|
I used a whole lot of steel beach sets here, a LANTIRN set, a B update set, FOD covers for both the intakes and nozzles and drop tanks. The total cost of all the sets probably was as much as a BB bombcat conversion set, but i got more material!
After building the cockpit, and scratchbuilding the PTIDS, I felt that it was still too sparse. I took two hasegawa 1/48 pilots and modified them, painting the helmets according to photos I got from ARC members. I moved the names higher up on the helmet for better visibility. At that point, I realised that no bird would have FOD covers on and pilots inside, but by then i have already put together the intakes (without the fan face) and was not going to pull it apart to do the insides. I should have thought it through first.... I used Gunze Sangyo Acrylics for painting, preshading and Kaan Gok's weathering technique. I cut a groove in the wings so I could paint them separately and attach them later. A check with photo references revealed that the yellowhammer sheet was missing in some areas: 1. the demarcation line between the 36237 and 36320 topside was further forward, 2. the jet had black walkways, which I had to paint on, 3, kate's nickel nose art lasted for about 45 minutes and was removed when the aircraft landed. Thanks to Brian Marbrey for all this info and more.. I had to touch up the yellow tips of the vertical stabs as the decals didn't cover that up fully. At least the decals were thin and reacted well with micro set and sol....
She's armed with a JDAM and a GBU-12, as well as 2 AIM-9Ms. Brian also said that
VF-103 tends to not carry AIM-7s on the shoulder pylon, so I left that off.
Thanks also go out to Darren Roberts, who sent me a new set of GE-F110 covered
nozzles at no extra charge, because I had an older set that was smaller. The new
set fitted very well.
Photos and text © 2005 by David Bey April 6, 2005 |
