Big Scale Mudhen

[Juggernut]

Here's some progress shots of my 1/32 Tamiya F-15E Strike Eagle (Bunker Buster release). Not overly wow, but the intakes I'm particularly proud of, all kit parts in the intakes. Ejector pin marks removed and/or filled and sanded. Seams glued, scraped, puttied, sanded. Tool marks removed (to the best of my ability) and shot with Matterhorn White, two-part epoxy paint. The white paint is basically the same as used on the real jet. It's a jet-glo color that we use to paint real aircraft and the shine it leaves is absolutely unbeatable by any hobby paint. Take a look for yourselves and see what you think. It's so shiny (without any gloss coat added, or needed for that matter) the compressor blades reflect back into the intake trunks with the light shining in on it. No way these babies are gettin plugged up with intake covers. They're pure and simple modeling at my "almost" best. They took awhile to get to this stage but the paint made the whole thing worth while. To me, it looks like they're mini jet engines inside a real intake.

 

Oh, I'm doing this for a group build over at the Aircraft Resource Center (www.aircraftresourcecenter.com). There's only one other guy and me who're even bothering to put the effort into cleaning up the kit intakes and showing them off.

 

Comments welcome and encouraged, good or not so good. Remember, nobody's perfect....especially me.

 

The following shots are of the intakes under contstruction, the afterburner section painted and appropriately weathered, and the finished intakes sans the scale 6 foot gunship grey portion (I'll add that when I paint the entire model). I'm posting the same shots over at ARC under the F-15 Group Build forum too cause I just gotta taunt those "assemblers" who can't do a bit of work and make the kit intakes viewable and just gotta cover em up with covers.....IMHO, the loser way out....(no offense meant to those who may use intake covers. Some aircraft like Tamiya's F-4 almost gotta use them. The intakes are almost beyond saving in that thing.)

 

More to follow:

 

Hope you like my little jaunt through the jet age...

 

 

Intakes in progress, sanded and slightly polished.

 

Tim

[Juggernut]

Another shot from the front under construction: the defects on the right sidewall were fixed.

[Juggernut]

Another shot of the intakes...this time with the Jet-Glo paint applied.

[Juggernut]

Another shot of the intake trunk with the white applied...notice how glossy it is. A huge advantage of aircraft paints. The little imperfections are not that noticable when the compressor faces are glued in place. See the next pictures.

[Juggernut]

Shot of the finished intake (sans the Gunship grey area) with the compressor faces installed. I even did a when I saw how they came out. Surprised even myself. Notice how the light is reflected off the compressor face and back onto the gloss white surface. I'm sufficiently impressed to make a note of it. The gloss white model paint I've used in the past, while glossy, comes nowhere near looking like this.

[Juggernut]

Another angle of the same intake. Damn but if they don't look good.... Even if I do say so myself

[Juggernut]

Next is the other end of the jet, the afterburner section. This I painted flat white while the flameholder rings are Alclad jet exhaust with off white rings and other simulated ceramic surfaces. The soot stains are black pastels drybrushed to resemble the patterns that exist inside the cans on the real jet.

[LSP_Matt]

Whoa What seams?

 

Very nice work man

 

Matty

[Juggernut]

Another shot of the same area...There is no way of cleaning the seam between the top and bottom halves of the burner cans so I did the next best thing and tried to camoflage em by using black pastels along the seams...The effect isn't all that great but passes muster in my opinion.