Thundertrio Challenge - F-84G RV i PVO SFRJ - Tamiya 1/72

[Dennis_C]

My second entry from my three-build challenge is going to be a very well-known Tamiya kit that I plan to do as a Yugoslavian aircraft. Here is what I have:

Not huge amount of aftermarket bits. However that box of resin is really full of goodies - I'll show its content later in this thread. 

 

Decal provides markings for a very non-standard Yugoslavian camouflage scheme of grey aircraft with dark green spots. 

I do not really like it to be honest. My intention is to make a natural metal bird with red arctic tail and tanks - I have references to at least two such aircraft with Yugoslavian serials 10600 and 10620 which had the same large size roundels (normally F-84G at that period had smaller sized roundels). I'll need to source serials and large nose numbers which I do not think should be a problem because at early stage of F-84G career with RV i PVO they were of typical USAF font.

 

Eduard masks hopefully will save me an hour or so for masking the canopy. 

Edited January 23 by Dennis_C

[Dennis_C]

Here are the contents of that Aires resin box:

I think it's quite an old release from them. More modern boxes I think were using dark grey resin and the boxes themselves were made from clear plastic. Here the yellow resin is used which frankly speaking I like more because it does not seem to shrink in size after molding. I find Aires grey resin to be usually undersized which is mostly seen with exhaust cones and canopy tub length. 

Another photo of goodies. Cockpit tub seems to be identical in dimentions to the plastic part so hopefully fitting resin bits will not consume all the three months of GB timing!

Also seems Aires packager noted that fragile front gear leg strut got broken and threw in another one. Nice touch. 

[reini]

Good pile of resin that should make this already good kit even nicer 👍

 

Interesting to see Yugoslavian Thunderjet 🙂

[Hook]

Nice one!

[Dennis_C]

1 minute ago, reini said:

Good pile of resin that should make this already good kit even nicer 👍

I'll make more shots later to compare resin and plastic bits. From the first glance some parts are almost the same - for example kit's cockpit tub frankly speaking is fine as is.

Some resin parts - injection seat first of all - needs cleanup from flesh. Not sure how this would work given how brittle this yellow resin is.

However some areas in kit are completely bare - the worst here is the front gear bay. Tamiya gives just zero details there. So resin part would be a super huge improvement. Wing bays are also much more delicate in resin. 

[RidgeRunner]

Oo yes Very nice, Dennis

[Wez]

Welcome along with an unusual and to some possibly, unexpected user of the Thunderjet.

 

Good luck with it.

[Dennis_C]

One of the biggest fun things in our hobby is that you learn a lot about each airplane you build. Much more than you could ever learn while just reading books and articles. 

A surprise discovery number 1 for me was that round shape on the right rear side of the F-84G canopy. As I understand that is an access door to the equipment located in the rear of the cabin that was moving together with the canopy and probably could not be accessed otherwise.

A question that I have - Aires offers a round piece of photoetch to represent the feature. And they offer to stick it from inside the canopy. As I understand it should be from outside as this framing was probably not hidden behind the plexiglass and instead represented a round metal plate outside the canopy. Who's correct here? Any thoughts?

P.S. I think Tamiya just offers a decal for this feature. 

Edited January 23 by Dennis_C

[Wez]

16 minutes ago, Dennis_C said:

A question that I have - Aires offers a round piece of photoetch to represent the feature. And they offer to stick it from inside the canopy. As I understand it should be from outside as this framing was probably not hidden behind the plexiglass and instead represented a round metal plate outside the canopy. Who's correct here? Any thoughts?

 

Actually, it's a bit of both, see here and here as I suspected, there's a bit of reinforcement inside and outside of the canopy, plus the removable panel, think of it as a reinforcement/plexiglass/reinforcement/removable panel wafer, I expect the screws in the removable panel locate into anchor nuts or rivnuts attached to the inner reinforcement plate

[Dennis_C]

Perfect help! So looks like p/e bit is definitely not going inside the canopy. At the same time seems that full piece of metal outside of canopy is not the greatest representation of the feature either as metal ring is only narrow thing with screws inside the circle. Reinforcement plexiglass ring around is probably best done by just spraying one layer of off-white colour together with full reinforcement web. Probably best option is just spraying the ring onto the cabin in two colours without photoetch and decal.

[Dennis_C]

As promised - I did start with resin sawing. And some sprue cutting indeed. Quite frankly I'm very happy with how this old Aires resin fits into fuselage. Pretty much spot on. Nothing glued yet - it's just dry fitting. 

So far I only cut the cockpit parts. There are more resin pieces to come later on.

Also using resin for T'jet leaves some plastic unused. Probably those pedals and joystick could go into the T'flash cockpit improving crude rendition as supplied by Sword. 

[reini]

@Dennis_C Looks good indeed! 👍

[Dennis_C]

Started some priming yesterday to prepare for black and green painting. Here is some progress with priming resin bits and wheels of the T'jet

 

[Dennis_C]

I have a question on the chromate greens. Should the green in cockpit and undercarriage bays be identical or not? 

