Hard-to-miss F-16

[Jakko]

Now there’s more paint on:




First a coat of Vallejo Model Air aluminium, followed by Tamiya clear orange:




That didn’t go very well, though, the airbrush spattered — a lot I’m blaming this on the paint being old and thick, and it didn’t want to thin well. It’s also surprisingly difficult to put down a nice, even coat of clear paint.

I’m still debating whether to leave it like this and call it a metallic effect, or to respray the model, though I’ll probably end up doing the latter once I can think of a better way to do metallic orange. If I had orange ink I might try mixing that into the aluminium, but I couldn’t find a pot of it on a quick look throug my paint drawer. I’ll have to dig deeper to see if I really don’t have any anymore.

 

[yak face]

Try experimenting mixing red , yellow and silver jakko . Dont know how much of a metallic orange its supposed to be but ive had success mixing solid orange before. The clear tamiya colours seem to be a different formula to the other acrylic and are quite tricky to spray being thicker and slow to mix with the thinners .

 

[Jakko]

I’ve searched through all of my paints and found inks in almost all colours (red, blue, purple, brown, black, magenta, green, chestnut, “flesh wash” and more) but no orange and no yellow I think what I’ll try first is to thin the clear orange better, because after looking closely at the current coat, I suspect the speckled finish will disappear if I can get a solid layer of that on. If that fails, then I’ll probably try mixing a metallic orange and spraying that over this first attempt.

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
This has thrown up a few difficulties but I'm sure you'll sort it. Not sure how you'd get a metallic orange but your thinking to mix the paint better may work. If not you have plans b and c.
Jim

 

[Jakko]

I did a test first, with clear orange over aluminium, and it came out as an acceptable metallic orange. If respraying the clear doesn’t work, though, I will have to go for plan B. Hopefully not C, though

 

[RM6239]

Jakko
Looking forward to seeing what you come up with mate.
cheers
Ross

 

[Jakko]

What I came up with was this:—



My trusty Badger 250 spray gun. I suddenly remembered that ages ago, I sprayed some caravan lights with Tamiya clear red without thinning it at all, and it went on perfectly through one of these. Since the clear orange I had left was a bit thicker than when new, I dialled my compressor up to 3 bars, put the spray gun’s siphon tube into the pot of paint, and found it sprayed well enough that way. So I then put the paint into the glass jar and gave the model a pretty thick coat of it.




I would have liked a thinner coat, but that didn’t cover well enough, and in any case it’s hard to spray thin coats with a spray gun like this, especially given the thickness of the paint. It’s still not an entirely even coat and a bit darker than I’d like, but the spotting that remains increases the metallic effect, I think, so I’m going to go with this.

Then I removed the masking tape, hoping that not too much paint would come along. On the upper sides, it was okay, but underneath a fair amount of primer let go of the plastic:




One of the smoke pods also came loose, so I’ll have to glue it back on and probably retouch the paint there. Of course, I’ll have to do the black first before I can even begin to add decals.

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Looks as if you have had a result Shame about the black being damaged but it is mostly on the underside and should touch up OK. The decals and the areas of black will make a big difference.
Jim

 

[Jakko]

Touching up the black proved easier than expected: just painting over it with Tamiya flat black (the exact same I had sprayed over the black primer) a brush got rid of all the bare spots and hardly left any noticeable marks.




I also painted the grey antennas on the nose (and tail), and am now waiting for the paint to dry more fully so that I can put a coat of gloss varnish over the black before applying the decals (for which I’ll be using a Games Workshop spraying can rather than the automotive varnish I normally use, because of the bad reaction that had on the Vallejo aluminium last time) No need to also spray that over the orange, as it’s glossy anyway.

As expected, the clear orange also accentuated the panel lines, but because of the thick coat, mostly filled those in. At least this is realistic, though — I read on a Dutch forum, where someone built this same kit, a remark by an air force maintenance worker, that the paint used on the real thing was so thick that they sometimes had some difficulty getting screwdrivers into screws

 

[Jakko]

Here I go!



That’s the first decal on. As you can already see, my orange paint is too dark, but I’ll have to live with that because there’s no going back at this point. It does depend a lot on the lighting and viewing angle, though: while I was applying the decals, clouds kept going in front of the sun and then going away again, and in the sunshine the decals are far more apparent than when it’s cloudy.

I decided to begin with the lion’s head on the underside, because it locates against the trailing edge of the wing and the side of the fuselage, making it a good reference point to line the other decals up against.

Here’s how far I’ve gotten by now, when I’ve decided to stop to let everything dry:



That’s eleven decals, and I’m only about halfway with just one side the hardest so far is the one in the middle, between the two fins. Not only is it too wide to fit properly (several other decals are also too large, BTW), but it lacks a cut-out at the front for the pylon, which I had to fix when I had already soaked the decal loose from the backing paper. Oh, and there’s a small fin antenna on the belly, which the decal covers, but which I only really discovered when the decal refused to lie flat — I just broke it off and will glue it back on after the decal is dry.

