Tomcat launch dio 1/48 - DONE AFTER 4.5 YEARS!!!

[ClumsyDude]

After I did this, I got on to installing the canopy. Such a simple concept, right? I mean, how hard can it really be to get a canopy on a model? We do it all the time, right?

 

At this point I have to confess that it took me about six months. Partly this was due to having a young baby daughter and not getting a lot of bench time; but mostly it was due to me coming up a very steep learning curve on vac form canopies.

 

The reason for going with vac was simple: for whatever reason, the OOB canopy wouldn't fit on the model I'd built as it was too narrow at the front. Doubtless this was my fault ... a better modeller would probably have been able to put it together without the fuse being too wide. But I wasn't about to pull it apart at this point ... after all, that would've taken a few weeks of filling and sanding. Much more time savings to be had by rogering around for six months trying to fix the canopy!

 

First attempt involved using hot water to try to "stretch" the OOB canopy using a length of satay stick wedged in the front. I got it wedged just right, added the hot water, and completely stuffed the canopy - it had a huge lateral twist in it when I took it out of the water. So I worked on other things - the good thing about the Hasegawa tomcat is that there are always things to fix - and waited for vac canopies to arrive in the mail.

 

When they did arrive, I set about screwing them up. The front canopy went (relatively) well. I trimmed it out, painted it, and faired it into the fuselage with Mr Surfacer 500. Pretty happy with it.

 

The rear canopy was another story. In the time that it takes most of you lot to build a contest winning model, I managed to install one single vac form part.

 

First one was a victim of lousy skills with a No. 11 blade. Next one had a blemish on the inside which I tried to polish out, and couldn't; I tried everything I've seen on line, micromesh cloths right down to 12,000 grit, tamiya compound, the lot. It still looked cloudy.

 

After ordering another couple of sets (if anyone wants 4 F/A-18 vac canopies in 1/48 I have a boatload of spares), I managed to get one installed with mirrors and everything. Then I noticed that the face curtain grab handle in the front had slipped down so it was resting on the pilot's helmet. See below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I tried to live with it and couldn't. So off came the canopy. I fixed the grab handles, and reinstalled the canopy. Then, handling the plane one day, I managed to squeeze just a little too hard at the very front; off came the PE rear view mirror, trapped inside the canopy and looking very sorry. I swore very loudly and continuously for about ten minutes and took a break for a few weeks. Then pulled the canopy off - again. In the process I lost the PE mirror and scratched the canopy.

 

Figuring this one was doomed, I cut out a fourth vac canopy. I installed a spare PE mirror set from another Hasegawa tomcat, and polished it up. It took about a month of dipping in future, stripping in windex, dipping in future, stripping in windex, etc, until finally I had one with no blemishes or runs or grit trapped in the drying future. I faired it into the fuselage and the front windscreen with Mr Dissolved Putty mixed with black Mr Color lacquer paint (didn't want the fairing putty showing grey on the inside, when the rest of the canopy framing is black).

 

Then I had to delicately sand the seam between front and rear canopy, without scratching the clear part, but enough to make the seam almost disappear. I fashioned a sander out of a thin strip of sandpaper superglued to a cut down satay stick; four of these at different grits did the trick. I didn't take photos at this point; you'll have to wait until after the paint is on to see the result. It basically looks the same anyway, but with the grab handle at a realistic angle!

[Guest]

Very nice work ! Pilots look cool !.....Harv 

[ClumsyDude]

Thanks Harv! I was really happy with how they turned out. I'm even starting to get the confidence to tackle some 1/32 figures in my next build ...

 

Cheers

Jim

[andromeda673]

Looking good! Can you share with us how you got the green for the front canopy

[ClumsyDude]

Hi Andromeda, I used Tamiya clear green thinned with Mr Color levelling thinner (I find the levelling thinner really helps with gloss finishes, at least at my airbrushing skill level). I actually sprayed it on the inside of the canopy - it was easier to mask on the vac canopy, the panel lines on the vac are very faint indeed and I didn't want gaps. With my sorry story about installing the canopy, I had lots of spares to practice on - so at least there was a silver lining!

 

Cheers

Jim

[ClumsyDude]

Hi all, welcome back ... and thanks to everyone who's been following and commenting.

 

While I was getting the cockpit together I had plenty of time to work on other things. One of those was the exhausts - these were a similar odyssey to the cockpit although not as extended.

