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1/32 Kitty Hawk F-5E Kicked Up A Notch. Oct 3/19. Finished!


chuck540z3

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4 hours ago, DonH said:

Chuck, you get a great gloss finish. Is TS-14 better than, say, Tamiya X-1?

 

X-1 is an acrylic, is TS-14 different?

 

20 hours ago, chuck540z3 said:

 

 

Several reasons:

 

1)  Through a "rattle can", you are stuck with the viscosity of the paint as it comes out of the can.  Decanted through an airbrush, I can thin the paint to make it finer.

 

2)  I can control the air volume and pressure to get what I need for the application at hand, which allows me to spray closer to the model.

 

3)  I can control the air/paint mixture, making the surface wet without running.

 

4)  A good airbrush nozzle atomizes paint much finer than a plastic nozzle on a can.

 

It's all about control.  The most common painting flaw is "orange peel" or a rough surface.  With the ability to control the above, this flaw is minimized, so that you can get results like this.  The only drawback is that a smooth glossy finish reveals every tiny flaw, like the sink marks near the aileron that were not visible before paint.  With further coats of paint and a dull finish, these flaws disappear completely.  On this glossy black F-5E build, however, I'm stuck with them and therefore need to repair them as they are encountered.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

 

Like DonH says
I understand why you don't use the rattle can.

But why not use ordinary Tamiya gloss black X-1 and thin for airbrush use?
What does the TS-14 rattle can paint offer that is better than the X-1 to go through the hassle of the decanting process?

Am I missing out on something in terms of paint quality when using the X-1 paint from a bottle?

 

/Johan

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Tamiya X-1 is an acrylic and TS-14 is a lacquer.  While some swear by acrylics, I prefer lacquers for durability, hardness and smoothness of application.  The decanting process is super easy, so no real hassle for me.  I understand that there is a new line of Tamiya lacquers in a bottle that might be just as good, but until my stash of rattle cans are gone, I’ll be using them instead.

 

Cheers

Chuck

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  • 1 month later...

August 13/19

 

 

A brief update.  With summer here it’s hard to find time or the motivation to model, but I have accomplished a few things.

 

 

First of all, despite my prior comments about spraying this model with semi-gloss lacquer to knock done the shine a bit, I’ve decided to keep it shiny after all.  I have many pics of VFC-13 Gloss Black F-5E/N’s and they are all super shiny, even from a distance.

 

 

The next task which I’ve been dreading is decals.  I’m pretty good at decals and have even written a fairly detailed tutorial on this step, but I had many problems with this build.  For those interested in that tutorial, it is here:

 

 

How To Apply Decals

 

 

Now the decal problems before I even started:

 

 

  1. Nobody makes decals for VFC-13 Saints F-5’s entirely in red, which are on all of the black Aggressors.  The only red decals I could find are for VFC-111 Sundowners, and not all of them are red.

 

 

  2. The VFC-111 Sundowner decals that available are from the kit or the OOP Two Bobs 32-040 decals.  Thanks to “Dragon” (Mike) who sent me some of the red decals he wasn’t using, I had a set of both (thanks again Mike!).  However, the Two Bobs decals are a dull red and not bright red as they should be.  The kit decals, on the other hand, are very thick and hard to

 

 

  3. No decals of the US Insignia emblem are made in red- or at least as far as I can tell.

 

 

So I decided to go with mostly the kit decals when color was important, Two Bobs decals when it didn’t, a set of Profimodeller decals (32-286) for the red star on the tail and the big red and yellow nose number and finally Maketar insignia paint masks to finish the job.  This results in a bit of a “Whatif” VFC-111 Gloss Black F-5N that doesn’t exist, but unless you’re an expert on these jets you probably wouldn’t notice.

 

 

On the tail, the Profimodeller, red star went on easily and the thin decal film blended into the rivet detail with ease.  The big red “NAVY” decal; from the kit was quite thick, but the bright red color won the day.  The other smaller kit decals nearby were crude and I found that many of them were off register, revealing a white rim around each decal.  These were torn off and replaced with Two Bobs decals, even if the red wasn’t very bright.

 

 

ontOLo.jpg

 

 

Similar story up front, with the big Profimodeller “01” decal, while the balance were Two Bobs decals. 

 

NOTE:  The Profimodeller decals come with replacements for the "01" decal, which don't have yellow in the interior of the "0", so use them instead.

 

 

S530Y0.jpg

 

 

One very characteristic feature of most F-5’s is the pronounced dashed border around the two “No Step” areas on the wing, especially directly above the landing gear well.  With no red decals available, I decided to paint them instead, along with the Maketar paint masks for the two insignias on the intakes and one each for the top and bottom of the wings.  This was probably the most involved masking job I’ve ever done, so I sure hope it was worth it!  Make sure you keep the masking tape off existing decals or they will likely lift when the tape is removed.  BTW, the VFC-111 decal is Two Bobs, because the kit one was terrible, while the "E" is the kit one.

