PATRICK FROM THE SANDS Posted July 15, 2022 Share Posted July 15, 2022 Hello Everybody! Continuing my USAF jets saga, here is the little F-5B from Italeri. Not a new kit, but quite decent. Two big issues I tried to tackle: - The wings are very thin (like the real bird) so the wheel wells are not deep enough: What I did was totally removing the whole wheel wells from each wings, leaving a large hole, glued in the extrados a thin plate of evergreen and re-construct the WW with the correct depth; after this the landing gear were installed but needs dramatically to be detailed (both main and nose); -the cockpit, a known issue in all Italeri kits at that scale: I did a new one almost from scratch, the most challenging parts are the separation between pilots and the mechanism to raise the canopies which is very complex and obviously oversimplified by Italeri. As I like camouflage "off the beaten tracks". I decided to represent an F-5B from the 405th TTW sporting an unusual version of the SEA for the F-5, the FS 30219 Dark Tan been replaced by a light beige color, but not everywhere. Also, the yellow band on the top of the fin is not completely painted. Unfortunately I have only one photo of the aircraft, right side: The 405th TTW bagde is home made, names on the canopies are fake because too small to read. So here is my version: Hope you will enjoy it! Have Fun SAFELY! 35 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wulfman Posted July 15, 2022 Share Posted July 15, 2022 A beautiful build, it looks like you have found a unique colour scheme ! Wulfman 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pantherhawk27263 Posted July 15, 2022 Share Posted July 15, 2022 What a wonderful build!! I love the F-5 family. They are so sleek and just some of the most beautiful aircraft ever designed and built. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vultures1 Posted July 15, 2022 Share Posted July 15, 2022 That looks great! The unorthodox camo scheme is really interesting and very well executed - well done 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
binbrook87 Posted July 15, 2022 Share Posted July 15, 2022 Great work! Very interesting colour scheme too... fabulous choice for something a little different. The Esci / Italeri F-5s in 1/72 scale are one of my all time favourite kits, they look spot on 👍 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F-32 Posted July 16, 2022 Share Posted July 16, 2022 That’s very cool, looks spot on 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry1954 Posted July 17, 2022 Share Posted July 17, 2022 This is an excellent build Patrick. The camouflage and the cockpit detail look superb. I'm especially interested in this part........ On 7/15/2022 at 11:14 AM, PATRICK FROM THE SANDS said: What I did was totally removing the whole wheel wells from each wings, leaving a large hole, glued in the extrados a thin plate of evergreen and re-construct the WW with the correct depth What thickness was the plate you glued back in? I have this kit and it seems the existing thickness of the wing above the main WW is around 1.6mm. Also, did you deepen the wheel bay within the fuselage? That looks to be very tricky to do! I have several Esci/Italeri F-5's and I'm looking for a standard way to deepen all the wheel bays. Thanks Terry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PATRICK FROM THE SANDS Posted July 17, 2022 Author Share Posted July 17, 2022 41 minutes ago, Terry1954 said: This is an excellent build Patrick. The camouflage and the cockpit detail look superb. I'm especially interested in this part........ What thickness was the plate you glued back in? I have this kit and it seems the existing thickness of the wing above the main WW is around 1.6mm. Also, did you deepen the wheel bay within the fuselage? That looks to be very tricky to do! I have several Esci/Italeri F-5's and I'm looking for a standard way to deepen all the wheel bays. Thanks Terry Hello Terry! Thank you for your kind words! About the wheel wells, I completely removed the original one from the wings, including the extrados. It is not too difficult to do because the plastic is soft and not so thick. Then I glued on the upper part of the wing (the extrados) a thin plate of Evergreen (the thinnest one) and sand it. Like this I have a wheel well with the correct shape and depth viewed from the intrados. For the fuselage part, I didn't do any surgery, the depth is correct for the wheels to fit inside. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of this, and I don't know if my explanations are clear enough... BTW, I have also the Sword T-38 kit 1/72, the WW are even worst! But this is not the most difficult work to do on this kit, I spent hours to figure out and scratch both canopies folding mechanism, which as I said in the post quite complex. It was quite challenging! Happy modeling! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paulaero Posted July 17, 2022 Share Posted July 17, 2022 That is a very nice end result even better with some 'proper' modelling thrown in.... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opus999 Posted July 17, 2022 Share Posted July 17, 2022 Wow! Very nice looking. Excellent paint work. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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