Uilleann

A little update - the ''Zipper'' needs new ''panel lines''. I checked other WIP builds, several pics of the real plane, and it really needs some ''reorganizations' of the panel lines. Moreover, they are HUGE, so they need thinning. Here is a simple measurement of the thickest lines...
 

 
Half a milimeter in this scale is somewhere over 1 cm, about half an inch, in the real thing, which is impossible. Two adjacent pieces of metal foil is the right way to go (I did some trials), but the ''gap'' underneath needs to be flat beforehand. Therefore...
 

 

 
Now it's drying time, then sanding, and probably a secondary filling/sanding of the panel lines. I'll figure out the locations of the ''new'' panel lines during the gluing of the metal foil, but the advantage of this black filler is that where two foil peaces are adjacent - the tiny little gap will be enhanced by the black color underneath.
 
PS: btw this white triangular white thing underneath is the finished casing of my F-117.   

Thx ALF!
There is no easy/simple procedure that I follow when making the gear... each is different, even the ''mirrored'' MLGs include different rods/materials for the joints and hinges. Every magnet has a slightly different place... It requires a lot of thinking of course, and just a ton of trial and test fits, and small fixes. It's not easy, but I like it. Now, while waiting for the filled panel lines to dry properly on the Starfighter, I just started planning on the F-22's nose gear in 1/48, which is... tiny.
My concern is how to protect the sprayed paint (from masking instead of decals) over the polished metal foil, but I have to figure out ways with the lacquer coats... This NMF technique is a whole new ball game for me, and hontesly, I'm feeling like I'm experiementing with some things and I'm not sure about the outcome. I'm optmisitic though.
 

I figue Godzilla is about 6 miles out......

The storage case and the bombs are aready, so I'm starting the ''parked'' sessions... firstly - just a few nighttime pics with a flashlight:
 
(btw here is the WIP topic, and the in-flight pics)
 

 

 

 

 
I'll take some ''normal'' outdoor pics soon. 

He is a genius.
 
but don’t tell him I said that 

How effin cool is this-

 
she’s a big girl, and needs some big legs. 
Timmy! Engineered all of this; incorporating brass inserts vertically and horizontally and high strength resin to ensure maximum strength…and the whole thing clicks together without glue.
Ridiculous.
This has easily saved me months of traditional scratch building, failures, and frustration.
The whole assembly just drops into the wing-
Those are Timmy’s! Fingers BTW-
 
super cool.
P

Cockpit - done. These are the parts other than the transparent canopy parts:
 

 
The canopy frames are painted from inside, and those ''other parts'' are added:
 

 

 
The resin pilot figure... I had to add the head and the right hand/glove after the gluing of the figure, because it barely entered the cockpit... almost unbelievable.
 

 
And with the canopy parts glued, finally. Note that I updated the seat ejection handles by using the twisting wire method... still not perfect, but times better than before.
 

 
I'm very happy with the silhouette. All the ''seat transformations'' and improvizations worked nicely.  
 

 
And in the open position:
 

 

 

Indeed, this post is living proof that (in modelling terms) reincarnation does exist!  Great work Pete.
 
Derek

hi Kev-
yep. And even back then, the plan was to skin the model in aluminum..which is en vogue around here lately..but you really need to go back even further in time to Timmy’s! 1/24 OV-10D for the genesis of aluminum skinning.
But also, this build certainly started before 3D printing was even a thing. Now it is really helping get this across the finish line.
 
hopefully it won’t be on my bench another 14 years!
 
P

We ALL do that, so he's in good company. 
 
Great continuing work Pete.  You are a Master.
 
Cheers,
Chuck

With enough thrust everything flys.  But don’t kid yourself, Pig is running around his basement with the model in his right hand over his shoulder making jet noises.  

Honestly; Timmy’s! Plans are so spot-on I’m sure it would fly..but it would need a ton of aileron trim from my crappy construction techniques 

So this is going to be flyable by the time you're done, right Pete? Couple of servos and motors in the back, and you can take it for a spin like your real jet. More wonderful progress on the Smurf
 
 

Matt 

This is as far as I dare go with skinning the belly for now. The forward join and intakes will require some adjustment before I can skin over that portion-
perhaps the oil-canning between the speedbrake wells is a little over done; but it is such a common characteristic of the T-38-I had to do it. Should look ok under paint..it’s just super reflective right now in bare aluminum.


 
…so on to the top next I guess!
 
P

Looks absolutely fantastic Pete
 
It is addictive once you start skinning - there is nothing like it for that realistic metal look
 
Peter

Awesome stuff, Pete!
 
Kev

…got that left speed brake well surrounded by aluminum.
can’t resist slapping the tail feathers up for a look-
 
P

Chopped out the channels for the speedbrake arms..

The gear wells have suffered some shop rash over the 14 years of construction and need some love.
the printed speedbrakes from Timmy! Literally drop into place.
genius.
fabulous.
 
P

Made it to the main gear well with the aluminum 

 
will work the sheeting around the speed brakes area, then flip it over and start on the top/sides moving back to front.
 
Cant yet go all the way with the aluminum to the fuselage split( behind the cockpit)..I’ll need to blend the joint between sections before I can cover that area.