 

Historically I used vallejo 71.094 for gear bays of F-101, F-105, T-33.

https://acrylicosvallejo.com/en/product/model-air-en/green-zinc-chromate-71094/

 

However I think this is not too yellow and not too 'acidic' for green chromate. I also have Hobby Colour H58 which is maybe okay for the gear bays at least how other fellows paint these but perhaps too bright for the cockpit. Special Hobby recommends Mr.Color C351 which I think is good but it doesn't exist in acrylic range.

 

My plan is to use 71.094 for cockpits now and H58 for the bays. But getting back to the initial question - should they be identically painted or different greens are not the right way?

[reini]

@Dennis_C@Dennis_C

Interior green (cockpit) and zinc chromate green (rest of the interior areas) are different paints - so i would use different paint colours. 

 

But it is a difficult subject for sure. I use this article as a guideline:

https://www.ipmsstockholm.se/home/interior-colours-of-us-aircraft-1941-45-part-i/

 

It is for WW2 aircraft but contains interesting information nevertheless. 

[Matt B]

4 hours ago, Dennis_C said:

My plan is to use 71.094 for cockpits now and H58 for the bays. But getting back to the initial question - should they be identically painted or different greens are not the right way?

I would go with that plan.  They were different colors (for US aircraft at least) with the cockpit being green and the wheel bays being the more yellowish-green zinc yellow color.

 

Cockpit color can be seen here and although I can’t find a super good photo of the wheel bays, you can see here that the outer gear bay doors are painted the yellow zinc color that H58 should work well for.

[Dennis_C]

1 hour ago, Matt B said:

you can see here that the outer gear bay doors are painted the yellow zinc color

It's actually another interesting point. Later aircraft such as Hundred-series fighters I think had the interior sides of the undercarriage doors in aluminium colour - whatever that was - dope or lacquer or unpainted surfaces. But here it's definitely green chromate. Poses the question about Thunderstreaks 

[reini]

51 minutes ago, Dennis_C said:

But here it's definitely green chromate. Poses the question about Thunderstreaks 

 

Might be my screen but looks more like zinc chromate yellow to me? 

[Wez]

Photos, photos and then more photos.

 

You really need to study period photos or photos of unrestored aircraft.  The Detail & Scale book has pictures of the F-84E at the USAF Museum in Dayton, Ohio.  I believe this aircraft is unrestored and still features original equipment.

 

The photos show the following:

 

Instrument Panel - black with black instruments, some warning placards in white or red.

Gunsight - interior chromate green with black placards.

Consoles - black on tops and sides to floor level.

Floor, cockpit sidewalls, all other structure - interior chromate green.

Seat - interior chromate green but to the yellow end of the spectrum, headrest olive drab.

Control column - apple green with black grip.

 

There's a b&w picture of a G cockpit, the book states that G cockpits were similar to late E's.

 

Detail & Scale state the wheel wells were usually chromate yellow, likewise the gear door interiors.  There is a colour photo in the book where the nosegear doors look like they're in chromate green on that particular aircraft.  The gears themselves were in silver paint finish.

 

Hope this helps?

[Dennis_C]

11 minutes ago, Wez said:

Floor, cockpit sidewalls, all other structure - interior chromate green.

Interesring if that interior chromate green more towards something like olive drab FS34087 or towards more greenish FS34102 or FS34097?

[Wez]

It's a lighter, yellower shade of green although in my working life I have seen so many variations with this colour and YZC it's hard to believe the paints were to the same standards.

[Dennis_C]

Some update on the Jet. I added cockpit side walls, sanded some pusher footprints in the intake and exhaust.

Exhaust pipe was not fitting very well leaving a visible gap between pipe and outer ring. So I decided to install exhaust sides and putty joint gaps prior to closing the fuselage. 

I also blanked off the end of intake canal to make sure pedals are not seen in the end of intake. 

 

Next step is priming additional parts and painting interior colours. Also I still need to finish main gear bays fitting. 

[Dennis_C]

Some painting accomplished over the weekend. But before that I spend quite a lot of nervous hours with my dremel trying to squeeze in Aires resin gear bays. 

I find result satisfactory although about 0.2 mm still needs to be dremelled from the upper wings side or sanded from the resin bit. I'll do this after I glue in the bays. Cyanacrilate may add another 0.1 mm.  I can actually squeeze the wing edges already but that is definitely a wrong way. 

 

Also I've brightened cockpit interiors a bit with brush and assembled instrument panel's sandwich. 

 

Next steps is gluing in seat belts as well as further assembly of cockpit tub.

 

Two different greens are applied here. Hobby Color H58 as chromate green primer in the bays and vallejo green chromate as cockpit green toned down with grey primer (otherwise it's too bright). I know cockpit green has probably been more towards olive in some photoes but I'm ok the way my green looks like. Green chromate primer is maybe too acidic. I'll try to tone it down with wash and powders.

Edited February 6 by Dennis_C

[reini]

@Dennis_C Looks good to me 👍Colours have really brought all the details alive. That instrument panel is stunning!

[Dennis_C]

Some further cockpit assembly in motion. Put together cockpit tub, gun sight, pedals and i/p. Also added belts to the ejection seat.

Edited February 6 by Dennis_C