Trumpeter 1:32 F-105G Wild Weasel Build Thread

[Builder 2010]

It is definitely huger and is actually difficult to hold onto when I need to work on the underside. I almost need a cradle like I used when building big RC aircraft.

In a short session today, I got the main gear piping complete and attached the main gear to the wings.

To start I painted and attached the main gear landing lights. The first one wanted to be a pain since it's a difficult shape to grab with tweezers. I put a drop of thick CA on the strut, pick up the piece with the tweezers, and then lose it a few times. When I would finally get it in place, the CA would have already set and I'd have to do it all over again. For the second strut I wised up and used a pic-n-stic parts holder to grab and place the light. It came out much cleaner. If I had a 3rd one to do, I have two good ones.

I used High E Guitar string for the solid brake lines and some very small gauge wire insulation for the flexible portions. I secured all this to the strut using gel CA, thin CA and then some "clamps" using wine bottle foil. I found that after cutting the thin strip of foil that I soaked the piece in acetone to remove any ink or lacquer on the foil. It makes it much easier to attach using CA.

I made the landing light electrical hookup with the same thin copper wire with its insulation.

I had to clip the end of the plastic retraction piston rod to make it a tad shorter so it didn't interfere with the locking leg on the strut. I then mixed up a small amount of J-B Weld and epoxied both gear into position. J-B Weld takes a good day to fully cure so the model was set aside for today's session. Sorry about the camera jiggle.

Here's a closer look.

Tomorrow I'll put the gear doors in place, and put on any antenna that can be plane color. A lot of them are painted black so I may attach them after (or not) depending on how much they will interfere with masking the camo scheme.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Crimea_River]

All looks very good. You might want to try solder for those brake lines - much easier to bend than guitar string.

 

[Wurger]

Or a pieces of a thin copper wire. The same easy shaping

 

[Builder 2010]

I used solder wire for the jet engine piping, but in this case, the hard piping was all a straight run so the guitar wire worked. The flexible portion is rubber. The guitar string had just the right diameter too.

 

[Crimea_River]

My bad. I thought you used it for the flexy part.

 

[Builder 2010]

No Problem… It just shows you're paying attention.

First of all, when we were talking about how big this beast is, here it is hogging all the space on my work table. Notice the excellent organizational skills at work.

Lots of odds and ends today. The gear cured well and are strong. There is some side to side sway, not due to the gear, but to the inherent flexibility of the upper wing skin to which the gear is affixed. I did read where someone soldered the gear to a brass plate and installed that into the wing to give more stiffness. Overkill! The model's not a toy and will not be handled very much.

There were two plastic levers that flanked the base of each main strut, and they were a bear. it was due directly because the gear is metal and the levers had to be CA'd in place. There was also not a very clear attachment point. The plastic gear would have had a specific place to attach. The first one went on okay. The second one broke in half due to the amount of force I was putting on the tweezers. I fixed that by adding a piece of 0.032" brass rod to replace the skinny part.

These levers pull the small bottom gear door closed behind the gear when it's retracting. those gear doors will go on after painting. I'll paint the underside color for the doors while they're on the sprue. They'll go on last.

I added the hinge closure pieces on the nose cone. All of them had to be shaved down.

The gun outlet fairing is stainless steel on this plane. Some restored museum planes have this panel painted body color. It is not. So I masked off the gun compartment and sprayed it with rattle can Tamiya Silver Real Metal. I didn't like the shine so I went back and applied some of the tube AK Interactive metal which I then burnished it with some paper toweling and brought the shine up.

This will all be masked off so it will be nice and shiny when done. I will probably add just a bit of soot from the gun exhaust.

While I was working on the nose cone I broke the other elevon off and did the same repair with the 1/8" brass tubing. The original design simply was too fragile to hold up. I added the intake splitters. I found that these are painted body color so puttin them on now was prudent. These separate the boundary layer air from the intake air.

There was a little bit of opening at the back edge which I filled with Bondic—I didn't want to wait until filler dried.

I started adding some of the doodads that spring up all over this plane. Since the Wild Weasel was a special plane with a special assignment and has a lot of antenna. The side bulges onto which the little added bulges sit was an ECM pod that normally was underslung, but in this case they split it in half and permanently mounted each half on the fuselage. The front, back and bulges get painted black.

I painted the dive brakes which extend out like flower petals Tamiya Real Metal. Tomorrow I overspray the outer surface with Tamiya smoke to make it look like titanium, and the inner surface with the burnt iron color like I did with the jet engine. These too will be added after the body painting is completed. They too will be delicate.

