1/32 Wild Hare F-16XL, Project SCAMP WIP.

[danimalmagic]

Hi all, a slower week in terms of overall progress, this is largely due to me deciding to re do the radome as I was not happy with the fit. 
I do not know if it was an issue with the resin casting or the fact we are using the radome from the CJ kit but the radome was a larger diameter and there was a step from the radome to the front of the forward fuselage. 

I had eliminated most of this but I still had the step and it showed, the transition from the top of the forward fuselage to the radome should be smooth. 
 
Fortunately I had a spare radome so I decided to cut the old one off and do a bit of corrective surgery. 
To get it to fit better I have split the forward fuselage along the seam and the inserted some card stock. I have done this both sides and it has increased the forward fuselage diameter to better fit the radome. I still have some more cleaning up and re-scribing to do but the nose looks much better now, this took a couple of days but it was worth the effort. 

The next issue was to fit the correct wing tip launch rails, I had some useful advice there and I sorted this straight away. Fortunately the Isracast detail set I am using to get the block 40 wheels also has the 16S210 Launch rails so just a careful bit of adapting to fit the kit light and mounting holes the same as before. 


Next up I have assembled the kit AIM-9 and fitted to the launch rail, as these will be sprayed black and there are no decals or markings they can be completed now and added at the end. The dummy seeker head section should be a little longer but I do not have anything in the stash so these will suffice, if I can find the correct ones I will change later. 
 

 To be continued.

[danimalmagic]

Next up was the join on the leading edge of the wing, there should be no gap or step just a seamless line. 

Filler of any sort would not be the way to go so I built up a few layers of CA glue and then sanded that back, this gives a solid join, filler would most likely get knocked out as there is very little purchase. 
 
Next the four cameras, I don't have a massive amount of super detailed imagery for these so I replicating at a best guess. 
 
 
For the camera head I have stretched a bit of clear sprue and inserted, once cut off this will be the camera lens. 

Forward camera fitted. 

Same again for the tail. 

The main gear bay has been detailed, the carpet monster took one of the small pipes from the bulkhead hostage, negotiations ongoing so I have replace with copper wire.  There is still a lot more detail to add most of this will be the blue hydraulic piping which I will fit at the end. 

The front gear bay is pretty basic compared to the Aires set, I will add some piping detail later on. 

 Con't

[danimalmagic]

Before painting the landing gear I have polished up the surface of the damper shaft, this will be masked before painting, I will do the same for the nose gear. 

I have also added two landing lights, the F-16XL in question had the heavy weight landing gear (48,00Ib) fitted 10.01.1983 however it retained the landing lights mounted on the main gear and not the nose gear door as per the modern F-16. 
 
I have added the kit brake hubs to the Isracast Block 40 wheels. 

Once painted I have added some piping for the gear and lights. 

I will clip the piping off later when the gear is fitted. 

Nose gear completed. 

I have also added 3 lengths of pipe to the main gear door hydraulic cylinders, on the modern F-16 these all seem to be blue, can't really be that specific for the XL. 

Con't

[danimalmagic]

With that done I moved on to the resin burner, this is the much improved GT Resin set and is very nicely cast, I understand that GT are now casting from 3D printed masters and the improved detail really shows. 

Painted. 

Completed, the no step and no push decals are present on the XL in question and I had these left over from one of my Academy F-16. 
 
The decals have a silver background not clear, makes it look like silvering but you can see this detail on images of the real nozzle, probably the required heat proofing. 

Lastly for this week I have cleaned up the surface of the canopy sill and added the missing canopy sealing tube at the rear. This will all blend in once the rest of the cockpit frame has been painted black. 

I have also started to add the missing canopy lock each side of the glare shield/HUD mount, I will finish this off next. 


That is it for now as it is nearly time for the Rugby and a few beers. 

Regards. 

Danny. 

 

Modification list.

1.       NSI Intake, the Big Mouth is fitted to the second two seat F-16XL, a full resin NSI intake is provided, and it is seamless to a point, essentially a direct copy of the Thunderbird kit parts. NAV light reinforcement plate still in place, need to be removed.

2.       48,00Ib landing gear was fitted to F-16XL, 849 (F-16CJ kit).

