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The Rumourmongers Trumpeter 48th J-10 build thread


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I started my J-10 this afternoon.

So far I have gotten the intake together and cockpit started.

I'll post some pics tomorrow when my camera recharges.

I have followed Yufei's build over time but I'll be doing mine OOB with lots of guesstimates of colors. (like Barley Gray for cockpit color and 'Mitsuibishi Gray' for the intakes.......)

So if you want to see how it is supposed to look take a look here

http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index....howtopic=197066

If you want to see how a hack modeller slaps it togther follow this thread.

They'll be pics if bits stuck together tommorow, now to sleep and wonder what I have gotten myself into (like those stupid little braces on the top of the intake - that should be good for a few laughs in the days to come!)

Matt

Mediocre Modeling for over a third of a Century.....

Edited by Matt Roberts
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Single seater and trying to write up my narrative right now...pics are loaded I just have to try and bring it all together....

Don't worry still don't have the fuselage closed up yet. Fit is great so far - except my typical weak spot in the intakes.

I can just feel the excitement bubbling out there in ARCland!

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I think one thing that may (or may not) be of interest to other modelers is why one builds a certain model or spends more time on one than another. Here the J-10 represents a sence of the unknown, of something really new and exciting in a subject that I have not felt in years. Let me try and explain it.

Go back to the mid-80’s and remember what was out there in Soviet and WarPac subjects - not much. Hasegawa had the Foxbat and Flogger, and KP had a Fishbed and a few other older subjects such as Mig-15s and 17s of various types. Reading my issues of Air International at the time - when I should have been studying at Ohio State there were rumblings of new and exotic aircraft coming out of Russia. Planes with code names such as Ram-L and Ram-K, as they were first spotted by satellite on the Russian ‘Edwards Air force Base - Ramenskoye. Soon we began to hear the correct names for these aircraft - and the NATO code names, the Su-27 and Mig-29, Flanker and Fulcrum. Small glimpses of these aircraft trickled out from intercepts over the Baltic and then the visit to Finland in 1986. Not long after Revell first released kits of these birds along with the Su-25 and Yak-38, I built them. Today they are rather cartoon like rather than accurate but they were ‘sexy’ builds for me. New, exotic and even somewhat menacing as they were the cutting edge of the ‘Evil Empire’ that we of a certain age remember well. Then by the end of the decade around the time of Desert Storm we began to see Red Army vehicles in the shops - and I built them, more so than American or British vehicles as they were the ‘bad guys’ and looked different from what I was used to, they were sexy. I can still remember building a Dragon T-80 and getting the camo colors from watching Yeltsin standing on one in ‘93 outside the ‘white house’ in Moscow. Which brings me to today and my two favorite interests, Israeli and Chinese aircraft. Israel is mostly as a result that until the mid-90s information that allowed one to model them accurately was harder to come by than Russian stuff. They are familiar equipment done up slightly differently from what normal American equipment is, so as IDF models become available I will grab them up. My Kinetic Barak build elsewhere around here is my latest example but I have Merkavas, Zeldas, Centurions, Sufa, Baz and Ahits in my stash and on my shelves. Only in the last couple of years have Chinese subjects become available, and as they hit the market I have the same feeling that I did when the first wave of modern Soviet kits became available. They get my modeling juices flowing.

The J-10 came into my conscious when I was reading a Tom Clancy knock off book, I think it was ‘Carrier’ or something like that where the globe trotting USS Thomas Jefferson sails around the world solving problems and blowing lots of stuff up. The J-10 was set up as a uber-fighter that was tested against Su-27s in a live fire exercise and the J-10 shot all 5 or 6 Flankers down. Looking back I am wondering if this would have been how another certain fighter aircraft 40 or 50 years earlier flying over China may have been described by a proto-Tom Clancy novelist.

