"Limping Lizzie" 75 Sqn RAAF F-4A-1 Lightning - completed

[trickyrich]

…and this one is finally here! I have been waiting for this build for a while and it will be a worthy addition to my collection of unusual RAAF aircraft.

 

The subject will be a F-4A-1 Photo-Recon Lightning operated by 75 Sqn RAAF, between Mid 1942 to late 1944. 1 PRU RAAF operated (and broke) 3 of there F-4-1 version Lightning, so the RAAF were loaned 2 others from 8th PRS USAAF which were used by 75 Sqn.

 

The 3 RAAF aircraft (A55-1 to -3) were in Foliage Green/Olive Drab schemes (there is still some debate on this), however the 2 operated by 75 Sqn retained their original HAZE finish, which is going  to be fun to reproduce!

 

Ok the model base for this build will be this...…

 

 

…..haha, actually this was the first thing I bought for the build, which was closely followed by this the conversion set, which ever so nicely included some decals for the particular aircraft I wanted to build.

 

 

Ok the model is of course Tamiya’s gorgeous P-38F/G Lightning!!!   I suspect we’ll be seeing a few of these in the build.

 

 

 

Some extra AM stuff just happened to jump into the basket as well….don’t know how they got there!!! 

 

 

The scheme as mentioned is for one of the aircraft loaded to 75 Sqn, called “Limping Lizzie”, she was done in this experimental Haze scheme, which as I get further into the build I will try to describe in more detail…..only that it’s going to be a real pain to re-produce!!

 

Ok for a very brief period of time this aircraft and her sister operated with standard USAAF markings with RAAF roundels slapped on top. Really unusual and something I have not seen before, so a must do scheme. Problem was the decals, very hard to get and only one place had them and they were for a while not available. They eventually did (the company is sort of just up the road for me), so I ordered them and was promptly told I wasn’t allowed to buy them because I was banned by them from buying any of their products!!!

 

Earlier in the year I wanted to buy some decals for my EA-18G from this lot, after waiting 11 weeks and the decals not showing up, I complained and wanted my money back. Seems like complaining and calling them “Clowns” (this was the rudest word I used) and wanting a refund gets you banned???? 

 

Anyway I eventually found a much better set at a fraction of the price with 5 other subjects included!

 

 

 

 

So long story ended, time to get the bench ready/cleared for this build.

 

Here is an awesome link to this and the other Lightnings used by the RAAF, masses of information for any interested.

 

http://www.lockheed.adastron.com/lightning/lightning.htm

 

[Dunny]

Rich,

 

Can't wait to see a haze scheme on this beauty, and a Tamiya conversion to boot! Interested to see how you treat the F4 nose, and particularly the camera ports (asking for a friend 😉)

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

[trickyrich]

This conversion kit comes with wee cameras from memory..... if not I'll bash something together to look the part through the windows.

[trickyrich]

ok not quite last on the list but close to it, so guess I'd better start the build part of the thread.  

 

What is here was done over some breaks while completing the F-15I and Su-27, since these were taken I've done heaps more...in next instalment!

 

So first up the cockpit was partially assemble plus detail removed from the IP and panels ready for the Qunita “decals”.

 

 

The undercarriage and wheel wells have been partially assembled ready for painting too.

 

 

The detail and how it all fits together is just superb!

 

 

The first of the AMN parts were tested fitted, new resin Turbo/Supercharges from Eduard have been test fitted, the kit ones look great, but these resin bits just add that little extra!

 

 

Tanks, now this is hard as the photos I have of this bird show drop tanks with no seem, but they don’t look to be as big as the 300gl seem-less ones here. I’m not too sure if they used these big tanks as there were limitations with their use……may have to do some more research here.

 

 

Some quick test fitting, gee the joins are soooo nice, with careful test fitting I reckon no filler will be needed at all.

 

 

 

 

The nose however…..lots of later test fitting shows there maybe issues here, will wait until I get the fuselage/pod done before I get too concerned .

 

 

I'll need to assemble these bits first, the "glass" ports are flush fitting to the nose, so if I do have to do any reshaping/profiling of the nose it should be too much of an issue.

 

I do however have a question, does anyone know what colour the radiator intakes/outlets would have been (same for oil cooler intakes) for the Recon scheme birds. For camo aircraft they were Neutral Grey, but for the Blue and Haze schemes would they be aircrafts colour? I haven’t been able to find out yet.

 

Ok next update will be bigger, heaps done since this one. Now need to clean up all the resin on the desk from a newly started HUGE project!!! 

[Dunny]

Rich,

 

Coming along nicely - I reckon that disparity in the nose is not dissimilar to what I encountered with Red Roo's (although that was intended for the Academy kit so no fault of theirs),

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

[81-er]

Nice to see you've finally started mangling plastic, Rich 👍 I see what you mean about the step on the nose, I really wouldn't believe it was made for that kit if you hadn't said it was. Intrigued about the secret squirrel resin project as well...

