Red, White, Blue and pointy

[dirkpitt289]

To celebrate the 4th of July, my good friend AndrewR and I had started a red White and Blue build. Both of our builds will be 1/144 scale American aircraft. I will be building F-16 Thunderbird's and Andrew will be building an F-15. We originally started this build on another forum and since Andrew has recently joined the ranks here at WW2aircraft.net I thought I start the thread here.

For about a year now I've had this very patriotic 50th Anniversary Thunderbirds set sitting on my shelf. What a great little project to dig into for this weekend.

Box Art

Parts

This kit comes with six separate parts bags to build six individual F-16s For this project I will need only two

Each kit contains 30 parts for each bird

These birds just about put themselves together.

Till next time, thanks for looking

 

[dirkpitt289]

Here is last nights photos. These are going to build in flight so my attention was to seal up the bottom of the Falcons.

Using Magic Masker I heavily coted the canopy's

.

next I used Mr Surfacer 500 white primer. I always like the white primer when doing white aircraft.

Now onto tonights business. Now that the fireworks have all been expended and successively dodging the police for two nights its onto the twin Falcons.

Here they sit ready for the first cote of white paint. For this I'm using Model Masters Insignia White.

One down one to go. It's kinda hard to tell in this photo but the gray falcon is actually the white primed bird. The white one is the Insignia painted bird.

Both tops are now finished. After they dry over night I will do the bottoms.

Minicraft has done a great job on this kit. I'm really enjoying this build and the good thing is there are still four more Falcons in the box. Till next time, thanks for looking

 

[vikingBerserker]

Very cool Dirk.

 

[dirkpitt289]

Thanks for the kind words David.

 

[AndrewR]

So here is my contribution to the Red, White and Blue build. A Revell F-15A Eagle with Bicentennial Colors, based on the Thunderbird display team scheme.

A very cheap and hopefully cheerful kit. A tiny bit of internet research turns up some pictures on the internet, which show that the aircraft in question, is in fact a two seat F-15B. Gadzooks!

An inspection of the sprues, shows that there is in fact, no cockpit at all, so some scratchbuilding will be necessary. There are only 24 parts, 4 of which are Sparrow missiles, which I will not be using, as the aircraft was usually photographed without external stores.

Unusually for Revell, there are no paint mixes in the instructions - everything is straight out of the tin. The decal sheet is tiny, and does not include all of the decorative stripes. You are expected to paint some of them yourself. Naturally, this is going to cause some difficulty in getting a good match between the decals and whatever shades of red and blue you choose. I also see from those pictures above that the blue on the upper fuselage appears to be lighter than the blue in the US National Markings. This could be a trick of the light.

cheers

Andrew

 

[AndrewR]

The cockpit on the F15 is completely faired over, so a bit of scratch building is in order to make it look just a little bit better.

I cut out slots in the fairing for the two crew positions, rather than take out the whole fairing. Then I scratchbuilt a couple of "ejector seats" from 1mm plastic card. No prizes for realism, but they look vaguely seat like.

A quick dry run showed that some sort of instrument panel in front of each of the crew would help things a bit. A couple of offcuts from the seats were pressed into service.

Not bad for 30 minutes work.

The rear IP needs a tad of trimming a little so that the two halves of the forward fuselage fit flush.

Next up: thinning the intakes and painting the interior.

cheers


Andrew

 

[dirkpitt289]

I've seen this kit kicking around my LHS for some time now so when you posted it, it wasn't something new to me. However those pictures of the actual aircraft are new to me. Never ever seen those before. Very cool

 

[hawkeye2an]

A very cheap and hopefully cheerful kit. A tiny bit of internet research turns up some pictures on the internet, which show that the aircraft in question, is in fact a two seat F-15B. Gadzooks!

img]http://sensible-design.co.uk/developer/images/498IMG_3670R.jpg[/img]


cheers

Andrew

Consorting with the RC boys SACRILEGE !!!

JUST KIDDING. I have always been amazed at the many Railroad or RC builders that think that way. We all do a LOT of the same type of stuff.

 

[Wayne Little]

Nice little project fellas..

 

[dirkpitt289]

last night I applied paint to the bottom of the twin Falcons. If all goes well I can start to apply the decals tonight but I'm not holding my breath. The top felt a little tacky after 24 hours so I might let them sit for a few more days. We'll have to see tonight when I get home.

Thanks for looking

 

[AndrewR]

Here's the next evening's work:

I assembled the rear fuselage and vertical control surfaces. All four parts. No great problems here, although the fit at the rear is not the best.

The slots for the vertical surfaces are way too large, but by pushing the surface to the front of the slot and as far outboard as it will go, the whole slot is actually covered, so no filling is necessary. Unfortunately, the model has no internal detail of the engine, so you can see right through the intakes to the rear of the aircraft. I put in a strip of 1 mm thick plastic card, 3 mm by 30 mm, bent into a hairpin shape, into each intake. This will be painted black or dark grey to reduce the hollow aircraft look.