After that first taste my interest was piqued. As early pictures dribbled out, my interest increased. Then a few years back Trumpeter released the J-10 before the Chinese Government even officially acknowledged its existence - hence the box art titled ‘New Chinese Fighter’. It almost tempted me to build a 72nd for the first time in years, I even had it in my hand at the checkout a couple of times, along with the Flying Leopard kit (JH-7) but then came good news. In a discussion of a die cast 48th J-10 a couple of years back it was hinted that a 48th kit was due, so it was time to wait. Then last May cadd pics popped up on the net and by the end of the year I held a Dragon in my hands. Honestly I cannot understand why I didn’t start it immediately, I looked at it in the box and looked for build articles to see what I was in for. Eventually I clipped my first piece from the sprues yesterday. Now to see how the experience goes.

The kit is what we expect from Trumpeter these days, a nicely molded and ,so far, nicely fitting kit. One nice thing with doing a J-10 versus a Viper, Eagle or even a Spitfire is that there is not much reference material out there. I am using two main refs for colors and general appearance.

1) International Air Power Review Vol. 22

2) Combat Aircraft Magazine Vol. 9.6

Makes things easier when I can just concentrate on the build and not worry if I am getting it right. Though regarding colors I am sure I will have to make guesstimates to see if I can get the airframe to look right.

So enough yakking lets see some mediocre modeling!

Edited by Matt Roberts
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J-10buildsgroup1006.jpg

Here are the bits in the box next to my work bench…..I figured that the pic of the boxtop are pretty cliched now.

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Here is how close to nothing the cockpit color I used is. Going by the color on the instrument panel decal, I experimented with a couple of colors of light gray. IJN Gray from Polly Scale and Grunze Barley Gray. Turned out Barley Gray was pretty much a dead match for the instrument panel decal so I painted the cockpit with that color and if you notice it is pretty much the color of bare styrene. One thing I would have rather had with the instrument panel decal was that it only covered the actual displays and instrument bezels like Hasegawa does with their kits. It makes it easier to match the cockpit colors. But in this case it helped give me an idea of what color I should paint the cockpit. One fun thing doing a ‘foreign’ aircraft is that the colors one is used to grabbing are not the ones you should grab - so no Dark Gull Gray cockpits….no White intakes…nice.

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The front of the intake is made up of 4 parts one of those is a PE part with the intake bleed vent that would probably be difficult to tool. I don’t really like PE parts much - too many stuck fingers, but here it worked. Don’t bother filling sink marks at the back - trust me once you add the trunking any time and effort is completely lost!

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The trunking is a two piece with an engine face at the back. There were a couple of knock out marks but I only worried about the nearest to the front, the stuff towards the back will never be seen. One thing I like about this kit - no white interiors! The kit calls for a mixture of 80% Light Ghost Gray and 20% white. Since I hate mixing paints - especially if I’d have to eventually match them I looked for an existing color. Here I found an old Aeromaster Mitsubishi Gray, when I held the lid up to the bottom of a Super Hornet over my bench I realized it would be close enough. When I get a new paint jar after my first use I try and paint the lid in the color and label it with a Sharpe marker. So I could make a judgment on if the color was right…..beats me it looks okay

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The trunking fits pretty snugly into the intake and all of my filling is behind the trunking now. Did I mention that I hate intakes! There was some filling needed and my old knife I use to apply putty just fit in and I worried about only the first inch or so .

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Here is the intake after my first pass of filling and painting. Can you tell I’m a brusher? Time to grab the sanding stick - again and my knife to flick off the paint boogers. One thing I discovered at my LHS the last time I was in there (literally Sawmill Hobbyland closed last weekend - now I have to drive an extra 6 miles to Graceland - life’s rough I know). They are “swizzle stick sanders’ from Squadron. Basically imagine a sanding stick cut into about a 1/8th inch wide sander. Very useful to get into odd areas - like intakes.

So my intake and trunking were done and now to the cockpit.