 

 

OrkQTF.jpg

 

 

I then painted these areas with Model Master “Chrysler Engine” bright red enamel (#2732), which closely matches the “NAVY” red decal.  I thinned the paint quite a bit with Mr. Leveling Thinner #400 to make sure that the edge of the tape demarcation lines were sharp, but you can’t load up the first coat too much or you will get paint bleed underneath the tape.  Unfortunately this gloss paint takes a long time to dry, so you need to be patient (which I’m not).

 

 

QTBCJO.jpg

 

 

I was also building the CATM-9M missile for the starboard wingtip and the TCTS pod (AN/ASQ-T50 V2) port side wing, as found in all recent F-5 Navy Aggressors.  Detailed pics of these pods can be found in Jake Melampy’s Super Hornet Guide on Pages 165 and 166.  Building the CATM-9M missile was easy, using the Zactomodels AIM-9L/M resin replacements, which I always marvel over every time I build one.  This missile, along with the other Zactomodels missiles, are the very best resin kits I have ever used on any model- period!  The super thin wings, which are surprisingly strong, and the fins that have to be glued on, make painting these details very easy. 

 

 

NGh4QB.jpg

 

 

After using Two Bobs decals, they really look the part:

 

 

TJEJMH.jpg

 

 

IswCNw.jpg

 

 

Qo9Fmu.jpg

 

 

The TCTS pod was another story.  Although there are TACTS and ACMI pods out there in 1/32, none of them are for CUBIC pods or TCTS pods and none of them have the much-needed ballasts to add weight to the wingtip to replicate the weight of an AIM-9 missile.  After building the beautiful CATM-9 missiles, I needed something that was fairly accurate and higher quality than the resin pods that are available.  If any of you resin guys are listening, there’s a huge market for these pods, especially if they are high quality!  So what to do?

 

 

I had a pretty good CUBIC pod made by a friend for my CF-18B model years ago, that has many similar features of what I was looking for.  This pod needs 3 ballasts for the F/A-18 wingtip application, while the TCTS pod I need has only two ballasts.  Fortunately, this pod was only held on with pins, so I cannibalized it for this build instead!

 

 

 MPMU3f.jpg

 

 

Modifying it heavily, I created something close to what I wanted with the middle ballast removed, but the rear ballast could not be moved forward a bit without harming the pod, so I left it as is.  All painted up with more Two Bobs decals (which are really for an ACMI TACTS pod), it looks pretty close to the real deal.  The blue band was painted on, since the Two Bobs blue band decals are always too dark.  Note that the antenna probes on the head bend backwards slightly like the real deal.

 

 

vRIndg.jpg

 

 

ahvUmt.jpg

 

 

Note that both pods have pins for easy insertion into the wingtip launchers- or future models!

 

 

c2N3Yo.jpg

 

 

That’s it for another week or two while I finalize the decal painting and many other small details.

 

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Edited by chuck540z3
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Beautiful, clean work as always, Chuck!

 

One thing, I believe the ACMI pods are somewhat longer than Aim-9's. Notice that they extend substantially behind the pylon, while Aim-9's are flush at the back with respect to the pylon.

 

It's hard to find plan view pics that show this well, maybe this one helps. 

 

Also, even though this is a somewhat older ACMI pod, I believe the dimensions (relative to your pod) are the same: Compare Aim-9 length to ACMI pod length, especially as they protrude (or not) beyond the pylon at the back.

 

Cheers,

 

Marcel

 

 

Edited by Marcel111
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Thanks everyone!

 

25 minutes ago, Marcel111 said:

Beautiful, clean work as always, Chuck!

 

One thing, I believe the ACMI pods are somewhat longer than Aim-9's. Notice that they extend substantially behind the pylon, while Aim-9's are flush at the back with respect to the pylon.

 

It's hard to find plan view pics that show this well, maybe this one helps. 

 

Also, even though this is a somewhat older ACMI pod, I believe the dimensions (relative to your pod) are the same: Compare Aim-9 length to ACMI pod length, especially as they protrude (or not) beyond the pylon at the back.

 

Cheers,

 

Marcel

 

 

 

 

Thanks Marcel.  I’m not sure what your point is because my TCTS pod IS quite a bit longer than my AIM-9 pod as shown below.  I should have displayed them on the wingtip launchers which would have given them a sense of scale.  In any case, they fit the launchers vs pics of the real deal fairly well.

 

XOqjyi.jpg

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Edited by chuck540z3
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11 minutes ago, chuck540z3 said:

Thanks everyone!

 

Thanks Marcel.  I’m not sure what your point is because my TCTS pod IS quite a bit longer than my AIM-9 pod.  I should have displayed them on the wingtip launchers which would have given them a sense of scale.  In any case, they fit the launchers vs pics of the real deal fairly well.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Chuck, my point was to make you aware that the instrumentation pod is substantially longer than an Aim-9, in the event that you were not aware of this already. I tried long and hard to find the exact lengths of these pods but couldn't find anything online, so the issue is top of mind. The pod on your Hornet drew my attention since it looks relatively short judging by how far back it extends beyond the pylon, but this is speculation on my part.

 

Anyhow, looks like you're all over this.

 

Cheers,

 

Marcel

 

 

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