Mike.
Thank you for your comments.
The cockpit console decals looked very close to photos that I have seen and would look better than painted by me.
I removed all raised details on the panels and then applied the decals.
Thank's for stopping by.

Step 3 is completed with Intakes and landing gear doors, I will leave off nose wheel until after painting:-

Looking good. Doesn't sound like near the nightmare my Airfix F-5A build was.

In steps 4 and 5 the wing half's are glued together and attached in step 6 along with the vertical and horizontal stabilizers.
Step 7 the canopy's are attached and now the Talon is ready to mask and prime:-

Richard,
Looking good. The cockpit/IP really looks quite nice. Looking forward to seeing some paint on.
Joel

Thank you Joel

With many build on the go right now I have managed to apply white top coat:-

Next up will be the masking of the nose cone for the black anti glare.

Today I have made decals for the flag on the tail, the green and red sizes are reversed on the kit decals.
The flags came out larger but I will trim them to size:-

Richard,
Really a nice job of correcting a major decal error by Trumpeter. It just constantly amazes me how a mainstream model company can make an error like this, and no one notices it!! This isn't even a language issue, it's just pure laziness, or not really caring one way or the other.
Joel

Hi Joel.
It never fails to amaze me the amount of mistakes made by most model manufactures!
With the amount of info and photos out there on the web there is no excuse for poor research.

Richard,
Unless the the person actually doing the decal sheet is Dyslexic, and no one wanted to hurt his/hers feelings, so they just let it go.
Joel

Finaly I have got the decals on!.
The national flag decals not only had the size of the colour panels reversed and the decal colour placement sheet has the flags backwards!
It pays to check the web!
So here are the wrap up photos of this Blog:-



The Talon was built OOB and went together well.
To me it looks like a T-38 and thats good enought for me!
Thank you to all who stopped by.

Richard,
Very nicely done. Solid OOB build. Paint and decaling looks perfect. And as you said, it sure looks like a T-38.
Joel

Thank you Joel!

Hi Richard,
My mate Tom is building one of these and we were wondering if it is possible to have both canopies closed by cutting off the front canopy mechanism?

Hi Mal
Here is a photo of the cockpit parts for the Canopy:-

For the Front Open C3 and C4 are used.
Closed C1 and C2 are used.

For the Rear Open C9 and C10 are used.
Closed C7 and C8 are used.
This info is from Kit MFG# 02852
I hope this helps.
Happy New Year!

Yep, ooops, I spotted the lowered canopy mechanisms after posting this. I posted to eagerly as I had looked in some time ago and it looks like I just assumed that the side walls had the open canopy mechanism moulded in place! This is my friend Tom's first model and he is referring to this build log

Hi Mal & Tom
I think that this is a good model to start of with in the hobby.
Good luck Tom.
Richard.