DigiHell & the F/A-18F Super Hornet - 3rd Wire & On The Deck

[themongoose]

Episode 3, our hero has joined with the main force and now we have created the Mega Zord! Yep, the fuselage is complete. After filling and rescribing the panel line on the lower fuselage this should look really good. I figured that was the best place to leave the gap. Honestly it’s not too bad. I spent a good deal of time doing the dry fits and lightly sanding  lots of surfaces to get it to this point. 

 

 

 

off for the holiday weekend on this one unfortunately. I’m off to my moms. Taking a 1/48 Tamiya P-38 with me tho!! 

[GreyGhost]

Very nice start on the CoNA Rhino ..! 

 

-Gregg

[Cbowling]

           Thanks Gentlemen for the warm welcome. Chris, the fit on yours was so much better than mine. And that was after I trimmed a lot of the detail off of the inside of the front fuselage (avionics Bays). My seams were much larger. The one seam in front of the intakes was horrible. I had to go back several times and re-putty the trench.

        It’s smooth sailing from this point forward. I patiently waiting to see the Jedi master of painting execute such an awesome paint scheme on this bird. Can’t wait to see yours complete. It’s going to be awesome.

 

Chris B.

[themongoose]

Well I’m working through a couple approaches to this build over the weekend. Doing my trials on the stabilator so it’s easy to work with. 
scanning - tried a couple approaches, scan by color and a general scan, then tried a “lasso” to see if the computer could pick the points up better then me. No luck on the lasso or by color. Color works ok but I can’t get a straight line unfortunately. The computer just sees waves along the edges of any given color. 
so i decided on a mix of techniques, some old some new. I painted the whole stabilator light ghost gray

then i used the masks for the LGG. Kept the picture in front of me and painted dark ghost gray DGG. 

 

now it was a decision point. Bright blue or black. I ended up making masks for the black as there are only a few spots of it but they are complicated patterns that were taking me awhile to create from the strips i cut on the cameo. Next time i will use the positive mask, paint the black, then cover it with the negative mask and go back to the blue. In this case i had to spray some gray primer over the black overspray because the blue is so translucent. I should have known that from experience 

So for you color guys here is a great comparison. The 1st two are on my desk with the overhead light pushed back a little to keep the reflection down. These aren’t sanded yet.

 

Now for these i sanded down the ridges between colors then wet sanded the whole stabilator from 3600 to 8000 grit, then put a gloss coat on them. These are under the led in my paint booth.

 

 

a few minor touch ups. These are so smooth. Too bad this is a 2d and not a 4d environment 

if the rest comes out like this i will be so excited. Tons of work tho. The next one should go much smoother. Large spaces of color i will do using masks from the cameo and the smaller stuff will be from the multi width strips i cut out ahead of time. I’ve probably got 5 hours in this 1 piece. Tho i had to sand and repair one section that got messed up. Guessing the right side will take about 3 hours. 
Flaps and rudders need cleaned up and the edges finished off next. Then i will paint those up. Trying to practice on parts that are easy to manipulate and to sand down and redo if things get goofed up before i get to the fuselage. 

Edited August 8, 2022 by themongoose

[MikeMaben]

[themongoose]

Managed to finish the 2nd stabilator. Sanded and gloss coated both. This pattern creates lots of opportunities to discover what you missed after you remove the masking! I had one square of black that was definitely not there after I pulled the masking off and discovered that I covered a spot that I was supposed to paint ha ha  

I swear this plane is gonna look even larger in the digital scheme. Next up is the belly tank. Got it all sanded, seems filled, and ready to go last night.

[Nighthawk Calling 1]

Inspirational work on the painting can’t wait to see it finished.

[themongoose]

ok I have what I think is the most complicated part of the build complete - The Belly Tank! 

My 1st shot at this was an epic fail. I printed a mask that would wrap around the tank. I thought aligning it and doing the wrap would be the tough part. That part worked great. What happened was I could no longer tell where the cut lines were, so I couldn't pull off the right section of mask as I needed to. I had wiped black acrylic paint over the mask ahead of time so I could see where all the cu lies were, however once the mask rolled they all but became invisible lol

 

 

Time to go back to the old fashioned way. I printed each color separate and then pulled individual masks off the sheet and placed them.

