Northrop F-5II, RMAF, Italeri 1/72

 

Another one of my oldies. I used the Italeri F-5E kit, widely regarded to be the most accurate 1/72 F-5E in the market today (and I think it's still the only one). It's a little dated, with slight flash here and there, with raised panel lines, but a pretty detailed cockpit. The only real gripe I had with the cockpit was that the ejection seat was molded in halves, leaving a significant seam in the middle. A couple of days later I figured out that I could cover up the seam by adding a set of seatbelts made out of masking tape. 

I decided that the kit needed to be rescribed, because an initial test fit showed that I would be losing a lot of surface detail as I put the kit together. I wasn't looking forward to it as my experience with rescribing was limited to replacing lost panel lines, and not complete rescribes. That alone took about three weeks with lots of labelling tape, CA glue, a lot of mistakes and redos. The fact that the model would also be in silver paint left very little room for error, and it got to the point where I was very tempted to give up on several occasions. It also didn't help that the model kept getting into accidents, losing a gun barrel and a nose gear panel in the process.

 The decals were out of the box, with the markings of FM2207, one of the more well-known Malaysian Tigers. They were slightly thicker than the usual Italeri and it took a lot of persuading with Solvaset to get the decals to lay down properly. Along the way I put the intake decals in the wrong position, and also accidentally destroyed a few. A quick call to Testor's and their great customer service folks rushed me two new sets within a week.

 

I painted the kit using Testor's Metalizer Aluminum paint, which had a great laquer look to it once sealed. Since I would be weathering it with oils later, I used Future as a sealer instead of the usual Metalizer sealer. The natural metal portion of the engines were painted with Alclad Aluminum.

Finally, the missiles from the kit looked rather odd to me, so I swiped a set of AIM-9Js from a Hasegawa F-16 kit. A quick comparison shows that the Italeri samples were too wide. Hobby Boss has released an updated version of this kit with recessed panel lines. I've bought a few and will be adding to the blog when they're done.