Skinny_Mike Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 (edited) My goal for this year is to build more models. With that in mind and the giant mess my Eduard Fw-190D-9 has turned out to be, i've decided to do a WIP. Hopefully this will keep me motivated and help me take my time. So as this is my first WIP, please be gentle! My plan is to take this kit: and build this aircraft: using these extras (plus a few more that aren't here yet): Before any one starts, yes I know there are accuracy problems with the Kinetic F-16s. I don't want to turn this into a thread about why one kit is better or worse then the other. The price was right, and it looks like an F-16 to me :deadhorse1:/> . I will say - I have no idea if this one has the bad nose or not, but don't worry - some help is on the way. Like most kits, i'm starting with the cockpit. For this I'm using the Aires MLU pit. From the reference material I have, i'll need to modify the instrument panel a little bit but otherwise it should look ok to most of us. So I started by washing the resin and testing the fit of the pit in the fusalage. Aires instructions metions removing the glare shield from the kit, but never mention that you also need to remove the rear decking. So i cut out the pieces that will interfear. I still need to thin out the detail on the inside of the kit cockpit side walls, but I think I'm pretty close. I did a little assembly on the cockpit tub. I had to reattach the control stick on the RHS of the pit as it had broken off in shipment. Then I added the rudder pedals. Before I installed them though, I rolled them around the barrel of my hobby knife to add a little curvature to them. Every rudder pedal I've seen has had a slight curvature to it so it seemed a worthy addition. Let me know what you think. I'm going to primer the pit and start detail painting tomorrow. Edited January 28, 2016 by Skinny_Mike Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Paolo Maglio Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 cool! I will follow you with interest! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Basman Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 I like Vipers and i built this one myself too. All parts need a lot of care, but when you give them what they need, you can built a nice Viper. She is called "The Ultimate Diana", but what about this one: Her name is Dirty Diana Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Paolo Maglio Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 I called her THE LAST DIANA since they ask me to paint her to celebrate the wing disbandement, there will not be another Diana on a military plane in Italy, so she was the last one, not the ultimate. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
huntermountain Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 Am I reading this right, Paolo, did you do the actual paint job on the real life plane? I'll be following this build with interest myself. I had the Kinetic boxing of the Belgian tiger meet viper in my hands the other day, which is basically the same plane, but with different decals, I guess. But unfortunately, with my wife at my side, bringing it home was not an option. I'm still planning to smuggle it into the stash at some point . Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Paolo Maglio Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 Yes, I painted the tail art free hand using a metal Aztek airbrush, since they only gave us 5 days to complete it there was no time to print masks: please check here for more references: http://s362974870.onlinehome.us/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=215468&st=0#entry2047548 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Basman Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 :unsure: as a simple dutchman i translated l'ultima as ultimate. That is the best reason to built this Diana. I now it makes a man feel proud to see your art on a warmachine, i did a Frigate once. They gave me a paint roller to fix it, haha. But you must be extra proud to see that they made decals for this one. This is a picture of my paint roller art. It was painted for the same reason, the final cruise of the "Philips van Almonde" for the royal dutch navy in 2002. Now i will stop posting pictures in your topic and i will follow your progress on this bird. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Skinny_Mike Posted January 9, 2012 Author Share Posted January 9, 2012 Hey Paolo - glad you found my build. I hope my kit does your great artwork justice! SO, not a lot of progress this week. I got the interior grey on the cockpit in preparation for detail painting and I worked on fitting to cockpit inside of the kit's upper fuselage. This required thinning out the plastic. And this is where disaster struck. Apparently I was a little too ambitious using the Dremel tool! The plastic got hot enough that it blistered and warped! The LHS is not too bad; the blisters fell in on themselves and are right in the middle of the blank panel. Shouldn't be a big deal to fill and sand out. Unfortunately the RHS bubbled up, and warped a panel line and rivet details! I've used the Dremel before on other kits, for this purpose and haven't had this problem before. Maybe this is just soft plastic? IDK. Here is a picture of the damage. Well I am going to preserver. I've emailed Kinetic, hopefully I'll be able to get a replacement part, otherwise, and in the mean time I will do my best to fix the damage I caused. And if I can't get a replacement piece, I may just have to buy another kit.... These things are worth the $35USD just for all the ordinance you get! Well, thanks for following. