RF-111C 6 Sqn. RAAF Base Amberley 88 - completed

[Woodziee]

Now she's starting to look the part. Loved the Camo scheme on the Pig.

[Graeme H]

8 hours ago, trickyrich said:

thanks, and speaking of painting......

 

 

just a sneak peek! Plus to go with the rest of the model, the HB painting instructions is wrong!

 

 

Who would have thought that, imagine a Kit manufacturer getting so much wrong with the kit then stuffing up the painting instructions

You are beating it into shape though

 

One big question I have, was the inside of the main U/C door painted with the red and black as you have and the 1:1 restored one also has?

was this always the standard? I found one photo that seems to suggest that it was all black on the inside as well as the outside.

[trickyrich]

7 hours ago, modelling minion said:

Nice job on the painting Rich it looks great, not like Hobby Boss to get the instructions wrong!

 

5 hours ago, Graeme H said:

 

 

Who would have thought that, imagine a Kit manufacturer getting so much wrong with the kit then stuffing up the painting instructions

You are beating it into shape though

 

One big question I have, was the inside of the main U/C door painted with the red and black as you have and the 1:1 restored one also has?

was this always the standard? I found one photo that seems to suggest that it was all black on the inside as well as the outside.

 

Hmmm who would have thought that HB could have let the paint scheme slip by without adding their little bit of extra!!!! Plus of course the decals are all wrong as well. If only I had known at the start, or better still if the reviewers had have known what they were reviewing!!!

 

No the RAAF ones were red inside with black none slip panels. I think they were originally fitted because you had to climb in there before shutdown to fit the locking collar to the speed brake actuator, else it would droop down when hydraulics were lost. Plus it gave you something to stand on when you were working in there, along with the added feature you could hide in there when it started raining on exercise! The black may have been on the USAF ones, but for sure all the RAAF ones were red with the black non-slip panels.

 

I'll have an update up in the morning, bit the painting is nearly completed, ran out of the Dark Green, plus I had to correct some pattern mistakes and some filler issues! There is a very slight chance I might finish her before I head back to normal work on Tuesday, if not she'll definitely be finished by the final weekend of the build.

[Hewy]

Good job on the painting rich, finally at this stage you seem to get a bit happier with it don't you?, light at the end of the tunnell , i should complete mine this weekend too,hopfully

Glynn

[trickyrich]

13 minutes ago, Hewy said:

Good job on the painting rich, finally at this stage you seem to get a bit happier with it don't you?, light at the end of the tunnell , i should complete mine this weekend too,hopfully

Glynn

 

thanks...yeah all the moaning and growning starts to be forgotten about now.......well if I don't think about the decals!  I still hope and pray someone will finally produce a good one but won't hold my breath on that one!

 

You still have 3 weekends to go, unfortunately I head back to work next week so I loose a weekend (well a full 8 days of modelling) so my plan is to get as much done as I can by Tuesday. Have managed to get quite a bit done today, will have an update up in the morning.

[Arniec]

That looks great Rich. Can't wait to see her finished.

I just noticed that the airbrake was red with black on the inside. So I learned a thing today. If I hadn't seen it it would have been white.

Luckely you have corrected me.

 

Cheers,

[trickyrich]

I guess they painted them red because they are considered part of the flight control system, all hidden surfaces are painted red. I even had a wee sleep/power nap on them after a particularly big/long night on exercise in Singapore!  

[trickyrich]

…well sort of!

 

I ran out of paint when doing the dark green and the paint I was using was super thinner down so I haven’t managed to get the proper finish so it will need redoing. That said I’m happy with the paint job so far…even if the pattern the instruction gave was wrong! HB stuffing this up as well.....who would have thought!

 

 

One thing I did find though was some unwanted filler sink marks on the nose, plus I still had issues with the joins around the canopy. Some further masking, filling and sanding sorted them out.

 

 

I gave these areas a quick coat with the same colour from another manufacturer, this will help when I redo the dark green.

 

 

Whilst I was waiting for the filler to dry I decided to paint the undersides of the wings. I managed to get a uneven finish I was after to help take the solid black feel from the wings, but boy is it flat! For the final clear coat I may try a flat/semi-Gloss mix to try and make it not so flat. The actual finish was not really flat or Semi-Gloss, but something inbetween on the real thing. I may even have to slightly polish the clear coat to help remove the flatness…will have to see how the final coat goes on.

