Monthly Archive for January, 2000
Kit Info
Manufacturer: Hasegawa
Scale: 1/72
Media: Injection Plastic
Construction
My kit came as an early production block Prowler (this is the only version of the Prowler that’s offered IIRC) so with the extra info provided by Hasegawa, I proceeded to add and cut the antennae to make the ICAP II mods. The hump on the bottom fuselage was also cut and filled with epoxy putty (the hump was hollow). I also did some research on the ‘Net to see how accurate the Hasegawa information was. I gave up after seeing about a dozen photos of actual Prowlers, with different antennae configurations. In the end, I just followed the Hasegawa sheet verbatim.
As per my usual practice, I put together as much of the plane as possible before attempting to fill the seamlines and painting. Because of that, I tend to deviate somewhat from the instructions. In fact, for the Prowler, I did the seats last (for reasons I shall explain later).
Overall, the kit fit OK with the following nitpicks:
Intakes
The kit allowed you to leave the boarding ladders down, so the intakes come with openings for the ladders to fit into if you wanted to model the ladders in the up position. Normally not much of a problem except, when you look inside the intakes, you’ll see flat plastic plates covering the interior. AMSers need not apply here.
Bottom fuselage
Because of the way the fuselage is shaped, I guess Hasegawa was forced to mold the fuselage into 3 pieces: left, right and bottom. This creates ‘opportunity’ for unnecessary gaps to popup. Nothing that some putty wouldn’t fix though.
ALQ-99 fan blades
The unique jamming pods have propellers attached to the front but the way Hasegawa molded them, it’s hard NOT to break a blade when you try to cut the propellor off the tree. I managed to wreck 2 of them but lucky for me, I was only planning to mount 3 ALQ pods anyway.
Canopy
The front canopy came as two separate pieces (left and right) which is weird because there is no reason for it to be that way since he old Hasegawa boxing’s front canopy came as 1 piece. Hasegawa also decided to remove the brown tint of the old canopy for this new reboxing which is another weird move because the actual Prowler’s canopies ARE tinted. If you looked at photos of the real aircraft, there appears to be a coppery tint at certain angles.
Seats
Oh man… where should I begin? The whole kit was ruined by the seats Hasegawa provided. It was as if they were put in as an afterthought. They look so generic they aren’t even funny.
To fix the canopies, I decided to do an experiment. I mixed a half bottle of vanilla essence with Future and then dipped the canopies into the concoction. I did it three times with 24 hours in between for the Future to dry completely. The end result was a very very subtle shade of coppery brown tint. A bit too subtle for my liking, if I ever do it again, I’d find another way to achieve the effect.
As for the seats, I settled with adding some simple ejection handles on the headrests. I wasn’t about to try to find the OOP True Details seats through the ‘Net. Too much hassle. The handles were done by some simple bending of brass rod and painting.
Kit Info
Manufacturer: Hasegawa
Scale: 1/48
Media: Injection Plastic
Construction
Even though the mold is at least a dozen years old (probably longer), the fit was excellent with minimal gaps and weird fitting problems. Assembly was pretty straightforward except for the fitting of the center fuel tank. In hindsight, I should have drilled holes and used pins to ensure that the fuel tanks were steadier. As it is, I only used CA glue.
I also removed certain sensor bulges on the kit that the real F-4G doesn’t have. Thanx to Andy Lee for pointing them out to me. He’s the Phantom Phreak. Not me.
The rear landing gears are very fragile affairs. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any good solution for reinforcing them. Just hope for the best I guess.
During construction, the nose gear broke off so to strengthen it, I drilled a hole and pushed a metal pin in. Nothing will break it now!
I scavenged the two pilot heads from my F-16CJ kit since the helmets included in the kit were the old clunky ones. I decided to add pilots to the cockpit because the seats were kind of bare and I didn’t feel like getting resin seats to replace them.
The ALQ-131 and HARMs were taken from the Hasegawa Weapons set. Again, the included pod and weapons were too old for the specific aircraft I was planning to model.
Finishing
I decided to model 69-0244 that operated out of the 52nd FW at Spangdahlem AB, Germany. During Desert Storm, it sported the noseart called ‘Night Stalker’ and like the other Weasels during Desert Storm, kill marks were added! ‘Night Stalker’ is the unit with the most kills during Desert Storm. As the Superscale sheet I had was old, some of the decals literally disintegrated when they touched water, so I had to replace them with the default Hasegawa ones. These included the USAF logo and the formation lights.
The center section of the front canopy is a clear blue color so I handbrushed it on in one thick stroke. This sufficiently prevents brush marks from popping up.
The camo demarkation for this unit was soft-edged, unlike the other Weasel units operating at the time. After unsuccessfully trying to do a soft mask (basically masking tape with the edges slightly lifted), I decided to freehand the lines and guess what… I finished it in less than 10 minutes when it took me almost 30 minutes just to try to mask the thing properly!
Colors were custom mixed by Mr. Nakamoto from Achtung Japan Hobby and went on pretty smoothly over a base of preshade in black.
Lastly, I weathered the aircraft with my trusty turpentine/artist oil combo and sealed it all with a semi-gloss coat.
Kit Info
Manufacturer: Hasegawa
Scale: 1/48
Media: Injection Plastic
Construction
The 1/48 Hasegawa F-14 kit has always been one of those model kits that I always wanted but never bought. But I couldn’t resist getting one and try out. This kit is actually the first aircraft kit that I’ve completely constructed and finished properly.
This kit isn’t easy to build. I plunged right into it before checking out reviews. Still, I enjoyed this build tremendously. Construction wasn’t straightforward by any means:
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