Hasegawa 1/72 F-2A/B JASDF 50th Anniversary Dual Build

[Hoops]

Good Afternoon,

 

These two kits have been in the stash for a long time, and I've started to do some work on them this year as my Rafale B was winding down. By chance I had stumbled onto this group build and rather than putting the WiP in the general forum, I'll participate in the GB with these two builds. I must say, I don't make it down into the GB sub forum very often, mostly to my own detriment.

 

The Hasegawa F-2 kits are pretty good, a bit better designed than their F-16 kits in some aspects, benefiting from a many years in between the release of the two. I've built a lot of Hasegawa F-16s over the years and am pretty familiar with their pitfalls and where I like to do improvements, a lot of which carries over to the F-2 kits as well. If you don't have a F-2 in your stash and want to build one, I'd highly recommend the Fine Molds kits, they are a lot more complicated, but a significant improvement over the Hasegawa kits. Already possessing these kits, there is no reason not to build them, and I'll enjoy their relative simplicity.

 

I will be conducting two different levels of detailing between the kits, the F-2A will get a little bit extra, whereas the F-2B will be mostly out of the box.

 

Starting with basic construction, the two top fuselage halves were joined front and back. I found that adding a strip of .125mm plastic sheet between to the two parts helped align them much better making for a easier joint on the top side.

 

20250304_164828 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Some putty and sanding on the top, and adding a little bit of detail to the cockpit decks. On the F-2A, I added strips of .25mm sheet along the canopy rails, as the center canopy piece is a little bit narrow as molded by Hasegawa. Raising it up .25mm is enough to make the slope smooth from the fuselage to the bubble canopy without a step.

 

Edit: don't do this, it messes up the fit with the forward and aft canopies, even it it does fix the slight step.

 

The mounting holes for the extra test antennas were filled in behind the cockpits as well.

 

20250312_162459 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

One of the things that I'm not a fan of on the Hasegawa kits is the "logo" lights on the sides of the aft fuselage. Hasegawa represents them with hemispherical lens in a depression, where as the actual aircraft has a flush clear panel with a light underneath. To fix this I drill the molded light out, glue in some stretched clear sprue, polish both sides and paint the bottom silver.

 

20250312_162514 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

Edited March 20 by Hoops

[Hoops]

Things under the wings in progress:

 

Hasegawa includes a full complement of weapons with their F-2s, which is often not the case with them. Even though not all of them will be used for these builds, I did a little bit of extra work now to add to the spares box for a possible "line" F-2A build. For these Anniversary builds, the F-2B will have the centerline tank only, the F-2A will have AAM-3s on the wing tips, empty outboard weapons stations, ASM-2s on the middle stations and underwing tanks inboard. 

 

20250304_164749 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Hasegawa has molded the weapons pylons symmetrically, whereas on the actual aircraft the "feet" are different on the inboard and outboard sides. Fine Molds has these correct, I decided not to worry about it.

 

Some detail was added to the ASM-2 missiles, panel lines scribed on the main body, the small bumps between the fins were added, as well as blanking off the interior of the motor on the aft of the missiles. On two of them I tried to replicate the protective cap on that goes over the seeker head, if it turns out well I'll use them on this build. If not, the plain ones will be used instead.

 

20250312_162718 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

For the F-2A, the flaps were cut and dropped on the wings. Kind of a pain to do, and I don't know if if I'd want to put that work into another F-2 again.

 

20250312_162626 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

[Hoops]

The F-2A will benefit from a partial seamless intake from V1 Models in Japan. I had picked this up with a few other parts back when I was stationed over there a few years ago. It doesn't go back the full length, but it is a significant improvement over the sort of "endless" intake as molded by Hasegawa.

 

I think I probably should have cut the kit intake off closer to the "lips," as it is the V1 part is set a little bit father back than it should be, but it's still pretty nice. You can also see where I added little plates behind the "wedge" above the intake to extend them back and give the illusion of more depth for the boundary layer intakes.

 

20250304_165226 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Test fitted: 

 

20250304_165319 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Since then I've done a couple of sessions of putty and sanding to smooth out the transition between the kit and V1 parts, and I'm really happy with it overall.

