jrlx Posted June 1, 2015 Posted June 1, 2015 EDIT: this is the first of three entries I made in the Phantom STGB in 2015. I wasn't able to finish any in time. Then I tried to finish the builds as regular WIPs. I run into problems with the decals for the Royal Navy Phantom, which were partially solved, but lead me to lose my enthusiasm for the builds. Then, I tried to finish the RN bird in the KUTA IX GB, as it was the one most nearly finished. This was the last update done before moving the thread to that GB. Though I progressed a bit (till this post), I still didn't finish it. Now it's back in the regular WIP area. I hope to finish it soon. ------------------- Hello, This is my first entry into a GB. This will be a test to my efficiency, since up to now, I've taken several months to finish my models. With less than two months to go, I guess this will be a good incentive to work faster Since the objective of the build is to improve my efficiency, I'll build it OOB. Anyway, my entry is Fujimi's Royal Navy Phantom in 1/72: IMAG1736 I believe this was the second boxing of their British Phantom and had a few inaccuracies. However, the level of detail and quality of moulding is very good. The sprues: IMAG1737 IMAG1738 IMAG1739 and the decals: IMAG1740 I'll make the aircraft based on Ark Royal, which had the omega on a white and red background on the tail fin. I started last Saturday's night by cutting the small parts off the sprues. Here are the parts for one of the ejection seats: IMAG1916 These were dry-fit, with blu-tak holding them together: IMAG1915 The cockpit base, with raised detail on the side consoles: IMAG1917 The seat was dry-fit on the cockpit base: IMAG1913 Up to now, everything fits well. I also cut the remaining cockpit parts off the sprues and super-glued everything to the tips of toothpicks, to ease the painting process. Here are the instrument panels and control stick: IMAG1918 And here are all small parts that are ready for painting and some that need putty to fill in ejection marks (those on the two blobs of blu-tak on the right): IMAG1933 Next, I took the main parts off the sprues (fuselage, wings) and dry-fit them together. I found that the two fuselage halves are a bit warped and will need some strong clamping on the back end: IMAG1919 IMAG1921 IMAG1923 Apart from the warping consequences mentioned above, everything fits very well. However, I'll have to insert a sprue rod spacer in the fuselage, to eliminate the small gaps on both wing roots: IMAG1920 IMAG1922 The warping problems can be seen here, just near the exhausts, below the back tip of the lower wing part: IMAG1926 There's also a slight misalignment between the top and lower wing parts on one of the wheel wells, though the wing edges themselves are perfectly aligned: IMAG1924 I'm not sure I'll be able to correct this. The other side is better aligned: IMAG1925 That's all for now. All comments are welcome. Cheers, Jaime 9
David H Posted June 2, 2015 Posted June 2, 2015 i built two of those in the late '80s. One in the red Omega markings, and the other with the Iron Budgie... which served as a warm up for the 48th scale Hasegawa kit. IIRC, it was the first model of mine that won a first place at an IPMS regional. It was a good build. david
jrlx Posted June 2, 2015 Author Posted June 2, 2015 i built two of those in the late '80s. One in the red Omega markings, and the other with the Iron Budgie... which served as a warm up for the 48th scale Hasegawa kit. IIRC, it was the first model of mine that won a first place at an IPMS regional. It was a good build. david That's great, David! Congrats! I hope my build turns out good. At least the kit seems very good. I'm now in the process of treating ejection and sink marks in the small parts. I also started another British Phantom, an FGR. 1 in Alcock and Brown markings, which I'll post later. Cheers Jaime
jrlx Posted June 3, 2015 Author Posted June 3, 2015 Hello again, I haven't progressed much on the Royal Navy Phantom. I've just taken care of some ejection and sink marks. I used Squadron White putty diluted with Gunze's enamel thinner and then applied the thinned putty with a small paintbrush. I applied a few thin layers to completely cover the marks. Here are the parts after applying the thinned putty: IMAG1936 After 24 hours of drying time, I sanded the excess putty with 400 grit wet-and-dry, resulting in the following: IMAG1939 The next step is applying grey primer to the small parts and checking that these marks are gone. Thanks for looking. Jaime 5
