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

Nice

Thanks!

Did some errands and then got to work. Bought some nice new backdrop paper (actually bulletin board paper from Michael's) and other stuff. Finished decaling all the missiles and the centerline tank, and went back and cleaned up the panel line work a bit more, and lined the vertical stab which I didn't do yesterday.

All the missiles are ready to put onto the aircraft. I used MicroSol and MicroSet. I never know which one does what so I end up using both.



I then did the same for the centerline tank. Thankfully, all those tags were actually just one decal.



Lastly, I went back and did the rudder. As you can see, I'm finally figuring out how to do it without adding too much material making it harder to remove. I also found that the longer it dries, the better the clean up is since the material actually in the grooves tends to stay there a bit longer. I also reduced the amount of solvent on the Q-tips to the barest minimum. The lines on the tank were put down yesterday, but I cleaned them up today and most of the material in the grooves stayed put. I only use the solvent Q-tip on those specific spots of the excess dye to protect the rest of the grooves. in my 66 years of modeling, this is THE FIRST that I ever did a full panel line job on.



You really want to put the tiniest amount of accent into the groove that you can just to get it flow. You watch the flow and don't add any more until it actually stops so you're not adding too much excess. The upper part of the tail on this particular plane appears to be bare metal, and there are antenna on the tail and wing tips that need to be masked and painted black.

Good work so far!

Thanks! Today was a mixed bag of successes and not-so-successes. I masked all the little stuff that needed painting on top of the base colors: being the wing tip sensors, recon camera housing (which I missed when I did the nose cone) and the upper part of the tail which I'm assuming from the color chart, some kind of metallic finish although it may be white.



After using the narrow Tamiya tape to define the space I went back and protected the entire space from overspray. It takes about 30 seconds to air brush these little bits, but takes almost a half hour between the masking and the cleaning of the airbrush.



The camera housing and wing tip sensors came out very nice.





But the tail painting was a totally different thing. I first thought I would paint the whole thing metailic then go back and mask the background and paint the sensor the base color which matches the camo at that point. Then I decided to use Microscale liquid mask and shoot the area with Tamiya Real Metal Silver from the rattle can. Seemed like the most efficient approach. But I was spraying lacquer over acrylic which ain't so good, and I had a terrible time getting the liquid mask off. What I ended up with was a mess! The tweezers kept damaging the silver, and the mask removal was stubborn. I also took off most of the green paint from the sensor.



I went back and brush painted the silver, retouched the green, and will have to go back and do more tomorrow after it all dries ready well. I was rushing and was working with paints that were soft and therefore, not cooperative.

I cleaned off the excess panel accent on the tail and it came out nicely. You can see the remaining touch-up areas on the upper tail. It will end up okay, but I wasn't happy about how I'm getting there. I definitely improved my panel accenting skills from the beginning to the end of the process on this model.



I got back to decaling starting with the myriad of little stencils that are on the pylons and adapters. They were a pain since I was working upside down and in between other stuff. In retrospect, I probably should have decaled the pylons before gluing them in place.



Many of these stencils were attached on the same decal so the spacing was set, but the connecting strands between them were very narrow leading to some of the stencils flipping upside down, or twisting and it was very finicky to get them back to straight. As I said, if I was doing it again, I would decal these parts before attaching them to the wing and even go as far as dullcoat them.

And though all of the handling, one of the metal main landing gear struts decided to come loose. I tried using medium CA, and added accelerator to the strut and put the CA in the hole. After installing, the CA cured quickly, but the gear wasn't holding. Now I had a hole filled with cured CA that needed to be extracted before I could re-insert the strut and try again. This time I mixed up J-B Weld again and it's now curing overnight.

Lovely work so far!

Thanks! The J-B Weld did cure and is holding the gear. I still have to deal with those auxiliary levers that pull the secondary door closed. One is missing and the other is half missing. I will have to scratch-build them if I want them to be seen.

I finished the touchup painting on the tail tip and it's passable. I left it natural metal although I think you're right that the bottom color might be more appropriate.