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Netz Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 Kinetics plastic is quite soft, you really need to use light pressure when grinding, no matter what plastic it is, also remember you can split the clearance by removing some from the resin piece. Just curious what tail-base are you going to use? is the ADF tail in that boxing? Curt Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Paolo Maglio Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 Just curious what tail-base are you going to use? is the ADF tail in that boxing? Curt Yes Netz, kit comes also with ADF tail base, not the best in town but there is not much to choose from since the Cutting Edge perfect one was sold out! On the minus side there is only one set of bird slicers sized for the ADF, the second set should be scratchbuilded while I suggest to scratchbuilt both since antennas on Kinetic kit are by far too much large. P.S: very sorry for the problem with the fuselgae! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Viper01 Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 Just a heads up, you've got the wrong nozzle for an ADF. The nozzle you show in the first picture is a GE, the ADF uses the PW. Remy.. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Skinny_Mike Posted January 14, 2012 Author Share Posted January 14, 2012 Hey Curtis - yeah, I thought I was moving pretty lightly, like I said I've done that before, just another stroke of bad luck I suppose. I seem to be having a lot of those lately. I do plan to use the ADF tail in the box, unless you guys have one in the works? :P Viper - I didn't think anyone would notice that! But yeah, I realized that and I have rectified the mistake. I have a true Block 15 exhaust nozzle for it now. So good news folks! Got a response from Kinetic, they are going to send me a replacement part for the one I messed up. Basically I paid the cost of shipping it from Lucky Model to the states. And they responded next day. Also have a set of Royale Resin wheels on the way. I was out of town all week for work, so no progress today. Hopefully I'll get a little time on the bench this weekend. Thanks for following. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Netz Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 That's nice Kinetic took care of you like that, shipping would be a small price to pay to save the kit. ADF is on the table, my 1st attempt failed, so I needed to step back for a while (to keep my sanity). Curt Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Paolo Maglio Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 be sure the tyres to be like that: while in ANG service the ADF used a different kind of tyres. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Skinny_Mike Posted February 7, 2012 Author Share Posted February 7, 2012 The boss at work and the boss at home have been keeping me pretty busy the last few weeks, but I finally got some time to work on this bird. First the good news, my new fuselage piece arrived from Kinetic. In the mean time I started working on the cockpit. This is the Aires MLU pit for the kinetic F-16. The details are great, but the fit is tough. It was painted with model master acrylic Dark Gull Grey. Then it got a coat of future followed by a wash using paynes grey oil paints. After that I painted the panels with Vallejo black followed by a flat coat. All the details where picked out with MM chrome silver and deep yellow, Lifecolor light ghost grey and Tamiya red. I think it turned out pretty well. I used a brand new 18/0 brush which I think helped with the details, although a few could be better. What do you think? And here is the cockpit assembled. I think it turned out well. The rear deck will get painted once the pit is installed and I clean up any gaps in that region. The instrument panel will go in after painting the airplane so I can better mask off the cockpit area. It will probably be a little slow this week as I work on fitting the cockpit in the fuselage. And after my last mistake, I'm using a lot of elbow grease and no power tools! Hope you keep watching. And comments are always welcome. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Skinny_Mike Posted February 7, 2012 Author Share Posted February 7, 2012 be sure the tyres to be like that: while in ANG service the ADF used a different kind of tyres. Hey Paolo - Those are the ones I got! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Paolo Maglio Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 interior gray looks a bit 6too much dark but I think it will improve as soon as you add flat varnish to it. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Skinny_Mike Posted February 12, 2012 Author Share Posted February 12, 2012 This week I got to spend some time working on my model. I've been slowly grinding away at the plastic, in an effort to get the Aires pit to fit. I'm almost there with that, just a little more material to remove around the side panels and it should be good to go. I've done most of the work using good old fashioned elbow grease, trying to not warp the plastic. In the meantime, I started working on the tail. I wanted to be able to show myself a little progress so I can stay interested. I figured the tail would be a simple subassembly to keep up the momentum. Ugh - I think I spoke too soon on that. The Kinetic tail is a multi-piece affair, with the leading edge of the tail on the left side and a smaller insert for the right side, with the join at a natural panel line. The