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Completed - Desert Storm Air to Air refuelling: KA-6D&A-7E


red Dog

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Red Dog,

 

Ambitious project you have going on here...and very impressively executed thus far. Nice work!

 

Regarding the rear canopy fit, a few different possible solutions come to mind...

 

First, check the fit of the original kit canopy. Trumpeter's accuracy woes are well documented, but their fit of parts is generally excellent, at least from what I've experienced. If this is the case here, then you could graft the rear canopy section from the kit onto the Zactomodels frame.

 

Another method might be to cover the aft canopy contact points of the fuselage with thin self-adhesive aluminum foil, place the Zactomodels canopy into position, and carefully press small "worms" of Milliput (or other epoxy putty) into the crevice formed by the ill fitting frame. At this point, don't be too concerned about excess putty on the outside. Just be sure that the gap is fully stuffed with putty. After the putty hardens, sand away any excess until the parts are flush. Gently pry free the canopy from the fuselage (the putty will not adhere well to the foil). Lastly, peal away the foil. If all goes well, you should have a nice fitting piece in the end, the epoxy putty having formed a new edge that matches the fuselage opening.

 

Yet another approach would be to glue into place the Zactomodels canopy frame, fill and sand smooth the entire gap, and then restore the hinge line with careful scribing and/or etching using a needle and/or micro saw.

 

Good luck the rest of the way. I'll be following your progress.

 

Rich

Edited by allthumbs
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  • 3 weeks later...
Regarding the rear canopy fit, a few different possible solutions come to mind...

 

Thanks Rich, nice tricks in there.

I tried as best as i could to minimize the gaps and fill them first with putty colored with black pigment (in case the putty was visible from the inside as I didn't want to have it grey or white) and finished the last layer of putty with non fogging cyoano. I didn't want to use cyano straight as i didn't want to take chance about the fog issue and i couldn't use straight putty as i needed to engrave canopy lines afterwards and putty doesn't stand engraving very well.

 

Apart from that , I have nothing much to report. The last few days, weeks have been spent on sanding, puttying, rescribing, priming, fixing the small errors with glue, sanding again and priming again

the usual aircraft model ordeal :)

 

but i'm getting close

 

whenever i needed a break from sanding, i compared some TERs to use with this build.

The excellent LSP modification list advise to swap the trumpeter TER with the ones from the Tamiya F-4.

Here they are side by side:

 

A6A7_058_A7_TER.png

 

A6A7_059_A7_TER.png

 

A6A7_060_A7_TER.png

 

No kidding, the tamiyas ones looks way better. That said, I hesitated to order the new ones from Eduard (brassin) perfectly knowing i will need the TER for my F-4J when the time comes. I decided to use the tamiyas ones for this build and i'll buy the Brassins whenever i build the Phantom.

 

I'll post the same report for the Mk82 i plan on using

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The Mk82s I'll be using are from VideoAviation.

They were released not so long ago and looking at the type of weapons in the kit and in my stash, I knew I had to buy them.

First they have the typical fire retardant coating but the Hi drag tail are much more detailled than the usual kit's weapon.

 

A6A7_075_A7_Mk82s.png

Resin is videoaviation, Light grey is trumpeter and dark grey is academy (F/A-18)

Both academy and trumpeter are too skinny. The tail is different, the Trumpeter and academy sport the Mk15 tails while video aviation has the BSU-86 tail

Still, even the Mk-15 tails are underdetailled

 

A6A7_076_A7_Mk82s.png

They come in three pieces: BSU-86 tail unit, bomb body and fuze (not pictured)

Attaching the body to the tail requires precision and careful sanding of the resin support to ensure a well aligned bomb unit.

 

A6A7_077_A7_Mk82s.png

The difference of detail when looking from behind is quite important. Eventhough the tail units are not the same, the trumpeter and academy Mk15 lack details

 

The only negative point about the resin bombs is the fact that the attachment point are already predrilled. Since they could be installed on many different pylons, the predrilled holes will hardly match anything and will need to be filled and redrilled at the relevant location according to the used pylon.

For the rest they are gorgeous and I'm sure the fire retardant coating will greatly help giving depth to the weathering of the weapons.