 

James

[trickyrich]

On 10/3/2022 at 7:31 PM, 81-er said:

Nice to see you've finally started mangling plastic, Rich 👍 I see what you mean about the step on the nose, I really wouldn't believe it was made for that kit if you hadn't said it was. Intrigued about the secret squirrel resin project as well...

 

James

 

Big update to follow shortly.

 

Think huge double delta!! 

[trickyrich]

Ok this update is bout a week late  and has now doubled in size to catch up with what was done yesterday……gosh I need to be more organized!

 

Plus I may have forgotten to take the odd photo or two as well……..

 

Right the cockpit is done, bar all those tiny levers, that would last only 2 seconds if fitted anywhere before last thing!

 

 

 

 

Looks nice and busy, though much better when everything is closed up.

 

So time to close up the upper wing and lower fuselage, some careful test fitting and all good, joins just disappear. Same with fitting the outer wings as well. I use less glue on the front section of the nose….reason… a bit later.

 

While that was all drying the wheel wells were done and the booms assembled. The way these go together is amazing and fit perfectly, plus look awesome too.

 

 

I really like how the U/c doors slide in as well, will make fitting them a breeze later on.

 

 

Tamiya supply decals for the radiators, not sure why they used them over using moulded parts. I decided to upgrade these using fine brass mesh, this way I don’t have to worry about masking them as some panel wash and dry-brush at the end will do the job nicely.

 

 

The panels for these fitted quite nicely, some very minor gaps, some Mr Surface 500 and some alcohol soaked cotton buds (once dry) sorted them out. One thing I didn’t know was that there is meant to be a join/panel line running down the top and bottom of the rear parts of the booms.

 

 

Now the fun begins……..the new nose, as already mentioned the new nose is quite a bit wider than the kits nose, not the easiest to sort out!!!  It took a bit of work to correct but it is doable and you don’t need masses of filler I ended up only using a wee bit of Mr Surface!

 

So here we go…..

 

…first up the new camera windows fit from the inside and sit just right, the 3rd weight sort of fits, I think it was meant to go in first and then the windows…..I did it last and that didn’t work!  But in the end the way I did it was probably the better way, more in a bit.

 

 

(Re-looking at these photos now, that nose would never have fitted with that nose weight fitted in any position!!!!)

 

 

You need to paint the “camera lens” black and leave the surrounds clear, them paint the inside of the new nose black, I added some black paper inside as well so you couldn’t see through the nose.

 

To correct the nose width issue you could either;

• major sanding to reshape the nose to fit……very messy, and lots of work!
• Use tons of filler to make the fuselage fit, even messier and lots of work
• Cheat and make them both fit, super easy!

Oh course I cheat, so with the fuselage joins all cured I broke some of the front ones (I used less glue here initially to make this part easier), I then add 10thou plastic shims to widen the nose slightly. It took some testing and positioning to get right, but the big steps between the fuselage and nose had now mostly gone. The change in profile is so minor you can't even notice.

 

 

 

Next to help with aligning everything while gluing (only 1 sec to align using CA glue) I added some locating tabs, just super-glued in place.

 

 

 

So some final test fitting and…….. I found with the nose weight fitted the new nose would never fit without cutting of the front of the wheel well!!!  Maybe that ball was meant to go in first (no), but there is that risk it mightn’t have fitted, so easy to go the way I ended up going……

 

 

…….. a couple of 5gm wheel weights later.

 

 

So nose on, remove temp locating tabs, quick sanding and this is how it looks. 

 

 

 

Pretty happy, some sanding to smooth it all out, gaps, Mr Surface will fix those as they are minor, using it more to make them look like panel lines.

 

At some stage during all this the booms were fitted, again some tiny gaps on the underside joins, but before gluing a couple of those 10thou shims and those gaps disappeared too.

 

 

NOTE…before fitting booms to wings read instructions!! 

 

Opps!

 

 

Out with the knife, that better!

 

 

The Turbo/exhaust unit is AM and can be fitted later which will make life much easier.

 

So here she is, nose is now 95% done, all the major bits are fitted, gosh this model is lovely!!

 

 

 

 

Final bit was the Mr Surface, need to remove that and tidy up a couple of panel lines.

 

 

Painting…….still not sure how to do this or the correct colour to use.    Will try (?????) to do it how the factory did it.  They painted them completely black first then using Haze Blue (whatever that was) slowly painted her, light covering on the upper surfaces, more on the sides and a final heavier coat on the under surfaces. This gave the variation seen in the photos. I have have all the info on the scheme but there is no mention of course model wise on the correct blue to use!

