RAAF Lockheed F-4 Lightning Photo Recon

Started by Carl Smoot · 59 · 8 months ago
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    John vd Biggelaar said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

    Glad to hear you are feeling better, Carl @clipper
    Good progress and a wonderful idea for a scenery.
    Looking forward to that.

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    Spiros Pendedekas said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

    Glad you are better, my friend @clipper! Great progress and fantastic diorama idea!

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    Carl Smoot said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

    Thanks John (@johnb) and Spiros (@fiveten), I believe I have gotten over the worst of it now. Enough so that I have temporarily taken over the tasks my wife normally does while she goes through here own bought with this. No fun for her!

    I've been working on two parts of the Lightning build over the last couple of days. Getting the pilot figure done so I can finish installing him and the remaining fuselage combing piece. That also includes working on the instrument panel which is Eduard PE (no pics of that just yet). The pilot is still in work and all I've done so far is base colors and a small amount of light and dark colors. These small figures are always a challenge to paint. Someday, I want to try my hand at a larger scale figure, but I still need a lot of practice first. This figure is the Tamiya P-51B Mustang pilot who will be standing in, (sitting in) for the RAAF pilot in the Lightning.

    The other area of work are the Fowler flaps. For those unfamiliar with this style of flap, it is attached to the wing on tracks allowing it to fully extend beyond the wing trailing edge. I have personal real world experience with these on the P-3 Orion when I was in the Navy. Those are very similar to what is used on the Lightning.

    I started by cutting the flaps away from the lower wing some time back and then cleaning out and modifying the flap wells. Using the parts I cut out, I added some styrene sheet to build them up and then Milliput epoxy putty to fill in the spaces fore and aft. I am now in the process of shaping these blobs into flap shapes. Then they will later be fitted to tracks mounted in the flap wells in the fully extended position for the in flight diorama.

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    Spiros Pendedekas said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

    Fantastic job on both the pilot and the Fowler flaps, my friend @clipper The latter will look awesome once finished. Excellent scratch building skills as always!

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    John vd Biggelaar said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

    Superb progress, Carl @clipper
    The pilot is beautifully painted.

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    Carl Smoot said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

    I have to laugh at that pilot figure. My intended use for this kit is of course to display it in flight just as it is about to crash land. I am quite sure that if it were a real situation, the pilot would not have a smile on his face, but rather an intense look as he hoped he would survive the landing. So how do you change the look of a 1/48 scale pilots face without making him look like something from a Frankenstein movie! 🙂

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    John vd Biggelaar said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

    Sorry to not be able to help you with this, Carl @clipper
    After trying several pilots which all ended up like Frankenstein models, I gave up on pilot painting 😉

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    George R Blair Jr said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

    You really know how to pick the challenging projects, Carl (@clipper). I am looking forward to following the rest of this build.

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    Spiros Pendedekas said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

    Maybe trying to reduce the edges of his lips, which point upwards, my friend @clipper? If you file the lips pointing downwards, then the smile will be gone and the mouth will be smaller, maybe? Kind of looking anxious?

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    Carl Smoot said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

    Hello everyone, I wasn't really looking for any help with the figure. It was actually a poor attempt at humor. Thanks for offering, however.

    I've basically finished the pilot. He's not too bad. Most of the pilot figures I've done over the last year have been modified in some manner to fit in the cockpits. This has the effect of removing some of the subtle fabric folds in places. Combine that with the limitations of plastic molding, and the size of these figures, it gets pretty hard to improve my technique with these. I suppose what I might try doing next time is adding some folds back in using putty.

    I wish that I had the room for 1/32 scale models as they would be easier to include well designed pilot figures in. To be honest, I do have some nicely sculpted resin figures in 1/48, but they are earmarked for other kit builds which I haven't gotten around to yet.

    When I install the pilot, I will have to add PE seat and shoulder harnesses.

    I am also continuing the work on the Fowler flaps. I had originally thought I Might use rods extending from the flaps and glued to the flap wells, however, the flaps are pretty thin and I didn't see this being anything but an exercise in frustration. So instead, I've added small strips of plastic to the flap well undersides for the flaps to be glued against.

    Each flap will be super glued up against the strip. A flap track will be glued to each end of the flap and extend into the flap well. The plastic strips will not be visible once the model is mounted to the base. The flap tracks will be slightly visible from the top when looking at the model on the base, so that is why I am including them. But the flap tracks by themselves would be insufficient to hold the flaps in place because the bonding area on the flaps is too small.

    You can kind of see it in the last picture, but I am also having to shim up the aileron wells. That's relatively easy to do with some plastic card and a bit of filler

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    Spiros Pendedekas said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

    Excellent progress and excellent job on the flaps, my friend @clipper!

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    Carl Smoot said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

    Thanks Sprios (@fiveten). BTW, I responded to your PM as well.

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    John vd Biggelaar said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

    Beautiful work done, Carl @clipper
    Very nice work on the flaps indeed.

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    Carl Smoot said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

    Thanks John (@johnb). This is the first time I've done these types of flaps. It is an interesting experiment.

    Today, I've gotten the aileron wells and ailerons fitted and shimmed, the pilot was given seat and shoulder harnesses and then installed in the cockpit, the PE instrument panel was installed, and then the remaining cockpit combing piece was installed. All seams have been filled and surface detail restored.

    I have to look the model over and see if I am missing anything, but I know there is some PE external details that has to be added. However, I may prime the model first in case there are defects in the finish which need to be addressed. I'll add the ailerons after the prime check as well as the PE. The flaps will be installed later before I mount the aircraft to the base.

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    Spiros Pendedekas said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

    Coming together nicely, my friend @clipper!