Today's RF-101 Voodoo

[Fiddler]

Damn,

That SEA camouflage is just amazing. actually everything on the model is great.

I must say I like the Voodoo very much and when seeing it I imediatly had the urge to post in here to congratulate you with your model!

Tom

[C5sparkcatcher]

beautiful!!!!

Ray

[Horrido]

Would Mr. Tan be willing to describe what paints, thinners, ratios, airbrush pressures, types of airbrushes, and masking techniques he used to finish his RF-101C? Essentially a comprehensive and in-depth omit-no-detail step-by-step description of the process? lol

A beautiful build!

[theocon]

I appreciate the kind words, Everyone.

I've always liked the F-101 series and i'm planning on doing all the variants in the future (soon as i figure out how to do a nice metallic finish.) According to the Koster vac kit instructions, I can do an easier A or C fighter conversion by replacing the C&H resin (or Koster vac) nose using the monogram kit nose radome (along with some judicious reshaping). The RF-101C was my favorite so i started off with this variant. I was considering the sun run scheme or a taiwan scheme (which is actually an RF-101A), but as my metalizing skills are still wanting, i opted for a camo. This was also incidentally, my first SEA camo scheme ever.

The first order of business was to rescribe the monogram kit mostly based on the original kit lines as the C&H nose panel lines were engraved. The monogram kit is a beaut in and off itself. The cockpit is superb considering is age and the seats are great requiring only minor drilling.

The C and H Aero kit was designed to minimize the amount of work for the conversion. The bloodiest work involved would be lining up the single piece hollow fuselage with the main fuslage around the intake area. I removed/sanded the step/tab that was in the resin kit and created and almost a complete circumferential tab along the main monogram fuselage interior to better align both parts and increase glue surface area. I did toy with the idea of cutting the intakes off to allow better access to the seam between the forward resin fuselage and the monogram main fuselage but decided against it working instead with thin sanding sticks and a lot of putty. As this was going to be a camo bird, I didn't have to be so meticulous with the finish, covering up seam edges with putty and a liberal amount of Mr. Surfacer 500. The interior changes were relatively easy requiring only the following: chopping up the 2 seat voodoo cockpit to a single seat cockpit adding a new rear bulkhead and oxygen bottle as well as a few wiring for the ejection seat. The coaming was replaced with the C&H resin part as well. I wasn't too happy with either the Koster vac instrument panel nor the C & H resin panels (which are just resin equivalents of the Koster panels) so i modified the kit panels to the correct (roughly) -RF-101C standard. AS i managed to mangle the vac canopy that came with the kit, I used the monogram 2-seat canopy cut in the appropriate place painted black then the camo color followed by brush applied future for the clear areas.. This however necessitated posing it open. The windscreen was unchanged except for adding a compass box and new scratch rear view mirrors.

The nose gear bay had to be cut shorter. I decided to forgo bulging the interior of the nose gear bay to save some work. Being a hollow resin fuselage, it was not necessary to put nose weights in and the kit nose gear was adequate to handle the weight without buckling or breaking (so far!). I was tempted to open the camera bays but that would involve extensive rework and i actually liked the predatory look of the voodoo in clean form. The bays were rather shallow so i cut small circlets from lollipop straws to simulate camera lenses and simulated depth with flat black around the glossy black lenses and covered the camera bay openings with clear sheet styrene and overhead projector acetate dipped in future.

The main fuselage NACA air scoops were scratchbuilt with styrene as the resin scoops were somewhat shallow.

The tail fan plate changes took some work again with alignment, more due, this time, to my error during surgery. The resin replacement for the B model tail was beautiful but tolerated no errors in surgery. The maxim "measure thrice cut once", came back too late to help. Liberal styrene shims and putty eventually corrected this.

As for the Exhaust cans, my copy of the cans had bubbles in the actuators, It was easier to add epoxy bulges blended into the surgically "shortened" monogram cans and blades. The problem with my approach was that the original monogram cans were elliptical at the base and rounded out at the end. After cutting up the monogram cans, you have a rounded aft profile which leaves a significant gap at the fuselage-exhaust area. I aligned the outer exhausts with the fuselage (which is the most visible part) and covered the gap with epoxy and putty (Still have to find a way around this. The best way is to have probably to replace my C&H cans for bubble-free ones).