3.       Block 40 wheels. (Isracast)

4.       Bulged main gear bay doors (F-16CJ kit), resin doors supplied are of no use.

5.       Bulged gear bay doors, need to check the closing/retraction bracket arrangement.

6.       Norwegian Type Drag Chute. (supplied)

7.       Check cockpit glare shield accuracy, resolved best as possible.

8.       Leading Edge Crank/Flap Under curl/profile, need to check all spans, not practical to correct.

9.       Thickness of ISA Booms, not practical to correct.

10.   Nav Lights on each side of the NSI intake, reinforcement place needs to be removed.

11.   Fill seam on intake join to duct. N/A

12.   Modify angle of RAM Ducts above the NSI

13.   Two small antennae required behind the nose landing gear.

14.   Two small antennae required forward of the nose landing gear.

15.   Two small antennae required forward of refuel point.

16.   Small round access plate between two antennae forward of re fuel point.

17.   Aces II Ejection seat, supplied with resin cockpits.

18.   Early F-16A Cockpit required, need to check for any further changes later on in the NASA program, further images required.

19.   Forward Avionics bay in front of canopy has no hinge detail, graft this area from the CJ Donor kit to rectify.

20.   Reposition the gun bay and associated ports to correct position on Portside, need to be further up slope.

21.   The panel lines for the PDU Bay , Gun Drum Bay , Gun Trough, Gun access door with vent, and, all need to be re-scribed.

22.   Gun bay Starboard side port missing, check and graft as required.

23.   Fuselage plugs details, lots of issues here, long story short to increase the length of the fuselage 2 plugs were fitted, 30†wide on forward area and 26†for the aft. In scale this has been replicated but the surface details need to be corrected on the upper surfaces, re scribe or graft.

24.   Rear fuselage lower plug Empennage Cant, quite a big problem on the underside as the plug has been positioned in the wrong place giving a much more acute angle up to the burner. I think the best option will be to cut these area out and graft in the correct details from the donor kit.

Points 22 and 23 will make more sense when I actually do the work.

25.   Top spine/center line antennae missing.

26.   Top spine/center line IFR light missing.

27.   Spin Chute Reinforcement strips each side of tail on upper fuselage, missing.(NASA onward)

28.   4 x spin chute mounting brackets, 2 per side after reinforcement strips.

29.   Check Pitot boom for shape and length, check.

30.   Throttle bulge on port side of forward fuselage, check.

31.   Extra AOA probe for the port side of the forward fuselage

32.   All TACAN/UHF/VHF/& other SI antennas, missing check.

33.   Pre bulge just fore of the MLG doors, check.

34.   C Band Beacon, check where etc, reference material.

35.   Store Separation Cameras, N/A for the version being built.

36.   Recesses for Dummy AMRAAM, check.

37.   Two ventral tails on the rear underside not fitted to the XL.

38.   Fit in flight test cameras including panel below each side of the rear canopy.

39.   Fit in flight test cameras to each side of vertical tail, middle top.

40.   Need the correct inlet compressor face, spare in Academy F-16.

41.   Port and Starboard air intake scoops, leading edge angle.

42.   Remove round access plate in front of the refueling port light.

43.   Air Data Probe, bottom side, behind Radome.

44.   Air Data Probe, port side, behind Radome

45.   Air Data Probe, above intake, Starboard side.

46.   AOT probes each side of radome, additional AOT probe on port side.

47.   Fit landing lights to heavyweight landing gear.

48.   Fit kit airbrakes as the resin ones supplied are too short.

[Guest Peterpools]

Danny

Fantastic work. Just blown away by your attention to detail and progress

Keep 'em coming

Peter

[danimalmagic]

Danny

Fantastic work. Just blown away by your attention to detail and progress

Keep 'em coming

Peter

Thanks Peter, a niggling week so i am glad its done, should get some paint on her this week.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Danny

[Pascal]

Still going strong Danny, looks great.

 

Do you know when those cameras were installed ?

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

[Loic]

Awsome work 

[danimalmagic]

Still going strong Danny, looks great.

 

Do you know when those cameras were installed ?

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

Hi Pascal, the engineering manual I have does not mention the fitting of the cameras, but there are present in the images for the time frame I am looking at, my guess is the later part of testing when the lower fuselage is painted grey, I will come to that Sunday with the next update.

 

If you get the Attic F-16XL Manual off eBay it will give you some good guidance.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Danny.