jrlx Posted June 5, 2015 Author Posted June 5, 2015 Hello again, Here's a short update. Nothing really thrilling but I'm still on the preparatory works. I applied grey primer to all small parts already off the sprues. As grey primer, I use Tamiya's XF-19 Sky Grey. It's an acrylic matt paint and works well as a primer. Here are the small parts primed: IMAG1941 The cockpit tube got primed as well: IMAG1945 I also primed the inner cockpit walls. The picture is a bit dull... Grey primer on grey plastic... Anyway, here it is for the sake of completeness: IMAG1947 The primed parts were left to dry for a day and then I checked the moulding marks that I tried to eliminate with putty. As should be expected, they were still visible, though not as bad as originally. Here are they on the inner walls of the air intakes: IMAG1943 and on the two small parts that will be glued to the inner cockpit walls (in foreground in the following photo): IMAG1942 and also on the inner surfaces of the auxiliary intake doors: IMAG1944 So, I had to apply another layer of putty, this time a bit thicker. Here are the air intakes: IMAG1953 The cockpit wall parts: IMAG1954 and, finally, the auxiliary intake doors: IMAG1955 The putty is now drying and later today I'll sand the excess off. Hopefully, the markings will be gone and I'll be able to apply a new coat of primer and go on to the painting of interior colours. Thanks for looking. I hope you're not too bored by these preparatory steps. Cheers Jaime 5
jrlx Posted June 5, 2015 Author Posted June 5, 2015 Thanks Sean. I'm working as fast as I can but some processes can't be rushed (drying times...) 2
jrlx Posted June 8, 2015 Author Posted June 8, 2015 Over the weekend I did some progress on the RN Phantom. After being left to dry, I sanded the excess putty applied to the parts that had moulding marks. Unfortunately, after applying another coat of grey primer, the marks were still visible in the main air intakes and in the aux intake doors. So, I removed all the primer with isopropyl alcohol and applied putty to a clean surface. I won't bother you with additional pictures which look just like some previously posted. When these parts are ok, I'll show them ready. Moving on, I rescribed the detail of the left cockpit panel part, lost to the putty / sanding process. I used a magnifying glass and an x-acto blade to rescribe the detail. Here's the result (could be better, I'm afraid...): IMAG1972 This panel and the one for the opposite side were glued in place. I should mention that this was done with the cockpit tube dry-fitted in place in order to ensure that, in the end, everything would fit. I found that I had to trim the right side panel part, as well as the rim of the rear seat cockpit on the same side. The following photos show these parts glued in place: IMAG1975 IMAG1976 Then, I painted the main colours of the small parts (seat parts, cockpit parts, ...) IMAG1989 Here are the instrument panels (detail colours still need to be applied): IMAG1991 And the cockpit tube (detail colours still need to be applied to the side panels): IMAG1990 The inner grey (FS 36231) was also applied to the cockpit sides: IMAG1992 The next step is applying the detail colours to seats, instrument panels and side panels. Thanks for looking. Jaime 3
jrlx Posted June 11, 2015 Author Posted June 11, 2015 Hello again, This will look to be a small update but, in fact, it represents several hours of work. The work was done in parallel on this and on the Alcock & Brown Phantom. The cockpit side panels were black. The structures between the two cockpits and behind the rear cockpit were also black. For a while, I thought about painting them with a brush but I'm not especially fond of the finish of brush painting (my fault, I'm sure). So, I decided to go ahead and mask the cockpit tube in order to paint it with the airbrush. Since the side panels and other black structures are irregular, masking was quite complicated and took a few hours for both aircraft. Here's the RN cockpit tube already masked, waiting for being painted: IMAG2008 After painting and removing the masking, here's the result: IMAG2018 It's not too bad but needs a few touch ups (with a brush...) I also painted the yellow handles on the ejection seat tops, which were used to initiate the ejection sequence. Here they are, next to the other seat parts: IMAG2019 I still need to paint the black stripes on the handles. That's all for now. Thanks for looking! Jaime 3