On to painting. After priming the aircraft with Mr. Surfacer 1000, i used abadger 150 fine tipped airbrush to pre-shade the panel lines and tail fan plates with dilute gunze flat black 50-50 mix with thinner. The underside was slowly built up in layers with Gunze flat white and masked with tape. The color edge between the lower and upper fuselages were masked with long thin rolls of blu-tack to give the soft edge. The camo colors were layed in, thin layers at a time using the Gunze H303, H309 and H310 (SEA colors) again with the help of blu tack rolls. After the colors have been laid in, I applied the decals after gloss coating only areas where decals were supposed to go.. The white tailcode markings were from letter-transfer decals i found in a crafts store suitably modified. The black fiscal year marks were printed on expert's choice clear ink-jet decals printed with an Epson C67 printer (durabrite ink) overcoated with tamiya clear gloss coats. All the rest of the markings were from the monogram kit and my spares box.

For the metal areas in the exhausts, tailfan and tail hinge, I used gunze H8 silver again in layers to preserve the pre-shade lines after the masking with tamiya tape. The exhausts were painted with a final layer of H8 and flat black mix for the darker areas and H8 and H310 brown mix for the area near the fuselage joint. I used my own rub-and-buff technique to give the metal areas a bit of metallic sheen by using dried gunze sangyo H218 aluminum paint. I left open an H218 bottle for days to dry out the thinner. When the thinner dries out, the powdery substance left behind makes for great rub-and-buff (or more accurately, rub on paint) material Et Voila! poor-man's rub-n-buff. I tried this on various gunze metals and so far it works great for me. (you can use soft, non-scratch cloth scraps, cotton buds or even your fingers (for the rub part only though as fingerprints tend to be a problem). I used the same technique to dry-brush (or more correctly dry-finger) the rear fuselage/tailfan to simulate slightly worn paint. On hind sight, thin layers of fine airbrushing may have produced similar or better results.

I also rubbed a bit of H218 "powder" on the nose tip of the fuel tanks to simulate worn paint. as for paint chips at the panel lines, i use a toothpick with the gunze h218 "powders" and apply them in dabs or streaks along panel lines. A final layer of gunze flat coat 50% mix with thinner with a Large airbrush tip applied in light strokes in multiple layers rounds up the painting.

Gear struts, Wheel wells and flap interiors were washed with tamiya 10% flat black and 90% water.

The final task was to weather the aircraft with post shading using a mix of H333 dark sea gray 20% with 90% thinner. I laid in a heavier layer for the darker areas (greens), a lighter thin pass for the brown areas. For the white underside, the pre-shade did show through but i did post shade it with H333 5% mix with 95% thinner. I used beads of Blue-tack to cover the panels while i post-shaded and added weathering (all with H333).

All in all, it the build was not so bad except for the fact that i dropped the entire aircraft 3 days before the Nationals and the plane cracked along the joint between the resin and the plastic fuselage losing a lot of resin chips along the way. It's true that things do happen in slow motion when bad things happen.My slo-mo scream of horror ("Noooooooooooooooooaaaaaah") and the sobs that followed still haunt me in my sleep. PMTS i guess (post modell trauma syndrome). Repairs progressed well (which is not the same as i can say for my emotional state at the time) following the techniques as above and liberal putty to replace lost resin parts. It didn't hit me as bad though as I had other projects near completion at the time all for our Nationals (a 1/72 C-47TP Turbodak conversion and a 1/35 Academy SH-60B seahawk conversion)

Sadly, I lost the canopy on the way home somewhere in the mall parking lot which is why pictures were limited as to what i had in the post. I'm going to have to write monogram for a replacement so i can get the old voodoo back to 100% and photo-ready.

I'm not sure about airbrush pressures as i don't have a regulator in my old bu trusty medical compressor

Bottom line though is the kit was built with generally basic techniques learned from the IPMS Philippines BA friends and online through sites like ARC. The C & H set is great and saves a lot of time as compared to the Koster vac set. However, you do have to be very careful where you cut the monogram kit parts.

Hope you guys enjoyed the build and i apologize for this monologue. Evan did say omit-no-detail discussion :)

[Andre]

Hope you guys enjoyed the build and i apologize for this monologue. Evan did say omit-no-detail discussion

And most welcome it is! Now I must find a way to get Gunze paint in the Netherlands, these colors look so much better than Humbrol..!

Thanks again,

Andre

[Horrido]

Hope you guys enjoyed the build and i apologize for this monologue. Evan did say omit-no-detail discussion :)

Yes, thank you! :D

Never apologize for an excellent, well-detailed explanation, it's the purpose of the board!

lol One of my major, MAJOR pet peeves is to see beautiful eye-catching work and then have the builder NOT describe his efforts and techniques in such detail so I cannot replicate the process, thus preventing me from improving my own work.