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

[Ginja Ninja]

Fantastic work, Chuck! 

 

Every time I read your build threads there is always a new technique to try out. Thanks for sharing! 

 

Out of curiosity, will there be a KLP build guide for your F-16?

[chuck540z3]

Thank you Gents!

 

11 hours ago, kike_gt said:

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?

 

It's tricky but very doable, especially with practice.  I use a new super sharp #11 blade and try to cut 90 degrees to the face of the tape, using the side of the plastic against the side of the blade as a guide when I cut.

 

5 hours ago, Ginja Ninja said:

Fantastic work, Chuck! 

 

Every time I read your build threads there is always a new technique to try out. Thanks for sharing! 

 

Out of curiosity, will there be a KLP build guide for your F-16?

 

Good question.  My build threads are usually a step by step chronology of how I create a model, so that when/if a magazine article or eBook is ever written, most of the work is already done.  I still need to finish this model (2 more months, a year?) and if it's a success and I'm happy with the end result, documentation of the build may occur in some form.  Let's see how things go and if Kevin is even interested, because he's got a lot on his plate already.

 

Cheers,

Chuck 

 

 

[chuck540z3]

March 24, 2024

 

I’ve been doing some more research on what differences there are between my subject, a Block 25 and the other Viper block variants.  One thing I found was that the so-called reinforcement plate (#7 of Cross Delta set above) around the radar blisters behind the nose cone are actually RAM panels (Radar Absorbent Material) instead, so I have edited my post accordingly.  Apparently these items are being added to older Vipers, but they aren’t on the Ghost Scheme ones I have pics of so far, so I won’t be adding them.

 

Another very small item I found was that Block 25’s have a small reinforcement plate which I’ll call a strap because it's long and thin, right behind the canopy hinge.  I don’t have a great picture of this area on my subject, so the one below will have to do, but sure enough I can see that it’s there.  The other Viper I have pics of above, 86-0299 which is a Block 32, doesn’t have them as expected.

 

 

So I’ll be adding this small strap along with the other reinforcement plates to make my model as accurate as possible, which begs the question: “If you’re so worried about tiny accuracy, why not alter those 3 fingered front flap hinges to 2 like you should have all along!”  Well, after this complicated modification was bugging me with all sorts of justifications for not doing so as described earlier, I finally caved and got on with it.  Deep down I knew I would eventually, as maybe a few of you did as well.  As they say, "No Guts no Glory"!

 

After lots of thought about how to do this effectively but still allow the flaps to be left off for ease of painting later, this is what I did.  First, the outboard finger was cut off very carefully with a #11 knife, to retain the surface detail of the flap, while also retaining a concave surface to the flap/wing boundary.  The remnants of the “flaps down” tab that was cut off beside it on the right was retained, since it provides a good glue anchor join when the flaps are cemented into place.  The “Flaps up” tab as I’m using is to the right of that again, are unaltered.

 

 

After carefully cutting the finger off of the flap, I then filled the recess where it used to fit with CA glue.  I prefer CA glue for almost all my filling, because it’s strong, dries almost immediately and I can sand and shape it quickly, in this case to conform to the adjacent contours of the wing/flap surface.  A very iterative procedure of applying CA glue and accelerator was used to achieve the end result.

 

 

The other side, which is a bit hard to see since the CA glue is clear.  While the surface under the flap can look like almost anything as long as it doesn’t impede the fit of the flap, the top portion that you can see must be flush with the rest of the wing.

 

 

The top fit is pretty darn good now, knowing that it will be even tighter after the application of glue when the flaps are glued into place permanently near the end of the build.

 

 

 

The bottom of the wing/flap join was a bit trickier with all of the complex adjacent detail here, but I’m sure it will look fairly natural after a coat of paint.

 

 

There, I finally caved on the flap hinge to make this Viper as close to a real Block 25 as possible.  The exact lateral location of the 2 vs 3 fingered hinge is not clear, but based upon pics in Jake's Viper Guide, I think it looks close enough by just deleting the outboard finger.  Now maybe I can finally sleep at night. 

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Edited March 25 by chuck540z3

[LSP_Kevin]

Excellent work, Chuck!

 

Kev

[chuck540z3]

March 27, 2024

 

Since I’m now trying to make sure my model is as accurate as possible for a Block 25 in every way possible, I found another change I need to make since this Thunderbirds kit is for a Block 32.  Apparently Block 25’s only have 2 flare/chaff dispensers on either side at the rear, and don’t have the extra 2 added on the left hand side as shown below.  Eliminating them was easy by gluing in the cover Part C16 plates, then filling the recesses with CA glue and sanding everything smooth.  For the 2 dispensers at the back, however, this kit doesn’t have any since the Thunderbirds have cover plates on them.  Thankfully I have a few spares from the Block 50 kit, which has 8 of them.

