Hoops Posted October 11, 2020 Share Posted October 11, 2020 Good Afternoon, Some work in progress for one of the attractive Arctic Aggressors from Eielson AFB in Alaska. Decals will be from TwoBobs. I've started with the Hasegawa kit in 1/72 scale and am doing some light work to address some of the weaknesses of the kit and a bit of extra. I'm not trying to super detail this aircraft, but out of the box, it is a bit simple for my tastes. P1030808 by J Hooper, on Flickr Some detail added to the glareshields and updating the gun muzzle vents to late type. As molded, the kit has the early vents, not accurate for this aircraft. I also opened up the muzzle recess a bit. I've found that the canopy is a bit too narrow, so a small strip of .12mm sheet on the right side smooths the transition nicely, once painted the canopy also hides it well. P1030813 by J Hooper, on Flickr A bit of detail added to the ejection seats, there won't be much else visible once the canopy is on the aircraft. P1030810 by J Hooper, on Flickr I cut the fuselage reinforcing plates out of .12mm sheet on my hobby die cutter (Silhouette Portrait). This was my first attempt cutting styrene with it, and it worked out really well. The panel lines on the kit around the base of the tail are correct for a F-16A/B, but not a C/D so I filled and rescribed as appropriate. The tail lights were drilled out, and filled with some clear sprue. P1030820 by J Hooper, on Flickr Vent added to the vertical tail and the incorrect longitudinal panel line filled on the horizontal stabs. P1030816 by J Hooper, on Flickr Intake and exhaust plugs added to use the artwork provided by the Twobobs decals for those plugs. Also simplifies the detailing! The wide mouth intake was borrowed from a Hasegawa F-16CJ kit. P1030819 by J Hooper, on Flickr A cross section of the ordnance, under the wing pylon is a scratch build Elta EL/L-8212 lightweight jamming pod. Everything else is sourced from Hasegawa weapons sets. P1030815 by J Hooper, on Flickr Straight from the box, the Hasegawa wing tanks are more of a vertical oval. To fix that I sanded down the mating surfaces until they had a circular cross section and added some appropriate detail to the aft of the tanks. P1030814 by J Hooper, on Flickr This aircraft has the late type lightweight wheels, which nobody has really done well in kit form. I sent the artwork to the die cutter to make the face and added the hub out 1.2mm rod. It could use some bolt heads as well, and I considered using stretched sprue for it, but in the end decided that the effort would not be worth the result. P1030812 by J Hooper, on Flickr Detail added to the main gear well, added a vent just aft of that. I filled in the inaccurately shaped chaff/flare buckets, and rescribed appropriately sized ones. Beginning in 1987 build years, the aircraft had four of them, so those were added forward on the port side as well. The panels around the tail hook were also die cut. Next will be to paint the cockpit and assemble the major parts. Cheers and thanks for looking! Hoops 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billn53 Posted October 11, 2020 Share Posted October 11, 2020 Nice attention to detail! I gotta get me one of those Silhouette cutters. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoops Posted October 12, 2020 Author Share Posted October 12, 2020 23 hours ago, billn53 said: Nice attention to detail! I gotta get me one of those Silhouette cutters. There is a bit of a learning curve to using vector drawing programs. I use Inkscape, a pretty powerful freeware bit of software, and it's pretty good. I've had the die cutter for a few years now, but really only recently have I started using it more. P1030822 by J Hooper, on Flickr I primed the exhaust black, and used the Silhouette to cut out masks for the exhaust plug, the petals and the canopy. There was another piece not pictured that I cut to mask the intake plug as well. P1030827 by J Hooper, on Flickr Wing root reinforcing plates cut with the same run, now applied. I still need to scribe a few lines in them, but I'm waiting for the glue to dry. P1030823 by J Hooper, on Flickr Cockpit painted, dry brushed to highlight details, decals, wash applied and installed. The ejection seats seem to have the black sheepskin seat covers applied in real life, so I painted the cushions black. RAM panels around the nose RWR antennas were also cut on the Silhouette and now applied. P1030826 by J Hooper, on Flickr Overall shot, next step is do spray a coat of primer to check for any flaws that need fixing. Then comes camouflage. I've scanned the instructions into the computer and copied the pattern to print a set of masks out. After that I'll just cut the masks and use to paint the aircraft. Cheers, and thanks for looking, Hoops 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
busnproplinerfan Posted October 12, 2020 Share Posted October 12, 2020 Nice detail work on such a small model. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoops Posted August 1, 2021 Author Share Posted August 1, 2021 (edited) This build has been finished for a long time, I finally took some photos of it: Cheers, Hoops Edited August 1, 2021 by Hoops Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serkan Sen Posted August 13, 2021 Share Posted August 13, 2021 simply perfect 🙂 Serkan 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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