1/48 Hasegawa F-2A

[Calum]

Thought I might give this one a go. It's been in the stash for a while now and I've just noticed that the F-2A is eligble for this GB so I'll throw this one into the ring..

I reviewed the instructions and promplty disregarded them starting with the intake as this looked to be a bit troublesome (an it has turned out that way).

Have just finished the Tamiya F-16 I figured I'd take the same approach with the intake and assemble it length ways first.

Also thought I'd have a go at using the Aires wheel wells - wish I hadn't, whilest the detail is superb getting them to fit is a pain, lots of sanding required to point they are wafer thin (or even right though) in places

Here's the nose wheel well

And here's my approach to fitting it. The last picture shows that the aires pirce maybe a little short but I don't have any reference pictures of the area to be sure.

The main wheel well was just as bad, although I think I may have removed more than required. You can see the areas were I went through the wheel well and the intake. Thankfully the intake hole is in an area that can't be seen.

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

You don't build in half measures do you Calum

I'll be keeping an eye on this one. I there that much difference between the F-16 and F-2?

[AnonymousDFB1]

I'll be watching closely as well Calum, got a couple of these in the stash that nearly made it to the build list for this GB

[periklis_sale]

i am watching closely my friend!

[wellzy]

Hi Calum

Look like you have this sorted I will be watching your build

wellzy

[RNoAF Aerobatic Team]

Wow.

Lots of sanding to get things in place... Aires should make their parts a bit more user friendly:-)

[kpc7676]

Nice start mate, may just push me to enter this GB...will see what happens.

[Bandwagon 106]

Hooray! another Viper Zero! Good start Calum, hope you enjoy this kit.

The F-2 is larger than a standard F-16- longer fuselage, bigger wings (with 8 pylons underwing as opposed to 6), tailerons, LERXs and has a 3 piece canopy. The seats are also slightly different, having "horns" on the top, also the IP has more CRTs. Think Hornet->Super Hornet-a kind of natural development.

Joel

Edited April 19, 2012 by Bandwagon 106

[davidsm]

That look likes hard work. But worth it in the end.

[Calum]

Thanks all. I think getting the paint shades right wil bethe biggestt issue as no 2 pictures show the same shade

[Bandwagon 106]

I have decided to use Humbrol 104 for the dark blue and an Xtracolour (I think it's FS 35109, I'll have to recheck!) for the light blue, it "seems" right at least! For the single seater I built before, I think I used Hu 144 as the light colour, but it seems too "grey"! Whatever is used, I think this is a great colour scheme!

Joel

Edited April 22, 2012 by Bandwagon 106

[Calum]

Have made a bit of progress.

The Eduard PE set is quite good for this kit. It has a lot of stuff for the canopies which I'll be using. I used some of the cockpit bits as well.

Didn't bother with the PR for the instrument panels as I had the Afterburner detail sheet. I'm a fan of decals over plastic detail for cockpits, the Hasegawa A-4 and F-104 are good examples of this combination.

As expected the Afterburner set fits perfectly over both consoles and looks pretty bloody good IMHO, much better than I could do with a brush and much quicker. The individual decals for the panel also fit perfectly. I did add a spare decal to the instrument on the lower right side of the panel as the sheet didn't have one for this position.

Onto the seat. Not sure if using the Quickboost seat the F-16 entirely accurate but it it;ll do, and it's nicer than the kit one. I added the canopy breakers from the Eduard PE set and picked out the details with Vallejo acrylics. The decals are from the Afterburner set and the RBF tag is Aires.

It took an age, with much sanding and painting before I got the intake to point where I was happy with it. I put the lip on and cut a hole in the top so I could but the heat vane in once I was happy.

[Calum]

Been playing about with the "light Blue". I started with "Furball Geoffs " from Zone 5's suggestion of Tamiya Sky Blue and Flat blue in about 80/20 ratio. But that was to blue for may taste so I added some Gunze Intermediate blue to taste. I'm still not happy as the colour is supposed to be FS35109, which is greyer still (the photos make it look bluer than it is).

I have FS35109 in model master, but because the panel lines are so fine/shallow I want a gloss finish straight from the bottle so I can I can apply a wash without adding gloss coat to further fill the panel lines. So I think I'm going to experiment some more.

I fianlly finished the intake then masked and painted the light blue lip

As usual I didn't follow the instructions and built the intake as one piece the next sequence of photos show how you can do this and fit the assembly into the lower fuselage.

I found there was a slight misalignment between the rear of the intake assembly and the lower fuselage, the lower fuselage sitting a little (1mm) high and slight (0.5mm) wider in circumference. Whether the Aires parts caused this or it is the kit I dunno but I spent a fair bit of time getting this lined up. I sanded bits from the mating surfaces on top of the intake assembly until I was happy

Then I inserted it it and applied some Mr S Cement to hold it. To make sure it wasn't going to move I then squirted a fair bit of CA glue down thorough the top to secure it in place

It was out little bit on one side a few swipes with the sanding stick and that was fixed.