 

 

This is confirmed by a pic I took of my subject in November 2022 at Nellis AFB.  Note that the forward 2 dispensers are missing as they should be for a Block 25.

 

 

Next, I decided to get into the ResKit F100 PW engine I bought for this build, but it doesn’t indicate if it’s the original 200 version, or the more modern 220 or 220E version.  No matter, because this is the one I’m stuck with.

 

 

This engine is super detailed like the ResKit J-79 engine I used on my CF-104 build, that turned out looking pretty good if I do say so myself…..

 

 

Like the J-79 engine, unfortunately, the instructions just show you how to put the engine together, with absolutely no guide as to how it should fit with the kit parts.  You are left to figure that out on your own, so I came up with a plan as you will see below. 

 

Like all ResKit resin, there are large casting blocks to cut off with a razor saw, which is tricky to do without damaging the fine details of the delicate parts.  Here is the main nozzle part and the approximate location of the cut line on the instructions. 

 

 

The best way to smooth out the cut line is to rub it on a rough sponge sanding block to get off the biggest chunks.

 

 

Unlike what the instructions call for, I’m sanding off the entire bottom of the nozzle, which removes a few millimeters of interior detail, in order to get a stronger fit with the kit parts as you'll see below.  This small detail will not be missed once the engine assembly is assembled and painted.  Here I’m using a flat sanding belt on a flat plastic holder, to keep the bottom of the nozzle as flat as possible.  On the sponge sanding block, the rocking motion and flexible surface creates a rounded edge, which you don’t want for final sanding.

 

 

The sanding is complete with a light buff with a 1000 grit sandpaper sponge.

 

 

This is the main goal when the ResKit resin and kit parts are glued together.  You want this fit to be as flat and flush as possible and it looks like the nozzle diameter is perfect.

 

 

Here is the top of the flame-holder with the recess and notch, that the nozzle fits into.  With the base of the nozzle sanded off, I sanded off this recess as well.

 

 

In order to fit the KesKit flame-holder into the engine fairing, I glued into place a thin strip of 0.5 X 4mm styrene into the kit parts P10 and P11, which turned out to be perfect.

 

 

And this is the reason for my departure from the ResKit instructions, in order to get a tight and very strong fit of the resin engine to the rear of the fuselage.  With this wide and flat surface, the engine nozzle can be glued on at the end of the build easily, with no fuss with finicky recesses or notches in the resin parts, which are not as strong.  Further, you can glue the “best side” of the nozzle upwards as you choose, without the need to lock it into a specific notch on the flame-holder.

 

 

The last resin block I cut was across the very detailed circular grid at the front of the flame-holder.  I dreaded doing this, because breaking the delicate parts seemed inevitable, but at least I had the kit Part P25 to fall back on if I made a mess.  There are 4 tabs that are a bit longer than the rest that I marked with red dots, that fit into slots of the engine duct.

 

 

The reason I noted the 4 longer tabs is because 3 out of the 4 broke off when I cut the assembly off the block, with the only remaining one marked with a red dot.      I’m guessing it’s because they flexed more with the saw and due to the extra stress, broke more easily than the shorter tabs?  At this point, I was fairly certain that I would be using Part P25 instead!

 

 

Much to my surprise, I was able to cut off the extra backing from all of the tabs and glue the broken parts back on with CA glue, without any more drama.  Using styrene cutters, the key to cutting the backing was to cut horizontally with the assembly to the base of the tab, which broke the vertical portion of the backing naturally, snapping it off.  From there, a #11 knife was used to clean everything up.  The repaired tabs are quite strong, with a fairly large amount of CA glue applied from the rear where it can’t be seen.

 

 

Here it is dry fit into the base of the engine assembly.  My kit came with a broken rim on this part, which isn’t a big deal because it will not be seen when fully assembled.

 

 

There are 3 more brass parts that need to be added below the resin assembly.

 

 

Final dry fit assembly, compared to the kit part.  Pretty impressive engineering by ResKit!

 

 

 

 

 

So now it was time to deal with how the front of the KesKit engine was going to fit into the fuselage.  I had the same problem and solution with my CF-104 build, so I sort of knew already what to do.  Using the front part of the kit engine that slides into a groove in the engine bay, I cut off about 1” of it and the front tabs.

 

 

I then cut off two pin locks in the engine bay that normally hold the kit engine.

 

 

Before I glued any engine parts together, it’s important to figure out which way is up and which way is down in the engine compartment.  I looked at several pics of PW100 engine pics from the rear and came up with all sorts of angles that I found confusing, but most of them were for F-15’s which appear to have the engines installed a few degrees out from what I finally settled on, like the pic below from an actual F-16.  Note the flat top to the heptagon with longer arms coming from the corners.