Things to know before you decide to build this kit too: make sure you have lots of decal solvent and a sharp knife at hand to get everything to fit

 

[Jakko]

The underside is now finished:




This is quite hard to photograph, again because my orange paint is too dark, and the decals have a metallic effect as well. Even looking at the real model, the decals can be hard to see depending on the lighting conditions and viewing angle.

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Looking good. Certainly not easy to photograph.
Jim

 

[Jakko]

I forgot to add: the decals for the ventral fins are too large, but this is actually an advantage: it allows you to wrap them around the edges of those fins, given either a liberal application of decal solvent or alternatively, letting the decal dry completely first and then using some PVA glue.

 

[Lee Drennen]

The cockpit is now complete:

View attachment 332020

Helmet colours seem to vary, but looking carefully at photos of the real thing, orange helmets were used ca. 2013 (off the top of my head) and that makes the pilot much easier to see in the cockpit once the canopy is on.

And inside the fuselage:

View attachment 332023

With that out of the way, I need to adjust the leading edge slats and the ailerons, as this model will be posed as in flight during an airshow. I used a Tamiya plastic scriber to cut about halfway through the right wing from underneath:

View attachment 332022

Then, with the help of my newly acquired, second-hand Etch Mate, I bent it down as far as it would go:

View attachment 332021

You can just see it by comparing the wing at the front with the one at the back. However, since taking the photo I’ve cut the slot deeper with a knife and bent it some more, then glued and clamped it in place. The one on the other side will follow later, and the same goes for the ailerons.

Your waking the line on that cockpit nicely done

 

[Lee Drennen]

Because the black primer showed up deficiencies like glue marks, I sprayed flat black over it on the front of the plane, then masked off the areas that need to stay black.

View attachment 335788
View attachment 335789

This isn’t too difficult, but is made harder by the instructions not being all that clear. On investigating, they don’t match up with the real aircraft in a few areas, which explains why I had trouble translating the drawings into actually putting masking tape onto the model. It’s mainly the side views, which suggest that the top of the air intake is black, with a demarcation line running fore and aft just above the lights. On the real plane, the upper side of the air intake seems to be orange all the way, with only the vertical bit between fuselage and air intake being black, and even then only the part in front of the small auxiliary intakes. I tried to mask this, but couldn’t really get the tape in there so instead, I’ll paint it with a fine brush after the tape comes off.

I’ve already discovered that the primer doesn’t adhere as well as I would expect of primer, though:

View attachment 335790

I had put on the masking tape, then cut it to shape and removed the excess — and some of the black undercoat with it

Hopefully, I’ll spray the orange tomorrow. I’ve not yet decided if I’ll spray it silver and then put a coat of clear orange over it, or try to mix a metallic orange from silver paint plus orange paint or ink, though. In any case I suspect I’ll have to touch up the black later on when I remove the tape.

Think I will sit by John and see if you can beat this thing into submission this thing is giving you a fit but I’m hoping you can work this out looks like a beautiful aircraft when finished

 

[Jakko]

I’ll need to go and put some decals on the top This can’t be harder than the bottom, and I didn’t find those as difficult as I expected them to be at first, but we’ll see …

 

[Jakko]

The lion decals are now on the top as well.




They fit reasonably well, except those on the rear fuselage, around the tail. These consist of one for each side of the tail plus one that goes in front of them. The ones to the sides of the tail seem to fit about a millimetre too far forward if they line up with the very front tip of the tail, but you can’t move them back because then the one on the right doesn’t match up with the lion’s head, and neither will fit with the front piece. At the same time, the front piece fits against the lion’s head on the right wing but not with the body/claws on the left wing, being too far forward by about a millimetre again. This throws off the fit of the piece to the left of the tail relative to the left wing and horizontal tail. However, there was not really much I could do about this when I discovered it, because some of the bits involved were already stuck fast and moving others would result in obvious poor fit elsewhere, like against the back edge of the wing.

Worse in some ways are the decals for the sides of the fuselage, nos. 73 and 74. What the instructions don’t tell you is that you can only fit them if you’ve left off the horizontal tail surfaces … I cut both 28 mm in front of their rear tip, and then also had to cut off one of the two “forks” that go over/under the wing, else getting them on was just about impossible. I then cut up one of the rear points to make it small enough to get it underneath the left tail, but didn’t on the right because the top and bottom fuselage decals don’t run all the way to the back either.

If I were to build another model like this, I would first of all use a lighter orange, and second, I’d mask and spray the lion. Probably, I’d trace over the decals onto masking film or something, using them as a guide to cutting out the lion’s shape before applying the film to the model and spraying the lion in darker orange.

 

[Jakko]

And two similar shots as above but with all the decals on:




What now remains to be done is attach the pitot tube, paint it, and then apply a coat of varnish over everything. Unfortunately, though, I seem to have misplaced the part If I can’t find it again, scratchbuilding one should be easy enough, but I’ll go search for it a bit more first.

 

[Jakko]

Found it I had left it on a section of sprue with many other parts, that I had already put into my jet aircraft spares box …

 

[yak face]

Watch it now though jakko , ive broke mine off and re attached it several times!!