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Hasegawa YF-21 from Macross Plus 1/72


Shin

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Hello there! My entry into the Movies & TV category is going to be a Hasegawa produced 1/72 scale YF-21 variable fighter from the anime series/movie Macross Plus. This will be a companion piece to the YF-19 I completed a few months ago (link below). I am planning on making this an in flight model, tentatively in the same orientation as the YF-19 so they look like they are flying in formation. I actually bought this kit well over a year ago along with the called out Mr. Hobby Aqueous paints. I'm mainly a Mission Models/Tamiya paint user, so am hoping the Mr. Hobby paint works as well as other people say they do. I'm planning a clean jet so no or extremely limited weathering. 

 

Based on my experience with the YF-19, I'm expecting this model to fit mostly well with some areas needing touch up with filling and light rescribing. I think the biggest decision will be whether to use the supplied decals or trying to mask off some of the larger compound areas of color blocks. 

 

I'm still a relatively new modeler, so any tips would be appreciated once I get going. I'll be wrapping up a couple projects before starting this, but thought I'd offer up box and sprue shots until then. 

 

Thanks for looking!

 

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The contents were six royal blue sprues in one plastic bag and a clear sprue in another. The clear sprue contains the canopy, sensor lenses, and navigation light covers.

 

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As you may be able to tell from the decals, there are a lot of curves and demarked areas to fit in. I'm strongly considering painting all the parts covered by the larger decals. Decals are dated 2002. 

 

Hopefully will begin soon!

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/30/2019 at 2:59 AM, whitestar12chris said:

I keep being tempted to buy one of these Macross kits, so far ive resisted but for how long LOL

do it! In my limited experience they build like jets, but with a few more fiddlier pieces. 

 

Finally was able to give this a start! Like many aircraft it begins with the cockpit. I painted the pilot up and attempted to use the decals for the visors, but the first one disintegrated. I painted in a purple visor to give it a little interest and match a screencap from the show. This tub is fairly undetailed so I tried to use the small brush to add in some buttons and details. Most of the cockpit will be covered by the hard surface canopy, so not much will be seen in the end. I had to shave the seat a little bit and even then I'm not sure I put the pieces in the correct places. 

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But everything seems to fit alright. The pilots legs wouldn't have extended to the foot pedals either way. The HUD piece on the left actually attaches to the inside of the canopy.

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The next step involves the top half of the fuselage, putting in bottoms in the intake bleedouts (?) (only leftist most one done in the top photo) and then some thruster looking things at the back. As you can see there are some fairly large gaps that will have to filled. 

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The fuselage has an interesting twist - a top and bottom half are joined, and then there is another bottom piece that attaches. 

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The extra detail in the middle part could perhaps be exposed in some extreme modding situation for this variable fighter, but the extra piece results in a large gap when looking in from the back of the jet. Light has difficulty getting in and you can only see it directly from the back, but I still may want to close it off with some plastic stock.

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And finally a quick look at the general shape with the large pieces dry fit together. 

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My biggest concern right now are the panel lines. Lots of them seem to be narrow or shallow. Rescribing is one of my most hated parts of modeling as I have trouble staying within the lines, so I'm debating whether to gamble and see if they'll hold up under primer and paint. 

Edited by Shin
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Hey Dazz, thanks for watching! I will not be weathering this one, to match the YF-19 I made earlier.

 

Was able to make some more progress on this today. First step was to close up the wheel bays. The model is only designed for landing gear deployed, but hacking off the tabs and then using little bits of sprue as tabs to keep the doors in place seemed to work.

 

I lopped off a little too much of the front third of the wheel door, but there was going to be a small hole anyway. I used Apoxie sculpt for the first time to fill this. Will let it harden to sand and scribe tomorrow.

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The next step was to close any gaps along the landing gear doors with putty or sprue pieces. Also filled the gaps from the last post around the thrusters. 

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We now get to what hopefully is the worst fitting part of the model. The side panels involves long pieces that run along the fuselage that you fit front and rear facing laser cannons into. These cannon pieces leave giant gaps. The smaller gaps I'm trying to use plastic putty to fill, but I will probably have to use plasticard to fill the larger holes. 

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So here's where I am right now. The wings and stabilizers are each two part pieces, these fit really well. I put one of the gun pods together as well, seen on the left. 

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The next step will be to finish filling those large cannon gaps, attaching all the large pieces to the body, and then filling and sanding anything that needs it. But it should look like a jet in the next update.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Progress has been slow recently, party due to life, partly due to how ill-fitting a lot of these parts ended up being. As mentioned I'm a relatively new modeler, and I needed to bust out plasticard to fill gaps for the first time. 

 

The side panels I mentioned in the last post are a disaster. In addition to the major gaps around the gunports (left photo, black plasticard to fill a gap, and unpictured, large steps I filled with apoxie-sculpt), I had to choose between lining up the rear of the piece with the back of the jet or having the top/bottom fit closer with the rest of the fuselage. I couldn't fix it if I misaligned the rear, so decided to bite the bullet and deal with the resulting huge step. The right photo shows the step after filled with apoxie-sculpt and sanded down. This was present on both sides. 

