Stealth GB

The Tamiya kit will have a similar problem in the tub if you use aftermarket seat kits. (At least I've found it to be this way) Some careful sanding and trimming seems to help there though. I've not seen the Academy kit in person however, and I can't speak as to the best way to remedy it's fit troubles.

I am doing the Academy F-117, but haven't played with the cockpit yet. I've just assembled the bombs and a bit of the undercarriage so far. Thanks for the heads-up, though, maybe I can work an angle with that and get it to not look as weird as it sounds like it'll end up looking.

Just another quick heads up - if anyone's interested in doing the Tamiya kit, or is generally looking for parts, keep your eyes open and pointed at ebay. Currently, theres a Tamiya 1:48 kit by itself for $20, and another of the same kit including the BB cockpit upgrade and the Eduard P.E. detail set as well going for $40. The kit alone retails for $52 now, let alone the cost of the upgrade kits.

I got both of my last kits on ebay for $20 each. Not too bad really! :) Hopefully, this will help some folks out. Sorry, i don't have a link handy just now, but do a search for F-117A and you'll get two pages of results. Haven't done a search for "stealth" yet, but I imagine it'd be similar.

Hey Will, sorry to have missed the question a few posts back - no, I don't remember where I picked up all those photos...but I'll keep my eyes open. Glad to hear the P.E. made it off to you safe and sound.

Bri~

Also, for anyone with cable and the Discovery Wings channel, there's been a special on the last day or so on Stealth tech. I immagine it will replay for another day or two. check it out or record it if you can.

just wondering if anyone knows what colour the ejector seat is in a f-117 stealth? is it an ACES II seat? cause i have a pic of that but none of the seat in the actual aircraft so I'm not sure. Thanks for any help!
oh and I finished the Habu I was making at about the same time this GB thread came up. If youre interested, the pics of the finished bird are here http://www.finescale.com/fsm/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=27327

Black. It is an ACES II seat but they didn't want any part of the cockpit to be overly visible from the ground or another passing aircraft, so they tried to 'black out' as much of it as they could - including going so far as to put glare shields sometimes called "elephant ears" to shield the glow from the displays from reaching outside the canopy. Even the pilots helmets are black or dark grey. Sounds kinda over the top to me...but that's the story I've seen anyway.

wow fast reply! thanks, cuz i was THIS close to going grey on it! thanks again!

You could probably get away with a very dark grey, to add a little visusl interest to things in there, but I'd be careful and avoid going too light. interestingly, the floor of the cockpit tub and the back wall arev all fairly light grey in color. Although much of the upper surfaces are covered in black swtch plates, wire bundles, electronics, hydraulics etc. The main panel is also black - as is the dash above it.

Here are a few links to some auctions on eBay that some may want to follow:

$20 Tamiya kit (usually $52+)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=50302&item=5920979628&rd=1

$10.51 Tamiya kit (may go for dirt cheap!)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1191&item=5921003426&rd=1

thanks again uilieann for the colour info. so has anyone else started building yet? I'm just getting into it, painting the seat and cockpit. too bad about the instruments being decals in the academy 1/72. Im also trying to decide whether or not to have the bomb doors open. I REALLY dont like painting white....
anyways, later!

HA! And GLOSS white at that! Such a major pain in the tail!! The Tamiya kit has decals for the main panel as well, though it also has some great raised detail that would dry brush very nicely if that's your thing. Have you looked into any of the aftermarket photo etched kits for your plane? They would likely give you razor sharp details and still hold true to your scale.

For my own part, I don't care for much in the 1:72 size unless there isn't any other option for my subject, but I know there are plenty of good kits out there and lots and lots of aftermarket goodies to be had. Check out ebay and Great Models for some ideas.

Brian~

yeah but i sort of decided not to go with the AM stuff for this one, i sort of decided to do it out of the box, and whatever i can scrape up myself. I like the small size since they dont take up too much space, although i do have a few 48th kits to do as well.