March 31, 2024
 
Painting of the engine is done, but it was a real struggle because I’m so picky.  Painting a jet engine, inside and out, is challenging because of all the metallic and ceramic colors and no two engines are the same- but there are some similarities that you try to replicate.  It’s also very artistic, which can be both fun and frustrating.  I want all of my engines to add to the model, rather than be a liability where “good enough” is never really good enough.
 
Starting with the base (front) of the engine, I painting everything as close to what I could find for reference pics.  This is a combination of dull metal and a whitish ceramic look, which I enhanced with white pastels.  It’s a bit of a shame that you won’t see much of this later, when it’s buried deep inside the fuselage.
 

 
The flame tube was painted black at first, then I shot flat white paint through it from front to back, using a crude zig-zag mask that created irregular dark shadows within.
 

 
Painting the outside petals of the nozzle was the hardest part, because I wasn’t happy with my first two attempts and had to strip everything down and start all over again.  With 3 small pieces of masking tape and 15 petals, that’s 45 bits of tape that had to be applied 3 times!  As I’ve done before, I used an ordinary piece of paper rolled into a tube to hold the nozzle for painting.  Not only does it hold the nozzle, but it also shows where you painted and where you haven't against the white background.
 

 
I looked at countless Pratt and Whitney F-16 engine nozzles as a reference and used this one the most.  Note that the petals have 1 straight edge where the petals overlap, rather than 2 curved ones, which appears to be more common.  This Reskit nozzle seems to be the same.
 

 
A more common pattern of a curve on both edges of the petals.
 

 
The end result, after finally settling on Alclad Durluminum for the main petal color and Alclad Magnesium for the overlap.  I tried a lot of other colors but these two seemed to be the closest to the real deal.  If you look at the nozzles above, they are fairly smooth as Pete pointed out and all that tiny rivet detail is not very obvious.  Instead of filling it all in, I opted to just live with it, because doing so would likely harm the other fine detail that I want to keep.
 

 
Note that the nozzles are not spotless and there is some wear and discoloration here and there.  As I did with my CF-104 build, I decided to use some “Metal Liner” wash to dirty them up a bit.
 

 
I went with “Dark”, because the lighter washes didn’t really show up on the light surface.
 

 
I decided to go light on the wash to give the nozzles some stain, but not too much to overpower the metallic look, especially for small 1/32 scale.
 

 
Painting the insides of the nozzles was also a struggle, because I tried a few new ideas and they all crashed and burned.  What you want is a combination of black and white soot that has a fairly distinctive repetitive pattern, depending on which part of the nozzle petal it’s on.  Make some mistakes, like I did, and you get a combination of white and black in a grey mess, so I had to start all over again and go with something that I know works quite well on these PW100 engines.  Here’s a pic of what I used on the engines of my F-15C Eagle Aggressor 6 years ago.  Small thin strips of styrene, taped to the base of the nozzle along an axis that usually has less white soot than on either side, provide a partial mask when flat white paint is sprayed from the base of the nozzle outward, just like on a real engine.
 

 
The results can be pretty impressive, as shown on this pic I’ve shown at least 100 times here before, because I’m so proud of these nozzles.  Long before ResKit and others created fantastic looking nozzles using 3D printing technology, I made these out of a resin Two Mikes base and 11 Eduard and kit parts per petal.  30 petals combined with the 6 main parts of the nozzles equal 336 parts!  They took me forever to assemble, but I think they were worth it.
 

 
So I did the same thing again, using 0.4 X 2.5MM styrene strips, which fit each petal axis perfectly, they sprayed flat white paint from the rear outward.
 

 
The results, and this time I was very happy with the ending.
 

 

 
Added to the flame tube.  If you squint you might be able to see the dark shadow I created in the tube with that paper mask.
 

 
All engine parts combined so that you can barely see the front of the engine face.  This is really hard to photograph without a special macro-flash.

 
Engine painting done!  Now I’m scratching my head wondering if I’m going to add all those tiny “No Push” and “No Step” placards to the petals and how the heck I’m going to do it?  Maybe tiny strips of decal film?  Stay tuned……
 

 
Cheers,
Chuck

Thanks Guys!
 
 
Thanks Pete.  Funny, I was just researching this very topic this morning, since I'm now painting the engine parts.  Here's the ResKit nozzle once more for reference, with lots of tiny rivet detail.
 

 
What I found in my own pics of these nozzles and on the 'net was all over the map, but it's clear that 90+% of the PW100 petals are smooth as you point out with no super obvious rivet marks like this one.  The nozzle collar isn't always blue either, but since I think it looks cool, I'll be adding some Alclad Hotmetal Blue to mine.
 

 
The next thing I thought, was that maybe ResKit was trying to match the newer 229 engine, which has a distinctive carbon fiber look which is almost black.  The little dimples are super tiny and random, however, so it can't be that.
 

 
Digging around, I found a fairly rare pic of exhaust petals that are near new, which show the rivets fairly well.  Those "No Push" placards are usually cooked on and you can barely read them like the first pic above.
 

 
 
Over time, heat and weathering, this is the look that's more natural.
 

 
 
I don't see me filling the rivets in, because the detail is so fine, doing so will likely create a bit of a mess of the delicate blade boundaries.  I think, however, that I have a few ways of toning them down, at least at a bit of a distance.  Time will tell if I'm successful- or not!
 
Cheers,
Chuck

Thanks for checking in-

 
slowly getting there…

As always; striving for mediocrity
Thanks for looking