 

 

So I set the “Top” accordingly and marked it with a pen, which coincides with the deepest tab of the resin assembly, which is no doubt there on purpose.  The front portion of the kit engine I cut off was then glued to the base accordingly.

 

 

The sub-assemblies indicating which portions go to the top.  While the assembly on the right is glued together, the rest are only dry fit at this point.

 

 

 

The groove at the top of the engine bay is quite long, thanks to it sharing the same part as the Block 50 kit, which has an entire engine that can be removed for display.  This kit only uses the rear of the groove, which is all I need.

 

 

The Engine sub-assemblies now just slide into place with ease, after trimming the side pins of the kit parts to allow clearance, while still remaining snug.  This fit is solid, so once everything is glued into place, the engine will be very secure when bounced around.

 

 

With fuselage Part B20 dry fit into place, the engine fairing fits fairly flush on the bottom.

 

 

Same thing on the top, showing that the hole of the fairing lines up with the hole in the fuselage top perfectly.

 

 

And the candle on this engine cake, the rear nozzle, which can be glued on at the end of the build with no fit issues later- and no gaps.

 

 

So the current game plan is to paint and detail all of the engine parts, then install the engine with the kit fairing and other fuselage parts to ensure that everything is smooth and looks natural on the outside, which will take a little light sanding.  From there, I’ll mask off the rear of the engine and attend to the other kit assemblies on the tail.

One might ask why I worry so much about the interior of an engine that I'll rarely see again, even with a flashlight.  The answer is, "It's Fun!",   at least to me, which is a big part of what modeling is all about.  Thanks for checking in.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Edited March 27 by chuck540z3

[chaos07]

Chuck,  

 

One of the best parts of a jet model these days, especially with aftermarket parts, is to look up the tail feathers!   So much detail, and it makes a huge difference in my opinion.  

 

I think the ResKit nozzle is the 220/220E because it has split bolts at the end of the turkey feathers where they connect to the inner nozzle.  On the 229 this is a single bolt and carbon petals.  Jake's book on page 143 highlights this difference.  The internals for the ResKit parts look to be the 220/220E as well when you reference page 141 vs. page 142 for the 229.  I studied these pages entirely too much when I was working on a SUFA build trying to sort out the differences.  

 

I like your approach to the attachment of the nozzle.  Mine was a bit more complex (only because that's what I thought would be the easy way), but yours will be  easy to install in the end.  It looks like sanding the can flush and trimming the lip on the inner parts doesn't affect the fit of the convergent(?) portion of the nozzle to the hot section.  My path was to assemble the ResKit parts as a unit, and slide it in at the end - but I'm missing the entire forward section to allow the display.  

 

On a side note - - there is some detail that the kit is short on with the arrestor hook.  Some easy work (a couple of holes and some light grinding on the hook end) could spice up this part fairly easily, even though it is mostly tucked between the ventral fins.   I grabbed some detailed shots of an A model near me - and I do not think the hook has changed.  The attachment point and the hook could use a little attention - happy to PM or post here if you want.   

 

Awesome progress.  

[Jaro]

Love your detailed photos and relevant comments!

[spyrosjzmichos]

Mighty fine work!

[F`s are my favs]

What an adventure! Of course the engine work (and the resin upgrade) is ''always'' worth it - this is one of the most detailed parts in the model, after all. PS: okay, I'm editing ''always'' in commas, as I remember some pretty rudimental improvizations in a few of my models.

Edited March 28 by F`s are my favs

[Pete Fleischmann]

Looking great Chuck!

 

I really like the Reskit nozzle- my only beef with it are the rivets on the individual petals. I just don’t see them in my memories of actually touching the jet during preflight; and they don’t show up in any reference photos that I’ve found. Me? I’d fill them..but your mileage may vary..

 

cheers

Pete

[chuck540z3]

Thanks Guys!

 

17 hours ago, Pete Fleischmann said:

Looking great Chuck!

 

I really like the Reskit nozzle- my only beef with it are the rivets on the individual petals. I just don’t see them in my memories of actually touching the jet during preflight; and they don’t show up in any reference photos that I’ve found. Me? I’d fill them..but your mileage may vary..

 

cheers

Pete

 

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

Edited March 29 by chuck540z3

[scvrobeson]

Your precise work and explanations are always so helpful Chuck. Really does a great job of demystifying the work, especially on complicated stuff where the instructions may fall short

 

 

Matt 

[chuck540z3]

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

Edited March 31 by chuck540z3

[Landrotten Highlander]

only have 3 words for this:

 

A.

Ma.

Zing....

[Marcel111]

Awesome work here Chuck, just wow! 
 

Cheers,

Marcel