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J-10buildsgroup1007.jpg

Here I used the decals and discovered what may be a problem later. While applying the instrument decal, it started to break up. The decal seemed a bit brittle - which surprised me as usually Trumpeter and Hobbyboss decals have not caused me much problem lately. The decals seem matte and remind me of the ones in the RoG Typhoon. I worry when it comes to the main airframe decals if I have to move one and it disintegrates I somehow doubt that Afterburner or Two Bobs make Vigorous Dragon decals. The decals on the consoles went down well, a little micro set and then pressed down with an old t-shirt. The panels matched the molded detail exactly. One hint if using them. On the left console the throttle is bright green. What you want to do is cut a slit left and right of it so when the decal settles over the detail you wont get a distortion. Probably when I build a two seater J-10S I will paint the details as the instrument panel is very nicely molded with nice relief which makes it easier for middle aged eyes to see what one id doing.

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Here is the cockpit located in the right fuselage - notice how well the rear bulkhead fits in the fuselage! Great fit all around. The instrument panel sits proud until the instrument glare shield is added once the fuselage is joined

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All in all a very nice fit of all of the parts, here you see the nose gear bay also added. Guess what - WW II neutral gray wheel bays! The color is stated as ‘blue gray’ and ‘intermediate blue’ - I noticed that Yufei used ‘Warship Gray’ I am not really sure what color that is as it’s referred to as a Grunze color. I may dry brush some lighter grays over it - but hey I enjoy not having to paint anything white - at least at this stage!

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The fit was again pretty good on attaching the intake to one side of the fuselage. The only filler I had used to now and then only sparingly was on the bottom of the intake and that may have been my own clumsiness. A couple of swipes with my xacto blade and the seam cleaned up nicely without any gunking up the engraved detail. You may have noticed that I am not using the refueling probe on this build. For some reason I am finding that I like doing builds right now 'lean and mean' so this will be toting 6xAAMs and maybe a centerline tank - not sure yet

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Here is my biggest fear in building the kit - these are the locating 'holes' for the six stupid little braces that go between the top of the intake and the fuselage. There is no way to add these microscopic pieces before adding the intake to the fuselage or before joining the fuselage halves. Be afraid…be very afraid….

Well that’s it for right now - tomorrow the fuselage closes up and I see how best to do the wing to fuselage. Yufei does it the ‘British’ way attach the upper wings to the fuselage and then add the bottom wing - to minimize the wing root gaps. Trouble is I have never had much success doing it this way. I call it the ‘British’ way because the authors who wrote for Scale Aircraft Modelling always did it this way when I first started to read ’real’ modeling mags in the 80’s.

Edited by Matt Roberts
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Wings…..

I tried to look at doing the wings as Yufei did on his build with attaching the upper wings prior to adding the lower wing separately. Two things made me do it as the instructions show with the assembly of the whole wing assembly prior to attaching it to the fuselage.

One is that the amount of gluing area available to attach the upper wing to the fuselage is very minimal and I would bet fragile for any man handling of the join would probably pop it back off. Also if I had tried to tack it into position with CA then attaching it with the regular cement for strength I may get it out of where it is supposed to go. As it is I have a question at the back end where the wing ends and the ‘booms’ that are alongside the engine - like those on the F-16 begin. Does the upper wing piece follow the taper to the end of the part or does it begin to angle down. As you can see here it naturally angles down. One good thing with the J-10 is no walk arounds to get really worried about....one bad thing...no walk arounds to answer questions like this!

J-10Build2008.jpg

The other area I worried about is when I dry fit the lower wing section is that it seemed easy to get it sat too low in the fuselage leaving a step aft of the nosegear bay where the gun pod goes. By adding the upper wing first I was afraid that I’d be unable to apply downward pressure on the join to get the forward section of the wing to be level with the fuselage. It is nice that the bottom of the fuselage is flat makes any filling easy when one messes up the join - which I did. More filling is coming!

