Stealth GB

First off Michael, Welcom

If you go back and read the very first post of this thread it outlines the details of the build. The start time had passed, the end date is 5 Feb 05. All group builds are about the same. The first post in the thread gives all the specs... subject matter, start and end dates, AM or OOB... and so forth. Some get a little outta hand with whacky things like "the mad fokker day" build a fokker in 24hrs... but hey that just adds to the fun right? Your subject matter for this build has already been accepted so I think your good. The owner of the thread seems to be a little slow on replies but accepting none the less so I'd so go ahead and contribute. Its easier to beg for forgiveness than ask fpr permission
One tip, We all like to see progress and completed pics. So if you have a digi cam or even a regular cam and scanner take pics and post em. If you have problems figureing out how to post pics ask and if some one doesn't help you sooner I'll walk you though it step by step. :) Now get building

Audiophile, dont want to step on your toes here, just trying to help.

Does anyone have ideas about weathering for a sr-71 blackbird? Im sure that any weathered areas would have been immediately painted over in order to keep the airplane stealth. Any suggestions would be helpful. I am still in the preparation stages right now. I will provide pictures when I advance to later stages. I do not know how to post pictures here. Any advice here would be greatly appreciated!

Weathering a Blackbird can be kinda intresting though I have seen it done. Painting the SR-71 wasn't done so much to keep the plane stealth as it was necessary to keep internal components from burning up during flight. Infact stealth was not really a consideration during design. It was designed to be so fast nothing could catch it much less shoot it down. The stealth features of the blackbird are a by product of the sleek design for speed. keeping in mind that the aircraft was designed for extremely high speed flight it had many thinks that could be used for weathering while on the ground. On the ground the aircraft leeked fuel like a bucket with a whole in it. It wasnt till the aircraft got up to speed and expanded from the heat that all the seals closed up stopping the fuel leaks. Weathering that would be intresting to see... If you want to add depth to the aircraft you can try varying shade of black on the panels, burning out the exhaust cans, even try using a fine tip lead pencil to accent the panel lines... just some ideas. As for posting pics if you want to send me an email at Awood23@yahoo.com I'll write back with detailed instructions on how to do it.

Some intresting history about the blackbird you might find intresting.
Originally designed as the A-12, The blackbird had armerment which was all later deleted. It was found that if equiped with cannons the aircraft would run into its own bullets. the aircraft could also carry nuclear bombs and it was calculated that the Blackbird could take off from California, drop its bomb over china and land somewhere on the east coast before the bomb hit moscow. Also when announced to the public the SR-71 was originally tagged as the RS-71 which stood for Reconisance Strike. As it wsa president Lyndon B Johnson (I think it was Johnson, maybe Carter?) making the announcement no one corrected him and they simply changed the meaning to Strategic Reconnisance.

My blackbird is about 45% complete now. The fuselage and canopy are fully assembled and the assembly is ready to be airbrushed. I am thinking about doing a primer basecoat with modelmaster enamel. After that has dried I am planning on spraying on a shade of lightened model master acrylic black paint. After the lightened black has dried, I will spray on a coat of future. The application of decals will follow then another appiclation of future to seal the decals. Once that has fully dried I will begin the weathering/detail process which will consist of outlining the raised panel lines with pencil? (I am not exactly sure what kind of pencil to use that will adhere to the future) and then patches of spilt fuel and burnt exhaust (anyone have any photos or ideas where the fuel has spilt on this airplane). The final step will be the application of dullcoat.

