F-16C Block 52+ "Raven" Polish Air Force - First LSP

[chaos07]

Tail assembly is complete sparing some final sanding and scribing.  

 

The attachment of the parabrake housing was a little work, but not bad overall.  My cuts on the kit tail strayed a touch from the panel line making the junction a bit out of square.  Certainly, the resin was slightly out of square from the resin part removal from the casting block, so some adjustments were made.  To make this easier a channel was hogged out of the forward section of the parabrake, leaving a contact area that was just oversized in width of the kit parts.  This made truing the joint much easier and eliminated any doming of the resin while trying to make very minute adjustments.  This task went much quicker and presented very few issues - I'll gladly take the win on this.

 

The truing was done with some 220 grit sandpaper - intentionally rough to allow some bite with the adhesive.  The initial attachment was done with VMS formulated for Resin.  Not sure what the difference is between this and all the other "types" sold, but it works very well with resin.  It is fairly thick - close to Medium - but the bond is instant.  It is imperative that you get it right first off, or break out the debonder.  

 

 

After attachment with some CA, a bit of JB weld was mixed up to layer in from behind the part.  My thoughts in doing so was to ensure there was a solid bond between the resin and plastic ensuring that an errant bump later on would not break the join.  My experience and relationship with CA is strained to say the least, and I don't trust it for a permanent mechanical bond for such a large resin part.  The benefit of JB weld over the 5-minute epoxy I've used in the past is how hard it gets, it sticks to anything, and clean-up with some IPA and a cotton bud or Q-tip is as easy as one could ask for.  This permitted cleanup at the base of the tail that will straddle the kit part that holds the metal alignment pins.   

 

The opening at the base is also visible here, as mentioned in the previous post. 

 

 

The RWR antennas at the top of the aft section of the tail were somewhat soft.  I measured them and they came in at approximately 1.5mm, which I could punch out of some .005 styrene.  The part was sanded smooth to remove the original detail - this took a bit of attention to keep the facets straight and even.  The new antennas were punched out and applied with some TET - the rapid stuff with the light green top.  

 

Due to alignment issues imposed by the builder (me) when this part was glued together, I lost some height on the lower surface over the rudder, when eliminating the step.  This was corrected with a strip of .010 styrene and sanded back into the rounded profile, which closed the gap nicely.  

 

 

The assembly dry fit together after gluing on the parabrake housing.  Full functionality was maintained with the rudder, and once finally assembled I'll have the flexibility to pose it appropriately when the time comes, and then lock it in with some TET.  Until I get the base and corresponding position of the model I don't want to commit to a final position ensuring flight control position and the pose of the model look right.   

 

 

The RWR antennas look very oversized in these photos.  They will be toned down slightly with final sanding and polishing before painting.  

 

 

Lastly, a PSA regarding securing the caps on ones bottles of TET - do it . . . .  I must have left one just sitting in place for a few days and as a result, most of it evaporated.  I'll gladly accept this over spilling a bottle - much easier to deal with.  

 

As always, thanks for checking in and your comments/suggestions/corrections - it makes the process much more enjoyable.

 

 

[chaos07]

A little further along.  This round is the slight weathering inside the intake.  

 

My attempt at giving this some wear and accumulation of environmental staining.  A mix of Lamp Blac, Ivory Black, Mixing White, and Yellow Ochre Burnt was used to make a color that when nearly wiped off has just a hint of brown, and gray.  In the reference photos I've found, the intakes tend to turn a bit yellowish over time and in time can accumulate a little character along the way.  

 

The mixed color used is at the top right of the cardboard below.  

 

 

Below you can make out some of the staining, and an attempt at a rub mark, which shows up occasionally - at least in the references I've found.  The PolAF birds tend to stay fairly clean, but a few do show some considerable wear.  My goal is to show an in-use jet, but clean and well-maintained.  