 

41-2156 Limping Lizzie

 

The downside to this scheme was that the finish couldn’t handle the tropical condition and wore off and faded badly and very quickly. In some photos they look (there were 3 aircraft) very pale, in others they look almost black.

 

Plus the graduation from upper to lower surfaces didn’t appear to be even either.

 

Painting is going to be fun for sure!!

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

9 minutes ago, trickyrich said:

You need to paint the “camera lens” black and leave the surrounds clear, them paint the inside of the new nose black,

I always paint my cameras silver/aluminum then coat with Tamiya clear blue or clear smoke. Gives the lenses more depth. 

Edited October 8, 2022 by Corsairfoxfouruncle

[trickyrich]

there are various way to do them

[81-er]

She's coming along well, Rich, I really like the way you solved the nose job  Good luck with the paint, rather you than me 🤣

 

James

[Komedy]

Nice update and coming along well

 

Kom

[trickyrich]

Well actually I’m more than started painting, I’m pretty much finished!!! More on that in a bit, again a fairly large update.

 

Got lots done today, most of it was just getting all the final bits on ready for painting.

 

The cockpit is pretty much completed, just need to fit the seat (can be done last), everything else is in, which means the canopies are on.

 

 

One thing all the reference photos show or don’t show is/was whether the Gunsight or more to the point if the armoured glass was fitted or not. From all the photos I have seen of this bird and its sisters it is very unclear. There appears to something other than the front canopy. As these were from the factory Recon models, I’d have to suspect the gunsight was not installed, but the armoured glass? Well I fitted it, it’s held on by PVA so can be removed if need be.

 

 

Camera masks fitted, same with pylons, decided to use the smaller tanks (again no positive photos of them fitted with the huge ones) so had to fill in additional holes I got carried away drilling!

 

 

Wheels are done and ready to be fitted, Those resin AM ones look so nice and are the correct pattern for this aircraft.

 

 

Props are done. There seems to be a bit of variation with the colours, well more the positions. With Limping Lizzie the few photos there are of her show 2 different spinner colour positions, A couple show blue tips and white bodies, other of her has a white nose and blue band at the back of the spinner. Again there is no reference of when either fitted, so I’m going blue tips.

 

 

Wow she really looks like a lightning now….

 

 

I was wondering how I was going to mask up the canopy, before I remembered Tamiya nicely supplies a separate closed section, problem sorted. Once done I can just give it a wash in alcohol and its new again.

 

 

So now ready for painting, I’m going to try and paint her as they did in the factory, so some wiggly panel lines first. Then a base coat of black, in this case Tamiya NATO Black. I wanted the panel lines to start out a wee bit and the NATO Black is a nice shade of off-black which works well.

 

The results were just what I was after and I had planned to stop there as I needed to buy some blue paint for her……though not sure what shade!!!

 

 

 

Despite the info that is available on this scheme there is no definitive description of the exact colour used, think it was top secret at the time. As far as a paint to use on a model, I’ve seen everything listed from RAF PRU Blue, other shades that are very grey to 3 different shades of blue. Originally it was one colour sprayed over black with light thin coats on the upper surfaces, slightly heavier coats on the side and a nice thick coat on the underside. 

 

There is another variation of the scheme I have read where all the shadow areas had a thick coat while the rest of the aircraft had a thin light coat.

 

Anyway I was looking through what paints I did have and found a bottle of Gunze C3962 Interior Blue (Soviet). This to me looked the perfect colour for this scheme……so no excuse not to continue now…..

 

 

So to paint this scheme, I started on the upper surfaces first and just gave them a light patchy coat. Then the underside a nice solid coat, then sort of tried to blend in the sides….

 

….and it actually turned out really nice!

 

 

 

In both of these photos I have also misted on some super thin coat of white and NATO black to build more contrast. I still need to lighten up the undersides even more as they had a real white look to them.

 

..and here she it with a few bits fitted, super happy with the paint job, just a wee bit more and I’m done, then on with a clear coat. A big effort next weekend and she’ll be almost done.

 

 

[81-er]

She looks fantastic, Rich! very nicely done on the paintwork 

 

James

[trickyrich]

Ok am on a bit of a roll at the moment, so got some more done on her this afternoon.

 

I spent some more time lightening and darkening areas and trying to the change more gradual. I know one thing for sure you HAVE to do this sort of scheme in natural light as it’s the only way to see how the pattern/graduation work.

 

From what I've read the actual painting of this scheme was a right pain, it had to be done in the day (needed plenty of light to get right, can agree there!), was hard to paint unevenly (as it was meant to be), took 12 hrs to dry (so got covered in dirty and bugs) and made the spray painters sick! Re-painting chipped area was nearly impossible to match and after all that the paint faded and weathered very quickly!!