I would like to post some pics. Awood23 ygm!

posting pics is easy. First you need to load your pics to a site allows hosting of images . Ron Georges is one but I dont have the link saved on this computer. A great on I like is www.photobucket.com Open your own account, its free up to so many megs. and load you pics. Once there loaded to which ever site your going to host them on you have to link them here. To do that, In a seperate window, open up the picture you want to post, right click on the image and click on properties. find the address or URL to the image. It should look like this http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v515/Awood23/Aidan%20at%20Work/Kirsten/Sights/F-15Cb.jpg
now add to the back minus any spaces. (I've added spaces to these to stop you from seeing the dreaded red X) take out the spaces and you have
note: to url has to end in .jpg and many site though they allow you to store images i.e. yahoo and msn photos do not allow linking. Rongeorges and photobucket are the only two I know of though I know theres more and if you ask Im sure some one could direct you too more. As for pics of the blackbird, check out this link, 7 pages of great pics. A very nice reference site for pics
http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?&maxres=500&keywords=SR-71&keywrange=all&nr_of_rows=77&first_this_page=0&page_limit=15&sort_order=photo_id+DESC&thumbnails=&engine_version=6.0&nr_pages=6&page=
Hope that helps

Hey Mike, I just found the link i was looking for the other day. http://rongeorge.com/modules/Gallery/upload
Using that link, go to "login" in the upper right corner, the Login is newfsm and the password is models. Once logged in go to admin options and add photos. Once the photo is uploaded use the same instructions as posted above to link the photo here (using properties and img tabs) You may like this site more as it doesn't require you to open an account and like photobucket its free. I perfer photobucket because I can store pics of more than just my models i.e. Group Build badges, reference pics, and other odds and ends...
Good luck and as always if you have any difficulties just ask.

amigos:
much as i would have loved 2 participate in this GB,
the combination of time constraints, a monogram kit w/ poor fit issues
& the size of an SR-71 (even in 1/72, she's a big ol' bird) r telling me
that i'll have 2 regretfully withdraw from this GB.
please accept my apologies....
too many ideas, too little time...

frosty

So how is it going folks? I've now joined the upper and lower fuselage and should be ready to paint in a few days, cross fingers. I'm going to try to post progress pics in a couple of days.

Here are some pictures of my blackbird. Its about ready to be painted. When I was sanding the model, I accidentally erased some raised panel lines. Any ideas about restoring these lines would be very helpful. Well here are the pics and enjoy. Ive included pictures of my other project. A 1/72 Italeri Sherman tank.










Suggestions and comments are Appreciated
Thank you in advance.

Looks great so far Mike, my only suggestions would be to help your photography skills.
Try placing the model on one color background with little reflective qualties i.e a peice of cardboard poster board then use atleast two different light sources with white light, desklamps placed at different angles to highlight the model work great.
Cant wait to see the rest of this done. I should be getting started on mine here soon.

Son of a !!! I was masking off my X-32 yesterday and I made the mistake of using cheap masking tape on the intake so when I took the tape off it took six or so coats of flat white off with it. Given the confined space, this is going to be a pain in the neck to fix.

Can i still join? I have an F-22 started thats maybe 30% done. If so , i kno the paint on stealth planes is to make them invisible to radar but wut do u think about an F-22 in IDF desert colors?

Izzy, I wouldnt get hung up about the paint sceme concerning its stealth Capabilities. If you havent seen this yet you may like it.

wow, awood, i havent seen that before. i guess this means the Nighthawk is becomming a Dayhawk huh? Well then im gonna gewt some idf decals. wut online store would have them?

Izzy,
I cant get this link to come up on the computer Im on, course Im on a government puter so it may be restricting it. Try this http://www.isradecals.com
Another option I was thinking... As your bird would be highly ficticious, you could always buy a kit of say an IDF F-15 and swipe the decals then build the Eagle using another set. Course the scorpion on the IDF's F-16's would also look great on the tails of a Raptor.
The pic I posted above is actually of the F-117 during the developmental stage before the airforce requested the all black scheme figuring they would only be flown at night. It turns out that black is not the best color for hiding in a night sky but as some one once said "real men dont fly in pastel painted planes"
I have heard rumors that I havent tried to verify that the NightHawk will be becoming a DayHawk with a Two Tone Low Vis Grey scheme
For more on that I direct you here
http://www.finescale.com/fsm/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16814

Good luck with your Raptor. Hope your gonna post pics. Id love to see it.

the raptor is going along fine. this is my first kit in which im trying to kitbash/ scratchbuild the cockpit 'cause as many who have done this italiari kit know that the interior is seriously lacking detail. i already posted a msg in the aircradt forum but if anyone in here has any ideas about scratchbuild this cockpit id really like to hear.