 

All for now, some other work has been completed, but I haven't photographed any of it yet. To be continued...

 

Cheers,
Hoops

[Col.]

You're off to a good start with these two and giving plenty of tips on how to get the best from them

[Thom216]

Looking good. And nice to see the intake trunking. I could use one of those for another build.

[Hook]

Very nice start!

[Hoops]

The Hasegawa kit intake can benefit from a bit of a bar to spread them out, this helps align with the lower fuselage half and making that filling and sanding easier once installed.

 

I just used some sprue trimmed to fit, and it worked out pretty well.

 

20250316_124238 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Intakes attached on both aircraft, and some masking done in prep for painting:

 

20250316_131354 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

The cockpits were painted, decaled and sealed before giving a light wash and being installed in the fuselage. Nothing extra was done to the two-seat "B" model, but some light detailing was added to the F-2A cockpit.

 

20250318_103011 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Orignally I thought that the RWR antennas on either side of the nose were black on both the A and the B model, but after closer inspection I realized that they are the surrounding camouflage color on the "B" model. I had painted all four black ahead of time planning to add them after the camo is painted on both aircraft, but that turned out to be unnecessary for the two seater, and they have already been glued on.

 

There are RAM panels present on the "A" model not present on the "B," Hasegawa does some work to capture the difference, representing them with engraved panel line on the sides of the "A" nose as well as on the sides of the intakes. For the "B" model I just filled these panel lines and sanded them smooth on the intakes. For the "A" model I drew them up quickly and sent them to my plotted to be cut out from .125mm sheet styrene. I feel that this represents the slightly raised platform better than an engraved panel line. This can bee seen in white on the sides of the single seater.

 

20250318_103102 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

Edited March 18 by Hoops

[Hoops]

Ok, this is where it starts to get really interesting, the 3rd Squadron 50th Anniversary aircraft has a very attractive set of white markings that were painted on top of the camouflage scheme, as well as white drop tanks under each wing. The Japanese being, well, Japanese, were very diligent in masking off the stencils on all those areas that were painted white, leaving a little bit of a patchwork that I had to think about how I would represent. To my knowledge I have never seen decals of this scheme produced commercially, and I have not even seen a build of it online. I'm sure that there are other people that have taken the plunge, but I have never seen one online. I've been planning to build this aircraft since probably at least 2005, but have put it off due to the challenges of how I would tackle the painting.

 

What I wound up deciding to do was to draw the masks for the special marking and send to my plotter to be cut out of washi sheet, and then draw and custom print the missing decals on my home laser printer. For those stencils that were masked off before painting the white, this was the solution I came up with:

 

1. Scan the decal sheet

2. Draw rectangles that will match up with the stencils and code them to the same numbers on the decal sheet

3. Scan a sample of the paint colors

4. Color match the rectangles to the paint colors

 

Now my plan is to paint the white sections of the aircraft, mask them off then paint the camouflage. Once this is complete, apply the custom printed backing decals, then apply the DXM stencil decals.

 

I did sort of a test run on the drop tanks, and it worked out pretty well, the results can be seen below.

 

20250316_120416 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

20250316_123623 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

[Col.]

Interesting and informative work again

[Hoops]

Cockpits finished and ejection seats added. The seats on the "B" model are straight from the kit, but the "A" model has a seat from V1 Models, the source for the partial intake as well. The canopy breaker horns on the F-2 Seats are pretty prominent, but fragile and easily broken off! After gluing the seat into the cockpit it was inadvertently knocked out, losing one of the horns in the process. Some very fiddly work with some .125mm sheet was able to replace it, but I would have been better off not breaking it in the first place.

 

The lighting arresting strips along the side of the radome are in the wrong place as molded by Hasegawa. The kit has them exactly on the top/bottom seam, but they are actually little bit above that. These were sanded off and replaced with stretched sprue. The AOA sensors are also too large, so I shortened them and reprofiled to make it look a bit more like the real items.