 

I used the Aires set. The detail is simply beautiful - the only problem is, resin shrinkage seems to affect them somewhere between moderately and severely. My first set had an enormous step between the kit part and the resin; fortunately, Aires customer service is nothing short of brilliant and they promptly sent me a replacement set. This too was a bit short, but nothing I couldn't live with.

 

After sanding back the kit plastic and rescribing, there's a bit of an odd hourglass look that isn't there in the real thing - but it isn't too noticeable. Here it is under a couple of coats of paint - you can see that I've gone with different colours for the different layers of afterburner petals, from alclad jet exhaust through steel and pale burnt metal.

 

 

I also tried to replicate the greenish-tan tinge on the insides. You can also see here a bit of titanium silver dry brushing on the blackest of the afterburner petals.

 

 

Having done this, I set out to replicate the distinctive discolouration that you see on F-14A exhausts. I started with a range of alclad paints and some salt weathering, which came out looking sharper than I'd intended - but I was still happy with the result.

 

 

I then added some weathering from Tamiya's weathering pastels, including red and blue heat discolouration. It's hard to see in real life, and almost invisible in the photo. The blotchy look on the metal bits is also deliberate, as you do tend to see it in reference photos.

 

 

Then I went back to the insides. I decided to abandon the greenish tan and went for a sooty black, which I then added salt to so I could overspray it with a lighter grey. In between I also semi gloss coated the exhausts - for some reason they look really flat in this photo.

 

 

Here they are with afterburner chambers installed.

 

 

And here's a shot showing the weathering on the insides:

 

 

I also tried to do some soot stains on the inside of the afterburner chambers, but between my dodgy airbrush skills and dodgy photography skills I couldn't get a shot that looked good.

 

More to follow - these photos are dated January 2014, so about two years after I started the build. A lot more has happened in the last 18 months so stay tuned.

 

Cheers

Jim

[ClumsyDude]

Thanks Maru ... really appreciate it, it means a lot!

 

Cheers

Jim

Edited June 17, 2015 by ClumsyDude

[ClumsyDude]

Ok, thanks all for the likes and comments, it makes a huge difference.

 

Time for the next update, and this one is a big one - paint! I'll spare you the tedious weeks of filling and scribing which are unavoidable on the Hasegawa Tomcat, and skip to the interesting bit - the whole airframe primed in Mr Surfacer 1200 and colour starting to go on.

 

I had decided out of the gate that I wanted to do a VF-2 bird in the high-vis scheme from the 1980s - full colour from the era of full confrontation with the Evil Empire. Given that I wanted to learn some new skills, I also figured I'd try paint masks for the first time. Bit of trepidation about this, especially for the U.S. stars and bars, but I figured, nothing ventured, nothing gained. So, paint masks ordered from Mal Mayfield (the stars and bars and Langley stripes on the nose) and Ad Astra (everything else). The reason I went with two orders is because I had years to plan, and in that time Ian at Ad Astra got pretty busy and wasn't able to respond to my second request. I can recommend both extremely highly.

 

First job was laying down some base colours. I wanted to use lots of layers to get a subtle weathered effect; there are at least four or five just on the grey. First I started out with a pre-shade of dark grey (on the panel lines) and brown (random blotches). Then I scribbled randomly over this in gloss gull grey.

 

You can see the initial effect here:

 

 

Then I went over that with a very faint, thin random coat of gloss gull grey mixed in with a bit of brown and yellow. Note this shot also shows the attachment points I made for the flaps, along the line of Dave Aungst's article over at Hyperscale. If anyone's interested I can go into how I did it.

 

 

And here it is on the fuselage. Particularly on the top, I tried to do the "dirty" mix in the middle of the panels, leaving some of the darker panel line shading visible at the edges.

 

 

From reference photos it looks like the forward panels are more likely to have some light grey touch up spray around the edges, whereas this is less pronounced at the rear.

 

 

Then I added some more dark shading in the centre of the panels, particularly on the turtle deck, and some touch up spray over some of the panel lines, particularly above the glove vanes.

 

 

Here's a close up. For this one I also added the non-slip walkways; the texture was created with Tamiya flat base (which isn't designed to be used as a paint), stippled on with a flat brush over a mask. I then sprayed over it with a medium grey, as you can see in the photos. Some white around the edges of the mask is still visible here, but it disappeared under a wash of black green enamel.

 

 

I have to say I found it really satisfying to build up so many layers of paint - it took quite a bit of patience, but - to my eye at least - the awesomeness increased every time. Next up: paint masks, and lots of red white and blue!

