chuck540z3

Attaboy John. Good enough is rarely good enough and your extra work on the canopy cables has paid off immensely. Super Duper work. Cheers, Chuck

Ordinary paint thinner you can buy at a hardware store. ie: Varsol or equivalent. Cheers, Chuck

Thank you very much Gentlemen! I was asked in the other forum a couple of questions that some may be interested in, so I share them here as well: Two questions if I may please: 1. What do you use to re-punch the rivets? 2. How do you apply the Tamiya Accent Colour? 1. Sewing Needle in a pin vice. Choose a needle that's sharp, but also a bit fat not too far from the tip so that you can modulate the depth and width of each rivet hole. 2. The Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color (TPLAC) product comes in the exact same bottle as their Extra Thin Cement, complete with the same application brush. Shake the bottle, then apply the wash sparingly, using capillary action to suck the dark wash along panel lines. When it dries for at least 10 minutes, use a paper towel or rag with just a little plain paint solvent (not lacquer thinner!) to wipe the excess wash off. Too much thinner and you remove too much wash. Too little and it won't come off at all, so you will discover what that fine line is with a little practice. One note on the TPLAC washes. The label says that it it might harm bare plastic, but used sparingly I have never had that problem. The tiny stress cracks above are 90% new scribing and rivet detail and about 10% TPLAC making it a bit worse, like any solvent would. Cheers, Chuck

Thanks Woody. I use quite a bit of Microsol already, but maybe not enough. I'll try using a bit more from now on. I just love your products and as mentioned, some of them wind up on every single one of my models lately. Cheers, Chuck

Neat! I have used your products on just about all my models and the added detail is always eye catching and well worth it. With all these rivets, this should look spectacular when done! One tip, which you have discovered, is to make sure all seams are filled and smoothed out before you apply the decal rivets. FWIW, I also apply a good Future/Pledge coat to the rivets before painting, to smooth out the decal film edges. Cheers, Chuck

I would give that model a 9.75/10 at a model contest, only because no model is perfect and I haven't found the 0.25 deduction yet! Your painting equals your photography, which are both fantastic. Cheers, Chuck

February 19/19 In my last post a few days ago, I was fairly impressed with the lower main fuselage which has fairly good panel lines and rivet detail. Although I usually re-scribe every panel line and re-punch most rivets, the bottom didn’t need too much of that. The upper fuselage, however, is not nearly as good as the bottom half. As a matter of fact, it’s quite bad and almost everything needed to be enhanced or changed. Here’s a few pics of what I mean. There are some nasty and big molding flaws that run the length of the fuselage, that need to be sanded down and removed. Further, the panel line and rivet detail are there, but quite weak to almost non-existent. Sanding off this flaw will remove this detail, so you need to enhance it, sand it, then bring it back. As noted earlier, the fuel caps are on the wrong side, so the ones molded on the starboard side should be filled and replicated on the port side. This is kind of weird, because the Kitty Hawk decal instructions have the fuel caps on the correct side, so there was obviously a screw up somewhere along the way. The caps should be slightly recessed and there should be some detail of a handle within. I don’t have anything that looks like that and I really don’t know how to replicate same, so I filled the caps on the right side with CA glue and drilled progressively larger holes on the left side, then inserted some circular PE brass bits to create new fuel caps. They aren’t exactly accurate, but they are crisp and detailed beyond anything I could have created with styrene, so as we say in modeling far too often, “Good Enough!” My jet has the circular GPS dome instead of the swept back VHS antenna. From the few pictures that I can find of this newer feature, the antenna base is about the same with a “hockey puck” replacing the antenna. Searching through the stash, this AIM-9 missile end is about the right size and it even fits the slot in the base, so that I can leave it off until the end of the build. I also sanded it down a bit to be more to scale. One of the most characteristic features of the F-5 is all the rivet detail, which is easily seen, no matter what the paint scheme is. This needs to be enhanced, so after sanding all of the plastic very smooth, I then re-scribed every panel line and re-punched every rivet, adding a few more rivets according to references. By doing this, you not only bring the detail out, you enhance it. A sharp scriber or a needle in a pin vice enhances the detail by creating a sharp demarcation line that actually pushes the kit plastic on either side of it, filling the dull detail around it. It is subtle, but very effective. Here is the upper fuselage after many hours of tedious work- and a sore neck! As always, I use Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color in Black to show this detail, but also flaws that I may have made or were already on the kit plastic, which are easily fixed at this early stage. I have found that this method of building models greatly reduces the number of flaws you find later after a first coat of paint. A few more close-ups: Sometimes, however, you get stress cracks, created by the scriber and needle, which is made worse by the dark wash, which is a solvent that weakens the plastic within. This is fairly rare, the cracks are not wide enough to see after paint and I have never had a problem with them later. Still, I added some CA glue to the inside of the cracks to stabilize them, just in case. I tried not to be too aggressive with the detail where it will join other parts of the model, like the front and bottom fuselage. As you may recall, the panel lines did not align very well on the bottom of the front fuselage, so it’s best to glue the parts together, then re-do the panel lines. The fit from top to bottom, however, is pretty darn good, so I should be able to align the panel lines fairly easily. In my next post I hope to have the intakes installed and all of the main fuselage glued together and cleaned up. That won’t be for about a month, because I’m off to Hawaii for a couple of weeks to get away from this “Polar Vortex” that the media has recently discovered is caused by global warming. Really. It’s in the news just about every day. That’s funny, because when I was a kid and it was cold for a long time, we called it “Winter” and there was no mention of it being an abnormal event, ever since the Ice Ages 11,000 years ago. Aloha, Chuck

