and other artistic stuff
I cut off the bomb holder rack from the pylons, and glued the pylons in place.
Struggling with both the airbrushes and Vallejo’s grey primer.
A thorough clean up seemed to have helped the airbrushes, but I kinda gave up on Vallejo’s primer, and used AK’s grey primer instead.
It reavealed a few areas to sort!
Hopefully, after sorting the flaws, I can use this primer as the light ghost grey for the underside, and then just paint the 2 remaining upper side colours.
I painted the Sidewinders from the Tornado to match the kit ones.
In an attempt to solve the missile and missing drop tank problem. I checked my Eurofighter Typhoon kit and found these tanks and pylons. I’ll check if they’re the correct ones.
The Eurofighter kit also contained a pair of Sidewinder missiles, and compared to the kit ones they are a better match than the Tornado ones.
I think I’ll paint them up and possibly use them instead of the Tonka ones.
Just a small update this time.
I’ve painted covers and landing gear parts with white.
Then there was this question about the load out. For some reason Revell have put the wrong missile on the wrong load out point, and also it seems this one should have no bombs. And I who thought that would have looked cool.
Anyway there’s 2 kinds of missiles in the kit, Sidewinders and Sparrows, and only 2 of each.
In reality there should be 4 Sidewinders in total. I’ve painted the ones I have.
The 2 other missiles seen in the pic are from my Tornado. Slightly different, but the Tiger meet Tonka don’t use them so i might use them for this kit.
I also should need a pair of fuel tanks instead of the bombs, to go on those pylons. I’ll see if I can scavenge up some.
I glued the main gear in place as well as parts to the bay.
The tires and rims was painted and the seam on the intake as well.
Then the wheels was assembled.
The intake was glued in place.
The canopy was masked.
Gear parts and missiles painted white.
Then I started adding the pylons.
I had to re-glue the cockpit tub and put the HUD in place before adding the canopy and later the nose (after addding weights).
A bunch of bombs was painted with OD.
The bombs will be masked and painted yellow on their noses. I also need to figure the proper colours for the missiles provided.
Not much left to do before it’s time to put some primer on. I think I’ll go with AK’s grey primer, even if it smells a bit. It gives a very nice and smooth surface.
After getting the cockpit and the exhaust addition in place, things went pretty fast, and the fuselage, wings, stabilizers and fin was assembled.
Not entirely without problems as there are some things to sort.
I had to cut a little to make the prolonged exhaust fit with the locator tabs on the inside.
Just to check, I fit the outer part of the exhaust to the body.
I think that turned out looking pretty good, and I’ll only need to touch up a little.
Next will be to sort out all the seams and also sort some panel lines to connect the upper and lower body panels. Then it’s time to start sorting the landing gears and some other stuff that will be needed later.
The focus is all on the exhaust in this update. I started by applying putty on the inside.
Partly do fill in the seams and partly to build up where needed. It took some passes with sanding inbetween. Here I’m still not done.
Once that was done I started painting the inside. Trying to replicate the patterns and general look inside.
The inside on the “bottom” part also got some paint.
I might need to redo some or simply glaze with some more insignia white.
I guess I can just mask the outer most part while painting the outside. Possibly I have to wait until I have put the exhaust pipe in place to make sure it sits nicely, before painting.
I tried to make up for missing depth in the exhaust pipe. So I wrapped a piece of plastic with thin stripes around the “fan” and glued the ends. It wasn’t easy to get it entirely even.
I added the same kind of stripes to the existing parts.
Typical Revel stunt on older models.
I decided to glue the turkey feathers to the can.
My plan is to cover the inside with something that resembles the real thing Not quite sure how yet, but I’m working on it.
For some reason tabs was missing on the bomb parts.
Re-scribing and working on parts like landing gears and weapons, have kept me busy for a while.
Re-scribing is tedious and takes a while. I still got some more scribing to do. The top fuselage is quite complex.
Once the scribing is done and the interior got some more paint, I think I can start assemble.
This is the kit I plan to build for the F-16 group build on IPMS Gothenburg.
I actually started building this kit many years ago. I think one of the reasons I stopped was because I tried to figure a way to cover the landing gear well bulge inside of the intake.
Not entirely an easy task, I’ll see what I’ll do. Perhaps a FOD cover solves the problem.
Here’s a pic on what was done then.
And here’s the decals I intend to use, if they still work.
My plan is to start the build after I’ve finished the Tonka I’m working on.
There’s a seam line on both the canopy and the rear window, which needs to be taken care of. I found out how to do it on Phil Flory’s Youtube channel.
The first thing to do is to put blue tac or clay inside the canopy to prevent it from breaking.
Then I started with the course side of a nail sander/polisher and carefully sanded down the seam line.
Then I used a sanding sponge to take out the scratches from the sander, also wetting it a bit while sanding.
Next step is to use a polishing stick also with a bit moist, and do circular motions and lastly finish it off with the smoothest stick polishing the last bit. I you have you can also use some polishing compound. Something I intend to get!
I tried on the rear glass first, just to see how it worked.
Here’s a pic of the canopy with the seam line visible.
After doing the steps mentioned above, it looked like this!
I am quite happy with that, but I still opted for a little dip in Pledge.
Lastly i just tried them on the plane!
I can’t see there ever was a seam line, so I’m happy! 🙂
I added some bb-gun bullets to the nose cone. The instructions doesn’t say anything about adding nose weight, but I rather be safe than sorry! 🙂
The nose was then glued to the body. As can be seen are the holes I made for the probes and pitot.
I did a little test fitting of the seat and canopy, and at first I couldn’t get the canopy down over the seat. I turned out I had put the seat slightly wrong.
With the canopy in open position that little misstake wouldn’t matter much, but still it’s better to get it right!
So the seat and the fuel tanks was painted grey.
The tanks needed some more putty and sanding, which will be taken care of.
The seat was painted and given seat belts made of thin cut tape. Here the seata is placed in the cockpit.
Some covers glued in place.
As well as some small covers on the underside.
The inside of the wheel bay doors was painted white.
Next will be the seam line on the canopy parts, that needs to be removed and polished. I just hope I can do that without damaging anything and getting a good result.
I ordered a set of Flory sanders and polish sticks, that I will try out once they arrive which might take little more than a week.