Monthly Archive for June, 2010

VF-1J Egg Valkyrie

June 30, 2010 in Projects. 0 Comments. Tags: .

Kit Info
Manufacturer: Hasegawa
Scale: Non-scale
Media: Injection Plastic

Plamo is also hosting a Supa Difomu FIGHT! groupbuild. I couldn’t resist starting this as soon as it arrived at my doorstep. I plan to do this in Hikaru Ichijo’s white and red colored VF-1J. It looks good OOB but there are some details here and there that I fixed or added.

I began with the exhaust, which required them to be installed before the exhaust trunks wrap around them. That would have required some masking which I want to avoid.

First I cut off the sides of the attachment points.

Test fit. Still fits fine. Even holds in place without cementing.

There’s a fan in the exhaust but the intakes are really obviously blank.

I cut some plaplate into triangles and stacked them in a semi circle.

Voila! Instant (almost) intake fans!

Next up, the really bare cockpit. Pilot’s nice and detailed, but everything else is blank.

So out with the plaplates to detail it up. I just randomly added buttons and panels. Looks busy enough.

The area in between the exhaust is also quite plain.

Again, out with the plaplate!

There’s a gap due to the swing wing feature. I cemented the wings in place and covered up the gap with more plaplate.

Strangely, there’s a gap inside the vent on the upper fuselage.

I proceeded to cover the particular ‘hole’.

No more weird hole!

There is a gap around the tailfin base.

I covered the huge space in the base with Milliput. Going to take 24 hours to dry.

And lastly for tonight (yeah, I’m on a rare roll here :D ), I decided to do the Egg Valkyrie in flight. The kit comes with the option to easily close the gear doors. Geez, if only Hasegawa does this for ALL their releases.

The base is actually the cap from my Gillette shaving cream. I used a plastic rod instead of (the usual) brass since the kit is really small and light. Milliput is used to stick the 3 things together.

Grumman E-2C Hawkeye 2000

June 27, 2010 in Projects. 0 Comments. Tags: .

I finally managed to find a closer match to FS16440. Vallejo Model Color ‘Silvergray’ is FS36622. It’s warmer than the original FS16151 I used.

First up though, I’m going to tackle the other colors this particular Hawkeye has. The first is blue which the instructions indicate as FS150150. My Model Master Acryl ‘Blue Angel Blue’ is a match for that.

Now I’ve never used Model Master Acryls. I only got Blue Angel Blue and a few other colors to try out via my nephew who’s in the US (MM Acryl is not available here and is rare in South East Asia). And you know what? I LIKE IT!

It goes on much smoother than Vallejo (particles seems smaller) and it’s very easy to thin. With Vallejo, I tend to over and under-thin a few times before I hit the sweet spot. Vallejo also has bigger tendency to dry at the tip of the airbrush so I have to wet the tip with Windex alot more often.

So anyway, I quickly colored all the parts that needed to be blue. Only after I’ve finished that I notice I’ve colored the wings’ leading edges which was wrong. These need to be black. Bah! Such a waste of an airbrushing session.

I’ll leave the blue to dry overnight. Tomorrow is black and red for the inside of the trailing edge flaps.

Boeing F/A-18A Hornet ‘VFA-97 Warhawks’

June 25, 2010 in Projects. 0 Comments. Tags: .

Kit Info:
Manufacturer: Hasegawa
Scale: 1/48
Media: Injection Plastic

While letting my wounded finger cure, I decided to start construction on another kit. I figure it’s time for a 1/48 kit so I chose this one from my stash. I have a very nice camo scheme for this one. The decals is TwoBob’s F/A-18A VFA-97’s Thoroughbred Warhawks II.

Like most of my planned 1/48 planes, this will be mostly OOB with only a resin seat and special markings. Nothing fancy.

Cockpit’s the first step and Hasegawa actually gives a twin seater tub for this. In fact, parts for the twin seater are all provided. Hase will have me use a blanking plate to cover the rear seat.

The cockpit instruments are all done in Vallejo Black Gray. Then US gray was drybrushed. A wash of a mix of the two colors is also done. The MFD screens were brushed with Future Floor Polish (FFP) to give them a shine. They are also supposed to be off so no green or blue color for these.