I decided it was time to decal this thing so I could put the flat coat on it. The decals are old and already showed that they would crack so I started to coat the decal sheet with the Microscale Decal Film, but then rememnbered that I bought some Testor rattle can product that was supposed to do the same thing. So I sprayed the sheet, let it dry and then attempted to put on the most challenging decal in the model; the shark mouth on the gun (port) side of the plane. This decal had part of it missing where it passes over the gun shield and the eye is also attached to the same decal. I put it on and it fell apart. The Testor product didn't work! It took a ton of fiddling to get all the pieces back together. Decaling is fun until it isn't.

What made it more complicated was having to temporarily hold the gun compartment door in place since the decal goes over it too, and then cutting the decal on the door seams so the door could be posed open.



I used copious amounts of Microsol to get the decal to conform. I then proceeded to completely decal the entire port side. I ended then so it would all have a chance to dry overnight so I could handle the plane tomorrow and do the starboard side.

When the shark was dry enough I did the cutting and touched up the cracks with gloss white. It is passable. Here's the nose.



Another problem seems to be how to fasten the gun door to the plane? The curvature prevents it from contacting the entire length posing weakness. I'm thinking of using some thin strips of packing tape to hold it and make it movable.

Here's the midship's decals.



And the aft end. I'm having some trouble with the big "J B" decal peeling at the back edge. I've been working with the elevons removed so I can more safely set it on my lap on its side. They just slip in and out.



One of the canopies is lacking a mechanism for holding it in the open position, while the other has an angular plastic tab. I may have inadvertantly cut it off when separating it from the sprue, but I'm not sure. I decided to tackly this by making a brass assembly.

It took a piece of small brass channel and ground off the flange on about 1/8" that would mate with the underside of the canopy's rear. I then bent this part to the angle I wanted to hold the canopy in the open position and then drilled two 0.021" holes and soldered some phosphor bronze wire into the holes to serves as anchoring pins.

I then drilled the canopy to accept these pins and put the two together. I thought about using epoxy, but my ADD kicked in and I wanted to do it faster. So I used some thin CA. The CA attacked the plastic and the entire rear part broke away leaving a missing chunk. To make matters worse, the brass part with the plastic attached hit the floor and went into the ether.



The missing chunk is an easy fix. I'll use Bondic. I also got a CA smear on the clear inner surface which I'll have to polish out. I will then come up with plan B (or is it C). I hate when I attempt to solve a problem and it ends up being worse.

Shame about the decals. Hope the rest go OK for you.

With Andy.

Yea....bummer

Nicely done so far!

Thanks Gents!

Yes and yes!

This is yesterday's report. Today, my wife and I took our grandson to a movie. Saw "Rocketman". Makes you wonder why anyone would want to be a rock star. Their lives get so screwed up...

The first thing I did was fix that canopy. I used Bondic successfully to completely fill the broken out portion, used plastic polishing materials of ever-finer grits to clean up the little bit of CA damage, and then fabricated and J-B Welded the missing bracket so the canopy can be posed open.



It's very strong and will survive installation.

I then got back to applying the starboard side decals. All went splendidly, until when I was grasping the fuselage to lift it and place a decal that was near the fore bottom, and the "stars and bars" on the fuze side transfered itself to my thumb. Then in my attempt to peel it off and put it back, it started to fracture. This is the result.



I may be able to clean it up a bit more with some strategic touch-up painting, but it won't be pristine. Why do decals have more affinity for flesh than models?

The shark decal on this side was having trouble getting around the compound curves of the nose. I had to slice the decal in two places so it settled in. That was after copious amounts of MicroSol. There's still a spot that has a wrinkle on the edge that I'll have to slice I'm afraid.



I was surprised that the "emergency release" decals were missing for the starboard side under the cockpit. The "Ejection Seat" triangles were included. I may just highlight the yellow lever in the at engraved portion to match the other side, but won't be able to duplicate the text. I may be able to make my own... now that I think about it. I just took some closeups of that graphic and will make my own. Once again, writing this journal gets me thinking.

This was the closeup that I took to get the text. I actually created new text over the decal text since it wasn't very precise. I don't like how that triangle decal is not settled in on top.



Here's what the decal's supposed to look like after I print it.



Now I'm going to go upstairs and print it.

And now that I think about it. I have one more stars and bars decal for the wing bottom that's intact. I may be able to scan that and reproduce a couple of good ones on white decal film. I'm going to give that a try too.