 

20250320_100503 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Canopy masks were designed, test cut, adjusted, test cut again and finalized to use with my plotter. A link to the file in .svg format can be found at the Scale Model Paint Masks Forum

Both canopies are from 3 part slide molds, giving them the correct Omega shape with the under cut, but it leaves a mold line on the top of the canopy. Filing, sanding with ever increasing grades of sandpaper and finally polishing was necessary to smooth them out. The "B" model canopy is a bit more robust and stands up well. The "A" model canopy is admirably thin, but that means that it very susceptible to developing hairline cracks along the apex if pressure is applied to the sides of the canopy at all while holding it.

 

That's what happened to the first one, but thankfully another modeler, @Lightningboy2000 Was kind enough to send me a replacement from his spares box. Thank you again, sir! Both now masked and applied to the fuselages in preparation for paint.

 

20250319_210427 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

The wing to fuselage joint turned out to be a little bit more of a pain that I was anticipating. The wing being a little bit more narrow than the fuselage, requiring the application of putty, sanding, and rescribing the lost panel line detail. This took a couple of passes. In the future, sanding the mating surfaces of the fuselage parts to thin them a little bit may be the better way to go about it.

 

Detail was added to the landing gear bays of the "A" model as best as I could. The fuselage frames as molded by Hasegawa are in the wrong place on both of them, making it difficult to add accurate detail, so I really just endeavored to busy them up give the impression of the complexity of the actual aircraft.

 

20250319_182240 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Paint coming soon!

Cheers,
Hoops

[Thom216]

Those 'pits came out really nice. And fit looks like a fair bit of work, but worth it,

[Col.]

More good progress and good notes on these kits.

[Lightningboy2000]

Excellent work so far on these kits. They're pretty good kits apart from the minor discrepancies. Oh & you're in good company when it comes to breaking bits as I did similar to the CMK cockpit replacement parts for my D Block 52. It's great to see that I could be of use with something from my ever expanding spares box. Another good reason not to throw away unused parts! I should post some pics of my extremely slow build! I have made a little progress.

[Hoops]

Ok, lots of work on paint the last few days.

 

As corrected above, while putting the small strips of .25mm thick sheet under the main canopy fixed the problem with the step on the fuselage, it created other problems with alignment between the three canopy sections. So I scraped off the pieces of styrene, glued the canopy down, applied putty and sanded until it got reasonably smooth. The advantage is that there is some significant color differences in this area once painted and that will help hide the transitions.

 

White was laid down then masked off with the artwork that was drawn in Inkscape and cut with my plotter. Lots of test fitting and adjusting with a couple different iterations on these as well. The main section on the top of the fuselage doesn't quite line up with the stuff on the base of the vertical tail, but I was able to get it pretty close. Future me will need to do some touchups.

 

20250322_102712 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Mr. Hobby Deep Ocean Blue (375) was painted on the top, then slightly lightened with Shallow Ocean Blue (374) to create bit of mottling.

 

20250322_113456 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Lots of masking, landing gear wells and on top for the camouflage as well. I drew the camouflage masks in Inkscape as well and sent them to the plotter to be cut from normal printer paper. There is a little bit of standoff from the plastic created by the looped masking tape under neath to give it a little bit of a soft edge. I think that the blob that goes right down the spine is probably a little bit too narrow, especially the fingers that go back to the exhaust, but I'll tweak those for any other F-2 build I do in the future. Once I got to that point, I was just done with all the adjusting and resizing and just wanted to get paint on the aircraft.

 

I think that that the Mr. Hobby Shallow Ocean Blue (374) is probably pretty accurate, but the real world lighting has a significant impact on how it looks to the viewer and the photographer. That being said, I think it looks too light for anything other than being photographed in bright sunlight, and I find a slightly darker presentation to be more aesthetically pleasing, and better represents what I see when I look at photos of F-2s.