 

My application method was to apply small dabs of oil with the brush, that had been dipped in lighter fluid first, across the intake trunk.  A dry cotton bud was then used to work the oil into the surface in two directions - first in the direction of airflow, then perpendicular.  After some time, another clean swab was used, dampened with lighter fluid, and flooded the surface.  After letting that sit, the oil was worked in a pattern that mimicked the reference photos below.  Of note, the long cotton buds that I used have a very dense and hard-packed head, which allowed me to leave the pattern used.  In my test, normal cotton buds that had a softer head tended to just blend the oil into a muddy mess.  The harder swaps left a pattern, and with enough thinner, I was able to control it some.  

 

 

A couple of screen grabs of PolAF jets that were used as a reference.  

 

 

 

 

Please note the rough skin inside the intake.  This will justify the rather unsmooth finish I ended up with on the third round of painting these. . . . I'll take the win, though the texture was certainly not applied deliberately.  

 

OPR is a new skill for me, but I like the effects one can garner with careful application.   I'm sure my skills will improve with time and more mileage.

Thanks for checking in.

[spyrosjzmichos]

Great work!

The air intake weathering looks pretty realistic!

[chaos07]

Greetings.  The hand has healed up a touch since having some work done on it, and I've managed a little bit of progress.  

 

A quick shot of Mr. Surfacer 1500 white, the intake looks pretty good.  A final light sanding is still needed, but the doubler for the lights came out pretty well, especially the blending to the intake.  I wasn't sure how this would work out, but it will certainly work here.

 

 

Moving on to the tail, and the parapack extension.  With an initial application of the 3m Red Glazing putty and some sanding, it was shot with the same white surfacer.  The panel line detail was very wide and deep, which will not blend in well with the rest of the model, and the access panels on either side below the ECM antennas are pretty rough.  

 

 

 

In the end, the lines were filled with some thin CA to re-scribe.  The doubler that is present on the aft side of the upper triangular panel will be sanded flush, and re-added later after the panel lines are restored.  

 

 

This afternoon the filling, scribing, re-filling, and re-scribing has been completed, sparing the small access pannels on either side.  These will be a bit tough to do, getting one of my PE templates up there to keep rounded corners that I'm not sure how to replicate with my normal methods of scribing.  Moving forward I'll likely make a template from some thicker styrene or some Dymo tape.  This will let me trim the template to fit each side and tape it down securely.  This resin is fairly brittle so I want to get this job done in one go.  Ging back after filling with CA is even tougher on the long straight easy lines, so making a mess of the square panels is not on my short list of things to accomplish on this build.  On a couple of the lines below it appears that there may be a double line cut, but that is the red putty showing through.  After I sort out the square panels I'll punch in the rivet detail and then final assembly the tail for primer.  

 

 

The restored panel lines above and below look a bit deep, but in person, they look pretty good compared to the kit scribing. Though the macro photos do wonders to identify areas that need a bit more work.

 

 

Thanks for checking in.

 

Edited March 11 by chaos07

[chaos07]

Some goodies arrived in the post this week.  

 

The kit has some ok representations of most antennae to install, but the Total Air Temperature (TAT) probe suffers from a rather inconveniently placed ejector pin mark.  This extremely small part installs into a keyed opening on the lower fuselage.  

 

 

There is no way I want to try and clean this up - lost one in my first attempt, and not planning on trying again.

 

 

Seeing the boom in 3D printed parts emerging from small and large businesses alike, turning to Google gave me a partial answer to my problem initially - it did not look like anyone made a replacement.  I found PK Productions (Pascal) listing a TAT and Air Data Probe set and reached out to see how to find them.  He passed on that Wolf 3D Resin produced the parts, so I dropped an order.  A couple of weeks later, the trip from Austria concluded, and here we are.  He produces several sets for the F-14, F-15, F-16, and F-18 along with what appears to be a growing inventory and varied subjects.  

 

 

These are very well printed, and super sharp in detail.  As a bonus, a better-looking Air Data Probe will also be used.

 

 

These are razor thin - and carry incredible detail.

 

 

One-inch squares on the cutting mat for a good size comparison.  

