Looking good, Carl (@clipper). I suspect that the 1/144 figures will look fine. They will be slightly smaller that the kit scele, which is preferable to being too large. I don't mind box-scale kits until I try to find parts or figures to match, then they can become a pain.

I am getting close to painting now, but I want to start on the diorama base as well so it will all come together at the same time. This is just a rough plan at this stage, but I wanted to take into account a chain link fence, people standing behind it, the stairs moved out of the way, enough room for the plane to swing to it's right when it taxies away, and a reasonable distance in front of the aircraft for the ground person who is directing the engine start up. I also need to make sure the diorama will fit in my display case.

I think this scene captures it fairly well. I'm having fun!

A beautiful diorama starts to arrise, Carl @clipper
Very nice progress.

This build is still in progress. I've started painting, but I took off some time to reorganize my modeling work area. I was also quite busy with work. So I'll have an update here soon.

Painting on this bird was delayed for a week because of waiting on a clear coat for the metallic paint. That arrived and I have got the metallic paint mostly done now. The photos look weird. The camera makes the metallic finish look wrinkly, but I can assure you, it is not like that in reality.

I started off priming the model which led to some clean up work and touching up the primer. This is Mr Surfacer 1500 gray.

Then the windows were painted the blue I am using to simulate them and the masking added to protect the blue while I paint everything else.

I applied Alclad2 Black Base, but was not entirely happy with it, so I smoothed it out and overcoated with Tamiya Gloss black which turned out much better. Again, the photos make it look rougher than it was. Maybe I need to use something other than my phone for these photos.

I used AK Extreme Metallic paints (Aluminum and Matte Aluminum) for the metallic areas. I am going to over coat this with the clear I bought (Alclad2 Clear Base) and then begin the other other colors (white and red).

This looks really good, Carl @clipper

I had put off painting the white on the Constellation for a couple of reasons. White is difficult to paint and because I knew I had to mask off the metallic finish (and paint and de mask) in the same day. I had gotten the metallic on the propellers but that's as far as I had got. This shot shows how I will be using the simulated spinning props with one not spinning yet in a startup diorama. I still need to add the blur to the prop blades, that will come later.

This morning, I decided to get the white behind me so I could start making progress on this build again. When I had primed the model, I did not have any white primer so I used gray instead thinking that would be better than my normal black. But gloss white is tricky. I got it on and after the first coat, the model still looked gray. It ended up taking five coats before I felt it was good enough. There was a small amount of white overspray on the lower outer wings by the wing tank, but it will be easy to correct that. Here it is so far.