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Dan DeSilva
70 articles

1/48 Monogram F-5N

December 22, 2015 · in Aviation · · 12 · 2.4K

Here is one of my completions this year. I have quite a few of these kits earmarked to be USN Adversary aircraft.

I built up the exhaust cans and intakes, using photos of the real things. While my compressor fans look a bit rough in the photos, they look very convincing in person. I can't figure why noone ever made resin intakes for the kits. I hope to master some since these worked out, and cast a few for my other kits.

I also made up a fuel tank by looking at photos and reshaping the kit tank.

This particular F-5N had a few modifications to its paint scheme over time. I had two decal sheets that were different from each other, which confused me until I found photographs of the aircraft on the internet. I chose one time period and went from there. The multiple photographs were also helpful in painting the camouflage. Neither decal sheet seemed to have the layout right, but I made mine a compromise between what I could see in photos and the painting diagrams. I hand drew the pattern on an initial coat of the base grey, then hand painted the dark grey shapes.

I don't usually put pilots in the seat, but it was nice to paint the kit with a closed canopy.

After my splinter scheme F-16N (see my imodeller gallery) I thought I would never want to do one of these schemes again- but my other F-5's await!

Reader reactions:
4  Awesome

10 additional images. Click to enlarge.


12 responses

  1. Dan, nice one! That the outfit out of Key West? Fleet adversary aircraft are great subjects, good to see a pilot in the cockpit.

  2. Yep that was the unit. I appreciate your comment- thanks and Merry Christmas.

  3. 🙂 ... Greetings ... 🙂 :
    Love the MONOGRAM models ... all of them.
    Nice job on this one Dan, especially the camouflage scheme, very striking.

    • Thanks again for the comment- I was going to do the grey scheme on my F-5F, but decided to do and older cam scheme on it instead. I think I have finally committed to the build list I put together!

  4. Nice agressor F-5E
    Like

  5. Nice job...don't see too many F-5's modeled any more.

  6. Looks good - and some good extra effort on stuff that can't be seen very well! Nice work on the intakes.

  7. Hi:
    Just found this one... Sweet camo work! Love the intakes too.

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