[wellzy]

Looking good I will watch this one

wellzy

[AnonymousDFB1]

Good work, looks like a nice kit

[Calum]

The worst aspect of the design of this kit is the top/bottom join on the radome. The join is very close to the static discharge strips on the radome. The join isn't the best either (well mine wasn't), from the leading edge of the wing forward.

The next issues is getting the SHULL exhaust to fit as the diameter of the doughnut is a little smaller in diameter than the kit. But the exhaust is really a work of art in it's own right, it's worth making it fit

Thankfully there isn't an detail around the rear of the jet to worry about protecting so out came the big sanding sticks

After some careful sanding I've reduced the diameter of the rear fuselage to remove the appearance of a big step. The profile isn't really correct so I may work on it a bit more

There is also some big holes between the engine and the kit. not sure why or if its correct but I've filled them in with some scrap card

I'd prefer the same approach Tamiya used with their F-16 where the radome is separate and split vertically, although that isn't perfect either.

You have to be careful cleaning it up. I managed, with a fair bit of patience

[Parabat]

Looking good, pity you've had to fix so much stuff. But I'm sure it'll be worth it, they're a superb looking fighter.

[Calum]

Used a bit of Mr surfacer to add a bit of height to the strip on the right and side as this was the side I had the worst trouble with

Wings are on. Fit was pretty good here but I did use a bit of Magi Sculpt, (a 2 part putty like Milliput), on the joins. It is the white line you can see in the following images.

I also spent a fair bit of time fixing a small step between the upper lower fuselage halves in the area rear of the flaps.

Also managed to fit the SHULL Doughnut after a bit more sanding

Prior to fitting the Doughnut I painted up the entire exhaust. As I said above the detail on this is outstanding.

I used a darker Alclad shade for the rear of the engine (IIRC Duralumin), the Flame holder was the same with a liberal coating of Alclad Hot Blue.

The White is Tamiya flat white and the petals are Alclad Pale burnt metal with a dollop of jet exhaust. The Black between the petals was Tamiya semi gloss black.

The whole thing was weathered with a couple of the Tamiya Weathering sets. IIRC Gunmetal was wiped over the petals and soot wiped over the ceramic interior.

Hopefully Shawn gets back in the saddle soon as I'd like a few more of these.

[Sundown]

The Shull exhaust looks great, really nice work on the weathering. Do you know which scheme you are planning to use from the afterburner sheet?

Sean

[Calum]

The Shull exhaust looks great, really nice work on the weathering. Do you know which scheme you are planning to use from the afterburner sheet?

Sean

Thanks Sean

I'm going with A/C 514 with the golden figure on the tail

Edited May 29, 2012 by Calum

[Calum]

Wasn't happy with the blue some made it a bit greyer by adding some Gunze Intermediate blue. Not that you can see it in this image

On Zone 5, Jens told us know the proper FS colours for the 2 blues (the light one being FS35109, the dark being FS35405) earlier in the thread and as I have FS35109 in modelmaster I thought I'd use it on the ASM-2's to see how it looks.

As you can see it's a fair bit greyer than my mixture, and also greyer than most of the photos I've seen, that said I reckon it's the right colour for a 1:1 scale model but doesn't look right for a 1/48 model. I'm going to leave it on the missiles though because the reference photos (here) show a this shade of blue.

Thought I'd try the paper mask idea like Geoff from Afterburner did

It worked well. Onto the Dark blue. There is, to my knowledge no FS35045 straight out of the bottle. I tried Gunze FS35044, which is a bit dark to my eye. I tried a few other blues before remembering a mates son's Corsair in all over blue. I checked with him and found out he'd used Tamiya AS8.

Coincidently I had a can of this right in front of my paint booth from a couple of Corsair builds last year. I decanted this and sprayed through my Airbrush. I reckon it's perfect for the dark blue, but your mileage may vary.

Forgot to use the Afterburner masks so went back over that bit

The paper masks worked very well but unfortunately the blue tac left an awful oily film that couldn't be removed. (I've had this problem with blu tac before and this was last straw so I bought some White tac from ebay for the next one)

To fix this I free-handed the edges with the light blue to cover up this file

Dry fitting the vertical stabilisator revelled a bit of gap, I reduced it by sanding as much as I could, then I glued it on and filled the gap with magi sculp 2 part epoxy putty. I cleaned the excess off with a toothpick and cleaned up the rest with a wet cotton bud

[Devo]

Good job so far Calum. It will look tops when the stickers are on it.

Cheers,

Devo

[Calum]

On another site I'm posting this one it was pointed out that I'd put the Doughnut on upside down.

At first I wasn't going to bother but the AMS set in quickly so I had to try and fix it. And what wee weed me off even more than the original stuff was that Shawn had put keyways in this exhaust to stop idiots like me getting it upside down.... How the hell I managed to get it on upside on the first place is beyond me

It flexed off in seconds.. but then I spent the rest of last week getting it back on restoring the surface finish and profiles

I lost the formation light detail on each side so I ended up replacing it with some plastic card. It's nowhere nere as nice as the original detail. But the the Afterburner sheet gives decals for the lights so hopefully this would be to noticeable.

[amason61]

Nice save on the doughnut!

[AnonymousDFB1]

Nice work and save