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In between filling and sanding sessions I also managed to drill through the bottom of the jet and install a plastic tube that will be used to house a brass rod for in flight display. I tried my best to match the angle with my YF-19, but I guess in the end I can bend the brass rod if it's a little off.

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After that I glued in the pilot, attached the HUD to the inside of the canopy, masked the clear parts using tape, then secured the canopy to the fuselage. There is a little bit of a gap where the right side of the canopy doesn't quite line up with the body, but I think it'll be overlookable as the canopy and fuselage will be different colors and separated by a black line. It may also be hard to see, but I cut out navigation light areas on the wingtips (both have a forward and rear light). I read on another build that the supplied plastic pieces don't line up with the existing lines, so I was a bit conservative and left material I could cut out later when it comes time to fit the lights. With that, ready to prime!

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And finally to the paint booth, sprayed with Mission Models grey primer. This is supposed to be laid down slightly wet, which meant that pieces of dust and gunk had a chance to settle onto the primer. These will need to be sanded out. In addition I already see places that need further filler and/or sanding.

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Lastly while all this was drying I broke out the Mr. Hobby Aqueous colors called out in the instructions for the body and shot a test mule for a color test. They suggest 95% Cobalt Blue H35 to 5% Black. I just realized I went 90/10 for the test, oh well. This is on the left side of the wing. Initially the color seemed a bit purple to me, but I think I'll stick with it. The whole jet is to be painted this color, but in the photo on the right is the same mixture with a few drops of FS15044 Blue (H326) that I'm going to use for some of the panels to add variation and accents. The difference is subtle in some angles and more pronounced in others. I may go a little darker, we'll see. For the test I thinned with Tamiya X-20A, but when I do the real thing will use Mr. Color Levelling Thinner.

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So looks like a bit of filling and sanding in my near future, and then I can apply a basecoat! 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Quick update for this one. Got the base coat on and masked a few parts for accent and detail coloring. I added a few drops of Tamiya blue to the above mix and I think it overpowered the pruple-ish color - the plane ended up a lot more dark blue than I wanted. Oh well, I can live with that. The unfortunate part is that when taking off the masking, some paint/primer pulled up in chunks. I also noticed that while sanding the primer it came off in small patches rather than giving a nice feathered edge. I'll have to test more, but I may be sticking with Stynelrez for the future. 

 

This also has me rethinking masking and painting as much as I originally wanted to. The canopy painting is done luckily, which was the main part I wanted to avoid using a decal on. Now all the blues and greys on the jet are matching, I really only have to worry about the yellow areas. I may try applying the complex yellow decals first, and if they don't cooperate, then I'll mask and spray all the yellow. It may be all or nothing as I don't trust myself to be able to match the yellow color.

 

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Everything major painted up!

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Base blue: Mr. Hobby Aqueous H35 Cobalt Blue (19 drops), H2 Black (1 drop), Tamiya XF-8 (3 drops)

Accent blue: same as above plus Aqueous H326 FS1504 (4 drops)

Grey: Mission Models MMP-118 FS36270 Medium Grey with a touch (less than a drop) of MMP-048 Blue

Burner cans/interior of thruster fins: Mission Models MMP-001 Metallic Burnt Iron, plus Molotow chrome pen for the thruster accents

Thruster fin exterior: Vallejo Metal Color 77.723 Exhaust Manifold

 

Also of note: the intakes are painted black interior. If I had spares I would have liked to chop off the back and slap some turbine faces in there, would have added some nice detail versus looking into a dark pit. 

 

I was really tempted to try and decal right over the paint, but after taping and fixing all the areas I'm not sure my paintwork is smooth enough for that , so will be shooting a gloss coat. 

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Another quick update - I decided to be kind of lazy and not gloss before decals. Rubbed the whole thing down with a wipe and then began with some small ones on the bottom. I then attempted to do the large yellow one around the intake because it had to conform to the jagged design and then wrap around the side. The top matched up great, but it was impossible to match both the panel line going around the side and actually conform to the curve. So to keep all the yellow color matching, paint it was. 

 

I masked the intake edges with really small strips of Tamiya tape. For the round part up top that would hold the antennae I cut a bunch of tiny yellow tape strips and layered them around. For the design running behind the cockpit I photocopied the decals, cut them out, and attached them to the model with blu-tac.

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This was followed by taping around the design with yellow Tamiya tape for the straight lines and their vinyl type bendy tape for the curves.

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It worked pretty good! Only a little bit of touch up needed from overspray - I'll have to shoot slightly less wet next time around masking. It currently looks like this:

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My only experience shooting yellow was on propeller blade tips, which were a watery mess. I took the advice of applying a "white" layer before shooting and also did some testing thinning and shooting yellow on my mule. Stynelrez white primer shoots like trash (at least my bottle), especially when compared to how well the grey/black work - it just clogs up the airbrush after a few seconds. I mixed it with the grey primer to get a very light grey that would spray a little better. It still tip tried pretty quickly, but I was able to work with it. My yellow of choice was Mission Models 007 Yellow. The only yellow decals I ended up using were those at the ends of the gun pods (upper right of the photo). That little square of yellow behind the canopy is a piece of tape I missed when taking the photo hah. 