I'm curious to see what everyone has gotten done so far on their builds - pics anyone?? :)

For those who already haven't done so, the F-117A Walk Around book by Squadron is full of detailed photos and is definately worth the purchase if you want to be accurate. I think I'm building mine out of the box, but I might add a few scratch built extras if they seem easy enough.

The statis of my kit is that I have assembled the ejection seat (and had some fit problems mentioned previously) and I airbrushed a grey primer coat over all of those sections that will be painted white later. I have about five other kits going right now that I need to finish before winter finally hits, so my F-117 will be taking a back seat for the moment.

Very informational posts, Brian. Many thanks -- I had no idea that the cockpit was all "blacked out" but could only follow the directions. I already painted the seat olive drab! Perhaps I could just paint it flat black again. Which is possible because I finally located my air compressor after it was hidden away somewhere for the storm! I have regained my airbrushing capabilities! Did you know that they had to specialize the windshield because the RCS of the pilot's helmet was greater than the plane's? I think that's pretty neat.

matt-alberta: It never ceases to amaze me, how people get their cockpits painted in such detail. How do you do that? Can you share any tips with me to help me do the same sort of thing to my cockpits? Man, I wish I could paint details like that!!

I've been bogged down with papers, essays, and the like .. ugh ... homework bites! Some evenings are open, but I paint in my back yard and the mosquitos make it so that I can only paint in the daytime so evenings are out. This weekend is free, though, so I plan on cramming some work into the weekend, weather permitting. Personally, I look forward to late fall and winter with my modeling -- the days are longer and the temperature doesn't get that bad here in central Florida.

... so approximately how light is the gray on the Nighthawk's cockpit floor?

QUOTE: Originally posted by Audiophile121 matt-alberta: It never ceases to amaze me, how people get their cockpits painted in such detail. How do you do that? Can you share any tips with me to help me do the same sort of thing to my cockpits? Man, I wish I could paint details like that!!

it's deceptively simple... first, paint it white. then, thin out some black and try to let it run around the dials and stuff. then wipe off the black that inevitably gets on your nice white buttons and whatnot as good as you can, and try to pick out some more of the white again. repeat until youre happy with it. seems to work pretty well for 1/72 pits anyway, since its more about the impression, if you know what i mean.

I found a pretty good site with some hi-res photos of the nighthawk if anyone is interested. I'm having trouble finding a good shot of the cockpit from above, since there isnt a store in town with any reference books and I dont want to order from squadron for just one book. anyway, heres the site http://www.aleinn.com/black_projects/f117_photos.html

so I emailed the photographer of those shots and he got back to me this morning. "Thanks for the nice words. No, I didn't get any shots into the cockpit except for the ones from the ground. Once I took out my long lens they immediately began to close the canopy, which they did within thirty minutes. The armed security force also were very sensitive about me taking shots of the rear engine exhaust area, at one point motioning me to get back with a gun barrel.
Attached are a couple of shots that might help your effort. Send me a shot of your completed model when you are done.
Thanks again,
Andre'"
the shots sent are just the same ones as on the page. but still really useful. what a nice guy!
Later

Let me mention a couplke od things here to try and clarify what I mentioned earlier! :) The cockpit is for the *most* part completely black. Things like the ejection seat are pretty much all black - with a few exceptions. Stuff like the O2 bottle, some wiring and cables, the ejection handles and the seat cushions are all their respective "natural" colors still. The cusions for example are olive drab, but the seat framework is black.