 

 

So after a few touchup’s and reshaping of the camo pattern it was time for the rest of the Black undersurfaces. Again it way to flat but she really looks like the RF-111 I remember!

 

 

Altogether she does look great. I’m super happy with the look of the Recon door, it’s depth is just right! I just need to redo the dark green, which I’m buying tomorrow, so should have that done and maybe even the clear coat by tomorrow night. It should be pretty straight forward then to the end. As I’m back to my normal work again I’ll only have the last few day before the finish to complete her……..I should make it!.

 

 

And her little brother showed up….gosh she’s a big aircraft.

 

 

Oh an a set of masks and decals for a Ukrainian 1/48th Su-24 in the “Digital” scheme showed up……something to sit beside her!!!

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

That is looking great Rich 

 

[TonyTiger66]

That looks really good Rich  !

 

The camouflage looks superb, very nice demarcation lines.

 

When they were repainted in grey, did they keep the red on the interior surfaces? I haven't seen that before, it looks like an effective warning!

 

Best regards

TonyT

[Jabba]

Although I have not said anything yet I have been following this build from the start. I am amazed at the detail that has been put into this model especially the Recce door, which is really all from memory. The intricacy of the detail has been sublime with all the corrections that you have carried out not just on the basic build, but also with the painting and other things that Hobbyboss has got wrong. I look forward to the completion of the build.

[Jabba]

1 hour ago, TonyTiger66 said:

 

When they were repainted in grey, did they keep the red on the interior surfaces? I haven't seen that before, it looks like an effective warning!

 

 

I know that the USAF aircraft kept the red inner surfaces when their aircraft went grey, so I think that the RAAF ones were kept the same.

[Hewy]

I agree rich, its all gonna be worth it in the end,a really nice 111 done the hard way, i for one could  have spent a lot more time on mine if not for the corrections and other lazy hobby boss mistakes all in all im happy with mine and you are with yours the way its looking, i think we'll both be over the line this week 

Glynn

[trickyrich]

7 hours ago, TonyTiger66 said:

That looks really good Rich  !

 

The camouflage looks superb, very nice demarcation lines.

 

When they were repainted in grey, did they keep the red on the interior surfaces? I haven't seen that before, it looks like an effective warning!

 

Best regards

TonyT

 

yeap even the grey one kept all the inside surfaces of the control surfaces red.

 

6 hours ago, Jabba said:

Although I have not said anything yet I have been following this build from the start. I am amazed at the detail that has been put into this model especially the Recce door, which is really all from memory. The intricacy of the detail has been sublime with all the corrections that you have carried out not just on the basic build, but also with the painting and other things that Hobbyboss has got wrong. I look forward to the completion of the build.

 

thanks, I was really surprised just how little there was out there on the RF-111C, I know there were only 4 but I would have thought there would have been something. It would have been a lot harder to make the recon door without the cast 1/72nd one I found, but even that was incorrect in a lot of places. Least now I have a door ready if someone decides to release a correct and accurate F-111 in the future.

 

it's been a long and quite frustrating build at times (ok most of the time! ) , and it really shouldn't have been. An hour on the internet and HB could have corrected all their mistakes and produced a winner. Instead the wasted all their time on a pair of detailed engines that no one will ever see but can't provide intake inlets to the engines or get the correct number on attachment mounts for the exhaust cans! The mistakes with the decals are just plain lazy or couldn't be bothered!

 

4 hours ago, Hewy said:

I agree rich, its all gonna be worth it in the end,a really nice 111 done the hard way, i for one could  have spent a lot more time on mine if not for the corrections and other lazy hobby boss mistakes all in all im happy with mine and you are with yours the way its looking, i think we'll both be over the line this week 

Glynn

 

I could have spent so much more time on her, but being away for over 8 weeks really hurt modelling time on her and I'm back to work tomorrow one my normal roster (8/6) so I only have the last 4 days of the build to finish her. You managed to nail the canopy, she looks good and the fit is really nice, mine I will admit is a bit rushed! Hopefully it'll be worth all the time and effort (and money!!) put into her. I'm still hoping someone will release a proper and correct model/s of the F-111 in 1/48th. 

 

It'll be interesting to see how she'll like beside a similar scale Su-24!! 

[trickyrich]

someone just answered my prays!!!!!! 