 

 

As I eluded to in an earlier post, I prepared for this in advance by drilling out the keyed opening to 2mm and placed a backer to ensure the replacement could be installed at the very end.  This will allow the entire probe to have a natural metal finish including the round base - and be installed at the very end.  The current depth is a bit too deep to account for a small amount of epoxy to fill the gap on installation.

 

 

The Air Data Probe fits quite well on the nose also and will get the same treatment as the TAT for installation.  Pre-paint, and installed at the end.

 

 

Goal is to squirt some paint on the intake and start gluing some larger parts together.   We shall see how the weekend treats the bench.

 

Thanks for checking in.

 

 

Edited March 13 by chaos07

[chaos07]

Still pushing the rope uphill this week, and some progress was made.  

 

First, the intake lip was painted in a slightly darker shade of gray that seemed to match many reference photos I've found of the subject jet.  I believe the lip of the intake, and a few other areas are covered in an anti-abrasion coating which weathers similarly to the radome.  As the jet flies more, the darker it gets.  In photos showing this jet freshly painted, these areas are slightly lighter than the Light Ghost Gray, and in the most recent photos I've found from late 2023 to early 2024 they are slightly darker.  This is a mixture of MRP Aircraft Gray and MRP Light Mod Eagle Gray to give a slightly different hue and darker appearance.   In the color card in the background, I've painted several colors from the MRP/SMS line to use as a reference as the project moves forward. 

 

 

The color demarcation is curved with the leading edge of the intake, so it was masked and painted before installation as doing so later on would be very tough to pull off.  You can see where the top portion of the splitter is cut out to allow the installation of the reinforcement strut just before the intake gets glued to the lower fuselage.  The same color as the intake lip is applied to the ECS inlets, though a slightly lighter shade to match references.

 

 

On this scheme, the majority of the underside is Light Ghost Gray, I opted to paint the intake before installation.  After painting the inside of the intake, I did not want to try and get into all the recesses after the fuselage was all buttoned up.  Since the Haze Gray of the Raven is limited to the underside starting on the nose gear door, and a small portion wrapping around just behind the nose, this will save some considerable hassle later on.  Provided I'm careful, this area will only receive some light touch-ups with the installation of the gear door and some antennas.  

 

 

The Navigation lights were also attached now.  On the kit parts, these lights are keyed and have a small stud that fits into the intake, but on the aftermarket extended light housing, there was no such locating hole.  Since the diameter of this hole was early as big as the fairing is wide, drilling this out was not in the cards. The lights were sanded flat on the underside, then glued in place with some JB weld.  This stuff sticks to anything and cleans up exceptionally well with some IPA on a cotton bud or micro brush.  It was a bit finicky to get the lights aligned and taped down for the overnight dry time, but in the end, I managed to get them aligned fairly well.  In the future I would mount the lights before installing the fairings to the intakes, that may have been a bit easier, but if everything was easy, we wouldn't build models.  

 

 

I realize now after looking at these photos the lights were not masked correctly.  The forward edge has a small painted section which I did not mask off.  I'll address this in the future, and should not be an issue.  

 

The intake seems to have shrunk in width at some point here . . . .  before painting the assembly fit perfectly on the lower fuselage, but now I have a small gap behind the ECS intake almost back to the forward edge of the main landing gear well.  Right now the triangular section at the front of the splitter has glue, and the two tabs on the top and bottom of the intake trunk have glue and are curing.  It seems I can push the intake sides over a touch and close the gap, but that will be addressed once the glue is fully cured.  I'll have to think on this a bit to minimize damage and re-work along that joint.  

 

 

 

The brass tube was blackened with some blackening solution since it will be partially visible once the kit is finished and mounted on the acrylic rod.  The fit is fairly tight in the styrene disks it slides into as well as the fit of the rod.  This seemed to be the  best method to darken the brass to prevent any paint buildup causing problems later on.  