 

To that end I mixed a 3:2 ration of Shallow Ocean Blue (374):Blue (5) from Mr. Hobby to get the color that I sprayed onto the aircraft. It was lightened a little bit more and some mottling was added to break up the colors some as well. The ends of the horizontal stabs were painted Gunship Grey FS36118, which I think is not quite dark enough, but I'll just deal with it. On the real aircraft it is definitely a dark grey and not a black, but I think it is something darker than Gunship Grey. It's hard to assess until you see it right next to the Shallow Ocean Blue, and at the point the die had been cast. I'm OK with it.

 

20250323_155152 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Another gratuitous glory shot to show the white markings on the side of the intake as well:

 

20250323_155230 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Not pictured, but all of the underwing pylons and fuel tanks for these builds, as well as a future F-2A build were also pained Shallow Ocean Blue at the same time. There is lots of clean up and little fixes that will need to be done to the paint. I have to leave for about the next 2.5 weeks for work so there will be no progress on these for quite a while. I'll be sure to update when some work does get done on them, however.

 

Cheers,

Hoops

[Hoops]

On 3/21/2025 at 12:17 AM, Lightningboy2000 said:

Excellent work so far on these kits. They're pretty good kits apart from the minor discrepancies. Oh & you're in good company when it comes to breaking bits as I did similar to the CMK cockpit replacement parts for my D Block 52. It's great to see that I could be of use with something from my ever expanding spares box. Another good reason not to throw away unused parts! I should post some pics of my extremely slow build! I have made a little progress.

 

I tend to agree, but must admit that I have done some spares box purges over the years. A couple of times later with regret, but it's hard to know what will come to be useful. Once it gets too unwieldly it's also not useful either, so maybe better organization is the key? 😄

Edited March 24 by Hoops

[Col.]

That neat paintwork on both Hoops and certainly gives a 'right' impression of the Sea Scheme on these machines

[Hoops]

After being away on a work trip for two and half weeks as well as a week of holiday with my oldest daughter, I was able to get a bit of work done before heading out to work again. I have my doubts that I will be able to get them finished before May 18, however! 😑

 

Detail paint was completed in preparation for clear coating. The F-2A is also using the ResKit F-2 main wheels, but hard to see in these photos. Trust me, they're there! 

 

20250430_211655 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

20250430_211750 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

The Hasegawa kit nozzle is molded in the closed position, representing a motor set at maximum mil power, but is not appropriate for an aircraft that is shut down. I'll be replacing the exhausts on both kits with aftermarket items. On the right is the Eduard Brassin nozzles intended for the Tamiya F-16CJ kit. At the time that I had purchased it, it was the most easily available GE F110 engine in 1/72 scale. I've adapted to match up with the Hasegawa rear fuselage. On the left is the ResKit F-2 Exhausts for the F-2A. Construction is complete, and the interiors are painted white to represent the ceramic coating, but still needs to be weathered. Metallic colors still need to be painted for the exterior as well.

 

20250501_153316 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

The first day of decaling was completed, covering the external stores and some of the initial decals on the fuselages. I have also done a second day of decaling on both, getting a lot of the stencils on the F-2A, but neglected to take photos before leaving on travel. Unfortunately old Platz F-2 sheet that I bought probably 20 years ago has not aged well and was very difficult to use. Appling some liquid decal film helped, but it was still a very challenging process to apply them.

 

20250502_194751 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Cheers, and thanks!

 

Hoops

[Col.]

Good to see you making a return to this project and both models are looking great

[Thom216]

That blue with the white striping is striking!

 

[exdraken]

Fantastic work!

[Wings unlevel]

Lovely looking blue birds there!

[Hoops]

Thanks @Wings unlevel @exdraken @Col. and @Thom216.

 

I haven't put many updates up as I was focused on trying to get both of the builds complete by the deadline. I just finished both up and they were not without their challenges. Five images can be seen in the gallery, but I'll upload a couple of more detail images of F-2A 03-8509 here, as I like it much better:

 

20250518_131049 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

20250518_130952 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

20250518_130816 by J2Hoops, on Flickr

 

Cheers!

Hoops

[Col.]

Nicely done Hoops

[exdraken]

Flawless!

 

Those huge tanks look weird though! Soft and pointy... 

[Thom216]

Indeed, great job!