 

no they haven't released a new accurate F-111, but instead I have finally managed to get a set of the NovaScale 1/48th F-111C decals for the SEA camouflaged scheme!!   I have been looking for these for ages and had almost given up. The HB ones are wrong in so many ways, being the colours for a start! 

 

I now have to wait to next week before I can decal. It's going to be cutting things a bit fine.......but don't care, just happy that I've finally got the decals I need.

[trickyrich]

I thought I’d better update this to where I’d left her on Monday before I headed back to work the next day.

 

I finally got the paint I needed and patched up the bit where I’d done some repairs plus a couple of errors in the pattern.

 

 

Once dry a coat of clear.......in which doing I discovered I really do need a proper spray booth, and old box doesn’t quite cut it! So I have a new one on the way!

 

Once that was dry it was onto the decals, or so I thought. And HB struck again with the amazing research (I didn’t help here either), more on that later. Needless to say that task was soon abandoned while I wait for some proper decals to arrive. As mentioned in the last post, the stars were finally aligned for me on this build as the decals I have been searching for over 6 months finally turned up on evilBay. It would have to be one of the fastest purchases I’ve ever made! Now I can really say goodbye to the HB rubbish!  

 

So moving on I decided to do the panel lines, once the decals are on I can touch up those spots.

 

 

Something really noticeable on F-111’s, well for sure of our ones, was the all the whitish/grey goop that use to seep out of the joins under the wings and fuselage. This stuff was used to help seal the fuel tank panels, the Framies played with stuff, and seriously nasty stuff this stuff was. The only time you ever saw an F-111 without it was either just out of major service out for special occasion. F-111’s did have a bad habit of leaking fuel!  So a bit more masking and some Lt Ghost Grey.

 

 

It doesn’t look to bad, it was actually harder to do than I imagine it should have been, just hard to get the right effect.

 

For those who may not know the F-111 had a Monocoque airframe in which the skin of the fuselage was an integral of the airframe structure. The fuselage fuel tanks were just sectioned off areas of the airframe, there were no internal fuel bladders. Just lots of special sealing goop was used on the inside and with panel seals, the same stuff was used in the wings. This was highly carcinogenic and caused, and still is causing, serious health issues with those poor guy’s from “3AD Reseal/Deseal” who had to climb into the tanks to pick it out!

 

Next up the drop tanks, I fixed up my mistake with the tank shoe, they were primed then given a coat of Dk. Green, I forgot to do the actual pylons themselves! They look good when fitted.

 

 

 

Ok back to the decaling fiasco.  I am soooo embarrassed to say this but I came close to making a really embarrassing mistake here. For some reason I had thought the SEA scheme was for a 6 Sqn aircraft and that HB had again done one of their “research” mistakes with the colour of the Sqn flash on the tail. The fin flash for 6 Sqn aircraft in SEA colours should be “Insignia Blue” and 1 Sqn was Yellow (for interest sake the old 2 Sqn Canberra’s were Red).  

 

So I had assumed that they meant for it to have been a 6 Sqn aircraft so a So a masking job was required to fix it, I would use the Sqn badge from the decals. I used tracing paper to get the size and shape right.

 

 

I was quite happy with this, however I hadn’t noticed the errors of my ways yet!

 

 

Next up I added the Sqn badge to the flash, I needed to cut this out of the original decal. For some reason it looked a wee bit rough in the photo, think it was just the edge. It looked ok in place, I still hadn’t noticed yet.

 

 

So on to the rest of the decals, I first needed to check that the orientation of the Australian flag was correct in the instructions, so back to the reference photos. It was while I was looking at a photo of a 6 Sqn aircraft that I noticed that the Sqn badge on the aircraft in the photo. I thought “gee the silly buggers put the wrong one on the display aircraft!”.

 

CRAP!   The silly bugger was me, though I think I can rightly blame HB for that stuff up.  The Sqn badge was for a 1 Sqn aircraft, they have a Kookaburra for their emblem, 6 Sqn a Boomerang!

 

This is where evilBay and a strong cup of coffee saved the day! Well at least now I have all the correct decals I need plus the special 2-tone camo serial number ones for the tail. With luck the new decals will just go straight over the top without any touching up required before hand.

 

I now only have 4 days to complete her and there’s still quite a bit to do! I’m still not sure what to do with the Recon cameras, I had though of just putting the covers over each opening, but then I’d really need to add all the other covers on the rest of the aircraft else it look odd, and that would take quite a bit of time. Adding the cameras would look great but add just as much time. I’ll just have to figure it out as I go.