Your work is beautiful and although I initially thought the tail camo was a bit too hard edged, when compared to the print of what the real deal looked like, I think you absolutely nailed it. Those tires/wheels are spectacular as well. As for the accuracy- or not- of the leading edge slats, as they say in Jersey, "Fugetaboutit!", as it appears you are. I'll bet 98% of those who view your model now or in the future will never question the slats position, including me. For the puttied seams, I would take a look at what Matt at "Doogs Models" has done below. Rather than apply a putty seam, he masked off the areas that were not puttied, then sprayed a putty coat. Doog's ME-262 Cheers, Chuck

Thanks Brian. Despite the misgivings of this kit for accuracy, ill fitting parts, mold flaws and poor (and wrong) instructions, I have to remind myself that we modelers should be happy that Kitty Hawk (KH) has created this kit (& F-5F) in the first place. If you wanted a 1/32 F-5, the old Hasegawa kit used to be the only option and it is truly bad. At least this kit gives us a fighting chance to create a really nice model of this iconic and very popular fighter. On the positive side, this kit has: 1) Generally well defined and clean panel lines 2) Good to excellent rivet detail 3) Good overall shape 4) Lots of options to create a specific version with a variety of load-outs 5) Lots of decal options, although I have no idea yet how good the decals are 6) Good plastic that sands and re-scribes easily Also, the front intake parts have a very specific ridge on the inside/back that indicate that something should have or will fit onto it one day, like maybe intake parts? There is no reason for this ridge to be there, so this kit just might improve in the future once these shortcomings are fixed. In the meantime, seamless intakes and likely a new resin cockpit will become available, even if KH doesn't change a thing, to make the kit better. Cheers, Chuck

Thank you Gentlemen! Thanks Marcel. I never would have tried this on a larger jet, like my big Eagle, because you can actually see quite a bit inside those big intakes. These tiny intakes mean that you can get away with minimal detail, because you can't really see much of it inside, even with a flashlight. In any case, even crude intakes are better than nothing! A bit of an update, but more of a warning. I am currently detailing the upper fuselage before I glue the entire fuselage together and along with moving the fuel caps to the port side, I've been scratching my head on how to deal with those circular windows just in from of the engine vents on each side. These windows indicate the level of some kind of fluid, but the kit instructions don't have clear windows for them. A review of other builds of this kit indicate that nobody is using an alternative, so the circular depressions are left as is. After looking hard at where all the clear parts go (GP Series), I think I have figured out that many parts are miss-labeled and therefore not missing. So here is what I've found by looking at the GP sprue below: 1) On the bottom of the forward fuselage, the instructions tell you to place two GP-9 circular lens into the openings in Step 22. These lenses are too small, so you should use two GP-1 lenses instead. 2) Now we have two small GP-9 lenses for the sides, which fit perfectly in the holes in front of the engine vents in Step 17, which are not mentioned. 3) The instructions tell you to use the GP-1 lenses for the navigation lights on the bottom of the wing in Step 19, but nothing for the top of the wing. Since there are four GP-7 lenses, which are almost identical to the GP-1 lenses, these should be used instead for the bottom AND top of the wing. 4) The remaining error is that the instructions ask you to use the circular GP-7 lenses in the vertical stabilizer in Step 21. This is wrong (and we used them already above), because they are rectangular shaped and should be GP-5 instead. In Summary: 1) Step 22. Use GP-1 instead of GP-9 for the bottom lights on the forward fuselage 2) Step 17. Use GP-9 for the side lenses just forward of the engine vents. (Missing in instructions) 3) Step 19. Use four GP-7 lenses instead of two GP-1 lenses on the end of the wings, top and bottom. 4) Step 21. Use GP-5 instead of GP-7 lenses on the tail. 5) Kitty Hawk instructions should be scrutinized thoroughly before gluing anything. Hope this helps! Chuck

