KC-46A Dual Build

[Jaypack44]

Hi all,

Those that know me know I have a terrible track record so far as actually finishing builds goes. I think the last time I actually saw a build through to completion was my senior year of high school, almost 8 years ago. Since then, I've started at least 15 other kits, and have them all laying around in various stages of completion, mostly waiting on me figuring out a more efficient way of using my airbrush. I normally build 1:48, and up until last year limited myself to WWII subjects. However, a few years ago I got into the hobby of aviation photography, and became more interested in building models of aircraft I'd actually seen in person. My first attempt at this was an F/A-18E, which is about 30% complete at the moment, and waiting on some latex paint for the engine intakes. That one will be in VX-9 markings cobbled together from an aftermarket sheet. Finding decals for the subjects I want has proved to be the biggest challenge, but I've had some luck in the form of a couple recent Hasegawa releases. Namely, their 1:48 AH-64E, and 1:200 KC-46A kits; finding decals for those was easy, as my photos were used as the boxart! I received two of the KC-46 kits in the mail this morning, and dived right in - the following post chronicles about 6 hours worth of work today.

As I mentioned, I normally build 1:48 kits, but am actually a little excited about these, as they bring some new challenges, as well as a break from my "usual" build process. I like that they're large enough that a little extra detail can be added, but small enough that scratchbuilding something like a cockpit takes a half hour or so, as opposed to several days...

The Boxart, and the photo that was selected:

Boeing/USAF KC-46A N462KC by Josh Kaiser, on Flickr

I spend quite a bit of time up at Boeing Field, and as such have amassed a pretty good collection of the four KC-46A flight test airframes (I have a flickr album of some of them here:

). The kit includes decals for the first two aircraft, N461FT (the first airframe to fly, but actually a 767-2C) and N462KC (the first actual KC-46A airframe), but with some chopping of the decals, N464KC (the second KC-46A, an third of the four test airframes to fly) could be built as well. I'm still undecided as to which of those three I'll be building, but will probably end up doing 461 and 462, as I'd like to represent both a 767-2C and a KC-46A.

The next choice is what time period to model, since the aircraft have carried different markings and equipment during different phases of the test program. 461FT has flown alternately with and without the refueling equipment installed; there's a part of me that wants to try to figure out a way (using magnets or pins) to make the equipment removable.

And finally, I have to decide how to display the finished models: at the moment I'm leaning toward one gear down for "normal" display, and building the other in-flight on a stand (the kit includes a smoky clear plastic stand, but I'd like to make something a bit more "solid"). The other option is building both gear down (less work), or both in flight, and posing them to match a photo (that I can't find, at the moment) of N462KC and N464KC refueling each other. As of right now, my inclination is to go with option 1, as it'll give me a chance to do one of each - I've never done an inflight display before, so I like the idea of the challenge that will bring.

The kit itself is based on Hasegawa's old 767-200 kit, and some of the parts do show their age. As has been addressed in many previous reviews, the fuselage has fairly deep recessed panel lines, while the wings, horizontal stabilizers, and engine nacelles have finer raised lines. I'm still debating whether or not I want to remove all the lines, as they aren't really visible on the real thing from any kind of distance anyway, or leave them as-is.

I started these two the same way I start all of my kits: the cockpit. The kit includes a clear windshield as well as the option of covering it with decals, but requires decals for the other windows on the airframe - a pet peeve of mine, as I prefer "real" clear parts to just representations of them. However, since locating and cutting out the windows would be a pain, I'm inclined to leave them as-is. The clear windshield gave me too good a challenge to pass up though, and so I spent about an hour scratching up a basic cockpit for both aircraft. at this scale, the details are almost invisible, but are *just* visible enough to warrant representation, as opposed to a black hole.

Instead of taking the time to cut a single floor piece and contouring it to fit both sides perfectly, I cut small "shelves" and glued them into each fuselage half, and then made a central floor piece to bridge the gap. Some basic seats and consoles were cobbled together with bits of styrene.

A quick paint job, and it was good to go! (and wow, does the close-up really make it look a lot worse than in person...)

[Jaypack44]

...Continued from above:

I then assembled the fuselage of the first aircraft, and taped the other together for a quick overall test fit.

Shortly after gluing the first fuselage together, I realized that if I was going to do a double in-flight build, I would need to put a crew in the cockpit. As such, I'll likely go with the one up, one down option... I tried a few different techniques for making the crew for the second aircraft; the best I came up with was a small wire frame, but then couldn't figure out a way to flesh him out, so I'm holding off on assembling the second fuselage until I figure out a better way - I may try to get my hands on some fimo-type clay, and see if that works any better. At this scale, a 6' person is only about 1/3" tall, so I only need a basic representation to be satisfied.

(excuse the heavy wash on the cockpit in this photo - the flash and macro shot make it appear way more intense than it really is)

As the glue dried on the first fuselage, I moved on to the engine nacelles - I started by thinning the exhaust cone and cowl training edges; the blue sharpie helped make the edge more visible to see how much I needed to take off:

Then I painted a few bits of the nacelles: the forward section was painted with MM Aluminum Plate metalizer, but there was a bit of an odd texture on the interior of the cowls, so I may go back and try to sand it so that it's at least a bit more even. I may also try a different paint, or some dullcote, as the metalizer is a bit "brighter" than the actual cowl interior.

Compared to the real deal: I may actually just use a shade of gray, as the metallic effect scaled down is almost not perceptible.