jrlx Posted June 19, 2015 Author Posted June 19, 2015 Hello again, I've been quite busy with detailing work on the cockpit parts of the British Phantoms since mid last week. Here's an update representing several days of work. In my last post I had painted the black side consoles on the cockpit tube. However, there were some other black items in the panels on the cockpit side walls and the cockpit edges on the fuselage were also black. So, I started by masking around these areas to be painted. On the inside: IMAG2024 and on the outside: IMAG2025 In the above picture you can see that I had already painted black the end of the air intakes and the area in front of the cockpit. I didn't mask at the time, so some overspray resulted. After painting the black areas, the results were the following. Inside: IMAG2058 and the edges: IMAG2051 As can be seen in the pictures in the following links, the side consoles and instrument panels were mainly devoid of any colours, being just black on grey: http://www.projectoceanvision.com/vox-07b.htm http://www.f4phantoms.co.uk/details.php?plane_id=253 http://www.f4phantoms.co.uk/details.php?plane_id=254 http://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co.uk/phantom/walkaround.php Taking these pictures into account, I moved on to detailing the lateral consoles of the cockpit tube. First, I applied a dry-brush of Tamiya's XF-19 Sky Grey: IMAG2028 Then, another dry-brush of flat white: IMAG2030 This made the buttons and dials really stand out. To finish with, I applied a final dry-brush with silver, in order to give a worn metal appearance. A coat of gloss varnish was applied in preparation for a wash: IMAG2071 Then, I detail painted the instrument panels, which were already painted in the base grey. First, using a detail brush, I painted the dials with flat black: IMAG2056 Next, I painted the other few colours (a mix of Tamiya's Desert Yellow and Gunze's Clear Orange for the radar scope in the front IP, and a few red spots). I also applied a light dry-brush with a lighter grey in order to make the dials' edges stand out: IMAG2060 This was followed by a flat white dry-brush to enhance the dials' edges further: IMAG2063 To finish the IPs, I dry-brushed with silver and applied a coat of gloss in preparation for the wash (the control column, on the right, was also dry-brushed with silver): IMAG2072 I also decided to detail the seats, since these are complex systems with lots of details and colours, as can be seen in the pictures in the walkaround here in BM http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/33782-martin-baker-mk7-seats/ I used a detail brush and about 7 colours to detail the sides, top of the seats and harnesses. Here is the result with the parts still on toothpicks: IMAG2046 The ejection handles were finished by painting the black stripes: IMAG2054 After all paints dried, I glued the parts together. Here are the two seats: IMAG2065 IMAG2066 IMAG2067 To finish these, I applied a light silver dry-brush to the metal areas of the seats (didn't manage to photograph these properly), followed by a gloss coat in preparation for a wash. That's it for now. The next step is the application of a wash to the cockpit parts. Thanks for looking. Jaime 8
jrlx Posted June 24, 2015 Author Posted June 24, 2015 Hello again, While I was finishing my Spitfire Mk XIV (RFI here, sorry for the self-publicity...), I applied a dark wash to the cockpit parts of the British Phantoms and left them drying. With the Spit finished, I came back to the Phantoms and cut the canopy parts off the sprues. Here is the sprue of the RN Phantom: IMAG2153 After removing and washing (water + dishwasher liquid) the transparent parts: IMAG2154 After drying, the canopy parts were dipped in Aqua Gloss, to improve transparency and brilliance. This was done simultaneously for the canopies of the three British Phantoms I'm building. Here's the set-up: IMAG2164 The parts were left to dry in the box on the right, which was covered to protect the parts from dust. I did a dry-fit of the main parts (fuselage, wings, cockpit, tail plane, landing gear legs), to check if any weight was needed in the nose, to avoid a tail-seater model. As can be seen, no weight is needed: IMAG2163 In doing this, I noticed that I forgot to fill in the hole on the rear cockpit's floor: IMAG2168 This hole is for installation of the rear cockpit's control column. However, most British Phantoms (both RN and RAF) had no rear control column, except for aircraft of the training squadron. Certainly not the specific machines I'm modelling. I knew this from the start but forgot