J-10Build2006.jpg

So how did I get the wing on you ask? (yeah all three of you!) After getting the wing assembled I attached it in stages. When you add the fuselage and wing together you will get a pretty good gap along both sides of the fuselage. To attach the wing I first got the leading edge of the lower wing aligned and applied CA to get the join to hold. A hit of accelerator and the wing was attached. I then glued the back end where the ‘booms’ are and avoiding the wing roots. Once set up I did What I have done hundreds of times with building P-40s over the years, I stretched a rubber band between the leading edge flap cutouts and the gaps closed. Then I run cement along the wing roots as I flexed them into position. I think the secret to getting a perfect wingroot join is doing as Yufei did with attaching the upper wings and then fiddling with the lower wing intake fit. I wasn’t perfect as you can see of the pic of the left wingroot. But I’d rather have a bit of a mistake there rather than the mess I’d make in filling it and losing the detail in the area. My beauty shots will be taken from the right side!

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One thing in this kit that I will warn you about is something you may not realize as a problem. When you assemble the wings without the flaps you have this portion of the wingtip and as you may be able to tell from it’s shape is that it is very susceptible to damage. I partially broke one wingtip and after my fix the outer aileron didn't fit that great. The 'bump' is the RWR antennas - similar to the 'beercan' antennas on F-16s

J-10Build2005.jpg

The other area that needed a bit of filling was the top of the rightside of the fin. Fortunately I was able to run CA into the gap and tomorrow I’ll double check it for smoothness to see if I got it filled correctly. (and yes I added a bit more filler since I shot this!). Interesting to see the PLAAF IFF antennas still appear to be the 'Odd Rods' antennas that I believe the Russians had replaced a while ago.

J-10Build2009.jpg

Here so far is the 'worst' fit area I have encountered, the bottom of the intake back to the leading edge of the wing. Again I added a bit more filler since the pic last night. One thing that I think would have made the lower wing to fuselage join easier was that the tab that facilitated the fit and strengthend the join was on the wing and not the fuselage. If it was on the intake behind the nosegear bay I would have been able to apply a bit more pressure in getting a tight join than I was

J-10Build2007.jpg

Well that's it for this weekend, I'm adding the wing flaps and underwing details and ponderif I want to mess up the build by trying to get the left wingroot fixed. But I have the Aussie Grand Prix to watch on my DVR now...later

Matt

(Edit 10p - right before bedtime....) It is funny that I still see a paint booger on the intake screen in the pic that I cannot see with my own eyes! Gawd I just got bifocals last summer! :doh:

Edited by Matt Roberts
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Hi Matt,

Thanks for the comments on you build. I've just been tinkering with mine and have noticed some of the same things as you. I too am leary about doing the upper wing to fuselage as Haneto did ( and did well) as it seems there's too many ways to mess that up. I was thinking about doing bottom wing first then adding some shims to prop up the mid area of the upper wing roots to get a better fit ... do you think that would have helped your wing fit?

One other idea I've been considering is getting the fuselage together, then fitting the inlet parts on and trying to get a good fit, then inserting the inlet trunk thru the fuselage and into the inlet from behind.

regards,

Gary F

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As for the inlet - It may be possible to add the trunking first, then join the fuselage and then add the inlet after completing the fuselage. But I wonder about getting the seam ok, as I don't think Steel Beech or Two Mikes is doing intake covers yet. But it is nowhere near as frustrating as the RoG Typhoon inlet. That sucker (pun intended) will probably get a Two Mikes intake cover when I do my next one!

As for the wings I am still convenced that Haneto (Yufei) does it is best. The horizontal gap is still the biggest thing to fix, and getting it lined up vertically is the time consumer. Next time I do one I will probably do them a day apart just so I can be fresh and not want to hurry the fix - as I did on the left wing root. After posting I figured a brute forse solution. I ran a new No 11 blade down the join and flexed it apart. With the right wing solid I could manhandle it and with a little run of thin CA to get it fixed into place. It is not as good as the right side but better than what I had....I'll get another pic probably in my next update.