The canopy glass is treated with Indium Tin Oxide - the same material that gives the F-16 and F-22 canopys their gold hues. It's also the stuff that makes touch screen computer monitors work. And will, you're exactly right - the pilots head and similar things poking up above the canopy sill did indeed have a greater return than the rest of the aircraft hence the use of the oxide. I'm curious to know if anyone has had any success in modeling a scale screen that covers the front FLIR and targeting pod just below the front glass?? You can see a little of it here along with the irridecent coloring of the canopy:





an image showing the cockpit PRE install of the full color moving map displays:


And this is the *ONLY* photo I've ever seen with regards to the F-117A's current cockpit layout. There are some black and white shots of the test aircraft in Dayton I think, but they are nothing like the instrumentation in the production craft:


And a shot of the IRADS system components up close:

Interesting stuff about the nighthaks here, I'm looking forward to seeing some of them finished with the detail it sounds like some are going to get. I've just put the fuselage on my SR71 together and there are a few gaps and scratches that happened in the box I'll have to fix but I havn't run into anything to bad yet, at least no problems I didn't cause (I glued the pilot instrument panel on in the wrong spot) not to worried about that though because I didn't give the cockpit much detail, I'm doing it canopy down and the windows are very small so It wont be obvious and the detail I did give it should look ok.

well I've got some cockpit shots for you all. I made up some seatbelts out of thin brass, put ejection spurs on the seat (If thats what they're called thats what they look like anyway...) with a rbf tag on it. made video screens from transparency paper i printed out at the officein black and dark green... oh and added a couple little boxes and wires, probably add more after I get it in the fuselage and see how it sits... All this because I wasn't happy with the decaled panel LOL...
for all the time i put in it, maybe I should've just gotten the resin. Nah!
oh btw no I havent forgotten the stick, just havent put it in yet

Sweet Matt! Looking good! I'm sorry - but remind me the make and scale you're doing? Now if I don't miss my guess, the "spurs" you're refferring to on the top of the ACES II seat are actually pitot tubes that the seat uses to orient itself and deploy the chute upon ejection. If you do a search for the seat on Google or some such site, I think you'll probably have some luck finding some good shots that represent that feature.

academy 1/72. pretty small, i dont know why Im bothering with all this you cant see it anyway!

oooh, very nice Matt. I haven't even started this build yet. Lack of a place to work. I'll see if I have the time to start either this or next weekend.

Delayed another week ...

Florida has met the record of most hurricanes in one season! Four. Too many if you ask me ... so I'm waiting for electric to come back on. Then I'll get my cockpit together and put up some pics for display.

What are you up to now Will - FOUR??? And how many of those were a cat. 4-5 at that?!?! Unbelieveable! Glad you're safe though.

Ok, so I've installed the cockpit and masked the canopy, primed, and painted the bays white. had to put some green putty on one of the long wing edges as there was a bit of an overhang. have i mentioned how much i hate painting gloss white? heres some pics, not too exciting but hey, its getting there! i decided to prime it as I'm planning on just putting on the black in really light coats and hoping that it will bring the color down a bit for that sort of dusty black look they seem to have in all the pics I've seen.
Hopefully I'll get started on that tomorrow.

Well I'm more or less done. After taking photos I saw a couple areas that need a bit of work. All in all I had fun with this kit, although the primer was pretty much a waste of time I think, the lesson is black covers everything instantly. I think it looks ok though. I still need to make the hydraulic canopy supports out of something, since I couldnt find anything around the house that looked right, anyone got any ideas? THe canopy pretty much needs to be up, or else I'll have to retouch the white on the edge of the cockpit . Also, some of that primer got into the cockpit, hence the dusty look, but its only noticable in close ups, cant see it with my eye so I can live with that.
The things I'm most pleased with on this one are the canopy, came out pretty sharp and clear, used scotch tape and a sharp knife and I think it worked pretty good, but I was sweating the whole week it was on there, since pretty much the last thing to do is peel off the tape and find out how it looks. I like the wires on the landing gears and on the gear door, and I like the way the bombs look. And I like how the cockpit turned out, considering how plain it looked when I started.
Well, here it is, my own private Skunkworks! Let me know what you think!



oh and the tires sort of suck. need to touch up that black.

Nice job, I like the cockpit and your undercarrige looks good too.

Wow, great job. To say the least, I am keeping your pics as references for my own bird of the same wing
On that note, I have a question. Not being an AC guy, what colour is it that you used? I thought all stealth aircraft had a flat-black finish? Maybe it's the photos, but it looks like yours is semi-gloss almost...