to fill in the hole when I should... So, here's a set back resulting from bad planning, which will make me waste some precious time, as I'll have to redo the rear floor's priming, painting and weathering. I started by filling in the hole with a piece of plastic, carved off a piece of sprue, melted in place with Tamiya's extra liquid glue: IMAG2169 This was covered with Squadron's white putty, diluted in enamel thinner, applied with a paint brush: IMAG2170 This is now drying. The next steps are: sanding the excess putty and polishing the area re-prime the area re-paint the area re-apply silver dry-brush re-apply dark wash Only after this, can I install the cockpit tube in the fuselage and close the fuselage. Thanks for looking. Cheers Jaime 6
jrlx Posted June 29, 2015 Author Posted June 29, 2015 Hello, Last week I managed to finish repairing the floor of the back cockpit. First I made a small "tool" for sanding the excess putty, using a sprue rod with a piece of sanding paper CA-glued to one of its ends. The following picture shows the tool next to the cockpit base, right after sanding the putty: IMAG2177 Then, I masked the back cockpit in order to repaint the floor: IMAG2179 I didn't use primer first, because the affected area was small. I applied the cockpit grey directly, in light coats. This is how it looked after painting: IMAG2181 After one hour of drying time, I dry-brushed the back floor with silver paint IMAG2192 The back floor was coated with gloss varnish and left to dry overnight. Then, I applied a dark brown wash and finished by applying a coat of matte varnish. The final result is shown in the following picture: IMAG2195 The repair is not perfect but I'll leave it as it is... Thanks for looking Jaime 3
Jabba Posted July 1, 2015 Posted July 1, 2015 Nicely done with the floor, it did used to get in at bit of a state, we used to replaced certain parts of the flooring as routine when doing the Major Servicing on Phantoms at RAF St Athan. 1
jrlx Posted July 1, 2015 Author Posted July 1, 2015 Nicely done with the floor, it did used to get in at bit of a state, we used to replaced certain parts of the flooring as routine when doing the Major Servicing on Phantoms at RAF St Athan. Thanks for the very interesting operational note, Jabba. I'm very keen on knowing real operational details of the aircraft I'm modelling. Jaime
jrlx Posted July 5, 2015 Author Posted July 5, 2015 Hello, Here's an update with the work of the last week. I was ready to close the fuselage. I started by glueing the instrument panels to the cockpit base. Here are the parts before glueing: IMAG2219 After glueing, this was the result (also with the control column in place, on the second picture): IMAG2220 IMAG2221 The cockpit base was now ready to be glued to the fuselage sides: IMAG2223 It was glued to the starboard side: IMAG2224 The fuselage sides were, then, glued together. The parts were held together by masking tape and I applied Tamiya's super thin glue from the inside, one small section at a time. This allowed me to keep the proper alignment of the parts as the glueing proceeded. I started by glueing the spine, then the tail fin and the area aft of the exhausts. At this point, I had to insert a spacer between the existing spacers near the tail, as shown in the next photo, to ensure the wings and fuselage were properly aligned around the exhaust area. This was done with a piece of 0.5 mm thick plastic sheet. The warping of the fuselage can be clearly seen in this picture: IMAG2225 Another spacer, made of a piece of sprue was inserted aft of the cockpit, to ensure there would be no gaps on the wing roots. The picture also shows the area aft of the exhausts held together by a clothes peg, to counter the fuselage warping: IMAG2226 I finished glueing the fuselage by glueing the nose area. The glue was left to cure for a day, like this: IMAG2227 Then, I moved on to the wings. The first step was the opening of holes on the lower wing part for the installation of the missile and drop tank pylons. I didn't open the centre line holes for the centre line drop tank because I didn't find any pictures of operational aircraft with a full load of armament and drop tanks (I guess the short deck of Ark Royal prevented this): IMAG2238 The top and lower wing parts were glued together: IMAG2239 IMAG2240 and the wings were, then, glued to the fuselage: IMAG2244 IMAG2245 The alignment around the exhaust area was not bad, though some panel lines were slightly out of alignment (this can be sorted out later). In the pictures