Tamiya F-16 Aggressor, Kicked Up a Notch, April 11/24: Lighting Details

[chaos07]

Quite some progress Chuck - and looking phenomenal as always.  

 

Not sure if you've seen it yet, but it appears your kit has the same sink marks on either side of the fuselage, just below the slot where the canopy sits.   I've found the white plastic a bit tough to see some of this in person.  

 

Love the progress.

 

[LSP_Kevin]

Excellent work, Chuck!

 

Kev

[Zola25]

Now why do kit manufacturers not make their instructions like this..? 

 

Really nice work and a joy to follow

 

/Niels

Edited March 15 by Zola25

[chuck540z3]

Thank you Gents!

 

17 hours ago, chaos07 said:

Quite some progress Chuck - and looking phenomenal as always.  

 

Not sure if you've seen it yet, but it appears your kit has the same sink marks on either side of the fuselage, just below the slot where the canopy sits.   I've found the white plastic a bit tough to see some of this in person.  

 

Love the progress.

 

 

Thanks Duane.  I saw that on one side but didn't check the other.  Consider them fixed!  This white plastic makes it really hard to see flaws, much less photograph.  It doesn't change color much after painting it white either, so I'm going to make sure I spray a thin coat of Mr. Surfacer 1200 to check for flaws before I commit to the very complex paint job on these digital jets.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[art2noise]

Chuck,

This is beautiful work and I truly admire your attention to detail. I hope to build this bird soon with your awesome instructions.

Looking at pictures of 1220, the canopy on the back is not tinted. As you mentioned, several of these are hit and miss.

 

Jorge

 

[ax365]

Hiya Chuck.  I haven't visited these parts much lately but here I am now.  I'm sorry to hear that you and Mrs. Chuck had to put the brakes on your retirement trip.  Bummer.  Having said that, I'm thankful to hear that the intestinal blockage has cleared and it wasn't something more serious as happened to a late friend.  Long story short, abdominal issues led him to a colonoscopy too late to be of any benefit.  Colon cancer metastasized to liver cancer and he passed in December at age 60.  I wish you good health as this issue goes forward and that there are no recurrences.

 

I've reviewed your progress since you returned from your hiatus.  I can't say much that doesn't parrot everyone else.  Great work and attention to detail.  I've also noticed your few 'work smarter, not harder' moments as you narrate your build.  Nice!

 

Keep up the great work.

 

Mike

[chuck540z3]

Thanks Guys!

 

On 3/18/2024 at 7:28 PM, ax365 said:

Hiya Chuck.  I haven't visited these parts much lately but here I am now.  I'm sorry to hear that you and Mrs. Chuck had to put the brakes on your retirement trip.  Bummer.  Having said that, I'm thankful to hear that the intestinal blockage has cleared and it wasn't something more serious as happened to a late friend.  Long story short, abdominal issues led him to a colonoscopy too late to be of any benefit.  Colon cancer metastasized to liver cancer and he passed in December at age 60.  I wish you good health as this issue goes forward and that there are no recurrences.

 

I've reviewed your progress since you returned from your hiatus.  I can't say much that doesn't parrot everyone else.  Great work and attention to detail.  I've also noticed your few 'work smarter, not harder' moments as you narrate your build.  Nice!

 

Keep up the great work.

 

Mike

 

Thanks Mike, it's great to see you follow along again.  Sorry to hear about your friend.  That's brutal.

 

Thankfully after lots of CT Scans and the like, I don't have anything sinister going on, but without going into too much detail, I do have lots of scar tissue due to multiple stomach surgeries after an ordinary appendix removal 3 years ago.  Just bad luck I guess, so we'll see what the future holds for more trips.  I liked your "work smarter, not harder" comment, which I used again at the end of this update.

 

 

March 21/24

 

First a little housekeeping.  I showed above that there are 3 blue hydraulic lines that stick out a bit at the front of the main landing gear, so I tried to create something that was close.  It turns out I have a pic of them, so here they are below.

 

 

 

Duane (chaos07) pointed out above some slight depressions near the canopy hinge, so here’s a pic of the one on the left.  It has since been filled, along with the one on the right.  Thanks Duane!

 

 

The kit parts share many with the Block 50 kit, so some of them need to be modified.  Although the blister removal on the wing roots is in the instructions, here they are again, since they are easily missed.

 

 

 

Here’s a tip that helped me a lot.  The instructions have you join the upper fuselage Part B28 to the rear upper fuselage Part A1 in Step 19 first, then glue the entire upper assembly to the lower fuselage in Step 20.  While this kit is generally excellent, gluing such large mating surfaces all at once is asking for trouble in my mind.  Instead, I glued the rear Part A1 to the lower fuselage first, got things sorted out, allowing the glue to dry and cleaned up, then glued the front Part B-28 to the rest later.  This procedure allowed me to glue all the complicated fitments in a reasonable amount of time without being rushed.  Gluing one big upper assembly to the lower assembly as instructed, would have been very hard to do cleanly.