I want to temporarily glue the gun compartment panel so I can paint it with body color while doing the rest of the model, but it didn't fit. The Vulcan front support was sticking out too far. This was caused by the Eduard PE appliqué adding more thickness to the back wall. I scraped and filed the support, but couldn't get it low enough. Finally I relieved the inner face of the compartment door. Eduard has another PE set for this plane with some more exterior details including a PE gun door. It would have been much thinner and probably would have fit. There was also some terrible ejection pin blemishes that had to be removed too since the door is going to be posed open.

There are cooling slots on the outside of this panel, but nothing on the blank inside. I'm thinking of drilling them out...More AMS.

As an aside... this Saturday is the Military Modelers of Louisville Club show. I've missed it for years, but this year we're around and I'm going to enter my Missouri and Essex in the contest just to see if they're as good as I've been telling people they are. I worry about bringing them since they are really delicate, but the Missouri's been sitting on the shelf for almost 7 years so it's time to let others see it. For the Essex the only thing I worry about is all the little planes breaking loose from the flight deck. I'll bring some CA with me and a tweezers to replace any that want to "take off."

The Missouri's pedestals are not as broad as the Essex's so the model can oscillate from side to side. I stick some dense foam pads under the hull to firm it up so it doesn't move. The Essex is very solid and doesn't need anything. They're both heavy with the bases and the plexiglass cases. In both models I will tape the cases to bases so nothing moves.

Just to refresh your memory, here both are sitting nicely on their shelves.

 

[Crimea_River]

Good luck in the show.

 

[Gnomey]

Looks good so far!

 

[al49]

Very nice build so far!

 

[Wurger]

 

[Builder 2010]

Thanks. Just hope I can get them both ships there in one piece.

Short session today... Got the dive brakes painted. Exterior was shot with Tamiya Smoke so the metal shone through. I'm probably going to pick out the fasteners a bit more with some wash or another.

Interior was painted almost fully with Burnt Iron. I'm going to pose the model with the dive brakes in landing position. There were two more body pieces that went on to fill out the 360 degrees of body to which the dive brakes connect. These get painted camo color. There were some ejection pin marks which I chose not to mess with since filling and sanding on a concave curve is not usually very successful.

Last thing I did which took most of the 2+ hours I spent was presparing the ordinance load out. I've chosen an all-missile scheme with four Shrike (AGM 45a) and two Standard Missiles (AGM 78) plus the huge center-line fuel tank. All of these parts are not finished. I chose to glue the halves together with all the sprue nibs still attached and after fully cured go back and finish off the seams and curves. It will dry all weekend and I'll do the finish work on Monday. It took a bit of studying the instructions to fully understand what adapters went on what pylons to affect the correct configuration.

The missiles will all be painted gloss white and get detailing and decals before assembling to the adapters. The pylons and adapters get bottom color. The fuel tank, according to pics I have seen is dark green upper and bottom color on the lower half. All pylons will be attached after most of the painting and masking is finished.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Builder 2010]

Yesterday's IPMS/Military Modelers Club of Louisville show was loads of fun. The Missouri got a gold medal and the Essex got silver in the Ships 1:400 and larger category, and Missouri won best ship. There weren't many entries so my competition was pretty light, but the comments and interest were wonderful! It was their largest show in the club's 43 history with over 350 entries. The ships made it to the show and back home without anything happening to them. Whew! My worries were unfounded. I was able to find an outlet so I could power up the hangar deck LED lighting.

There were over 350 entires with some terrific models. The competition was stiff, although in ships, there weren't very many. I had terrific comments and it was a pleasure to watch other really good modelers stare at the ships and really understand what all that work means. If you'd like to see some of the category winners, I've put pictures of them on my Photo-image site and can be viewed here:

Military Modelers Club Show 2019 — Postimage.org

Then today (Sunday), my wife went to a play with our daughter so I had a couple of hours in the shop. The Thud is getting into the final stages with masking and painting just around the corner.

I got the dive breaks finished starting with a coat of Tamiya flat clear and followed by a Tamiya Panel Line Accent wash to give some definition to the rivets.

They're ready to go one the model after all the body painting is done.

I then finished all the ordinance and glued the adapter for the large Standard HARM missile. All the nibs are removed and the surfaces sanded using one of those Bow sanders with some fine grit abrasive. I had to fill just one spot. They're ready for painting and decaling.