The 'bent' left wingtip did mess up the fit of the left aileron to the wing. Funny how all of my problems seem to be on the left wing so far...operator error!

Matt

Edited by Matt Roberts
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Oh yeah....almost knocked off the fin top IFF aerials. I've been so good on not breaking antennas and static dischargers off of my builds recently....until now.

The one that I don't look forward to is the antenna on the JF-17 on the spine - the 'Flying T' shaped one. Anyone laying odds on it's survival until I get the last Pakistani makings on it applied!

Matt

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Matt, I did the superglue method to the upperwings to the fuselage also, one drop at a time and the

trailing edge came down as your pics show. Once I had it tacked the entire length, i filled it up pretty good on the back side.

I came out with a real nice tight fit, looks like it was molded as one piece.

I am thinking of doing the latex paint method for the intake trunking, or maybe scratching a cover and not having to worry about it.

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Just a quick update.....

005.jpg

I have added the flaps and ailerons and fixed the wing root snafu I showed above. Still not perfect but better. One aspect I'd be more careful about the next one I build I may make sure that I add them more closely to glueing the wings together. I didn't get the seam tight and my flaps don't fit very well - underneath. The rudder also was a bit tricky for me to get tightly atached. When I glued the tail I got a bit of melted plastic to squirt out of the seam and was a pain to get it cleaned up to get the rudder attached.

One interesting thing to me are the leading edge flaps. You can attach them retacted or extended by trimming either of a pair of tabs. I attached them extended, and was surprised. I am used to A-4 leading edge slats that would be used to assist slow speed control. These I am willing to bet are more for manouverability than landing, as extended they seem to serve a function like the dogtooth leading edge of a delta winged aircraft like a Kfir.

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The Radome and instrument coming added. I had a bit of filling alongside the radome on one side of the fuselage. Not sure if it was my mistake or not. A bit of CA and hopefully it'll be good to go

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The engine needed a bit of filling, mostly as it seemed a bit out of round - again not sure if it's my mistake or not.

Now for the thing I am most afraid of - adding those six little braces to the top of the intake.....my smallest tweezers and pliers don't fit. This will be fun.

Matt

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Just in case any of the two or three people following this are wondering, I've been finishing up my Spitfire and Dora with my time this week, when I have not been keeping my sons apart during spring break.

I have done some more work on the J-10, but my camera has dying batteries and one of the boys has hidden the charger (along with a TV remote!) But I did get a couple taken before it just died.

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I actually did get the 6 braces fitted without too much trouble. I just worked slowly and carefully - so I wouldn't loose the tiny braces to the carpet monster (or even losing track of them on my work bench!) A drop of Testors cement atop the intake and then grab the braces with the tip of a fresh xacto blade, get it in position and once the glue has grabbed the end of the part, manipulate it with the tip of the blade into position. And then work on the other side to let the first part get set up. Funny the longest time and most frustrating was adding one of the front braces - which are the largest. I used the knife blade as non of the tweezers/needle nosed pliers were fine enough to get any of the parts into location. I also worked back to front, shortest to highest. There are also PE braces and honestly I have no idea how you'd get them into place utilizing even slow setting CA as it'd be so easy to get them out of position or with a visible blob of CA there.

I have started painting it. That has been fun. Try and match the grays to a picture! Much like my earlier discussion about the colors on the Saudi Typhoon where I thought they looked like Ghost Grays when the actual colors are Barley and US Medium Gray and it all depended upon which software or even camera a given shot was taken with. So here going with PLAAF grays is a new thing to try and match. I used both the instructions, with the Vallejo colors given, as well as pics in the IAPR issue and Combat Aircraft to try and match. I'll let you decide how close I got to the single color upper surface scheme. I ended up using a pair of Polly Scale railroad colors. 'New Gravel Gray' which is a pale blueish gray and 'Southern Pacific Lettering Gray' for the underside. I'm still unsure if they are right, but look closer than the Vallejo suggestions to the current scheme. Funny the pics make the topside gray look 'bluer' than it does to my own eyes

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I am getting ready to start the landing gear (and yet another gray...)

