DigiHell & the F/A-18F SuperHornet - Wing Fold

  Very cool and ouch there Chris, if anyone can figure it out it'll be you. I'll be watching.

I couldn't, and wouldn't even if I could, give that a try. More power to you. That's a lot of serious work ahead. I'll be watching to see how you do it.

Oh, almost forgot, great pit! 

Jim 

Stay Safe.

Oh My!

     If that comes in Decals, I ain't gonna do it. It's awesome though! P.S. What happened to the Mesh you were showing us? I use coffee filter mesh for vents on 1/350 ships!

Tanker-Builder

Oh My!

     If that comes in Decals, I ain't gonna do it. It's awesome though! P.S. What happened to the Mesh you were showing us? I use coffee filter mesh for vents on 1/350 ships!

 

Ha, too funny! No it didn't end up getting used for liquid beverages or on a ship ;-) I m saving it for more seats. Should be good for tons of jet seats 

That looks outstanding. Great job on them seats.

fox

I couldn't, and wouldn't even if I could, give that a try. More power to you. That's a lot of serious work ahead. I'll be watching to see how you do it.

Oh, almost forgot, great pit! 

Jim 

Stay Safe.

 

 

I can't help but think there's a Dr. Seuss book in my future  

armornut

  Very cool and ouch there Chris, if anyone can figure it out it'll be you. I'll be watching.

 

Great project.  Pit turned out really nice and I'm looking forward to watching you pull of this digital camo scheme.

Your work thus far is fantastic. Love the pit. That camo though, ooffta, gonna need a stiff drink while you mask and mask and mask. It'll be super cool when done. Looking forward to it.

BK

Thanks for the props BK! Yeah, definietely going to need a relaxant while doing all that masking. Good odds of going cross-eyed for sure 

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Hey Guys here's the 1st of a 2 part fuselage assembly. I've got a few things to show for my efforts so far. You definitely feel like you need 4 or 5 hands during this assembly. Let's jump right into it - I read a few build threads and my buddy is done with this part so I got his insights as well. There's 2 trains of thought on assembling the intake itself, attach the inside wall 1st or last essentially. I took the approach of attaching it 1st.

the bottom goes together well

the top not so much. It's a uniform gap that will take some filler if not using FOD covers. It's pretty small so no big deal. given I'm assembling them with no stress on them there's just no way to improve this without shaving some plastic off. 

My buddy did the opposite as I understand it and glued the back panel to the lower fuselage 1st (before gluing it to the intake). his turned out great as well so there's 2 options here.

I did some dryfitting and put it together with tape to decide how to tackle the rest.

The best way seemed to be starting at the back and working forward. I sanded and got it all to fit nice 1st, then tacked the back corner with CA. Came back around after that dried and used cement and some plasticard to stiffen up the joint.

working my way to the front in the same manner it all lined up pretty darn great.

Next up was some alignment tabs. Caution on the ones I did in the 1st pic below near the wing joint. I didn't realize at first that the top and bottom tabs are different thicknesses. For the final fit the alignment tabs had to be bent inward some to get everything to fit. Works but, would have been better a different way from the beginning.

then the back half

And the reason I'm doing it as a 2 parter...there are a number of vents and things I wanted to modify and those are best done before all the assembly so the parts are easier to manipulate in my opinion. 

Those very large and obvious ducts into the intakes on top of the fuselage. Left side is thinned out here to show the difference.

And here the right side is completed vs the left side stock.

Similarly I added some depth to the vents on the sides of the intakes as well. Will clean these up before paint.

then I wanted to give some depth to the ECS vents - opened up on the left, stock kit on the right

And last, even though it will be hard to see without a mirror I really thought the large vent on the lower fuselage needed opened up. 

A little cleanup and fill to finish it up and it will be good to go.

All done for the moment. I'll return tonight I hope with part 2 of Fuselage Assembly :-)

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Gentlemen glad you're enjoying the scenery here! I'm onto joining the top and bottom halves of the fuselage together. This is coming together nicely. I feel like I keep saying that  This is just one of those models that needs caressing and talked to, like a good Stock Car to perform best (flashback to Days of Thunder movie lol).

The dry fit was looking good and aligned without a lot of pressure required to hold the joints together so I marched forward...although I started at the back 

So the joint looked just a litttle off with some small gaps. When I looked close these weird ejector pin marks were in the plastic right on the mating surface. Blown up here quite a bit but believe me sanding them down helped the fit.