 

To help with this I created what will probably be my favorite part of the build, a digital camo popsicle! Wrapped a print of the camo pattern around a dowel rod so I could visualize where everything was to go. Worked a treat!

 

And a closeup

 

 

I'm traveling for work this week however I was able to download a copy of my Silhouette software so I can draw masks from the hotel room every night. Now, finally, some time to go browse the board and see what everyone else is up to!

[LSP_Kevin]

Impressive!

 

Kev

[themongoose]

Well i started prepping all the flaps and slats, ailerons, wingtips, and tails for paint. While looking at the wingtips I realized I hadn’t taken the top cover plate off the sprue for the wing fold option I’m doing. No worries, a quik snip and then decided to do some fitting to decide if i shOuld glue it on 1st or paint it 1st. So glad i did. What a horrible option Trumpeter gave for the fold! heck i had to go find someone else’s build just to see how the piece fit as the instructions are wrong. They have you just place the cover plate on top of the wing. What a farce! We must fix that. So i spent the afternoon fitting and cutting so i can install the cover plate properly and not have an extra piece glued to the top of the wing tip.

 

The offending wing joint. The fingers stick up so high that the cover play is at a 45° angle.

so let’s cut about a third of it off on the backside that can’t be seen so that the plate fits

then trim the cover plate so it fits around everything once the wing tip drops down far enough to align the fingers.

 

 

and finally our objective is met :-)

 

 

the 1st one took about an hour. The 2nd one maybe 20 minutes. I used the 1st one as a template and just worked my way to the final fit with a file. Now the cover plate, slat, and flap mounts can be glued in place before i lay down the digi pattern for painting.

[chrish]

Nicely done

the wing doesn’t fit much better unfolded….my experience

[themongoose]

12 hours ago, chrish said:

Nicely done

the wing doesn’t fit much better unfolded….my experience

Funny you mention that, when I looked at the folded fit I thought maybe I’d have to give up that idea. Then after trying to see what it looked like straight decided they both sucked and should just work to my original plan.

Still it’s a nice kit and i love the detail in the wings so not complaining  just putting all the info out for the next builders to read 

[themongoose]

8 hours ago, MARU5137 said:

OUTSTANDING  work.

Superbly Done.

 

Happy Birthday Chris...(themongoose).

 

thanks Maru! Big day, spent some time on my bug this morning. The rest of the day drinking Pina’’ coladas in our little wading pool lol should be a relaxing weekend. Working on all small stuff to get it ready for paint since almost everything except landing gear needs light ghost grey as a base coat.

[themongoose]

Quik update post traveling - 12hrs of drawing has the masks for the top and bottom fuselage and the twin tails complete. Next up the fuselage sides which should take less time for sure.

 I didn’t want to get the airbrush out the other night as time was a bit limited so i worked on the canopy over 2 short evenings. Had some struggles with fine scratches using the novis. Gonna need some more work to get the technique right. I did great on a small P-38 canopy recently but the big Bug canopy beat me. Decided to coat it. I tried the Gauzzy thru the airbrush after polishing up to 12k grit. It went down pebbly. Read a bunch on how to do it but 3 tries and wasn’t happy with any of them. Stripped it all off and went with my tried and true future.

 

 

then tonight i sprayed some mr surfacer 1200 on the fuselage seems to see how much work i have left. Not much actually. Then i put the light ghost grey on the loose pieces to end the night. 

 

 

 

and now Thursday and Friday taking the last kid off to college! Back on the Bug Saturday as an empty nester. Can you say more model time, i know you can! 

[themongoose]

Moving right along on this one…seems like a long time since i posted however it has been unfathomable how long it takes to draw squares and rectangles   

 

 

so, at 1st i did all the squares and rectangles on the same sheet. Figured to pluck off what i needed and apply it. Holy cow, it took me a whole football game to do the light ghost grey on the wings and another Sunday afternoon game to do the top of the fuselage, that was definitely not going to work. I ended up taking time to learn how to draw in layers in the Silhouette Designer software. The LERX were then redrawn in layers. Costs 3x the masking sheet but way worth it for speed and how much better the alignment is now.

ive got another 6 hours into drawing the fuselage sides so plan to print and apply those this weekend. Oh yes, it’s like watching paint dry it takes so long to do. I’m committed now tho!

Edited October 1, 2022 by themongoose
Redid pic links