Stokey Pete

Bummer.

Today sees me starting the tedious and very meticulous repair and touch up work. I’m wary of using the masks, or using tape to fix, for fear of lifting more paint up. My method is very simple. I have 4 pieces of vinyl masking film which has been de-tacked on my hands, by laying the pieces around the edges that need fixing, I create the right angles/corners. Then I’m simply spraying using my H&S infinity with a 0.2 needle, with barely enough pressure to get the paint out. Thanks Alex. From looking at a whole raft of photos that show these aircraft, they appear to look quite clean and neat. With that in mind, I won’t be going overboard with making it look too beat up. The only parts that will get extra attention will be the hot metal areas...I’ve got dozens of shades and oils that will be going into that bit.

Last update for a bit. I managed to get a bit of paint onto the nose area. There’s a couple of overspray and peels to repair, easy enough. Also, a bit of blending where it appears I have two different batches of the lighter blue. Again, an easy fix, making it look like a paint shops touch up mid service. All good fun, I think.

Speaking of the decals... They come courtesy of Foxbot. Paintwork has been wet polished with a 12000 Micromesh cloth. This eliminates the need for a gloss coat. I’ve used Mr Mark setter, followed by softer. They conform to panel lines really nicely, are very thin with very little excess carrier film. So far, I’ve experienced no slivering either. For now, it’s going back onto the shelf to allow paint to cure fully, and to give my mind a rest. That’s been fully 3 days work in getting the flanker to where it is now, and imagine there’ll be another couple of days work with the paint repairs.

Wow! That was a bit stressful. So I made a start on the topside camouflage... I deliberately left the nose unpainted so I has somewhere to hold onto the beast. I took a bold decision and decided against priming. I knew that MRP paint would require a few coats to cover sufficiently, and I didn’t want to soften the detail further by adding layers of primer. The downside to that risk was paint peeling when I removed the masks. A risk I am happy with. I have a plan for the repairs, utilising discarded bits of mask and tape. My only mistake was thinking I could get away with painting the metals first. The majority of the peeling paint is from the metals area. My prediction came to pass. I now have a few areas to fix, and some tiny spots of overspray to fix. All of which will be done with a slightly different shade of base colours, to represent mid-service touch ups. I did no pre-shading, as I plan to weather this using post shades, washes, and multi layered oil paint filtering after I’ve applied decals.

That looked like a brutal workout. F-16 Demo team routine being flown there?

You can almost hit them with a hammer and it wouldn’t do much harm. They’re brilliant paints to use without primer, putting enamel/oil washes onto, and if you’ve polished the paint with a 12000...to decal straight onto without the need for gloss coating. AK real colours, and MRP lacquers are my go to choices for paint these days. I’ve pretty much got rid of all my acrylics except for a few metallic colours.

I’ll pop this in here, the monster ‘Flanker’ is still a work in progress owing to choosing the ridiculously labour intensive digital scheme. Here’s the office before the fuselage was sewn up, and the pilot was headless. And, here he is installed.

Now THAT’s a view to behold.

Tamiya one worked out well enough for me. I’ll accept its inaccuracies, i chucked a few AM bits to jazz it up rather than correct anything. I left the raised panel lines (laziness), gave it a snazzy paint job, and hey presto..... It looks close enough to a Tomcat for my shelves.

Haha, that’s a brilliant story. I’ve never seen the show, but I’ll have to seek it out when this episode airs. Sounds like you had a blast, even if your pax suffered somewhat.

Thanks. I suspect the Viggen will be much easier than this to do. Those masks are a tad more flexible. The Foxbot stuff is so delicate, have to be super careful when peeling it from is backing.

Hello from a cross eyed Stokey. This represents pretty much a whole days work. The stress involved in positioning the masks correctly, getting the paint on sufficiently thin but with correct coverage, and the painfully slow/careful peeling process has left me drained after so small an area. To reduce the risk of paint lift, I cut masks for the grey panels from Oramask before I even put any paint on the tails. So any scalplel cuts were into plastic, vs cutting the surface of the paint. Worked out pretty well I’d say. If one stares at the camo’ for long enough, you begin to see shapes that aren’t there in reality.

