F-111F, 48th TFW, Lakenheath, Operation El Dorado Canyon, 1986

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Two quick hot off the workbench shots of the side, center and back instrument panels. For those of you interested, the technique was as follows:

Step 1: Airbrush the entire panel with flat black (make repeated passes and build up the paint slowly) and let dry
Step 2: Cover the panels with a light coat of Future and let dry
Step 3: Apply Promodellers light gray wash over the entire panel and let dry - you can also use a dry brush to siphon off any excess as necessary
Step 4: Remove excess wash using a damp cotton swab

First time I've tried this too! I'm pleased with the way it came out. I NEVER could have brush painted it that well.

You can judge the results for yourself.
 

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Looks good but why airbrush such a tiny thing.

Lately I've been seeing people do that and wonder it probably takes more time to prep the paint then paint the thing...


Great work!
 
B-17engineer said:
Looks good but why airbrush such a tiny thing.
Click to expand...

If you overload those tiny PE parts with paint you can totally lose the recessed details. I find it a LOT easier to get a smooth uniform surface and control the paint thickness using an airbrush rather than hand painting. Besides I had several panels for this plane and the F5E along with some conduits in the F-111 wheel wells that had to all be painted flat black. So mixing up a small batch of paint for all of those was no big deal. It just takes a couple of minutes to get the paint / thinner mixture ready anyway.
 

Do'h forgot there's more

Thanks for clearing that up!
 
Here's the latest in-progress on the cockpit tub.

All of the control and switch panels are in glued in place. The tub bottom and back and the seats (from the Verlinden Resin set) are simply dry fitted at the moment. The small square panels were actually intended to be placed up the main instrument panel overhang. But the "F" variant only requires one, the "D" requires two, and the PE set comes with THREE. So I simply took the two spares and glued them into place where instrument / switch clusters SHOULD be.

Oh yes, the panel on the back center console is NOT misaligned. It actually supposed to be offset slightly to the port side.

The seats need a bit of touch-up painting around the headrests and near the bottom of the seat cushion on the port side with my 18/0 spotter brush. I need to paint the belt buckles as well. The PE Rudder pedals on the port side got slightly warped as well, (NO idea how that happened either) so I need to hit with a touch of De-Solv and reset it.

It's not perfect, but it's not too shabby looking either.

Front instrument panel is still in progress. Next update is the main wheel well and main gear assembly. I think I went a BIT overboard on the detailing. Oh and I had to a quick order for the paints for the camo. Thought for sure I had the TAC TAN color for this, but turns out I didn't. Took me almost half a day scouring the web to find somebody that had the right paint brand in this color. But I found it and ordered an extra bottle just to make sure, and extra bottles of TAC Dark Green and TAC Green as well.

Here's the pics:
 

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