EE Canberra B.8, SAAF, Airfix 1/72

Another Airfix kit, this time the Canberra, which was one of the first of the new moldings after Hornby took over the company and injected some new life into it. A new Canberra kit was much needed and Airfix managed to deliver a quality kit with minimal cost. It’s not a super-detailed kit but it offers incredible value for money – simple construction with minimal fuss and very reasonably priced at $25 (the limited run High Planes kit ran at about $35-40 before shipping).  This particular boxing is the Canberra B.8(I).  The “I” stands for “interdictor.”

The cockpit is quite detailed and I had a lot of fun putting it together. Too bad the guy in the bombardier’s compartment has to pretty much sit in the dark (British pilots would call the bombardier’s position the Black Hole), with a little window on the side. The bombardier would also crawl forward into the clear nose to operate the bombsight (remember that this is a late 1940’s era jet, with late WW2-era bombsight technology).

 

I had to pack a ridiculous amount of weight in the front. It was a hassle to squeeze in that much weight in so little space. If I were to do this again, I would use smaller weights like #7 1/2 shot pellet, rolled up in plumber’s putty as it would fit in those little crevices better.

The fuselage went together fairly well. I used a bit of Mr Surfacer 500 to fill a seam line, sanded, polished and then rescribed the panel lines. The wings were the easiest thing to put together. Two gigantic wing halves glued together, then stick the engine face on! The tail rudder needed some modification though – the tail had these panel lines that look really odd and detract from the final look, so I filled it with putty and sanded the surface smooth. Once the fuselage, wings and tail surfaces are put together you really get a sense of how big of a plane this is.
 

 

The ejection seat is out of the box, but nicely detailed. It has molded-on seat belts (perfectly fine for the tiny, dark cockpit) and according to the instructions and some of the reference photos I found, a bright yellow seat cushion that was for some reason my favorite part of the entire model (probably because it was so brightly colored). The bombardier’s seat is slightly different from the pilot’s so be careful when you’re putting it together. I stuck the engine faces on and it was from there that I found my first real issue with the model. Somehow, one of the engine faces was round and the other ovoid.  I can’t remember how it turned out this way – either I oversanded one of them or there was a molding issue. To correct it, I slathered on some Milliput, shaped it into the basic shape with some water and my finger, then sanded it down after the putty had cured.

 

After a coat of primer to insure that I was happy with the seams, I sprayed the entire model down with Warhammer’s Mithril Silver. For an acrylic paint I was really impressed by how fine the metallic flakes were. A major bonus for this was that I could thin it with tap water. The paint went on smoothly, was dry to the touch within 10 minutes and fully cured within a day.

 

  

Decals are for the markings of a South African Air Force (SAAF) bird during the war with Angola.  The decals took three days to apply – the wingwalk lines went on first, then sealed, then the stencils went on next, sealed again and finally the unit markings and roundels. The decals were in perfect register and were a joy to use. The cannon belly packed looked really neat and I added a pair of rocket pods for extra effect. Staining was achieved with a mix of black and gray pastels ground up and applied with a brush.

I wanted the aircraft to look war-weary so I sprayed a flat coat on the model, unfortunately dulling the beautiful metallic sheen on the model. I then added drops of Testor’s Model Master Buffing Aluminum Plate to a cap, wrapped a rag around my forefinger, then rubbed the paint on the model in spots to add some shine. My understanding was that the aircraft were painted silver, so the idea was to make it look like there are still patches of shiny paint left on the aircraft. The final touch was to add an antenna wire using a fishing line glued on with CA, then painted a dark metallic color.

 

The Canberra is a very nice model, and again, good value for money, that looks fantastic with patience and a little care.  I also have the PR.9 version that I’ll be doing in colors flown over Iraq in 1991.  Hopefully that’ll show up on this blog soon.

 

 

 

Sikorsky MH-53J Pave Low III, Italeri 1/72

I built this out of box as a "de-stress build" but it turned out to be more stressful to build it out of the box! Fit isn't the greatest but is adequate. Cabin was not very well detailed so I closed up the tail ramp (it didn't help that I broke off one of the hinges). I resisted the urge to detail it as I needed a quick build but this ended up taking me 2 years to build off and on. I made an aggressive push and completed it after putting in 30 minutes a day over the next three weeks. I enjoyed putting on the ultra cool paint job though, and it's huge. I have an Mi-26 which is even bigger. I really ought to build that thing sometime.

Chengdu J-20 "Mighty Dragon," Trumpeter 1/72

After a year, this is finally done. The infamous J-20 surprised US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates when he visited China in 2011. There’s a lot of speculation about how good an aircraft this, how stealthy it is, etc but I think it’s safe to say it’s a pretty wicked looking aircraft.  

I picked this up in September 2011 (which was when the kit showed up in the stores) and I worked on it off and on over the past year due to a few issues on the kit that I had to walk away from and think about to other things happening in regular life that took priority.

The kit is nice enough – very well engineered, but over-engineered in some aspects. The forward fuselage is one potential trouble area – it is split up into three sections – upper fuselage, and left and right forward fuselages. The nose wheel well fits on the bottom of the left and right fuselage halves – and the nose wheel well is made out of five pieces, by the way – and the nose wheel mount pins are on left and right sides of the wheel well, not the top, so the entire assembly has to be assembled early on, complicating other assembly and painting (fortunately the nose gear did not get broken off).
The rest of the aircraft assembled fairly well – I made one modification to the assembly steps – I left out the tail surfaces until the last minute, which means leaving out the little caps that hold it in place.  The locator holes were really tight and had to be drilled out anyway. This is one other area that is in danger of snapping off during assembly, so I left it out. The tail surfaces are not glued on.
 