Taking a different route, I decided to do up the stores first. Based on info from the Two Bob’s instruction sheet, I got the weapons from my Kinetic spares (what a godsend), with the FLIR and LDT coming from the kit. The A wasn’t wired for AMRAAM or JDAMs so these were left out.

Construction of aircraft kits tend to follow a linear path so this WIP will simply showcase the main issues I have with the kit.

The bottom of the LERXs are molded separately and these required using clips onto them section by section to make sure they fit OK. In the end, it’s still not perfect but at least it’s easily fixed with putty.

The splitter plates have a very (very) small piece of guiderod which attaches to the main fuselage. Easily lost. Lucky I managed to hang on to mine.

To make it easier for me to align the top and bottom fuselage halves (especially at the back), I added some 1mm plaplates. These also serve 2 other purposes: 1) they will strengthen the joint since it’s very thin in this area and 2) the horizontal stabilizer will have more area to grab onto when I stick it into the holes.

The nose is made of 2 halves split down the middle (while the fuselage is upper and lower halves. Weird). This presented some fitting problems that I tried my best to fix by cementing one half to the fuselage first before attempting the other half. I think this will reduce uneven steps compared to if I put the nose together separately and tried to cement it in one piece to the fuselage. There are some gaps between the LERX and the nose and a very slight step on the port side of the nose and fuselage joint. But these won’t be too hard to fix.

I also added some nuts to serve as weights. The instruction doesn’t call for them but I do it just in case.

This is turning out to be a suitably impressive kit. It’s BIG!

So what makes an F/A-18A an F/A-18A and not an F/A-18C? These are the more obvious things:

No sensor bumps on the hump behind the canopy.

Reinforcement plates on the tailfins (the Cs have them reinforced internally).

Simpler sensor cluster on the tailfins.

The Centurions

June 23, 2010 in Mecha Nostalgia and Musings. 0 Comments.

The Centurions was a 65 episode cartoon series that was shown on TV in 1985-1987. A recap of the plot:

In the near future, the evil cyborg genius Doc Terror, seeks to conquer Earth, assisted by his cyborg assistant hacker, his daughter Amber, and an army of land, air and sea-based Doom Drones.

Out to stop them is an elite group of brave men, The Centurions. The Centurions wear ‘Exo-Frames’ that allow them to fuse with assault weapon systems which enable them to stop Terror and his Drones at every turn.

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A sign to stop modeling for the night

June 23, 2010 in The Hobby. 0 Comments.

Note to self: Chisel away from the finger, not towards…

Grumman E-2C Hawkeye 2000

June 21, 2010 in Projects. 0 Comments. Tags: .

I carefully puttied the pin marks inside the gearbay. Then I wrapped sandpaper around a satay stick and slowly sanded. Should look fine after a coat of paint.

After a final check for problems, it’s time to preshade. I normally use Vallejo Black Gray for this purpose. I also tend to be quite haphazard in my application. :)

Current Hawkeyes are in an overall FS16440 gray. The closest shade I have to it is Vallejo’s Pale Gray Blue which is FS16515.

After applying the color though, I noticed it looks a tad too ‘blue’ compared to the online pics I found of the Hawkeye.

I might need to fix this, but for now, I’ll paint up the whole kit first.

Switching paints

June 17, 2010 in Musings and The Hobby. 2 Comments.

Ever since I got married and had kids, I’ve consciously used acrylic paints for my models. The most important reason is because they are much less toxic than enamel or lacquer paints, which is always a plus with toddlers running around. So for awhile now, I’ve been using Vallejo paints almost exclusively.

However, they are not the easiest paint to use. They handbrush very well (especially Vallejo) but airbrushing-wise, they’re more finicky. They require precise thinning: too thin they run all over the place, not thin enough they leave splotches all over the kit. They also tend to scrape off the kit easily so touchups are inevitable. I find enamel and lacquer much easier to handle and use. Their main disadvantage of course is that they are much more toxic.

I’ve recently finally have a workbench setup in a separate room which means I can keep the kids away when I’m painting so the health concerns are now less important for me (I’ll be the only one breathing the fumes after all). So I’m considering adding enamel or lacquer paints to my painting options.

Now the question is whether to go with enamels or lacquers. Both are surprisingly hard to find here in Jakarta with most shops only carrying Tamiya acrylics. But there’s always the online option, though it seems like shipping lacquer or enamel paints are now much more restrictive.