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Showing results for tags '1/72 F-35'.
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These are, of course, The USAF F-35A by Hasegawa, the USMC F-35B by Fujimi, and the USN F-35C by Orange Models. I started these 3 in February and finally finished the F-35C today. First a couple of notes; I built the "B" first and used a Caracal decal sheet. The instruction said that the best color match for for FS-36170 was Humbrol 224 Dark Slate Gray. Since I only use Humbrol anyway that was fine with me and I ordered a batch. When it arrived it looked a little greenish. I called customer service and the rep said that it would depend on the lighting and that real slate had a greenish tinge. The fact that he had this answer instantly indicates that the get a lot of questions about this. I went with and for the most part after spraying it looks, mostly, dark gray. For the RAM I went with Humbrol 145 because it was the best match I had for the Hasegawa decal, more on that later. Speaking of the RAM these 3 builds show 3 different approaches, for the Hasegawa they are done in decals, mostly, For the Orange I used their masking set and painted them and for the Fujimi I just punted. For all 3 I used Eduard cockpit interioirs Now some pictures. First all three The Hasegawa went together beautifully with the great fit I expect from Hasegawa. The real blessing and curse of this kit is the RAM decals. It is a blessing because is saves you a ton of masking. The decals seemed to be thinner then the usual Hasegawa offering and they wen down beautifully with NO silvering. The curse is that they give you most, but not all of the RAM details. This means that you must paint the rest. Not too bad since the areas they left out were simple to mask, but you must also match the the decal colors. I first selected a color that seemed to match the decals on the sheet, but once I stared applying the they changed color on the model and did not come close to what I had painted. So now I had the bottom decalled and an unacceptable color difference. I couldn't remask and repaint because the masking would pull up the decals, so I had to strip it all down and start over. Humbrol 145 seemed to be the best match. It is a little darker, but was close enough. No dust infiltration! The Fujimi F-35B was actually the first built. This is a "snap-tite" kits and I found this to be an issue since the connections were so tight I had a hard time getting surfaces to mate and ended up clipping off must of them. Once don the fit was good. I toyed with the idea of opening all the doors and displaying it in verticle take off configuration, but they only allow most, but not all of the door to doors to be shown opened so I rejected that idea. Neither the kit instruction, not the Caracal decals gave any instruction for painting the RAM areas and I found some pictures showing them not painted, so I just punted (and American football term for giving up ) and ignored them Finally the Orange Models F-35C. The fit on this one was not as good as either the Hasegawa or Fujimi, but it still went together fairly well. The kit came with some PE parts for the interior and I used them along this a spare Eduard F-35B set I had. I also purchased the Orange mask for the RAM. This cam in 3 sheets and was very detailed. They did it opposite from the way I would. They had you paint the dark gray and then had you mask around the RAM areas. They also gave you most, but not all the areas to mask and gave no instruction on how to complete the masking. I used this video as a guide https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjF7oSsy8fTAhUJbSYKHUZtC_wQtwIITDAF&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DbEfRDLEY3EA&usg=AFQjCNHJ7C3mlqFNV6va-am4lnNBAkON1g. It took 5 days to complete the masking, but I think it came out well. The kit came low vis and high vis decals. The low vis ones look like they were printed using an injet printer with some of the ports clogged and were useless. This meant none of the "no step" decals were usable. I looked on this a a good thing since I am so tired of applying the, :). The high vis ones were very thin and tended to fold on themselves, but went on with no silvering and look nice. Glad that is done.