Some supports for the stabilators

Starboard side a clean joint front to back, no fill yet but there may not be any after I sand the surfaces down a little. They are pretty much flush with each other. I used the slot for the vertical fin and some curved tweezers to push the lower portion of the joint out a little till the cement dried so that they stayed aligned. Pushing on the top and bottom to pinch the joint together seemed to push the surfaces in at an angle and throw the alignment off. I had put tape on the joint and then noticed it was causing the joint to dry with a step in it. BAD JUJU 

Port side joints were great except behind the wing. Clamping them together seemed to change the alignment so I decided it just was better to follow Dad's old addage and "don't force it". a piece of 5 thousandths sheet slid right in and closed it up. Ended up not requiring any clamps, just some tape on this one end to close the whole thing up.

Now the very very last thing to do is close up the intakes to the fuselage sides. This is the step Trumpy has you do 1st. Last definitely seems to work better.

You'll notice I had the wings glued to the upper fuselage already. I was test fitting and ran into this quandary...

No way to get these to fit if you put the fuselage halves together 1st. Reading the instructions a 3rd time, after talking with my buddy about how he did it, I realized Trumpy is trying to tell us to put the wing in 1st. It just plain isn't clear. Definitely a watch-out for you future builders.

Now to let it all dry for an hour and then onto the forward fuselage assembly. Cross your fingers it still lines up as good as it did when I had it taped together 

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Now See!

      I didn't expect this! You have run into a problem I have had with Trumpy on ships. You follow along and then, Surprise, It's wrong!

 They had you build a lot of the upperworks for the U.S.S. North Carolina(A Battleship) and put the bottom on last!

      I don't know if this was your fault, although I doubt it! Their instructions leave something to be desired when they should Really define a certain assembly step, and WHEN and where it goes in relation to the other parts!

Ahem;

    How soon did you say it was going to be done? Whoo, thatsa lot of work just to be able to build it!

Shooting for mid September finish date. I want to bring it to the Lousville KY show and Cincinnati's ModelNati in Sep/Oct.

Tanker-Builder

Now See!

      I didn't expect this! You have run into a problem I have had with Trumpy on ships. You follow along and then, Surprise, It's wrong!

 They had you build a lot of the upperworks for the U.S.S. North Carolina(A Battleship) and put the bottom on last!

      I don't know if this was your fault, although I doubt it! Their instructions leave something to be desired when they should Really define a certain assembly step, and WHEN and where it goes in relation to the other parts!

 

fortunately i caught it before gluing the fuselage halve together. I was setting up to do that and then took a pause. So glad I did!

Episode 3, our hero has joined with the main force and now we have created the Mega Zord! Yep, the fuselage is complete. After filling and rescribing the panel line on the lower fuselage this should look really good. I figured that was the best place to leave the gap. Honestly it’s not too bad. I spent a good deal of time doing the dry fits and lightly sanding  lots of surfaces to get it to this point. 

off for the holiday weekend on this one unfortunately. I’m off to my moms. Taking a 1/48 Tamiya P-38 with me tho!! 

Man have I been missing out. I'm gonna have to get all caught up here.

Hey bud....I think ol' Lyle's trying to get ahold of you. Email him here: lew3055@gmail.com

Thanks Mustang will do. On a siesta with this until after NATS. I did pick up the paint for it last weekend :-) 

Our hero returns following the 2022 NATS. We find him looking for motivation. He finds it in the paint booth, to hell with that sanding routine har har har

Well I’m working through a couple approaches to this build over the weekend. Doing my trials on the stabilator so it’s easy to work with. 
scanning - tried a couple approaches, scan by color and a general scan, then tried a “lasso” to see if the computer could pick the points up better then me. No luck on the lasso or by color. Color works ok but I can’t get a straight line unfortunately. The computer just sees waves along the edges of any given color. 
so i decided on a mix of techniques, some old some new. I painted the whole stabilator light ghost gray

then i used the masks for the LGG. Kept the picture in front of me and painted dark ghost gray DGG. 

now it was a decision point. Bright blue or black. I ended up making masks for the black as there are only a few spots of it but they are complicated patterns that were taking me awhile to create from the strips i cut on the cameo. Next time i will use the positive mask, paint the black, then cover it with the negative mask and go back to the blue. In this case i had to spray some gray primer over the black overspray because the blue is so translucent. I should have known that from experience 

So for you color guys here is a great comparison. The 1st two are on my desk with the overhead light pushed back a little to keep the reflection down. These aren’t sanded yet.