There is a gap at the back of the rear fuselage, but this will be mostly covered by the engine nozzles. I found that the upper and lower halves of the rear fuselage don't align at the rear, leaving a pronounced step on the circular pads where the nozzles go.

A vigorous sweep or two with a file removed the step. Trial fits with a nozzle show that it fits much better, although still not perfectly.

The final step of the evening was to paint the interior of the cockpit with Model Master F-15 Grey. Handily enough, I already had this colour, as it is what I use for RAF Ocean Grey. I also added a couple of fishing weights, just in case this turns out to be a tail sitter.

The seats have also had a coat of grey paint, but I am about to check some photos to see what colours are used.

cheers

Andrew

 

[AndrewR]

So back from a pleasant weekend at Lac St. Pierre de Wakefield (love those Quebec place names ), Monty, our shaggy dog went for his haircut this morning. It took 7 hours

This is the before.

This is the after.

The F15 had a coat of Tamiya Fine White primer on the top. I'm going to use this as the white coat for the F-15. I've had good results on a Sabre and a Sea Hurricane by sealing the primer with Pledge and then putting a matt varnish on.

Still pointy, but a bit whiter!

 

[AndrewR]

I managed to get a couple more coats of primer on today. I was spraying outside (remember I'm living at the in-laws ), and while I wasn't looking, a large ant crawled over one of the wings. I can't see any footprints..


Monty the dog has got an ear infection in both ears, probably from his wash and shampoo at the groomers.
He's responding well to antibiotics. At the moment he is chewing happily on a Bully Stick. This is a polite name for a dried bulls penis


So here we have some red and blue bits painted on as well. The stripes on the horizontal flight surfaces aren't on the decal sheet. Cost cutting by Revell? The ones on the vertical surfaces are on the sheet.

The blue is Ceramcoat Pthalo Blue, and the red is Vallejo Carmine Red, which I have to say, does not cover that well. It'll definitely need another coat or three.

I'll need to put another coat of each on tomorrow. But it's nice to see some colour on there. The only awkward bit is that the nose should also be red. The decal has a small red outline on it, but doesn't wrap around the nose. So you have to paint part of the nose, and then put the decal on. Except of course, that you could easily not get the red part of the nose quite right and end up with either a white gap, or red under the blue and white part of the decal. What I aim to do, is put the decal on first, thereby defining where I need to paint the nose.

The metal areas have been repainted. I'm not entirely happy about the finish, which is Vallejo silver, mixed with a little white, followed by a rub with some graphite powder when dry.

But it worth it as an experiment.

 

[AndrewR]

I skipped a bit of painting and touch up after removing the paint masks. There's still a bit more to do on the stripes on the port wing.

After two decalling sessions:

The nose now needs painting carmine red. The canopy also needs framing in blue, and reattaching to the fuselage.

It looks very pretty in this livery. Much better than a grey scheme 8)

 

[dirkpitt289]

WOW, That was fast Andrew. That is looking sharp. How will you be mounting this bad boy?

 

[AndrewR]

WOW, That was fast Andrew. That is looking sharp. How will you be mounting this bad boy?

I'm managing about 30 minutes of modelling time per day, so it doesn't seem that fast!
I'll be doing it undercarriage down, I think. It's been a fun build so far.

Cheers

Andrew

 

[dirkpitt289]

ne of the things about white paint (IMHO) is that it seems to take longer to dry then most other colors. So last night I did my best to keep away from my twin Falcons but being a little week I couldn't resist. I was able to resist the urge to start the decaling but still I had to do something. So I started the painting of the engine exhaust.

 

[dirkpitt289]

Just finished decaling aircraft #5. It took 34 decals and about 4 hours to complete. 14 of those decals went toward the bottom Thunderbird decal alone. As you might expect not all the decals lined up correctly so there will be some touch up required but first I'll need to mix some paint to match the decals. After I take a little break I'll start aircraft #6 and then see what touch ups will be needed.

here is the decal sheet for aircraft's #5 and #6

you can see here in the nose how the decals didn't quite work as I had hopped. The good point is I think I have what I need to match this color. We'll get back to that a little later on

One down one to go. There's a huge difference between the virgin white Falcon and the one all dressed and ready to go.

Like I said before it took 14 decals to get the Thunderbird image.

Till next time, Keep em pointy

 

[dirkpitt289]

This post brings you up to the current progress of the build

Decaling continues on the Twin Falcon Thunderbird's

 

[dirkpitt289]

The decaling is finally done. Now its time to mix up some paint to fix the short coming of the decals

Using the Floquil Maroon and Testors Red I set to work

Time to mix the paint

Damn if that isn't close

Left is done right is not

Left is done right is not.

Next will be some black touch ups and then time to seal it all in.