Reskit have some coming soon. They look pretty good alternatives to me.

The result of 3 hours of careful airbrushing and masking. One very minor paint peel and subsequent repair. And this is all I have to show for it . The F-15 wing/paint mule gives another sense of scale. I fear this will test my patience and skill to the limits.

The AN/ALQ-188 is from Aires. The ACMI round is from AIMS I think. BUT, I may have one in my spares box if you would like one.

Nice! I’ve done the Black and greys version of this. You’re gonna love it. My one bit of advice...consider using a masks set for the paintwork. I started out with masking tape and quickly lost patience. I didn’t do the conversion works you’re planning. My budget wouldn’t allow for it. So a little artistic licence was used with regard the Block version accuracy. this is how mine turned out.

Well, there’s finally some paint going onto this beast. Getting to this point has been a bit of a mission. The Zacto intakes, as brilliant as they are, weren’t exactly the same size, and so I had to use a little creative licence. I couldn’t get the splitter plates to meet the surface satisfactorily, so I simply built them up with scrap plastic and cut slots into the fuselage for them to rest. Any gaps were filled to hide the cavities I could see. Next up was the horrific landing gear doors. With no option to build this kit wheels up, they simply didn’t fit without lots of dry fitting and careful sanding. Given that I will be displaying this largely with the top surface showing, I did the best I could so that it looked ‘good enough for me’. Surface prep’ was basic. I gave the plastic a polish with wet 12000 micromesh. Wiped every inch with rubbing alcohol and left to air dry. Paints come from MRP, their Ukraine SU-27 colours, MRP-043. They’re so nice to spray, at 8-10 psi. It takes a LOT of paint to cover this area, I used a full bottle to cover all underside surfaces. With another bottle on standby for any touch ups or paint based weathering I’ll do. Next up, I just had to test drive the masking set from Foxbot. They’re amazing! The paints were MRP-44/45/46. They look a bit gaudy and stark from the bottle but I’ll be knocking this back a fair bit when I start some bleaching later down the line. The paint is almost bulletproof, I’ve used no primer, allowed a 24 drying period between colour applications, the masks were in situ’ for 4 days in total. Removing them caused no paint lifting of an sort. Now the real fun begins. I’m onto the top surface paintwork. The finish line is drawing to the horizon.

Tough question. The Tamiya kit is really showing it’s age now. The fit is pretty rough to nail well, a mix of raised and recessed details, and unless you’re modelling the A variant, needs a bunch of work to convert. The Trumpeter kits have more in the way of resin items to dress up their offering. Obviously there’ll be shape and size issues as standard with the Trumpeter. I’m no Tomcat expert, so if it looks like one, it’s good enough for me. Whether that’s good enough for you, only you’ll know that. If I were in the market for and F-14 now, I’d go with a Trumpeter D kit and dress it up with Aires ‘pit, Zactoman goodies, and some Reskit exhausts that are just hitting the cyber shelves.

Having just taken a look at the various parts when taped together and offered up to the Tamiya fuselage, I think I’ll abandon this plan. It’s a bit beyond my skill or patience to attempt. I’ll go with artistic licence with a few things.

Hi all. Has anyone here successfully grafted an Academy small mouth intake and exhaust to a Tamiya kit? Getting hold of an Academy single seater is pretty rough so I was considering using some spares from an old Sufa kit. If yes, how did you find the work to do it?

This is tragic news to read. I didn’t know him personally, beyond him sending me a kit as a surprise addition to the 2020 raffle. May he rest in peace and be free from his pain.

They certainly did sir, the scale of what I’ve chosen to take on has now become apparent. As it has to all others with this choice of paint job.

My sentiments were the same as soon as I saw it too.

Simply fantastic. There are so many things wonderful about this build. The labour of love to produce that incredible interior, all the little details that make it so spectacular, I could wax lyrical about everything. I’ll be in for a copy of the book when it drops, and my Blackhawk will be staying in the stash until I have it to refer to.