you can see melted plastic coming out of the joints. This was done on purpose, since the melted plastic works as self-sealing material, easing the treatment of joints later: IMAG2246 IMAG2247 I also managed to completely eliminate any gaps on the wing roots: IMAG2248 IMAG2249 Since I was working in parallel on the other two British Phantoms, at this point it made sense to paint the inside of the aft fuselage auxiliary air intakes and the inner side of their doors. The colour of the doors is red and the intakes in the kit have no detail, so I opted to paint them red as well, though we could argue about this. The intakes had grey primer applied previously. Before painting the red colour, I masked around the intake area: IMAG2264 After painting, this was the result on the aux intakes: IMAG2265 and here are the inner sides of the aux intake doors: IMAG2268 To finish with, I glued in place some remaining parts. The front instrument panel cover and the nose air intakes: IMAG2270 The parts for the nose air intakes are really poor, just a squarish piece of plastic each. I'll have to sand them to shape later. These are possibly the poorest parts of the kit up to now. The IP cover was glued in place with CA. The idea was to avoid damaging the paint job. However it was a bad choice because: there's no margin for errors when glueing with CA the paint job gets damaged anyway Fortunately, I managed to place the part in the right position in the few seconds before CA became rock-hard. I also glued in place the part with the nose gear well: IMAG2271 There's a tonal difference between this part and the adjacent fuselage area because the later had already some primer applied. The alignment was not bad but there are slight steps on the sides that must be filled away and a small gap on the front, which was filled in with CA. I've already filled, sanded and polished all the joints. There are a few points were I'll have to apply a bit of putty but, apparently, not too many. Thanks for looking. Cheers Jaime 4
Jabba Posted July 5, 2015 Posted July 5, 2015 A lot of work and the effort can plainly be seen in the results that you have obtained. Well done. 1
jrlx Posted July 5, 2015 Author Posted July 5, 2015 (edited) Deleted duplicated post Edited July 11, 2015 by jrlx
jrlx Posted July 11, 2015 Author Posted July 11, 2015 Hello, Last week's work update. After closing the fuselage and wings, and sanding and polishing the seams, I moved on to masking the canopies. These are made up of four transparent pieces, since I'll assemble the canopies in the open position. Starting with the front wind-shield, the first step is to delimit the edges of each transparent panel with thin stripes of masking tape: IMAG2285 IMAG2286 After delimiting the edges, the centre of the panel is covered with tape: IMAG2287 This is repeated for each transparent panel, in sequence: IMAG2288 IMAG2289 The front wind-shield is now completely masked: IMAG2290 The process is repeated for the front canopy. First, the edges: IMAG2291 Then, the inner area: IMAG2292 The fixed part between cockpits only has small lateral windows: IMAG2293 The back canopy was also masked: IMAG2294 The external surfaces are now completely masked: IMAG2295 Since the canopies will be assembled in the open position and are relatively big pieces, I decided to mask their internal surfaces as well: IMAG2296 IMAG2297 These parts were then bathed in Aqua Gloss to seal the maskings. After completely dry, I mounted them on blu-tack blobs and put them on toothpicks, ready for painting: IMAG2316 I also cut the remaining clear part from the sprue: the gun-sight. It can be seen on the top right corner of the sprue, in the following picture: IMAG2313 To avoid damaging the part, I used a saw, followed by x-acto blades to remove the excess plastic (the same technique used for removing the canopy parts, as per a previous post in this thread). I masked the cockpit area again, in order to repair some damages inflicted on the black paint while glueing the fuselage and cockpit parts together: IMAG2320 After this, I painted the canopy parts with the interior black colour: IMAG2323 and repaired the paint job around the cockpit: IMAG2325 Having done this, I moved on to the main air intakes. These were painted off-white (Gunze H316) with about 6 inches around the intake edges painted with the camouflage colour (Extra Dark Sea Grey). I started by painting the white colour: IMAG2326 This was left to dry for a day. Then I masked the intakes for painting the 6-inch wide band of EDSG around the edges. 