[danimalmagic]

Hi all, another busy week with a lot done, I thought I had cracked the nose but once the gloss white went on I could still see a few blemishes, if I do much more work on the nose it will be up there with Joan Rivers. 

With that done I could get on with the spraying, I will put the white coat on 1st and I have used the same method as I used on my Arctic Bandit F-16 as below. Basically post shading to bring out the panel line detail without too much need to apply a wash. 

The first thing to do is spray on a darker base coat, I have used Tamiya XF-55 Deck Tan. 

Next thing to do is apply the white, I do not get on to well with Tamiya bottle gloss white so I am decanting Tamiya TS-26 gloss white into the airbrush, this paint is much thinner and gives a much better finish. 
The idea is to fill in each panel one at a time but stopping just short of the panel line leaving that area darker. 

It takes a while to do and at this point the finish is a bit patchy. 

From here I just need to add another coat to eliminate the patchy areas, job done. 

Cont'd

Edited February 20, 2016 by danimalmagic

[danimalmagic]

The early NASA paint scheme has the underside completely white and the instructions indicate that the later NASA bird has a light grey central fuselage. It took me quite a while to see it in the images as in most it just looks darker as the underside is in shade. 
Once I did find an image as below I found I could see it very clearly in most of the pictures I have, a bit of an illusion. 
 
As you can see the white line stops just short of the wing join and this was a real pain to mask, I have been making use of the piles of post it notes I have accumulated for masking,my wife is a nurse and she is forever finding them in her pockets. 

Next I mixed up a batch of thinned light grey, I have no indication of the exact colour so I have used the lightest grey I have and a bit of white mixed in. 

Next I have masked and sprayed the gear bays. 

With the application of the light grey I have lost a lot of the panel line post shading so I needed to rectify this, to do this I have re sprayed the panel lines with deck tan. 

From there took some of the grey I mixed up and made a filter then applied slowly to the grey area until the panel lines had been reduced. 

Lastly I sealed with a coat of Future to bring back the gloss. 

Cont'd


 

[danimalmagic]

The next thing to do was paint the gear bay detail, this is another job that seems to take forever. 


I have added some wire to the nose and the rest of the detail for both bays will be added when the gear is fitted. 

Before I got to mask and spray the top of the fuselage and wing I decided to do the tail first as I wanted to see if the idea I had for painting would work. 
Weathering black is something I always find a challenge and I learned a bit from doing my Blackbirds, essentially I have painted matt black and then applied a filter of tyre black to the panels to try and give a patchy effect. When you look at the actual images you can see that the surface is bleached a little by the sun. 
It is hard to show it with the camera as it is quite subtle, once completed I will dust over with one of the lighter shades from the Tamiya weathering sets. 

Next up masking the yellow stripe, there is a magic mask set supplied with the Wild Hare kit but is totally useless as the masks all vary in size and width, I had decided not to use this early on. 

Masking done and some future applied ready for decals. 

Next the Parapack, I have a nice image of this as follows. 
 
Done, I have painted in both of the ECM Antennae, they were probably redundant and may well of been painted over but it is an easy fix if needs be. 

Last thing to do was get the decals on and the discharge wips in place and seal with a matt lacquer 

Cont'd

Edited February 20, 2016 by danimalmagic

[danimalmagic]

Lastly for this week I found a possible solution to the dummy AIM-9 issue, the version used on the XL has a longer seeker head assembly as below. 
 
In the Tamiya F-4 kits you have the AIM-9E, this in turn has the longer nose, only trouble is the 4 guide fins at the front are different shape from the above. 
It would be easy enough to glue on some fins from an AIM-9L/M as I have loads of them but it would mean breaking into a new Tamiya F-4 kit just to use the AIM-9E and I am not prepared to do that. 
I don't want to get too lost with this minor issue so I will keep an eye out and see if I can source some from elsewhere. For now they have been sprayed Matt Black and weathered a little with a filter of Tyre Black, does not really show in the image. 

Well that is another week done, looking good for completion in week 8, next thing to do is mask and get the black area painted on. 

