Kittyhawk 1/32 F-5E Tiger II

Moving on to assembling the cockpit fuselage today. My solution to the gun door issue and windscreen poor fit was to grow two extra hands  

to start, i did not glue the fuselage to the edges of the wheel well and I didn’t glue the very top radiused section of the gun assembly to the fuselage. I used cement on the tabs for the cockpit so i could move it around for a minute or so. I glued the bottom fuselage seam closed. Then i laid the windscreen in place and I ended up separating the top of the fuselage just a 1/2mm or so to the point where the windscreen sat down flush with the canopy rails. I let this dry overnight before starting on the nose.

for the nose i placed both sets of gun doors in place with blue tape. Then when i put the nose section in place it centered itself on the doors. This kept it from shifting and going cockeyed as the glue dried. The result was a perfect vertical and horizontal seam.

With everything centered and in place and showing flush panels I went back and glued the fuselage to the wheel well and to the top of the gun door assembly.

Now to let this dry while i work on the seamless intakes

Lots of little stuff going on, plus most has been shown before so no reason to bore anyone ;-) 

The aversary aircraft don’t have guns.  I was lucky enough to find the plane I’m portraying with a gun door open. Here’s my rendition of the electronics...a big red box is mostly all that’s in there.

In the above pic the errant access hatch and door are filled with superglue. Planning to use the Archer Fine Transfers hatches as a replacement. They’re thin enough to lay down here i believe. 

Ohhh I’m starting to paint and that’s the truly exciting part for me. You know I’m close when I’ve got the 8x10 glossy up. I can tell you it’s not the same as the ones my Uncle Dennis used to have up in his studio back in the 80’s 

I was so excited thinking i was ready to assemble the fuselage...and then it hit me, the intake ramps and the area of the fuselage behind them has to be painted before it can all be assembled. Dang, full stop. So here’s how they are coming along. There’s 4 ugly giant ejector pin marks on these that have to be eliminated before even starting. For the internal seems I made color matched putty to fill the voids. On top I’m trying tamiya white putty and lacquer paint & on the bottom perfect plastic putty and vallejo acrylic paint. I’m hoping the acrylic works best as i can smooth it out with water and not affect the base color paint at all.

did all my paint mixing yesterday and have my colors set in stone. Hoping to at least get to primer this weekend.

The missile is assembled  Big update tonight. I’ve spent lots of time reading build logs and checking out that 80+ page F-5 thread ;-) to know where the assembly issues are for sure. Rubberbands and all around and it’s ready to dry. Definitely going to be in primer this weekend.

 

Adding the seamless intakes added another dimension to the build for sure. What i decided to do was essentially dry fit it all - both fuselage halves (in 3 pieces) and both intakes all at the same time. I tacked the top shoulders with CA to hold the alignment, rolled it over and tacked the bottom once the panel lines were mated. Then i did a similar thing with each intake, tack the corners, get it aligned and do a final tack. Then i went over every seam with Tamiya Extra Thin. 

Forgot to get a dry-fit pic of the E so here is the same setup on the F which is next up

 

 

 

this is the only one that didn’t mate up right once i started gluing. Some putty, ca and rescribing and it should be ok. It’s pretty flat and way better than having to fix a step in that bottom joint!

 

 

 

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HaHa, you know the next time I say a model will be ready for primer this weekend someone call BS! Lots of family stuff happening so I've only been sporadically working on my F5's. I did however get primer on the E yesterday  Overall it's not too bad. It's so hard to keep from filling in these shallow rivets. Most of my rescribing worked out ok. I plan to preshade the rivets and panel lines so that something will show up ;-) Actually it will probably be close to reality then as the rivets will be mostly filled in and will look flush. That's my hope anyway.

And look at these horrible sink marks, ugghh. Chuck showed these in his build on LSP. It's amazing how deep they feel when running your fingers over them. Bondo and sanding away...

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Putting some color to my adversary today! This is a custom mix of a yellow from an ‘81 Ford truck and gloss white. 

3 to 4 light coats is covering nicely. In the close up photos the 1:1 scale bird has some serious fading of the yellow, plus some corrosion type patches and strips that I’ll add before i do the other camo colors i think. The strips of primer showing are where the green and brown will go to try and get some of the variation i see in those colors.