And the original Vigorous Dragon!

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Matt

Edited by Matt Roberts
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Looks Great Matt.

So great that I think I have to get me one myself.

I wonder if you can take a J-10 and an F-16 to use as a base for a Lavi?

Keep up the good work and keep the pics coming

:worship:

/Bosse

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  • 2 weeks later...

OK it has returned from the deep.....

I have gotten it pretty much up to decaling stage now. The gear went on nicely, and one thing I really liked about the tooling is that the wheels were keyed to the legs so that the flats are correctly oriented. The gear doors also were securely attached. I still have nightmares of butt joins of gear doors.

The weathering is pro-modelers dark wash with some help from my 6 year old son. After mucking it up I used some windex on a paper towel to get the last amounts of wash off. I left my toy room for a bit and Jack grabbed the Windex and doused the kit...afterall he was just doing what daddy did. Well three paper towels later I noticed something scary. To my eyes the topside blue-gray seemed close to the International Air Power Review pics but a bit too intense. Well probably the ammonia in the Windex heped tone down the color a bit. A long time ago one of my first builds with acrylic paints was the first AccMin Avenger in the Atlantic ASW scheme (Dark Gull Gray over White) and I had been used to using alcohol wipes to clean the sludge wash off my builds painted with enamels. Well it wasn't a total disaster and ended up fading the topside gray to look pretty close to the pics I had of Avengers on CVEs in the North Atlantic. Now would I ever do that again...no, would I ever flood my build again with Windex...nope but at least it didn't totally screew up the paint job.

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One thing I did to the paint scheme was add a bit of red behind the canards. Some pics in the IAPR do show this like the area behind USN flaps - others don't. I just thought it added a bit of color to an otherwise 'boring gray airplane'

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Here is the landing gear. A pretty simple style of gear - especially after an F-16 or two (and an F/A-18). Nice solid joins and what I did was use glue on the main strut locators and a dab of CA on the other points to hold it in place while the gear set. I used another gray for the struts, it is another railroad gray that I use as a close enough for Aerospace Defence Gray such as used on USAF Century Series jets. Mostly as I really didn't want to use the same grays again. The gear doors were a light blue. I overpainted a Grunze light blue which was a bit too vivid with RLM 78, and until we get a good close walk around I'm not too worried about it!

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Just noticed two things...one of my missile rails is skewed and I missed a couple of small areas of paint on the belly...the underside gray is nearly a perfect match for Trumpeter plastic!

Here are the missiles I am arming it with. I decided to do a pure air superiority loadout with a pair of PL-8 IR AAMs - the Chinese licence built Python 3, and 4 PL-12 AMRAAM-like missiles. The kit comes only with a pair each but I have a JF-17 in the stash and it has the same missile sprues, so I robbed them. One nice thing about the kit is that each missile has it's own rail. One gripe many have had about the weapons sprues in the Trumpeter Su-24 is that some of the missiles did not have the correct rails, no problem here. It is a bit of a puzzler in that each missile has its own specific rail, seems inefficient. The kit also comes with a a pair of Sidewinder clones (PL-5 and 9) Magic clones (PL-7) and licence built ASPIDE SARH missiles (PL-11). One thing I noticed is that the missiles seem a bit 'fatter' than the American Sidewinder. I wonder if this may be due to co-operation with Israel as the Shafir was a larger diameter than the Sidewinder.