Painting was a challenge as I’ve always found that black paint on models tends to be too “black.”  The resulting effect is that it absorbs all light around it, leaving little depth to the subject and looking like a black shape instead. I used Tamiya’s NATO Black instead, which has a slight greenish tint to it (but that goes away after applications of gloss and flat coats) and the end result is an off-black that looks reflects light slightly, giving it a little more depth.  I also took a little artistic license with the panel line wash, using white paint instead of the usual dark gray (which would disappear on the paint surface anyway), giving it even more depth.

Masking the exhaust nozzles was a bear. I cut masking tape in to thin strips, then cut them in to little squares, and sticking each corner on every jagged panel line. The exhaust petals on the actual aircraft are fairly clean so I left weathering at a minimum (one of the prototypes has newer engine exhausts with stealthier jagged-edge exhaust petals).

Overall, this is a fantastic but challenging kit of an interesting aircraft. Trumpeter pulled out all the stops to make a really detailed kit out of the box, which is fitting as there is great pride in China for coming up with such a technological feat. I’d recommend this kit but make sure you take your time building it.

Grumman F-14A Tomcat, VF-31, Academy 1/72

I built this guy a long time ago. Definitely an Academy kit, but I can't recall who did the decals. I think it was Superscale.

 

Pretty much out of the box, it was a fairly pleasant build. The kit decals were rather plasticky for some reason and didn't work very well with setting solutions. Fortunately, the aftermarket decals covered for 90% of what I needed.

 

 I'm a big fan of Felix the Cat, so VF-31 naturally became my favorite squadron. Today they're VFA-31, flying F-18E out the the USS Abraham Lincoln (last time I checked).

MiG-15bis, NKAF, Airfix 1/72

Note: This is one of the older entries from my old blog.

 
One of my favorite model aircraft brands is Airfix.  I do believe I’ve built more Airfix kits than any other brand in my collection.  I started off with an Airfix 1/72 Hawk T.1 my dad got me when I was six.  Over the years, Airfix has risen and fallen, due to bad decisions and just general  mismanagement.  In the past five years, however, Airfix has made a spectacular comeback under its new parent company, Hornby (which also manufactures slot cars and model trains – so it knows its business).   Looking at their recent releases, I’m delighted to say that they’re back – along with well-engineered, fun kits with an unbeatable price.

To start off I have a fairly recent build that I’m quite proud of – the Airfix MiG-15bis in 1/72, that I picked up for $10 and built in a week.  This is one of their new molds.  I’m not going to dwell into the shortcomings or inaccuracies of the kit as this blog is primarily about the process of building the model and enjoying the journey.  To start off, we’ve got the cool CG box art that they’ve been doing – I miss the Roy Cross stuff but I have to say Airfix did a fantastic job with packaging, and their box art is simply exciting and cool!

I’ll be doing this cool scheme:

As with all models, painting started at the cockpit, which consists of a tub, stick, seat, instrument panel and decals.   It’s not incredibly detailed but it’ll do the job.

Stick that into the fuselage halves, glue a few BBs under it as a noseweight and it’s on to the wings next.  With fuselage halves I tend to use a “hotter” adhesive like MEK (methyl ethyl ketone) as it bonds the plastics at the molecular level, forming tougher joins.  This is especially important for “seamless” areas such as fuselage halves as you don’t want the seam to pop later.

 

The ejection seat is not too bad – it’s a fair representation and the addition of seatbelts (made from tape) improves the look considerably.

 

Next comes painting.  This is a little different from my norm as the aim is to replicate a war-weary bird with minimal aesthetic maintenance, ie paint repair.  To start off I primed it to make sure I didn’t leave any seams, then coated the entire model with Testor’s Model Master Metalizer Polished Aluminum, then I polished it until it was slick.  Next came the panel line shading in black paint, then the first coat, which was Tamiya Desert Yellow, and finally the stripes in Tamiya Dark Green.  After it had dried I sprayed the undersides with Tamiya Gloss Black.

I did not apply a gloss coat at this point as I intended to scratch and scrape a lot of the paint off to simulate wear and tear.  This was done with a combination of using a #11 blade, seam scraper and sanding sponge to applied to areas around the model, with an emphasis on maintenance panels and high-traffic areas.

After I was satisfied with the scuffing, I applied a gloss coat and waited for it to cure overnight. Decals went over the next day – only six decals – four roundels and a pair of aircraft numbers – no warning stencils.  OSHA and maintenance inspectors would have had a heart attack.
Much later, after another gloss coat over the decals, and an oil wash to bring out the panel line detail, I proceeded to the “fiddly bit” stage where smaller items such as the drop tanks, landing gear, antenna, etc were completed, weathered and touched up.  A final coat of matte spray and she was ready for final assembly.

And there we go.  I’ve stuck this next to a Mig-31 I finished earlier as a size comparison.  This project took a week, which was one of the fastest builds I’ve done in a while.  To sweeten the pot this model won first place at the 2011 1/72 Jet category at IPMS Kalamazoo (2nd place went to another Airfix Mig-15).  It was a great feeling as I had never won first place before and to earn it at the club I first started out at was a great homecoming of sorts.