...And finally, I went ahead and scribed some new panel lines on the outboard engine pylons, as these areas will be pretty visible, and OOB they looked pretty bland. I'm not going to bother with the inner pylons, as I don't have any photos of that area, and it's not all that visible, anyway.

(they're hard to see in the picture, but should show up once I get some paint on)

That's where I'm leaving off, tonight - tomorrow I may make a run over to the LHS to see if they have some paints that I'll be needing pretty shortly, otherwise, I'll have to put things off a little longer while I wait for an online order to ship :(

[phasephantomphixer]

Nice goin' and quite the off path selection!

I see them (well, one at the moment) every night at work. I am considering converting a 1/100 scale kit.

A good way to achieve seamless intakes as well as easy painting is to cut the nacelles just aft of where the fan goes, glue, sand and paint the front halves, install the painted fan and glue back onto the nacelle. Then mask the front until final steps.

[Jaypack44]

Thanks! I take it you must work at BFI, or PAE, then?. And thanks for the tip regarding the engines; I'm not sure how confident I am in my chopping skills to try that, but it might be worth trying; I'm waiting on an order for some paint to do the fan blades, though, so I have a few days to mull it over.

I got some more work done on it yesterday, namely closing up the gear doors on the in-flight build. I started by slicing off the molded-on nose gear doors, and then trimming them to fit the openings - I'm planning on just filling and sanding the whole area smooth once the fuselage is assembled, so I wasn't too worried about the gaps and sink marks, for the time being.

For the main gear, the KC-46 has three doors that are open while the gear is down - the largest is included in the kit, but the other two are simply bumps molded onto the larger door and the lower wing half - I removed these, and cut out some basic "close" shapes from styrene to fill the holes. Everything was glued in, and once it had set, the gaps were filled with CA and everything sanded smooth. I'll rescribe the lines at a later point.

Lastly, I'm trying to make another decision regarding the wings of the gear-down model: photos seem to show that the Elevators and High-Speed Ailerons droop when the aircraft is parked and powered off, I assume due to hydraulic pressure bleeding off; I may end up cutting out and posing those surfaces, just to add a little visual interest.

A couple examples:

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Untitled/Boeing-KC-46A-Pegasus-%28767-2C%29/2832766

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Untitled/Boeing-KC-46A-Pegasus-%28767-2C%29/2687338

[Trojan Thunder]

Nice progress Josh, the cockpit work looks good, nice to see the effort there, I don't even bother with cockpit detail in 1/144 let alone 1/200!

Edited July 12, 2016 by Trojan Thunder

[Jaypack44]

Thanks, Ray! I'm liking this build more and more, since in 1:48, I usually get so caught up in the details that it's hard to make steady progress, where here, there's just enough detailing potential to keep it fun, without driving me too crazy! I'm starting to wish there were more military kits in this scale, as it'd be fun to do a refueling diorama of sorts with the in-flight build.

Yesterday brought more progress: I spent some time cleaning up the 10 tiny wheels for the gear-down build's landing gear (makes me glad I decided to do one gear-up!), and also went ahead and cut out the control surfaces (high-speed ailerons and elevators) to droop them on the gear-down build. Then another taped-together test fit to see how it'll look. I use a lot of tape just doing test fits, but it helps keep my motivation going, as I can see what I'm working towards.

Elevators trimmed out:

Wing progress

Cutting out the surfaces removed enough material to create some gaps on the high-speed ailerons, so I tacked on some extra styrene to bring them back up to size.

And all taped up:

Today, the plan is to go in and detail the landing gear - it's probably not necessary, but at this scale, there's some stuff that's *just* noticeable enough that I can't just leave it be.

[Trojan Thunder]

That is starting to look the part Josh.

Looks like I might to to have a crack at this in 1/144. I have B767 kit and spare KC-10 boom. It should not be too hard to scratch build a few lumps and bumps here and there.

[Major Walt]

I love your attention to detail, especially the cockpit. I'm enjoying this build. Thanks for sharing it with us.

[boeing767mech]

Awesome build, if your going to do a airplane sitting on the ramp. Another little thing to consider is the Nose Landing Gear doors droop about an inch. DOn't know how close to real you are going but that is a bit of info you may consider.

David

[Jaypack44]

Thanks, all!

Sorry for the delay; not too much to report, as I tend to work in short spurts at intermittent intervals...

My main focus as of late has been the landing gear - I decided there were a few details that needed representation, namely:

The brake lines are quite prominent on the real main gear, and are supported by a small ladder-like part to keep them clear of the main wheels (I assume). So I added that detail using bits of photoetched mesh from a long-ago scrapped F-117 kit, and some thin wire.

I'm still debating whether I'll be building new gear doors and detailing the rest of the struts, as they aren't too visible under the wings.

The nose gear received a little more attention, since the strut will be more visible, and the kit part was a little lacking. It's nowhere near perfect, but it'll at least look a little busier.

The pencil dots in the second pic are markers for the lights on the gear; the two larger lights will be added after paint using a couple small MV lenses.

@boeing767mech, I've thought about that door droop - still haven't decided if that's a detail I want to add, or not, since I'm not sure how I'd go about it, and in this scale, an inch is equal to .005", which wouldn't be too noticeable.

Edited August 23, 2016 by Jaypack44

[Trojan Thunder]

Detail work is looking good Josh.

Any more progress?