 

 

Then to allow the installation of the main gear bay, and the aft portion of the intake trunk/engine bay some more JB weld was applied to fully secure the brass tube to the fuselage.  This is now rock solid and is permanently affixed.  The aft bulkhead was painted black to ensure that the white plastic will not be visible in the end.  Right now I intend to install the ResKit parts minus the aft turbine section - I would have to drill a slightly larger hole than 1/2 inch in this part, and what detail is left would not be visible so I will not install it, and just leave the forward section open.  The black will make sure that the forward area blends into "nothing", making alignment tasks much easier at the end when this section gets installed.

 

 

Next, more work was done on the Sniper Pod.  The glass was installed, and what a pain that was.  As mentioned in an earlier post, the resin parts that Eduard provides were slightly small across the width, and I felt that clear styrene would look better.  Below the glass is installed with some Gator Glue and the glue line is quite visible - though still wet.  The seam between the longer sections of glass did not come out as well as I had hoped but is as good as I can get it.  This is the 4th iteration of making these parts and was the best.  On the real deal, this join is very visible, but to me, this still seems a bit too obvious but will be the final configuration.  The forward edge of the glass will get painted gray, and the red/orange sealant will also be painted.

 

 

Once the gator glue dried, a coating of MRP Gloss was sprayed over the styrene glass to ensure that the dark gray stripe at the front and the eventual red sealant will not work its way inside.  My thoughts were that if the edge was sealed up with clear, the paint will not make its way inside.  We shall see.  My phone doesn't do justice to the glass, it looks pretty decent in person.  At some point, I need to learn to use my DSLR camera for these shots.  

 

 

Lastly, to prepare to close up the fuselage the chaff/flare buckets were cut open to allow the Kopecky flare buckets to be installed.  Straight forward, and it only took a few minutes to file the edges flat after drilling out the perimeter and knocking out the centers.  These will be installed at the very end after final paint and such and I'll ensure the configuration is correct for the two partially empty buckets  The Chaff/Flare buckets offered by Jan have partial, full, and empty configurations allowing several options.  

 

 

 

Flares only will be how this jet is configured, so the red caps will be painted before installation.  Anodized Aluminum is what is currently painted on these, but may not be the final color.  I have time to sort out the final shade.  

 

 

That's all for this week - thanks for checking in!

[chuck540z3]

Really nice work Duane and I must say, very different than most Viper builds due to your unique and really cool looking subject.  I'd like to steal some of your ideas but everything is so different than mine, there aren't many that would apply.  Good catch on adding a cap to the intake navigation lights which is often missed and here's another tip if you don't know already:  The panel lines around the pitot tube on the nose cone aren't real, so they should be filled and sanded smooth.  The pitot covers when the jet is one the ground (red with a RBF flag) often leaves a mark, which is what Tamiya was apparently trying to replicate, which they also did on their F-15 kits.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[chaos07]

Chuck,

 

Thanks for the comments!

 

Yes, I was tracking the radome and the AOA "panel line".  The brass replacements for the AOA probes are in hand and the recessed line will go away, allowing me to work on some weathering as you describe to show the demarcation between the cover and the radome.  There is a Blizzard Agressor, Viper Demo Team build, and an Israeli Barak in the future too, and each each jet is different in many ways.  Hunting around to source out all the little details makes the process that much more fun.  

 

Duane

[Stokey Pete]

Great progress. 
As a huge fan of the Viper, I’m so looking forward to seeing how this scheme turns out. All here know how much I enjoy a colourful scheme. 

[chaos07]

15 hours ago, Stokey Pete said:

Great progress. 
As a huge fan of the Viper, I’m so looking forward to seeing how this scheme turns out. All here know how much I enjoy a colourful scheme. 

It seems like there is a never ending supply of subjects these days with unique paint - there is a half dozen I’d love to do - time shall tell

though.    

Edited March 26 by chaos07

[Stokey Pete]

1 hour ago, chaos07 said:

It seems like there is a never ending supply of subjects these days with unique paint - there is a half dozen I’d love to do - time shall tell

thoigh.    