Updated modification list. 
1. NSI Intake, the Big Mouth is fitted to the second two seat F-16XL, a full resin NSI intake is provided, and it is seamless to a point, essentially a direct copy of the Thunderbird kit parts. NAV light reinforcement plate still in place, need to be removed. 
2. 48,00Ib landing gear was fitted to F-16XL, 849 (F-16CJ kit). 
3. Block 40 wheels. (Isracast) 
4. Bulged main gear bay doors (F-16CJ kit), resin doors supplied are of no use. 
5. Bulged gear bay doors, need to check the closing/retraction bracket arrangement. 
6. Norwegian Type Drag Chute. (supplied) 
7. Check cockpit glare shield accuracy, resolved best as possible. 
8. Leading Edge Crank/Flap Under curl/profile, need to check all spans, not practical to correct. 
9. Thickness of ISA Booms, not practical to correct. 
10. Nav Lights on each side of the NSI intake, reinforcement place needs to be removed. 
11. Fill seam on intake join to duct. N/A 
12. Modify angle of RAM Ducts above the NSI 
13. Modify angle of RAM Ducts above the APU behind rear gear bay both sides. 
14. Two small antennae required behind the nose landing gear. 
15. Two small antennae required forward of the nose landing gear. 
16. Two small antennae required forward of refuel point. 
17. Small round access plate between two antennae forward of re fuel point. 
18. Aces II Ejection seat, supplied with resin cockpits. 
19. Early F-16A Cockpit required, need to check for any further changes later on in the NASA program, further images required. 
20. Forward Avionics bay in front of canopy has no hinge detail, graft this area from the CJ Donor kit to rectify. 
21. Reposition the gun bay and associated ports to correct position on Portside, need to be further up slope. 
22. The panel lines for the PDU Bay , Gun Drum Bay , Gun Trough, Gun access door with vent, and, all need to be re-scribed. 
23. Gun bay Starboard side port missing, check and graft as required. 
24. Fuselage plugs details, lots of issues here, long story short to increase the length of the fuselage 2 plugs were fitted, 30†wide on forward area and 26†for the aft. In scale this has been replicated but the surface details need to be corrected on the upper surfaces, re scribe or graft. 
25. Rear fuselage lower plug Empennage Cant, quite a big problem on the underside as the plug has been positioned in the wrong place giving a much more acute angle up to the burner. I think the best option will be to cut these area out and graft in the correct details from the donor kit. 
Points 22 and 23 will make more sense when I actually do the work. 
26. Top spine/center line antennae missing. 
27. Top spine/center line IFR light missing, new panel grafted in from donor kit. 
28. Spin Chute Reinforcement strips each side of tail on upper fuselage, missing.(NASA onward) 
29. 4 x spin chute mounting brackets, 2 per side after reinforcement strips. 
30. Check Pitot boom for shape and length, check, kit one ok. 
31. Throttle bulge on port side of forward fuselage, check. 
32. Extra AOA probe for the port side of the forward fuselage 
33. All TACAN/UHF/VHF/& other SI antennas, missing check. 
34. Pre bulge just fore of the MLG doors, check. 
35. C Band Beacon, check where etc, reference material. 
36. Store Separation Cameras, N/A for the version being built. 
37. Recesses for Dummy AMRAAM, check. 
38. Two ventral tails on the rear underside not fitted to the XL. 
39. Fit in flight test cameras including panel below each side of the rear canopy. 
40. Fit in flight test cameras to each side of vertical tail, middle top. 
41. Need the correct inlet compressor face, spare in Academy F-16. 
42. Port and Starboard air intake scoops, leading edge angle. 
43. Remove round access plate in front of the refueling port light. 
44. Air Data Probe, bottom side, behind Radome. 
45. Air Data Probe, port side, behind Radome 
46. Air Data Probe, above intake, Starboard side. 
47. AOA probes each side of radome. 
48. Fit landing lights to heavyweight landing gear. 
49. Fit kit airbrakes as the resin ones supplied are too short. 
50. Fit 16S210 wing tip launch rails, LAU-128 incorrect. 
51. Fit Static Discharge WIP to top of the vertical tail. 
52. Airbrake warning decals, white and black. 
53. Red decal border around APU flap, port side. 
54. Late version XL has a light grey central fuselage. 
 

Thanks for looking.

Regards

Danny Attree
www.modelmasteruk.com

[Guest]

OMG Danny, this is great !........Harv

[Guest Peterpools]

Danny

Right with Harv

Incredible work and looking so good

Keep 'em coming

Peter