The making of the Stars and Bars worked well too. I scanned the decal, and then re-drew it over the image on CorelDraw. I wanted a very clean edge without any pixelation. The results of both activities were good. The "ejection warning" could be printed on clear film since there was no white in it. The "stars and bars" required printing on white decal inkjet paper.

Here's the decals after I sprayed them with Testor's decal film spray. Inkjet ink is water soluble so you must seal it before soaking in water.



Tomorrow I'll remove that wrecked decal and put on a brand new one.

Good work so far!

I agree. The insignia look good but the trick will be cutting the shapes away from the white backing cleanly so that you get no white edges. The yellow on the clear looks to have turned out well but may wash out significantly when applied to the model. You might want to try to paint a white stripe on the model where the yellow part of the decal goes. This will give more depth to the colour.

Busy day and kind of weird. Got you note about the white undercoat just now, and it's a bit too late and yes… the yellow did wash out a bit. Next time...

Put the new "Ejection Warning" decals in place. My sizing was dead on. I had measured the little square space at .147 and use that number to set some guidelines in CorelDraw. I imported the photo and sized it so the same rectangle in the image coincided with the guidelines. I was then able to draw the entire decal design over the picture with assurance that it would be sized correctly.



I used decal softener to remove the destroyed Stars and Bars from the rear fuze.



I then trimmed the new decal as best as I could so it would have any white edges since the decal is actually all white. Maybe I should have matched the tan color and used that as a background around the stars and bars so any white would have been missing. But that horse has left the barn.



Regardless, it's better than the destroyed one it's replacing.

With these decals in place it was time to spray that Tamiya Flat Clear. I bought it by the bottle, thinned it a bit with Iso and then airbrushed it on. And then this happened in many places, with this being the worst case. YIKES!



It was some kind of water mark reacting with the flat spray. In most places I was able to retouch the airbrushed colors without causing any other problems. In this case I had to mask the decals since they were way too close to the action. I used some Press-n-Seal food wrap to make a quick mask that wouldn't be too tacky and pull off the decals.

I then, using the detail airbrush, which is gravity feed, started with the tan, then light green and finally the dark green. Thankfully it worked. When the marks appeared I almost freaked, not being sure it retouching it would make it worse. Since I was using flat paint, I didn't even think about re-shooting the flat clear. I didn't want any more surprises. Some of the decals silver which really pissed me off. Even with the gloss top coat, there was too much texture for these old decals.



With painting done, I got to work finishing up the cockpit and canopies. The canopy I repaired needed repainting. It actually needed all three colors. I've figured a way to clean the gravity brush pretty fast. It's hard to tell that it was missing a chunk.



The canopies recieve some PE embellishments on their bottom edges. I lost track of which canopy went where and was mistaken in thinking that they were the same. They are... almost. The rear canopy is a bit wider than the front since the fuze is still expanding to its full diameter from the pointy nose. So I ended up putting the front's PE on the rear and vice versa. Why is this important? The two PEs are different heights so there is bare brass sticking up in the viewable area of the clear glass. I can approach it two ways: 1) remove them and put them in the right places, or 2) using the yellow trim tape and it will cover most of the exposure.

I'm choosing option two. Prying them loose might work, but it can also bend the heck out of them and ruin them. And I am planning on using the yellow trim tape so option 2 will work.

The rear view mirrors are in place, the clear areas came out nicely, and all in all, the canopies work.



No canopies are glued in this image. There are few more instrument boxes that go onto the instrument panel cowl. With them and touching up some paint, the cockpit will be complete.

I've flat sprayed the gear doors and they'll go on next. I didn't flat the missiles. They're generally new and leaving them shiny won't look too back. Unless you all have an opinion about it. I'm going to use some "Glue Dots" strips which is a kind of contact cement to hold the main gear doors on the structs. It's somewhat flexible and will be forgiving if it's bumped. I'm going to have to scratch-build two of those auxiliary gear struts for the side that got whacked, and I wil make the pitot tube for the nose out of telescoping brass and aluminum tubing. The ILS reflector looks like it gets painted yellow and a #440 decal goes onto it. With the gluing on of the missiles, the model should be done.

Looking pretty good.

Great fix on the clear flat incident