Awood, the reason that site wasn't coming up is because it is called isradecal.com with no s. I tried to use your link but that didnt work so i googled the site. Thanks for the tip on it.

Owing to a rigorous work schedule, a anxiety attack inducing academic schedule, and monster technical problems on my X-32, i'm going to have to bow out of this build. I just don't think I'm going to have time to work on this or anything else on my bench till the end of February at the earliest.

Well, my F-117 is finally coming together. I finished the cockpit couple weeks ago and I'm now just cleaning up the rough edges and filling some gaps. I hope to be ready to begin painting soon.

As for the paint scheme talk... the color of the paint isn't what gives it radar absorbing properties, it's the material the paint is made of. Hence, some early F-117 and all the F-22s were painted in gray colors.

I have also heard about the daytime scheme for the F-117. Didn't we already have this discussion earlier in the forum? Anyway, the Air Force has been conducting experiments to determine the viability of using F-117s and B-2s in daylight operations. I read once in Aviation Week magazine about en experinemnt where a B-2 slipped between a pair of F-15s undetected in the middle of the day! But I would imagine that daytime operations would only be conducted in environments where the US has control of the skies.

Izzy, in short, paint your F-22 however you want. It wouldn't affect the radar signature of the real thing, so go with what you think works best. Of course, even the IDF F-15s are in a standard gray paint scheme. The desert colors work best for strike aircraft that want to fly low, not air superiority fighters that fly high in the sky.

Anyone else have updates on their kits?

Hey all...I've been on the forum for awhile, but am new to the whole group build thing.....I know I am too late to join this one, but thought I'd let everyone know I just started the Italeri 1/48th F-22A "Raptor 01". Just started on the cockpit -- thought it was kind of sparse, so I am scratchbuilding the blank instrument panel with various styrene squares for MFDs. Look forward to seeing what everyone else finishes....happy building!

For anyone building an Academy F-117... after looking closely at some reference photo's in my "F-117 Walkaround" it looks as though the bomb trapeze in this kit is mounted backwards. The trapeze should be swung forward in the deployed position, placing the nose of your guided bomb slightly forward of the bomb bay. It should be relatively easy to correct, just turn the thing around and maybe move it a little forward. It's probably a little late for everone, but I guess I'm a slow builder.

WOW ... I have been out of it for a while! My last post on the forums at all was in what, October? A thousand apologies, guys ... but I have made significant progress on my 1/48 Academy F-117.
Would you believe that the ModelMaster Gunmetal that I put on mine looks better than many of the the Flat Black paint jobs I've seen on others? I had originally planned on a base coat of gunmetal and a thing layer or two of flat black, but the gunmetal just looks so good that I think I'll leave it. I'll post pics of the plane when I find that elusive camera.....
Well I hope everybody is **HAVING FUN** with their builds, either completed by now or still in the process. I promise I'll be on the forums more often, at least until the GB ends.

Hi guys I havn't been around for ages but I have to say everyones builds are looking great. Unfortunately My SR71 had a little accident, Just after christmas I moved into a new flat (I know what you think happened but your wrong) in doing so I put my build on the back seat of my car along with a F16 i had built earlier, being the lazy ****** that I am I didn't get it out of the car until about 2 weeks after we moved in and when I picked it up I discovered that it had been melted! I had left the car in the sun a few times and when I picked it up my SR71 was in a U shape, I'll try post a pic of it soon. But yeah well that's me out.

Good luck everyone else.

P.S The F16 didn't suffer the same fate, maybe the plastic was of a higher quality I don't know.