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Once more into the breach...all the kids were still sleeping at lunch so I ended up with a day off to myself, great modeling time! Finished up the light ghost grey and the gloss black. Now on hiatus until next week as the wife and I are off for our anniversary trip starting tomorrow.

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Masked it up and got the 1st camo color down tonight. I mixed 6 parts brown to 1 part red. Off to my 1st show in a year tomorrow, Indianapolis Roscoe Turner IPMS is this weekend. Hoping to find a few things from vendors for the next series of builds. Will get back to this in a few days and start the green 

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All the camo colors are on now and primary painting is all done. 

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now for some outdoor projects. I’ll let this dry a day or so and then do some weathering before i do the gear and the canopy.

Hello!

Definitely not enough comments here! Looks like you have everything figured out. The model looks very good and is BIG! Thanks for sharing and have a nice day

Paweł

Thanks for stopping by pawel! Appreciate the nice comments. It seems a little slow these days but there's a lot of stuff going on in the group builds. Lots of nice weather where I'm at. I'm sure everybody is probably outside, I know I've been spending less time at the bench and computer in the last month for sure.

Not much to share lately. Doing the standard stuff; finishing the landing gear, painting and detailing the canopy, and touchups. Thought I would take a second and share the Archer Fine Transfers rivets. These really add to the look of the tail on the F-5!

should have an awful lot done this weekend as it’s supposed to rain a lot...uggh, see i lost a rivet there. Will touch that up too haha

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Twas a good day for modeling, just rain outside! All the rivets on, stainless exhaust metal painted, some touchups done and all the decals on...what few decals there are, the Navy bird has more than the Marine and most of the standard stuff isn’t there by design. What i love is that it doesn’t have those oversize dashed lines on top of the wing! i know they have a real purpose but from an aesthetic point of view they take away from the look of the AC 

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This Aggressor’s got some legs now. Let it be known they are NOT very strong. I’ll end up gluing them on the base as they want to slide out on a smooth surface already. Just a few shots here to show the stance. Everything looks pretty straight. Once I post these I’m bound to see something I forgot though lol I was sitting at the bench wondering what else needed done, seemed like there was something missing...walked away and came back, went duhhh in my best Homer Simpson voice, and got started on the nose gear doors 

 had to add this note - my wife looked at this and asaid, “can you see the face looking at me”? lol 

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Really coming together now. Gun doors, missiles, and the base to go! I did some detailing in the cockpit tonight and it’s all set. I think the clear canopy on this kitty hawk kit can’t look much better. It looks like they form it over a series of flats rather than a curved surface lo

 

Coming down the home stretch this weekend. The only thing I'm missing is "CATM ONLY" decals for the inert sidewinder  gonna have to make those when i return from business trip next weekend. For now I've been working on the pilot and the base. Here's a teaser of the pilot...the base is in various stages of paint and addking chochkies haha

This looks just great! Gotta love that camo scheme. Sorry to hear about the weak landing gear. Real bummer but sounds like you've got it handled.

Thanks for sharing this wonderful build thread. I had the hasegawa aggressor version but it disappeared from my stash and is now lost forever.

I've heard of similar problems in every build review concerning the nose and gun area. That was a nice recovery on your part to fix the kits shortcoming. 

I like the agressor camouflage you've chosen for the build, it looks great. I am looking forward in seeing the finishing touches.

The pilot is perfect for the build too.

Ben

Appreciate the great comments guys! Drums it's a shame that one disappeard, there's so many cool agressor schemes.

My aggressor is 99.5% finished. I need the CATM ONLY lettering which i will have to make myself i think and then I’m waiting on the clear tubing for the drains. Took a few pics tonight that I’ll share. Usually I go to take the final pics and find a couple things I missed...so this time I’ll outsmart myself  sure enough i forgot the wheel chocks and the oxygen mask and hose. Will work on those before final pics. May find something else as I look these over close up.

 

 

 

 

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My Afghan camo adversary aircraft, affectionately known to my wife as the chocolate covered banana, is complete! The finishing touches were the fuel drain tank, fire extinguisher, and the oxygen hose hanging outside the cockpit. With a sunny day here in Cinci I grabbed some shots in natural light. Enjoy the show guys!

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