 

Cheers

Jim

[LSP_K2]

Looks great. You're aware that valindon makes a 1:48 carrier launch base?

[ClumsyDude]

Thanks Kevin, appreciate the comment. I didn't know about the Verlinden set, and I thought I'd done all the research it was possible to do! Do you have a link?

 

Cheers

Jim

[Starfighter]

Looking very good so far!

[ClumsyDude]

Looking very good so far!

Thanks Starfighter!

 

Jim

[ClumsyDude]

Ok, I'm back! It's been a huge week, my old boss (best guy I've ever worked for) just got speared and I've been scrambling to impress the new guy. Hasn't left much time for LSP I'm afraid

 

Anyway, I promised paint masks in the last update, and I won't disappoint. First place I started was on the paint mule Italeri F-14; it was the first time I'd ever used paint masks and I had no idea what to expect. Don't have any paint mule photos, but it came out ok - the masks (Ad Astra) worked beautifully and I got a great finish out of the Gunze gloss paints. Here are the Hasegawa vertical tails, with stars and air wing codes sprayed on - the air wing code masking is genius, with a yellow mask going underneath the black one, slightly offset to get the effect you see. There's an outer mask around both the yellow and black ones which keeps them aligned and ensures the offset stays consistent - neat!

 

Below these are the ventral fins. Despite both parts and masks being pretty fiddly I managed to get a good result, only to realise I'd sprayed the markings on the wrong side! Had to overspray and repaint.

 

 

Next up were the aircraft numbers on the flaps. Same method for masking the black and yellow - by this point I was getting quite comfortable with it, and really getting a kick out of how clever it is.

 

 

Next up (after endless practice on the paint mule) were the stars and bars on the wings. I spent an eternity laying out Tamiya tape to ensure that the outer edges of the mask were in identical spots on each wing; and here's the result. You can see where I had to do a couple of touch ups after getting some paint lifting as I took off the mask - I'm not yet good enough with the airbrush to get convincing gloss primary colours without building up a bit of thickness. Good news is, the colours don't look so dark in real life:

 

 

Next up, SHOWTIME - the Langley stripes on the front fuselage.

[ClumsyDude]

I've always felt that the big, bold Langley stripes on the front fuselage of VF-2 aircraft are one of the most striking markings out there (at least, since the end of WWI). I agonised endlessly about how to do them; should I lay down the stripes first, then add the insignia? Given my questionable gloss-painting skills, I was worried this would turn into a pancake of multiple layers of paint, complete with visible ridges. I ended up scanning a sheet of Hasegawa VF-2 decals (they're too thick to use as decals) and sending it to Mal from Miracle Masks to turn into masks.

 

But before I did that, I had to get the black skunk stripe right. This was - at least for me - brutally difficult. I spent HOURS on it! Getting the tape aligned evenly on both sides across compound curves was a NIGHTMARE. Eventually I got there by using panel lines as reference points, and attaching small pieces of Tamiya tape to mark out the distance from the panel line. I figured out that if you cut a piece of tape, you get (by definition) two edges of the cut that are exactly identical in length. If these are then tacked to matching panel lines on opposite sides of the airframe, you can lay out a track for the masking tape to follow.

 

Fortunately, I got it right before I shot paint (did I mention it took HOURS?). Once that was done, I spent hours more aligning the masks for the Langley stripes. Fortunately, Mal gives you four of each mask - I ended up using all four, and still didn't *quite* get them even on both sides. Eventually, however, it was good enough.

 

It was all I could do to maintain patience while I sprayed layer, after layer, after layer of paint. You can judge if it was worth it:

 

 

Here's the front quarter view:

 

 

 

And here with the aircraft numbers sprayed on the nose:

 

 

And another shot, with the much-abused Italeri paint mule in the background:

 

 

Here, with NAVY stencilled onto the rear fuselage:

 

 

The other side:

 

 

And finally, a confessional - here you can see the slight misalignment of the Langley stripes between port and starboard:

 

 

Here are all the external bits, complete with alclad aluminium on the slat leading edges:

 

 

Slime lights added:

 

 

And finally some red underneath the slats:

 

[Starfighter]

This looks ab-so-lutely stunning! No decal can beat painted markings, I love it! May I ask when Miracle Masks did your custom masks? I have asked them to do do some for me earlier this year an I got the reply that they no longer make custom masks...