Now for these i sanded down the ridges between colors then wet sanded the whole stabilator from 3600 to 8000 grit, then put a gloss coat on them. These are under the led in my paint booth.

a few minor touch ups. These are so smooth. Too bad this is a 2d and not a 4d environment 

if the rest comes out like this i will be so excited. Tons of work tho. The next one should go much smoother. Large spaces of color i will do using masks from the cameo and the smaller stuff will be from the multi width strips i cut out ahead of time. I’ve probably got 5 hours in this 1 piece. Tho i had to sand and repair one section that got messed up. Guessing the right side will take about 3 hours. 
Flaps and rudders need cleaned up and the edges finished off next. Then i will paint those up. Trying to practice on parts that are easy to manipulate and to sand down and redo if things get goofed up before i get to the fuselage. 

   Looking great Mongoose, I'm not worthy. Surfing thru You Tube vids of the Nats and I think I seen your starburst plane.

armornut

   Looking great Mongoose, I'm not worthy. Surfing thru You Tube vids of the Nats and I think I seen your starburst plane.

 

yep you sure did! It was driving distance for me so i took 7 out there.  Another great show!

Managed to finish the 2nd stabilator. Sanded and gloss coated both. This pattern creates lots of opportunities to discover what you missed after you remove the masking! I had one square of black that was definitely not there after I pulled the masking off and discovered that I covered a spot that I was supposed to paint ha ha  

I swear this plane is gonna look even larger in the digital scheme. Next up is the belly tank. Got it all sanded, seems filled, and ready to go last night.

   All in good fun my friend but it looks like your fighter jet flew thruogh a pile of smurfs. The " New" Navy called the camo pattern Blueberries, perfect for consealing that sailor who goes overboard.

   Looks like a heck of a job Chris, keep it up.

SIR!

        "Captain said sumpin about flying through Berries, again? " Jumpin Jehosaphat! That is playing tricks for sure with me eyes, eh wot?

That's insane,I would never have the patience to attempt that,I would be ordering digital camo decals for sure.

Wow, that's amazing. I have a Mig-29 I plan on this, but I think I'll get the stencil kit for it rather than free hand. I don't have those kind of patience. Great work.

BK

You guys are great! Yeah, I wish they made a mask in 1/32 for this beaut. There are sets for 1/72 and 1/48 but I have found both to be unobtainium. Have been looking for 3-4 month now. Finally had to bite the bullet and do it myself. I have a buddy locally who's building the same jet but a different scheme so this was sort of a group build for us.

ok I have what I think is the most complicated part of the build complete - The Belly Tank! 

My 1st shot at this was an epic fail. I printed a mask that would wrap around the tank. I thought aligning it and doing the wrap would be the tough part. That part worked great. What happened was I could no longer tell where the cut lines were, so I couldn't pull off the right section of mask as I needed to. I had wiped black acrylic paint over the mask ahead of time so I could see where all the cu lies were, however once the mask rolled they all but became invisible lol

 Note:  Can't wait to hear what armournut thinks this one looks ilke hahaha

Time to go back to the old fashioned way. I printed each color separate and then pulled individual masks off the sheet and placed them.

To help with this I created what will probably be my favorite part of the build, a digital camo popsicle! Wrapped a print of the camo pattern around a dowel rod so I could visualize where everything was to go. Worked a treat!

And a closeup

I'm traveling for work this week however I was able to download a copy of my Silhouette software so I can draw masks from the hotel room every night. Now, finally, some time to go browse the board and see what everyone else is up to!

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  LOL, your first pic looks like an ear of corn...not even gonna touch the others LOL. I met you in Nevada and you didn't appear nuts then. What happened?

armornut

  LOL, your first pic looks like an ear of corn...not even gonna touch the others LOL. I met you in Nevada and you didn't appear nuts then. What happened?

 

lol must have been vision of that arm-chair of yours driving me crazy!

Well i started prepping all the flaps and slats, ailerons, wingtips, and tails for paint. While looking at the wingtips I realized I hadn’t taken the top cover plate off the sprue for the wing fold option I’m doing. No worries, a quik snip and then decided to do some fitting to decide if i shOuld glue it on 1st or paint it 1st. So glad i did. What a horrible option Trumpeter gave for the fold! heck i had to go find someone else’s build just to see how the piece fit as the instructions are wrong. They have you just place the cover plate on top of the wing. What a farce! We must fix that. So i spent the afternoon fitting and cutting so i can install the cover plate properly and not have an extra piece glued to the top of the wing tip.

 

The offending wing joint. The fingers stick up so high that the cover play is at a 45° angle.

so let’s cut about a third of it off on the backside that can’t be seen so that the plate fits

then trim the cover plate so it fits around everything once the wing tip drops down far enough to align the fingers.

 

 

and finally our objective is met :-)

 

 

the 1st one took about an hour. The 2nd one maybe 20 minutes. I used the 1st one as a template and just worked my way to the final fit with a file. Now the cover plate, slat, and flap mounts can be glued in place before i lay down the digi pattern for painting.