I was unsure about when to attach all the sensors and antenna to the body. They're delicate, stick out and will probably get whacked, but I really didn't want to have to glue anything to the plane after all the painting, so I atteched them all.

There are five in the fore area.

And a vent, large blade antenna and a vent tube. The vent tube was just a piece of plastic and there was no hole in which to glue it, so I made a real brass one instead with micro-tubing. The filed the sloped outlet after CA'ing it into the fuselage.

Tomorrow's Monday so that means more shop work. This plane could be done in a bit over a week.

 

[Crimea_River]

Congrats on the medals. Well done!

 

[Wurger]

Congrats !!!!

 

[Gnomey]

Nicely done so far!

 

[Builder 2010]

Thank you very much!

Short session, but here's what got done.

All of the fuselage masking is complete waiting for paint. According to my hobby shop experts, Vietnam Era fighters had soft-edge masking... more complications..., but this masking was just the first step to protect previously completed areas being, gun bay, exhaust, struts and wheel wells and cockpit. I used wet paper towels for the big areas supported by Tamiya tapes of varying widths. To hold the gun bay door on I used Blue Tack lumps and just mashed it together until it seated properly. The "stainless steel" muzzle panel was also masked. Any leakage will be hand painted later. I also masked the fuel probe for its exterior paint color. I may have to put it in place to get the camp paint line to match.

I masked the exhaust by sliding individual pieces of wide Tamiya tape under the rear sheet metal. At first I tried to door it cicularly, but that proved impossible, so I went to a radial plan. I shoved wet toweling in to the big open space in the middle.

I used paper towels on all the wheel wells also, but I first made paper sleeves to wrap around the struts themselves. Again, any leakage will be hand brushed.

I then realized that it would be prudent to glue on the hard points on the wings since these will be bottom color and it will hide any glue errors. I tried them all on and found that I had glued the support rails for the Standard HARM missiles backwards. I ripped them off and replaced any sway braces destroyed in the process. Luckily, since there were so many gravity bombs included in the kit (4 frets) that there was a second set of support rails and many more correct sway braces. I was able to make the fix and then glue the hardpoints onto the plane. The air intakes are stuffed with towels also since I painted them white. I couldn't find out what color they were, but from what I've seen of other planes, intake trunks are generally white.

In the above I haven't yet glued on the rails since they were drying. I'll do that tomorrow.

So here she is all ready for the paint shop. I wiped the whole plane down with Iso Alcohol to get rid of all my body oil. From now on I handle the model with nitrile gloves on.

To paint the missiles I'm going to drill a small hole in the area near the mounting holes and use wires glued in to hold them still. First paint step will be to just spray the entire bottom and outter wheel door surfaces bottom white (a very light gray). I was thinking about shooting some Tamiya white primer first, but it's rattle can I don't have as much control over it as I do with my airbrush.

 

[Builder 2010]

Short session today and I was fully ready to start painting. Then I noticed on the instructions that when you're using a dual Shrike option on the outer pylon you need to use an adapter, but when using the single missile, the missile attaches directly to the pylon. I didn't notice this diffierence until today, but had thrown away two of the four adapters I would need. I tossed them in the trash can yesterday thinking they weren't needed.

So I spent more that 45 minutes searching through disgusting crap with tons of floor sweeping, emptying one trash bag into another and carefully sifting through the refuse. I found one! I did this bag transfer activity four times, but couldn't find the second one. So why did that have to disappear instead of all the other little bits and pieces of junk?

So I scratch-built one. I should have done this right away. It turns out that the kit part is just about the thickness of four laminated pieces of 0.040" styrene. I measured the original with the caliper and transferred the width to the Duplicutter and made four pieces. The two pieces comprising the middle needed to be notched for the female slots that engage with the lugs on the pylon. So I measured and cut them with the micro-razor saw and the chip out the piece with a very small chisel. The two ends are reduced by the amount on the original.

The sides have a thicker piece which I cut out of some 0.015" ABS, and then I traced the end tapers and knocked off most of the stock with the 1" belt sander, and then hand sanded the final finish.

I added the simulated fasteners with a dividers and then cut the corners off some 0.040" stock and use them to form the male nubs that connect to the missile.

I glued all the adapters onto the plane so the would dry hard before I had to handle it for painting and since they all get painted bottom color.

When painted it will be hard to tell which is the real one and which is "Memorex" (I showing my age). Tomorrow I will get back to painting, but first I need to make a way to hold all the missiles. That won't take long.

 

[Wurger]