6 inches is about 2.1 mm at 1/72. First, I applied a 2.1 mm wide stripe of masking tape, as a spacer: IMAG2341 then, applied tape for protecting the already painted white: IMAG2342 And finally, removed the 2.1 mm-wide spacer and concluded the masking of the white area: IMAG2343 This process was repeated for the intake ramps. First, I applied the 2.1 mm-wide spacer: IMAG2338 Then, applied the first piece of masking for protection of the white area: IMAG2339 And finally, removed the spacer and finished the masking: IMAG2340 Here are the intake parts, ready for painting: IMAG2344 After painting the EDSG areas and removing the masking, I got this: IMAG2347 Since the white is gloss and only had about 24 hours to dry, it wasn't completely cured. So, the masking tape marred the white finish, leaving an imprint of its sticky side surface texture. This is quite common when the paint is not properly cured. Fortunately, this can't be seen after assembling the intakes. The tape was only on for about 2 hours (I was also masking and painting the intakes of my other two British Phantoms). On an external surface, care must be taken to avoid this: leave gloss colours to dry for at least 48 hours, limit the area of application of tape (use blu-tack if possible, or cling film), and limit as much as possible the time the tape is in contact with the painted surface. Flat or satin colours are less prone to being damaged by tape. I only use Tamiya tape. Thanks for looking. Jaime 2
jrlx Posted July 19, 2015 Author Posted July 19, 2015 Hello, Update with last week's work. I was ready to assemble the main air intakes when I noticed that the front edge of the lower wing part would be seen through the intake openings: IMAG2365 This wouldn't be realistic, of course. The real thing can be seen in this picture: http://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co.uk/phantom/full/raf99326.jpg I decided to copy delta7's idea from his WIP in this GB (link here). Thanks for the inspiration and I hope delta7 doesn't mind my using it. So, using Photoshop I scaled down the picture of the real intake I printed several of them for both intakes: IMAG2369 Then I carved out the plastic where I will create the intake tubing: IMAG2366 This is a test fit just to show how it will look like: IMAG2370 To create the missing intake tubing, I decided to mould it using milliput: IMAG2371 IMAG2372 The milliput was left to dry overnight and then sanded and polished to shape: IMAG2375 In preparation for painting, I primed the milliput with Tamiya's XF-19 Sky Grey. The remaining primer was applied to the fuselage seams, to check any defects. When the primer dried, I checked the seams and applied putty to improve the defective ones: IMAG2377 IMAG2378 Putty was also applied to sink marks in the landing gear parts: IMAG2382 Then I painted the milliput with the intake tubing white colour: IMAG2385 While the paint dried, I scraped the misalignments in the main gear wells, using a curved scalpel blade: IMAG2386 IMAG2387 The port well is the worst one and will need some further treatment. When the milliput paint was dry, I applied gloss varnish in preparation for a dark wash. The objective was to darken the intake tubing and make it as tonally near as possible to the picture. Gloss varnish was also applied to the other intake parts. After the varnish dried, I applied the wash: IMAG2389 The wash was cleaned with cotton swabs and water after 10 minutes: IMAG2393 IMAG2395 Now I was ready to assemble the intakes. Here are the parts for the starboard intake: IMAG2399 First, I glued the pictures to the ends of the intakes, using super-glue: IMAG2400 A test fit of the intake plastic parts showed a gap between these parts and the lower wing part. To fill this gap, I used pieces cut from a 0.5 mm plastic sheet: IMAG2401 IMAG2402 Then I glued the intake ramps: IMAG2403 Before glueing the remaining parts, I glued the pitot tubes: IMAG2407 Finally, I glued the outer intake parts: IMAG2409 Here is the final result, with the pictures in the end of the intakes: IMAG2410 IMAG2411 I'm not very happy with the results. There are some discontinuities, the extra tubing made out of milliput is not perfect and there's a tonal difference between the picture and the intake interior. Funnily, It looks better in the pictures than in real life. What do you think? Thanks for looking Jaime 8
philp Posted July 19, 2015 Posted July 19, 2015 Love the fake intake idea. Might steal this one myself. 1
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