Danstream

Hi,

some progress on my F-15. Similarly to the upper side, the panel lines of the underside of the fuselage were treated with Payne's Grey oil color, while the wings were left natural with the exception of the control surface gaps. I might come back later to the panel lines of the leading edge.

Then the jet nozzles were glued on and some stains were added by putting some black oil color dots on panel junctions and smearing them with a flat brush. Also the nozzles were drybrushed with black oil color.

The underside engine area of F-15's might get really dirty by gases leaking from the junctions, but I prefer to keep the weathering quite limited. The engine area seen from the above will remain cleaner:

A rear quarter view of the jet nozzles area:

The jet exhausts of the kit are quite simplified, but I preferred not to replace them and get the best I could by playing with paints and oils.

On the upper surface, I added some streaks of color from the hinge lines of the surfaces as suggested by some pictures.

Finally, I sprayed a transparent layer of Tamiya Smoke and clear yellow on the underside of the engine area to mimic the discoloration of this area as seen in pictures:

That's all for now, I hope you like my weathering effects.

Best regards,

Dan 

1 hour ago, king derelict said:

Terrific work Dan. I'm learning a lot from your techniques. The panel lines are really neat

Thank you Alan. I am not a master, but if you have any question on the above that I am able to answer, please do not hesitate to ask.

Dan

Hi,

After having applied (almost) all the decals onto the fuselage, I sprayed the last coat of gloss to seal them. Then, the diluted oil color was liberally brushed on the panel lines of the upper side. This operation is always a bit frightening to me:

After 20 minutes, I removed the wash with a cloth damped with white spirit:

Next, the underside fuselage will be similarly treated. Meanwhile, I restarted working on the exhaust jet pipes because they will be glued on soon. With a fine brush, I picked few details with aluminium metallic paint and Tamiya panel liner, then I sprayed a mist of flat brown to mute down the contrast of the metallic parts:

Best regards,

Dan

Hi,

working on finishing the wheels:

Wheels mounted on the LG legs:

Finally on its legs (but legs are not glued yet):

Kind regards,

Dan

21 hours ago, ccoyle said:

I had to do some additional nips, tucks, fills , and touch-ups to get this to look half-way decent.

Once mated with the fuselage, from here it looks full-way decent.

Dan

2 hours ago, king derelict said:

Beautiful work Dan, the landing gear struts are spectacular

Thank you Alan, I am happy that you like the work done on the LG. As you might have noticed, there were quite a number of steps involved (i.e. a number of different coatings), but, eventually, it is easy to obtain a satisfactorily result. Actually, if the mould is good, most of the job is done by the wash 🙂. Presently, I am repeating all the coatings with the wheels.

I have just finished decaling the fuselage, omitting some of the many stencils.

King regards and thanks for all the 'like's! 

Dan

Hi,

while going on with decaling, I tackled the modeling of the landing gears. The kit provides a fair, quite accurate representation of the main structural parts. The legs were provided split in half and you have to insert a metallic rod in the vertical element before closing the halves. One end of the metallic rod inside the forward leg protrudes outside and it is supposed to get clamped into the wheel. This is the first time I see such a feature. The first step was to add few lead wires to busy up a bit the parts:

Then, I sprayed a light coat of primer followed by a satin white and I glued on the landing lights. To render the shiny struts of the shock absorbers and the oleo, I used a strip of thin self adhesive aluminium foil. The placards are made with small pieces of decal.

After that, I painted black some portions of the wires and sealed everything with a coat of gloss clear varnish. At this point, details can be picked up by applying a black wash (Tamiya panel liner):

That's all for now,

Thanks for following,

Dan

@amateur, I visited the museum about three years ago, and, yes I could see the thing hanging from the ceiling. I can easily believe that they were noisy planes. What impressed me were the sheer dimensions of the aircraft.

Kind regards,

Dan

Excellent model Javlin! Nicely assembled and finished. The paintwork of an otherwise just drab finish came out very interestingly textured and very realistic. I repeat what I said, the transparent parts are very sharply done.

Bravo!

Dan

Hi,

I had little time for the hobby lately and I am posting just few images to show that the build is going on. From the images above, I noted a blemish in the filler located next to the cannon opening which I could not ignore and hence had to be corrected. Then, after a light wet sanding of everything, I sprayed a second layer of gloss clear to prepare the surfaces for the decals:

I sourced a decal sheet that contained the service stencils and one for the insignias of the 32nd Squadron which was based in the Netherlands since the early 50's at the Soesterberg Air Base. The squadron was under Royal Netherlands Air Force control, therefore it was the only American Squadron that was under the command of a foreign nation. The role of the 32nd TFS was to guard the West-European air space which stretched right up to the Iron Curtain. Below, I just started to apply the decals:

This is an early scheme which will display the high-visibility stencils as I found in some pictures on the web (note: I find strange that the diagram around the fueling port is so larger than the outline of the port, but I do not have other options).

That's all for the moment,

best regards,

Dan

I see a great paintwork nicely finished by the decals. The transparencies also turned out very sharp. This will be a terrific model.

Dan

Hi all,

some little work done over the weekend, painted the control surfaces and posed together with the main body to see the effect.