 

[Graeme H]

Can feel your pain, great work so far

 

why do you only have 4 days, are you sailing off again?

[Hewy]

Good work rich ,the camo has turned out beautifully, and the start of the decaling after a little hiccup I'm sure all will be well,i like th goop

Glynn

[Jabba]

I think that we have all been there, thinking that the kit has provided one thing when it should have been another, only to find out just in time when looking at something completely different that the kit was actually correct. Hopefully you will be able to get this one finished in the 4 days that you have left.

[trickyrich]

6 hours ago, Graeme H said:

Can feel your pain, great work so far

 

why do you only have 4 days, are you sailing off again?

 

no I'm back at work, I work a 8/6 day roster, so am away at the moment and don't get home till Wednesday night. So I only will have 4 modelling days till the end on the GB! 

[trickyrich]

Gosh all I can say this is a bit of a struggle now!

 

I’ve made a lot of progress but I still have an awful lot to do and am still running into the odd issue or two!

 

Ok my lifesaver decals arrived. Exactly what I needed but not without issue, more on that later.

 

 

Plus this glorious device showed up as well…..it’ll save my lungs, but may be not my hearing, boy it’s noisy!!!

 

 

Ok the decals and the tail! Will again perfect case of “check your references”!! I used a backing decal from the new set to help me position correctly where the fin flash should be!! I was so far out…..plus silly me besides using the wrong squadron insignia, it turns out they didn’t have the insignia on the tail for this period.  I worked on them for nearly 5 years and didn’t notice the tail markings……I’ll blame old age for this one!

 

 

Ok masking and sanding time…….

 

 

..ok now looks ok, painted the pylons the right colour this time as well……

 

 

….add some decals…..well for the serial number 4 decals over top of each other!!! While the decals are correct and are actually quite nice to use the printing is not the best. The solid colours are not solid and nether are the coloured serial numbers, The print quality is quite course and close up the look a bit rough, but at let the main colours are correct and accurate, unlike the HB rubbish! Unfortunately I had to use the HB rubbish in a couple of places.  

 

 

So even with a gloss clear coat the decals still showed up noticeably. A word of warning with these decals, be VERY careful using decal solution with them, they’ll pretty much dissolve with it! I did have to use setting solution on all on them but very carefully!!!!!!!!!

 

 

A coat of flat clear helped a lot, that and careful use of setting solution after the decals were on made them almost disappear.

 

 

I started work on the cameras for the recon bay, I decided against just fitting covers, why go to all the trouble of making the camera bays if I was going to just cover them up. Fingerprint is not included!

 

 

 

Ok big issue, I removed the canopy masks to find the dust bunnies have gone into overdrive!! Don’t know what to do!!!!!!

 

 

 

I may have to cut the canopies open so I can remove them, not something I want to do at all. Will have to think about it.

 

At this stage I’m not sure if I’m going to make it or not, I still have an awful lot to do and very little time to do it. Cutting the canopy open is going to kill it for me! I’ve done a bit more than can be seen in the photos, but it’s going to be so close, I may have to cut a few corners, not because I want to, just because I want to be done with this beast!! It’s no longer a labour of love that’s for sure!

[Arniec]

She is looking impressive. A pitty about the dust. Hope you solve the problem.

 

Cheers,

[exdraken]

very impressive!

 

may be you could move your bunnies by loading your modell electro-statically on ones side.... somebody (you??) used a similar method in this GB already!

[Jabba]

As others have said, what you have carried out in the face of adversity in very impressive. As for the dust sorry but I have no idea how to get rid of it. I do hope that you find a solution that does not include cutting the canopy off. I wish you good fortune.

[trickyrich]

 

 

 

hmmm I sort of think I may have to open one side at least, it was not uncommon to see one with the pilots side canopy partially open. the worst that could happen is I have to touch up the paint around it, plus I have the spare vacform canopies.

 

I sort of now have a wee bit of extra time to spend on her, I though my brother was passing through tomorrow from Sth America, but it actually Monday. So more time to spend in the dungeon!! Now just have to stop getting distracted....the Mirage 2000C's control surfaces mounts on the main part of the wing are in the wrong position, i'm going to have to rebuild the section for the control surfaces!! Whilst I was waiting for part to dry I started some work on the Mirage, this one will be a problem child now as well.

 

If I leave cutting open the canopy til last then I may actually finish her in time.....maybe!