 

My plan is to finish decaling, paint a few details I missed, and then apply a gloss coat for the panel line wash. At some point I'll also have to build the stand...

Edited by Shin
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thanks for the comments all!

 

decals went on a couple nights ago, intakes attached, and gloss coat sprayed on tonight, but with a couple minor setbacks. The first of which I ripped off part of a decal trying to touch up some paint with masking. I wrestled with how to approach fixing this, as it took off half of two large block numbers. I ended up getting a small pointy brush and trying my best to recreate the missing numbers -- think it came out OK. The second is while glossing tonight I removed a bit of paint in two areas - one in which when I tried removing a hair lodged on the fusulage, and another putting my hand on a still wet part (the Mr. Color Leveling thinner made the underlying coats a little pliable). 

 

So I'll need to do a little paint touch up, but I can do that concurrently with my pin wish once the gloss has a chance to cure.

 

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Tamiya X-22 with Mr. Color Leveling thinner, roughly 40/60 ratio. It came out pretty thin and I ended up essentially shooting one wet coat, then overspraying with MLT neat afterwards. 

 

 

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Thanks for the reminder! Luckily I'm near the end of this build. Actually I would be done, if not for this at the almost last step:

 

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That is me probably fat fingering chrome paint onto the side of the fuselage as I painted and installed those lens things. Ugh... luckily none of the paint went on decals, but it affected both sides of the plane. I retouched the areas with the base color (it would have been better if I re-primed, but at this point too lazy) and it's waiting to dry before I slap on the final varnish over the affected areas. That said, this will probably be my last set of WIP photos.

 

A quick step by step of my base - I used the end of a large roll of paper taken from work. This one wasn't too bad, but I have some that are severely warped. To counter this I bought a very rigid 3.2mm styrene sheet to use as the bottom. I measured and cut the square, and then glued in the square tube in the center, along with some supports. I drilled a hole in the center of the paper end then slid it over, inserting the brass rod to make sure it was oriented straight up. This was taken off, then some weight was put in. I didn't have anything lying around the house this time so bought a bunch of washers from the hardware store and superglued them together and to the base. After this, I spread plastic bonder to the entire bottom of the paper end (it's made of high density poly-ethylene), and clamped the heck out of it. I also attempted to use this to fill the hole in the top around the tube. Two days later I went and sanded off the excess styrene around the base, and tube at the top. When I do this again I'll use putty to fill in the hole at the top, as the plastic bonding didn't sand too well. Then give it a spray of black and you're all done. 

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But back to the plane, pin wash was done with black enamel from Mig and then for my final coat I used the trusty Alclad Klear Cote. I have a Matte and a Light Sheen, and thought I wanted something in between, so I mixed it 50/50 and shot it through. It went on pretty well except for the one part where I accidently blasted it, but letting it try and trying again seemed to even it out. And man did this thing become a dust magnet after this. 

 

After that it was final details. 

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The sensor lenses are pretty cool because they have spaces drilled into them for you to put in some paint if you want to mimic sensors or whatever they are. I put in Tamiya clear red with a sewing needle tip. These pieces snapped in for the most part (I only had to sand down one), but some take a little pressure to snap in. So much so that I think doing this cracked the paint a bit (seen in the very first picture above under the chrome paint). The areas inside were painted with a Molotow chrome pen to give it some shine. 

 

Like I said above I saved sanding the wing navigation light holes to the end because a buildup I read said the plastic pieces didn't fit with the molded in lines. I'm not going to lie, this was really nerve racking, taking a metal file to an almost completed model. In the end it worked out OK, but the lights pretty much lined up with the existing lines and I would not have any issues if I had just cut these out at the beginning. Painted these Tamiya clear red on one side, then green and blue on the other. 

 

The clear parts are a real bummer in my copy of this kit - the larger forward wing sensor ones have dents on the them, and the inside of my canopy actually had a gouge in there - unfortunately in the small area that's actually shown through. There was no fixing that one though due to the area (it's in the bowl), so I'll have to live with it. 

 

The last detailing step was painting all the metal parts that I didn't want to do before the dull coat. I used Mission Models Burnt Iron, Cold-Rolled Steel, and Vallejo Metal Color for the intake bleedout area, the back of the gun pods, the laser gun barrels on the fusulage, the rear thruster things above the exhaust, and the tabs that will hold the stabilizers. Also painted the stabilizer lights with silver paint, and then clear red where needed. 

 

So that's pretty much the end of this WIP. After the dull coat touch up, I'll attach the remaining pieces and break out the nice camera. I'll probably throw a few shots in here, but until then, here she is. 

 

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Thanks for reading, and Happy Thanksgiving for those that celebrate it!

Edited by Shin
typo
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It's done! The exhaust nozzle fins were extremely fiddly and I was a bit overzealous using glue with the gun pods, but I'm calling it finished. 

 

Thanks for all the comments and encouragement in during the build!

 

Pics are in the gallery, but here's a bonus one:

 

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Edited by Shin
fixed pic
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