Wow! You can see how dangerous that would be if it hit somebody. Likely certain death. Incredible nonetheless. Chuck

While I realize that a video like this might be old-hat to a lot of you guys, I had no idea that remote control jets were as sophisticated and fast as they are- and this sucker is big! Any intel on engines, cost, etc. of this amazing hobby? Check out the low pass at the 2:26 mark. Incredible. RC F-104 Starfighter Video Cheers, Chuck

Now the intakes present a much bigger problem, because they don’t exist at all and so far, there are no after-market ones available. Phase Hanger Resin is making some, but after at least 10 attempts to contact them and get a real date for delivery, I gave up and for the first time, tried to make some of my own. With small engine intakes and a fairly straight forward trajectory, I found some 5/8” OD/1/2” ID PVC pipe and gave it a whirl. Let’s call these “Econo-Intakes”, because they are nowhere near as good as resin ones, but they are better than nothing- and waiting for some to show up one day (or not). I started with a few tools to shape and bend the plastic pipe. The pliers on the right give an intake opening similar to the kit plastic and the awl-like gizmo on the left (it’s really a wine stopper) should spread the pipe enough to get it around the engines. After a lot of trial and error using a heat gun, I found that the pipe will become very flexible when heated and you can shape it. The pipe also has a bit of shape memory, so by re-heating the pipe, you can get it to go back close to where it started before heating. So here is Proto-type Econo-Intake #7, which worked out quite well. In order to get the intake to fit over the gear well, you need to sand down both the bottom and top so that it will clear. This was done using a sanding wheel on a Dremel tool, which made quick work of the plastic. Other parts were heated and shaped accordingly, but you have to be careful to let the pipe cool before it touches the kit plastic. While the outside of the pipe is quite rough, the inside remains very smooth. The fronts are a bit rough right now and everything is still only dry fit. After the top fuselage has been cemented to the bottom, I will sand and shape them super thin so that they are one smooth unit with no gaps. When the front portion of the intake is installed, it will be tough to see this join anyway. This front piece has lots of issues to deal with anyway, so I plan on making everything smooth as one unit and, well, seamless! From the front you can see the intake fan, which is really hard to photograph. I’m leaving these intakes white, so no need to paint them. That’s it for now boys. Next up will be clean-up of the “Econo-Intakes”. Cheers, Chuck

Thanks Bryan! The answer is yes, as I will show again below. Peter, you make me blush, especially coming from the Master! Feb 12/19 Thankyou Gentlemen! With the front fuselage done, it’s now time to attack the rear fuselage. Before I go any further, many of the modifications I’m making I found in the LSP Kitty Hawk F-5E SIG thread, so thank you to everyone who pointed these out before. You guys tell me what’s wrong with this kit, and I’ll try to show how to fix them! My jet doesn’t have the chaff and flare dispenser (B12), so the raised panel should be removed and the two small holes filled. At the rear of the fuselage are 4 raised lumps. Two should be there and two should be sanded down. As mentioned earlier, I rescribe every panel line and re-punch every rivet to enhance detail, so I also always use a dark wash to see if I goofed up somewhere. For all my criticisms of this kit, the bottom detail is excellent. I was also going to hide the landing gear bays with closed doors, but with this fine detail, I’m having second thoughts. I may jazz this stuff up some more and leave it exposed. The top of the fuselage, however, isn’t as well detailed and it has a few errors. The engines have nicely formed intake fans and compressors, but there’s lots of crap in the way and ink marks for some reason, so I’m not sure why KH bothered. There is a fix, however. Eduard supplies flame tube screens to cover all the warts and some nice detail for the compressor face. Some engines have this screening and some don’t and I found a pic of a jet that had one of each, so anything goes. All painted up and ready for assembly. With the exhaust extensions dry fit, most of the seam lines are covered. And no ugly seam lines on the sides either.

Thanks Guys! Looking at my close-up pics, I see some remaining flaws, which I have just fixed. Next up, seamless intakes for $3.20 US. I haven't actually made them yet, but I think I know how after a little experimentation. Wish me luck! Cheers, Chuck