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PL-12

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PL-8 (Python 3)

Overall the missiles assembled nicely, one thing that stood out are the attachments for the fins are nice and large and allow the fins to be seated strongly. I have built alot of missiles that are either butt jointed fins or very shallow joining areas and these are good to work with. Now I just have to get the bloody things painted white...I hate white. Maybe I should do the PL-8s orange as some training missiles seem to have been painted

Now for the fun part...decals.....(and painting the PE glare shield on the instrument panel!)

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Umm no... I hate stenciling and this stuff is microscopic!

One thing I did get from the books is how the two digit 'Bort' number is determined. Each aircraft has a 5 digit serial number on the tail, the number on the nose is the 3rd and 5th number of the serial number. Did anyone ever determine how the WarPac assigned the bort numbers on thier airframes?

Now to get the gloss coat ready....

Edited by Matt Roberts
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You want to know something strange, here I am again nearing the end of a build and all I can think of is wanting to start the next one. So here is hoping I get the bug to finish this one up soon. Nothing against the kit but for some wierd reason I am losing interest once the knife and cement at closed up and the paint brushes come out!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Frankenstein build returning.....

I have not done a whole lot on my Dragon recently - I have been trying to get resumes out and a few as yet unproductive interviews. And then there is my Tomcat...dang you Darren Roberts! I have been mucking with the intakes of it instead of finishing this build.

My earlier fears of the decals have proved right, they are probably the worst Trumpy/HB ones I have used in quite a while. They are a matte finish and seem fragile and my numbers have split a couple of times in placing them. My other gripe with the decals is that there are not enough numbers for what appears to be the current standard of a PLAAF airframe. There is a 5 digit number on the tail that uses the largest of the gray numbers, then a 'bort number' goes on the nose with the same sized numerals. Now we only get 2 full sets of 10 numbers (0-9) when we need 4 sets to do the bort number as well as the tail numbers. The tail numbers are tied to which regiment the airframe is assigned to. My number is 41xxx which is an airframe based with the 44th Fighter Division based at Kunming....(hmmm put it next to a certain Hawk 81 build....hmmm). According to IAPR the current numbers are 50x5x, which given the lack of numbers (4 number 5's) means I went with the earlier numbering. The airframe also has the 'bort number' repeated on the top of the rudder. I'm still adding markings right now so hopefully I'll get some pics up in an hour or two.

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J-10decals002.jpg

Here are the markings around the tail, I still have a few to add, such as the bort number on the rudder

J-10decals003.jpg

Here is the nose...so far. Here you can see one of my problems....I am missing a number for the nose number (bort number) The number is the 3rd and 5th number of the tail number. Here the tail number is 41256, so the 'bort' will be 26. I can flip a '9' to be a '6' but the '2' is not easy to fix. Perhaps when I eventually get a J-10S two seater I'll be able to poach a '2' from it. The cockpit stenciling is still to be added but is pretty subdued.

J-10decals004.jpg

Here is the underside with the national insignia....not too much there

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The Guardian of the Closet 'o Doom

Next up is detailing the missiles, ejector seat, and canopy

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Here are the markings around the tail, I still have a few to add, such as the bort number on the rudder

...

Here is the nose...so far. Here you can see one of my problems....I am missing a number for the nose number (bort number) The number is the 3rd and 5th number of the tail number. Here the tail number is 41256, so the 'bort' will be 26. I can flip a '9' to be a '6' but the '2' is not easy to fix. Perhaps when I eventually get a J-10S two seater I'll be able to poach a '2' from it. The cockpit stenciling is still to be added but is pretty subdued.

...

Hey ... what a nice progress, however - and sorry if I'm too much critical - there are some mistakes.

Your machine is reportedly one of the first serial models delivered to the 44. Division and as such they has some minor differences to the later birds and the updated ones. First, the number "41256" is wrong for the 44. Div, since the first number should also be a 4 ... "41256" would be an aircraft from the 34. Division.

the early machines were not fitted with atht white tear-drop shaped anteanna behind the canopy and the blade antenna on the spine was of an older design, that wasn't angled backwards.

Sorry ... but Cheers, Deino

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