 

 

I find masking off cockpits and landing gear to be a real PITA, partly because its hard to do cleanly, but also because it must be done right if you want a successful outcome.  There are no real shortcuts, but I have developed a procedure that I’m sure a lot of you guys use as well.  Note that this model is now sitting on the same cardboard box I’ve used for at least 6 different models, using pipe insulation as a soft platform.  The yellow paint is from my Harvard/Texan build 4 years ago, followed by my Special Hobby Tempest Mk V, Italeri CF-104 and my last build of the big 1/24 Airfix F6F-5 Hellcat, which all sat on this same box for much of their assembly and painting.  More on that in a bit.

 

 

I used a small block of foam to fill the cockpit cavity, then ordinary masking tape for the rest, followed by a liberal coat of liquid mask.  The mask holds everything together strongly and covers small edges that tape won’t adhere to.

 

 

When the liquid mask has dried, I apply a few pieces of masking tape, since the liquid mask is tacky and you don’t want it to stick to anything and come off.

 

 

The landing gear bays were a lot harder to do, but I did have the advantage of having a central beam to attach masking materials to, since Part C27 will not be installed until the end of the build, right after the landing gear is installed.

 

 

Again, the voids were filled with custom cut little pieces of foam, followed by masking tape.

 

 

Everything was then toughened up with liquid mask, in this case “Mr Masking Sol neo”, made by Mr. Hobby in Japan.  This is the very best liquid mask I have found, because it’s easy to apply but more importantly, easy to remove as well.  You can’t say that about Micro Mask, which can be almost impossible to remove from small cavities after it dries.

 

 

Again, cover tape to keep the gear bays from sticking to stuff, like my fingers, arms and elbows as I handle the model.

 

 

As much as my cardboard modeling box has served me well for a long time, it was time to “upgrade to a new model”.

 

 

This was created with a small acrylic storage container that was 6 ½” X 12”, cut down to 2 ½” high, then foam pipe insulation was added to the top, for a total cost of about $3.  While I see that many of you use all sorts of contraptions to hold your models, I like this simple box a lot better.  There are no pressure points to rub paint, I don’t have to adjust anything and I can carry my model around safely to and from my paint booth without fear of it falling off something.  I just cover the box with a microfiber towel and paint away.

 

 

You can flip the model around from top to bottom with ease, because there’s always a position somewhere that fits.

 

 

One thing I’ve noticed in my pics above is that the leading edge flaps are usually up a bit when parked.  According to Jake’s book, this is normal for parked Vipers, which are up about 2 degrees, so I will be gluing the flaps accordingly.  Right now they are just dry fit.

 

 

The other thing I found in Jake’s book and pointed out by Pete Fleischmann earlier, is that Block 25/30/32 jets have only 2 “fingers” that connect the flaps to the wing at the most inboard position.  This kit has 3 fingers, just like the Block 50 kit, so it’s obviously a holdover not easily cut off like the blisters.  If I filled the outboard finger it would be more accurate, but I’m not sure if this is “working smarter or harder”, since I kind of like the look of it, even if it’s wrong.  I’ll think about it.  Any thoughts?

 

 

One thing that I did add was the so-called “ECS Exhaust”, which was basically missing from this kit.  What prompted me to look for it, was because there was a small depression at this location, that I thought might be a flaw of the plastic.  Checking my Block 50 kit, it’s much more pronounced, although quite small.  There’s a great picture of it on Page 65 of Jake’s book with a half shroud forward from the hole in the fuselage, so I fashioned something similar out of styrene.

 

 

So that’s about it for now.  I still have lots to do and then there’s that super complicated paint job!  I sure hope it turns out OK.

 

 

Cheers,

Chuck

 

Edited March 21 by chuck540z3

[Scale32]

Wow, great masking I love neat masking!

 

cheers Bevan 

[chuck540z3]

Thanks Bevan!

 

March 21/24

 

Another quick update while a few things are still clear in my old mind. 

 

Whether to delete one of the front flap “fingers” has bugged me since I made my post above last night.  While I always strive to make my models as accurate as possible, sometimes the effort isn’t worth the reward and in some cases, altering things can look worse, so you wish you hadn’t bothered.

 

One thing that I wanted to do was to leave off the front flaps until after painting, so that I could easily mask off and paint a few small things like the RHAW “beer cans”.  If I just glued them on permanently now, however, filling in the gap for the third finger would be fairly easy and I could re-scribe the panel lines.  I came very close to doing so….

 

 

Before I did that, I thankfully flipped the model over to see what exists for detail underneath.  Here there is a lot more detail and none of it would be easy to fill and recreate, because the kit parts are made so that the flaps can be either raised or lowered, leaving a big gap.  The real wing doesn’t look like this at all and is almost identical to the top.  If it did, I would just fill it, but since it would be a real PITA to modify the kit wing, I’m going to punt and Fuhgeddaboutit!