I built 9 in total before I became a bit jaded with them 

Edited March 26 by Stokey Pete

[chaos07]

A very minor update for the past couple of weeks.  I had Family in for a week and a half and some more this coming week, time at the bench will be limited for a few more days.  

 

The large gap at the joint between the intake and fuselage is sorted and will need some time to cure.  To fill this area, and minimize sanding - I layered on some regular Tamiya Thin cement with a paintbrush.  Every 3-4 days I've added a couple of swipes with the thin cement and let it cure.  I've seen others have issues with too much thin cement in play at once, with some nasty results.  WIth the above distractions in play, it seemed like a perfect time to handle that issue.  The last layer of cement went on just before the below pics, and I think by the weekend it should be ready for some clean up for the final paint when the time comes.  

 

 

 

I think this side will need a little cleanup, whereas the other side looks darn near perfect.  Both will get a light sanding either way.

 

 

Lastly, while surfing the net - looking for things that I really do not need, I found these . . . A Highline HP-AH and Highline HP-AR in .2 and .3 mm nozzles respecively.

 

 

They are on clearance on the Iwata site.  I've started the painting of the red sealant on the Sniper ATP pod windows with the tiny red stripes, and even in the CM-B brush in .18, with its super small 1.5ml paint cup - I wanted something smaller.  Previously the AH/AP brushes passed my internet feed, and being new to the hobby again, their usefulness was tough to discern.  But now that usage of an airbrush is well within my grasp, this seems to make some tasks a little easier.  A pure luxury, but one that given the closeout pricing, is now in the arsenal.  Hopefully the unrestricted view of the area being painted, along with the ability to use just a few drops of paint, and quickly and easily clean the brush out, will make some fine detail work a bit easier.  Neither has had any paint through them by my hand, but having both delivered to the door with spare needles for less than one of these would go for at retail price, it was worth the gamble.  The AH has the MAC valve and should provide some good options for detail work and some weathering tasks with ink, etc.  The AP should work well for metallics or other paint that has trouble with the smaller needle sizes - or at least that's what that guy I saw in the mirror earlier told me just before buying them.

 

 

As always, thanks for checking in.  Hopefully some progress in the coming weeks.

 

Cheers.

[chuck540z3]

No paint cup on those airbrushes Duane?

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[chaos07]

15 minutes ago, chuck540z3 said:

No paint cup on those airbrushes Duane?

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Nope, just a small opening that will allow for a few drops or a few more.  The AH has many features as the CM-C+ I know you use, but nothing to get in the way for tight spots, and for small detail work I think this will be perfect.  These should get a bit of a workout or trial in the next week or two.  I'll certainly let folks know how it goes on this end.  The .8mm or so wide line I'm painting on the glass of that SNIPER pod is half done, and the touchups and remainder will be done with one of these I hope.  I imagine 10-20 drops of paint will fit without it being too full to use, depending on the dropper/pipette of course.  

 

I think these are being discontinued since they are on closeout - I do not recall the wording on the Iwata site.  They came in at $71 and $56 respectively.  They both share common nozzles, needles, etc with other brushes, so spares should not be an issue.  I'll grab a new nozzle for each one day for the hamfisted day down the road.  

 

https://www.iwata-airbrush.com/closeout-products.html

 

Duane

[chuck540z3]

Those prices are smoking good, even if you just kept the needles!

 

As much as I have used and bragged about my Iwata CM-C+ over the past few years with it's tiny 0.18mm needle, my "go-to" airbrush these days is back to my older HP-CH workhorse with the regular 0.3 mm needle, now that I use MRP paints whenever I can.  The MRP paints spray very well without thinning, assuming the orifice is big enough, but the CM-C+ struggles and often sputters with this paint after a few minutes.  Right now this thin needle airbrush is restricted to Alclad or other extra-thinned paint where it excels, while the rest of my painting goes through the HP-CH.

 

One other observation.  Both of these airbrushes have a screw at the bottom to further fine-tune the pressure and paint flow.  I never use it, so I recommend buying the cheaper version without them, since I don't find them helpful.

 

Cheers,

Chuck