 

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Thanks Mario and Peter, I'll add more soon while the paint dries :)

 

In the meantime, the Corsair has been preshaded

 

A6A7_078_A7_Preshaded.png

I am usually very rough when it comes to preshading and I don't do it subtely as you can see above :)

 

A6A7_079_A7_basecolor.png

Then  I applied a base coat of Mr Paint MRP-97 (=H307 aka FS36320)

 

Looking at the colour of the model I remember that I never quite was convinced with FS36320 for late scheme Navy Corsair. 

IMHO it's too blue, and not dark grey enough. I looked at using FS35237 but after some tests decided against it.

The weathering stages will undoubtfully darken the grey to something more appropriate, I hope. 

Edited by red Dog
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Hi red Dog, the attachment points on the bombs are where the lugs screw in as you can see in this pic:

 


 

the lugs go into where the hooks are on the rack, between the sway braces, which hold the bomb in place:

 


 

the NATO standard spacing of lugs on bombs 1,000lbs and less is 14", above 1,000lbs is 30" spacing in most cases. Unfortunately most kit makers put their attachment points on their stores where ever is convient for them, most have the attachment points at the swaybrace locations. It offers a bit more strength at that location but it would leave a gap between the bomb and the rack where in realty the bomb lugs would be. An easy fix is to use the swaybrace location and just add a couple of small disks where the real lugs would be:

 


 

or just drill out the area, between the swaybraces, on the TER and use the bombs attachment points. 

 

Jari

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Thanks Jari, most useful references as always

I studied the Mk-82s on TER and found out that if I used the forward locating hole on the bomb to the forward locating pin on the TER, the bomb was sitting nicely and properly aligned with real life pictures.

In that case, i will have to fill the rear locating hole on the bomb and punch a new hole a bit further back to accomodate the rear pin of the TER

I'll post pictures later on.

 

In the meantime, i need all the faith i can get :)

 

the corsair basecoat was lightened with a lighter shade of MRP97

A6A7_081_A7_lightened.png

 

Then sprayed with water and salted

A6A7_083_A7_salt.png

 

Base color was then sprayed in a mist and heavier spots of MRP smoke have been applied according to photo references.

A6A7_085_A7_salt.png

 

I know it's way too contrasted at this time, hence why i need to keep the faith in my abilities to solve that issue with a further mist of basecoat :)

The issue is the density of the MRP smoke, it's darker than the tamiya smoke and the first time i used it. I'll need to work on having a lighter hand :)

We'll see once the salt is rinced...

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ambitious project, I like it a lot! Nice work on the corrections for the A-7. I wasn't sure on the Video Aviation bombs, if they were too big or not. The Eduard ones are very similar to the Academy offerings, enough so that if you have their GBU-12s next to the VA Mk-82 series they look silly. 

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  • 4 months later...

After a 1/48 Lego Tornado Hiatus I'm back on this project.

 

I resumed with painting the walkways on the rear fuselage and horizontal stabs. 
I used Rust Oleum textured paint from a spraycan.
The whole model has to be protected because this is spreading textured dust everywhere. It's dark grey but the texture are often made of white specks So I gave them a coat of H301 dark grey lightened inside with lighter grey.

 

A6A7_096_A7_walkway.png

 

A6A7_102_A7_walkway.png

 

A6A7_103_A7_walkway.png

 

The belly and undersurface were heavily weathered with Smoke at different level of dilution and Alclad metallics after masking the doors and some panel lines. I worked in subsequent light coats. To achieve the desired effect I masked all the front of the airplane from a certain panel line, then sprayed light coats from the masking area to the rear of the airplane. Once dry, I picked up another panel line as a reference line and sarted over. 

 

A6A7_098_A7_paint_belly.png

 

A6A7_099_A7_paint_belly.png

 

A6A7_100_A7_paint_belly.png

 

A6A7_101_A7_paint_belly.png

 

 

The top surfaces were worked over in a small process benefitting from mistakes. :)

By correcting mistakes you actually do exactly what these airframe go through during their service life. Painting, cleaning, painting, more painting, fading, dirtying, more paint from corrosion control with fresh colours, etc etc.

 

To me it was a long process because the plan needed a lot of time to mature in my cartesian brick head :)

 

Many different paint were used in the process. I kind of stayed close to the FS36320 but darkened the paint with FS35237. Used also a lot of smoke or dark brown at different level of dilution

I used salt, masking tape, free hand and even chipping effect fluids for the stab scratches

 

A6A7_105_A7_stab.png

 

A6A7_104_A7_painting.png

 

 

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