 

So using the leftover mixed paint from yesterday I darkened the upper surfacers further misting on some black.

 

 

Then misted on some white to the underside and where the wings met the fuselages. 

 

 

Then tried to blend them all together, this is the hard part and needed to be done in daylight.

 

 

 

This is probably the best shot, but even this doesn’t show it very well, in natural light it looks amazing, though the blending is probably too smooth.

 

 

Well all the painting is complete, I still want to do some more fading/distressing of the finish, but that can wait until the decals and final clear coats are on.

[81-er]

That's quite a paintjob, Rich! Sounds like it's about as much of a PITA in model form as reality? Worth the efforts though

 

James

[trickyrich]

Thanks.

 

Actually it wasn't too bad to do, the only real hard bits were trying to find the correct colour....in the end I just guessed as there are no proper colour photos of these aircraft in this scheme. Not that they would be of any real use , photos from that era are notoriously bad for the colours to be off, colour chips are the only real way to go.

 

The other thing is you really need to have natural light when painting this (and quite a few other similar schemes), I'm lucky as my spray booth is right beside the garage door, plus helps with fumes too.

 

Other that that it's just lots of lite layers/coats to gradually build up the colour you need, this scheme only took about an hour all up to do, from wiggly lines to final finish. Will probably spend more time later working on the weathering and fading stuff.

 

 

[trickyrich]

Have managed to get a bit done the last couple of afternoons, decaling is pretty much done, plus I came close to a disaster and learnt something from it!!!! 

 

So near disaster, luckily it was major but had potential to be! I have this endless battle over trying to get a nice gloss clear coat finish and it continued the other afternoon. Had some Gloss lacquer thinned nicely with some lacquer retarder, but it just wouldn’t go on nicely, after heaps of attempts tried using a 0.4mm nozzle (I normally use a 0.2 for everything), and found it work perfectly. I just needed to reduce the flow right back, but got a lovely finish finally.

 

So painted the whole model, did a few coats one after the other as usual, finished and went to put it down and found the nitrile glove I was wearing to hold the model had sort of stuck to the wing!  

 

 

I had forgotten I was using retarder as a thinner not plan lacquer thinners! Luckily it have almost dried so only minor damage to correct….could have been much worse. So learnt to be more careful using retarder thinners!

 

Anyway, some careful masking and touch ups and all sorted and then on with the decals.

 

 

They were a mix of the CMK supplied ones and the DK ones, both went on perfectly. I had to mix-n-match between them as there were a couple of inaccuracies in them. But once on they look great.

 

 

 

I will still need to do some post final clear coat on them to fade them further, especially the “44” on the nose, it was barely visible on the real aircraft.

 

 

It is also at the heart of the mystery of what was this aircraft’s actual serial number. These 2 numbers are meant to be those of the last 2 numbers of its serial number on aircraft from its original squadron, 8th PRS USAAF. So in this case it would have been 41-2144, but the aircraft also had the codes 56 all-over it, so it was actually 41-2156. I’ve attached a link to this, really interesting reading and show perfectly the confusion that can arise with subjects from this period.

 

http://www.lockheed.adastron.com/lightning/44.htm

 

Anyway not too much to go on her…….plus I’m going to try and do a special base for her….I haven’t tried doing this before, so it should be interesting.

[trickyrich]

 

Ok a bit of a double update today and the final one as well.

 

So today was the final Flat clear coat, fitting (and painting) turbo exhaust unit and fitting other small stuff.

 

Plus, I started the final weathering using some pastels which did a great job, much better than I had expected so I may not need to do any further painting (well misting). The insignias have faded in quite nicely with the pastel dust, I may just keep playing with that.

 

As far as she looks now……couldn’t be happier!!!!   

 

 

 

 

I could have gone way heavier with the weathering, but I just don’t have good reference material of how she looked at this particular stage with these insignias. So best to play it a bit safe and err on the less side. 

 

 

There just a wee bit more to do and she’s done, so I’ll put her to side for now and work on the base. It’s a ready-made/cast base that just needs painting, haven’t done anything like this before so it should be fun. Have plenty of time to play with it, but will try to complete it tomorrow.

 

So next post will be the completed beast on her base.

[81-er]

She's looking fantastic, Rich! I'm looking forward to seeing that base, as well as Lizzie on it. Interesting link about the confusion over her identity as well

 

James

[Wings unlevel]

Something of a masterclass build Rich, she really does look incredible. Nice to see a forgotten piece of RAAF history remembered.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Well done Rich, someday I’ll get to build my recon lightning(s). 

[AdrianMF]

Super build and a great colour scheme too!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[spaddad]

orsum

[PattheCat]

A mighty fine job you did, conversion and delightfully subtle painting effects.

 

Congrats and applause.

Pat.