base of the tail has a forward part and an aft part, each made up of 2 halves to allow for building the different base configurations. I picked the parts for the ADF base and assembled that first. That part went together pretty well. The join line for the front and back sections went together ok. The join line is a little big but I think I can make it a little more subtle. And the tail is getting painted a pretty dark grey which should help to hide it a little. So then I moved onto the top part of the tail. Upon inspection, the LHS has a string of rivets on the leading edge, but all the RHS had is three giant ejector pin marks! Ok - well fine I can deal with that. I'll just clean up the parts, assemble it and add the rivets. It'll give me a chance to practice with my new rivet tools. When I went to assemble the two halves, I found something peculiar. Turns out the insert is too thick. It left a big step at the join line. What the heck! Did the guys at Kinetic assemble this thing before they decided to mass produce it!!!! I mean wow! As I see it I have a couple of options here: 1. Sand down the inside of the two pieces to get them to join up. 2. Rebuild the leading edge of the tail with some plastic and putty. Either way I have a lot of sanding to go do! Has anyone else run into this? I'd be happy to hear some suggestions on the best way to overcome this issue! Stay tuned - More fun to come I'm sure! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Skinny_Mike Posted February 25, 2012 Author Share Posted February 25, 2012 (edited) I back with some good news. I finally got the cockpit installed in this beast! It took quite some time, lots of foul language and a few sore extremities but its finally in. Here is a picture of the tools I used and how much material i had to remove. Hopefully the picture shows that well. And here is a shot of the front of the fuselage with the pit installed. I used MM aircraft interior black for the black color. It turned out pretty glossy so I do still need to tone that down a little bit. But I'll get to that later. So now that the pit is in, its on to the intake. Kinetic has a full length intake that ends in a decent enough engine face back behind the main landing gear bays. The intake has a front section and a back section. I started with the back. Here's how the parts looked. But the good news is, I got all that mess cleaned up in about an hour. Here is how they looked under a coat of Mr. Surfacer 1200 from the rattle can. Pretty good if I do say so myself! Next step is to assemble the halves and then do the front part to check the joining seam! I'm starting to pick up some steam! Thanks for following along, and comments are always welcome! Edited February 25, 2012 by Skinny_Mike Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Skinny_Mike Posted February 28, 2012 Author Share Posted February 28, 2012 He y everyone, I'm back with another update. Spent the weekend working on the intake. It assembles into two pieces. Let’s start with the aft section. And the forward section. I've dry fitted the pieces together looking for the seam where they connect. Because of the curvature of the intake, its completely invisible! Awesome! I wasn't sure how I was going to clean that up. And I got the top of the fuselage assembled. Looking good. Thanks for checking out my build, comments are always welcome! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Paolo Maglio Posted February 28, 2012 Share Posted February 28, 2012 Mike, mind you have to remove the GPS dome from top of front fuselage. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Skinny_Mike Posted March 1, 2012 Author Share Posted March 1, 2012 Mike, mind you have to remove the GPS dome from top of front fuselage. What? NO GPS????? How do the pilot's find their way??? Just kidding. Any way - thanks for that heads up Paolo. I assume you mean this circled part here. You don't by chance have a photo of the bird slicers on the bottom of the intake do you? I have a couple really good ones of the nose bird slicers but I had a tough time finding any pictures of the ones on the bottom of the intake. Is it essentially the same raised panel just mounted to the bottom? Thanks Mike Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jmel Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 I assume you mean this circled part here. No, the part you have circled is the A/R floodlight. The GPS antenna is the round dish behind that. You don't by chance have a photo of the bird slicers on the bottom of the intake do you? I have a couple really good ones of the nose bird slicers but I had a tough time finding any pictures of the ones on the bottom of the intake. Is it essentially the same raised panel just mounted to the bottom? Pics of the ADF antennas are in The Early Viper Guide. Jake Quote Link to post Share on other sites
coladito1 Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 Looking good Mike! Gonna be following the progress for sure! :D Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Paolo Maglio Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 Mike, Jake is right on the GPS dish. Here you can find sevaral photos in 4 pages including details of the lower IFF, these should be same size and shape of the top ones, Kinetic simply forgot about them! By the way Kinetic IFF are too thick and wrong in shape and position, check my photos here: http://s362974870.onlinehome.us/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=173980&hl=paolo maglio&st=20 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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