 

 

For years I have been a bit intimidated by all the F-16 Block variants and what specific details they should all have, including the reinforcement plates that many of them have.  Apparently Block 50 and up variants don’t have them, because they are internal.

 

I have the super thin stick-on set that came with the kit in the upper right, but I also have the thicker Cross Delta set on the left, which thankfully comes with accurate instructions as shown below.  This indicates that I should be using the large fuel tank plate which is actually made from 5 parts (1), the “lawnmower blades” around the front of the vertical stabilizer (2), and a fairly big panel around the nose radar blisters (7), which are RAM panels (Radar Absorbant Material).  Surprisingly to me, the more modern Block 40/42 Vipers have a lot more reinforcement plates as shown.

 

 

My subject, 84-1220, nor 86-1229 have the front plates, which are RAM panels, so it looks like I’m good with using just #1 and #2.

 

 

 

While digging around for reference photos, I stumbled upon pics of a THIRD F-16 Aggressor painted in the digital Ghost Scheme.  It’s another Block 25, 84-1301, and since none of the pics are mine, you can see it here at Jet Photos:

 

F-16 "Ghost" Aggressor, 84-1301

 

Pretty cool.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Edited March 22 by chuck540z3

[JayW]

!!!!  Heavy lifting indeed Chuck.  I don't know where to start - let's just say I am impressed.  And, I love how you are trying to keep track of config on an aircraft that has seen so much change.  

[chaos07]

Great progress Chuck.  

 

Great tutorial on the masking and sealing of the critical areas.  This technique will be added to my toolbox.  It looks way easier than wet tech wipes/kleenex and then tape over after it dries in place.  

 

Out of curiosity, given the complex digital scheme on this bird, will the canopy be painted on the jet when the time comes, or will you tackle that separately?  I was debating how to tackle my build - mask as you have and paint separately, or "glue" the canopy in place with masking solution and paint in one go.  

 

Cheers.

[Cycling Guy]

This is a masterclass in everything one needs to level up their skills. I appreciate you showing your masking method. I had trouble getting mine to stick on my last build and it caused a lot of head aches, but I look forward to trying your method on my next build!

[chuck540z3]

Thanks Guys!

 

14 hours ago, chaos07 said:

Great progress Chuck.  

 

Great tutorial on the masking and sealing of the critical areas.  This technique will be added to my toolbox.  It looks way easier than wet tech wipes/kleenex and then tape over after it dries in place.  

 

Out of curiosity, given the complex digital scheme on this bird, will the canopy be painted on the jet when the time comes, or will you tackle that separately?  I was debating how to tackle my build - mask as you have and paint separately, or "glue" the canopy in place with masking solution and paint in one go.  

 

Cheers.

 

Thanks Duane,

 

While the wet Kleenex method works just fine, it leaves tiny particulate crap behind that might get into future paint coats and if you have any decals, like I do in the gear bay and cockpit, wet tissue can lift them.  Small bits of foam have none of that and they compress nicely under tape.  Every time I unpack something with foam I try to keep a few pieces for future projects.

 

As for "gluing" the canopy with liquid mask and painting it with the rest of the model, I never do that because if you have any leaks, you contaminate both the cockpit AND the canopy.  On my F-4E and F-15C that both have camo paint jobs, I just painted the fuselage as I saw fit, then placed the canopies in place and noted the demarcation lines and painted them separately.  That way you can get a good paint job on the inside and outside with no over-spray, assuming you mask them properly.  The canopies are almost always in the upright position anyway, so if the lines are off a bit, nobody will ever notice.  HTH.

 

1 hour ago, Cycling Guy said:

This is a masterclass in everything one needs to level up their skills. I appreciate you showing your masking method. I had trouble getting mine to stick on my last build and it caused a lot of head aches, but I look forward to trying your method on my next build!

 

Thanks.  I often show things in my builds that are basically "Modeling 101" and not very unique, because we aren't all at the same skill level, so I'm glad this mini "tutorial" was of some help.  When I finally get to the digital paint job, I will be showing how I did it, because at this stage I just have some ideas that I hope will work out.

 

One thing I contemplated before I glued the intake to the lower fuselage was to paint the area between them first to reduce paint spray turbulence in a tight area and the negative effects of that.  On a grey jet it would have been smart and easy, but on this very complex digital scheme with lots of little squares in this exact same area, I'm better off masking it along with the rest of the fuselage and taking my chances later.  One thing that would help reduce turbulence is to spray at very low pressures with extra thinned paint, which I've done before.  It takes several light coats, but you don't get that "dusty" look and feel of tiny paint balls drying in the air then sticking to the rest of the paint.  We'll see how this works in the future.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[scvrobeson]

I appreciate the detailed look at masking and the paint box that you've created. Will have to file that away.

 

I think leaving the third finger there will be okay, since it's a tiny detail on what will eventually be a spectacular build

 

 

 

Matt 

[kike_gt]

Great job as usual Chuck! How do you avoid damaging the plastic when cutting the tape on the edges? do you use a knife? or how do you get such a nice contour?