Then a first light coat of Tamiya gloss followed by a light wet sanding. Before a second coat, I masked some details to get a metallic paint on the cannon opening and on the largest dorsal grilles:

I sprayed on these details a coat if Vallejo metallic 'steel' obtaining some points of interest on the large upper surface.

The simplified cannon opening gained a bit of detail:

Meanwhile, waiting for the gloss coat, I started to work on the landing gears.

That's all for now,

kind regards,

Dan

12 hours ago, amateur said:

But I guess it takes more thsn you can see (in talent, time and experience) to get it ‘not perfect’ like this…

OK, beside 'talent' which is a big word and I do not consider applicable to me, the other two ingredients are correct. I started with brush painting (my other hobby is actually... 'brush painting') and then I moved to airbrush. However, I soon realized that the time spent in airbrushing models was too short, too insufficient to learn reasonably the basic techniques and, in addition, it needed a long preparation in building the model before I could get into action with it. Hence, I started to spray paint on scrap cardboard and the like trying several effects that I wanted to reproduce. This way, I could get some of the 'time' and the 'experience' that were needed.

Excuse me for this unsolicited long digression and thanks to all of you that offered benevolent comments and 'likes' 🙂,

cheers,

Dan

A small update, after a long series of touch ups, where I was correcting oversprays of one color just to make oversprays on the other one, I consider the main airframe finally done. Not perfect, but good enough for me.

The two fins need to be finished, then a coat of gloss will follow.

Cheers,

Dan

Thank you, @Old Collingwood, for you kind note. I am glad you find it good. Still working on the greys, it is taking longer than expected, but it is a hobby, so it is ok.

Kind regards,

Dan

I like your rendering of the Africa camouflage. The result is very convincing.

Waiting to see more,

cheers,

Dan

Fine model, very nicely executed. The presentation in the display case is very elegant. 

Congratulations,

Dan

Slowly going on with the camo scheme. Worms of blu-tack applied as masking material:

The area above once sprayed with the dark ghost gray:

I need to touch up some areas on the spine which did not have enough contrast. This is the drawback of spraying one area at the time because it is difficult to keep the right consistency between the different applications.

By the way, I have also repaired the metallic panels:

At close distance, some blemishes of the surface can still be noticed, but I will have to live with that.

Thanks for following,

Dan 

@king derelict and others, I am glad that you like it. It's a bit of work, but it is one way to make an uniform grey surface more interesting. In addition, for the aircraft I have in mind there are pictures showing them quite weathered.

kind regards,

Dan

Hi,

after having declared the light gray application as finished, I removed the masking of the metallic panels because I was anxious to see whether the metallic surfaces were spoiled by the prolonged contact with the adhesive of the tape. Fortunately, the Vallejo metallic withstood well the adhesive.

However, there was a problem because, while spraying the grey paint, not having closed the airbrush cup with its lid, I spilled some paint onto the masked area. The very thinned paint found its way through the tape and marred one part of the metallic finish. 🤬

Due to the limited extension of the damage, I think that it can be repaired, but that is very annoying. After having prepared the paint mix for the darker gray, I started masking the most difficult and curved area on the forward of the airframe. For that, I wanted to use rolls of blu-tack which I never tried before. I am going to do one area at the time, so to limit to a minimum the time the blu-tack will remain in contact with the paint.

I sprayed the dark grey making irregular blotches of color.

Eventually, I think that the blu-tack worked reasonably well and it did not leave any oily markings on the paint.

Now, I need to go through the rest of the darker areas and that will take some time. And, yes, I will have to repair the marred metallic panel as well.

Best regards,

Dan

1 hour ago, king derelict said:

I'm glad you showed the details of the colour build up.

And I am glad to share my build with you! Then, please find a small addition to the color build up which now looks pretty final after few additions of paint.

I have saturated a bit more the coverage. You have to consider that the darker grey zones will be added to the wings and to the back of the fuselage.

The bottom looks ok, some weathering will complete its final look. Transparent layers that will be added for decals and inks usually tend to smooth the contrast.

That's all for now,

best regards,

Dan

58 minutes ago, Canute said:

I remember an early experiment with the Eagle in a pale blue. Didn't last long.

Indeed, the very first livery was 'Air Superiority Blue' tones. Apparently, the blue didn't give the expected mimetic result because it made the silhouette of the plane appear dark and quite visible against the sky background. The 'Compass Ghost Scheme' replaced it.

Hi,

I started the application of the camouflage which, for the livery I chose, is the early one designated as 'Compass Ghost Scheme' made with a Light Ghost Grey background FS 36375 with areas on the upper surface of Dark Ghost Grey FS 36320. Using Tamiya paints, I found that the lighter grey can be rendered with 1 part of XF-19 and 2 or 3 parts of XF-2. For the darker gray, I will use a mix of 1 part XF-66, 1 part of XF-54 and 3 parts of XF-2. 

I usually thin a lot the paints and I also add a dose of clear paint to the mix to make it more transparent. Just for fun, I am posting few progressive applications of the light grey to show to whom might be interested, the non-uniform coverage of the paint.

Considering the darker areas that will follow, I think I am almost there. Next I will continue with some local filling in with some grey variations.

Kind regards,

Dan

It is good to see you back in action. The last print of the engine looks great.

Dan

Nicely done, carefully assembled and painted.

Congrats,

Dan