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1/48 Kinetic CF-5D Lizard air to ground scheme


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Welcome fellow Canucks, and Canuckofiles (just made that term up).

I have about 10 different subjects I could build, but I thought I'd start with a Kinetic CF-5 Dual. Back in the day, when I was a student fighter pilot in Cold Lake (1985 to 1987), I flew about 200 hours in various CF-5s. I loved the colour schemes. This one, the "lizard", was one of my favourites. I will be building another of the same model, but in the "grape" scheme, at some point later in the GB.

 

The Kinetic kit is a bit challenging, but in the right hands it is the very best representation of an F-5A/B model available. There are some minor things missing in the instructions, and some care must be taken, but overall it is easy to come up with a good CF-5. The kit is also great for making an NF-5 (Netherlands) model. Before, the Classic Airframes kit was the best option, apart from Fujimi, but both had real problems (poor cockpit detail in Fujimi, and atrocious fit for some parts of the Classic Airframes).

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I didn't take a lot of pics of the cockpit build portion. It is pretty straightforward. Here are the air intakes. Just like the real thing, they are long and tiny. The CF-5 was very prone to compressor stalls in manoeuvring flight. High angle of attack, a bit of a nose slice (yaw), and "pop" you just lost an engine. Make sure you do some dry-fitting; they only fit together one way.

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Two things about this drawing. First, they say to assemble the front fuselage halves, then the rear fuselage halves, then glue front to back. The first F-5A I built, I did this... big mistake. Huge gaps. What I do now is I glue the front and rear sides together, then glue the two long halves together, like most other kits. This avoids all sorts of fit problems. Second thing, the little PE part mystifies me. I'm not sure where it goes, so I left it off. I think it goes at the front of the windscreen, but it looks OK without to me. We'll see at the end if the fit of the windscreen is good or not.

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And now, we are ready to glue left and right long halves together.

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More soon. Looking forward to browsing the other threads in this GB. Canadian subjects are my absolute favourites.

ALF

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On 12/07/2017 at 6:07 PM, phantom said:

Your doing it right. It will fit much better this way.

As long as you don't ask me too much about how I knew to do it this way... :rolleyes:

 

I built up the ladders while waiting for the glue to dry on the fuselage fore/aft sections.

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Nice touch to have these in this kit.

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Kinetic is making very nice kits, but they are not so great at making instructions for them. Here is a very good example. Notice that there is nowhere in the instructions to add the aft portion of the fuselages, right in front of the nozzles.

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These parts, which I hunted around for, are the required ones.

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Here, in the assembled fuselage halves, I have not yet attached the little aft fuselage parts.

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Makes it easier to clamp this part while gluing the fuselage halves. I planned it this way... :sunrevolves:

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For those who do not know the F-5A/B very well, there is an option to use parts 9 and 10 or 7 and 8 on the side fuselage, just aft of the wings. Parts 9 and 10 (doors closed) are the right ones for almost every circumstance. These are the "engine doors", which can be manually opened by the pilot to allow air to flow into the engine intakes at slow speeds. Yes, the engine intakes are WAY back there, behind the wings. The little J85 jet engines in these birds are very similar to the engine in the Tutor jet trainer. The Tutor's J85 is a slightly different variant, with 2,700 lbs of static thrust. The CF-5's have 3,000 lbs of static thrust each, and go to 4,300 lbs in afterburner. The aircraft itself weighs around 12,500 to 16,000 lbs or so, depending on the load-out, so it has poor thrust for a fighter.

The only time these doors would be open is prior to takeoff, or on approach. The post-landing check includes closing these doors. You will never see one parked with the doors open, unless they were forgotten, or deliberately opened by maintenance for whatever reason. I built one of these kits (CF-5A) with the pilot inside, engines running, and doors open with flaps down for takeoff.

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More soon. Thanks for stopping by.

ALF

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Have a good look to ensure you are using the right parts for fuselage bottom, etc. There are a few options in this kit for different variants. Frankly, to me, they are all close enough. (he ducks for cover as the purists rain down scorn)

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I did some dry-fitting of the intake outside portions. One mistake I made was to install the fore and aft canopy supports at the cockpit build stage. These parts can be left off until the very end; I recommend that, so they don't get broken off during assembly. Both parts are easy to install after the fuselage is buttoned up.

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Next were the wings. The Leading Edge flaps are supposed to droop very slightly when parked, power off. I estimate about 2, maybe 3 degrees droop. The way the aircraft works is interesting. The flaps are "pre-loaded" (sucked in hard to the wing) when in the UP position, but when LE (leading edge) or DN (down) is selected, the leading edge flaps will droop to their normal angle of around 15 degrees or so. When power is off, the tension is released from the leading edge flaps, and they will move slightly forward and droop, thus relieving some structural load when parked, I guess.

Normal on-ground: All controls neutral, with slightly drooped leading edge flaps

Take-off: LE flaps down, Trailing Edge flaps at half, everything else neutral (maybe a slight nose-up stabilizer tilt of about 4 degrees, from foggy memory)

Approach/Landing: LE flaps down, TE flaps full, everything else neutral

 

This is where Kinetic's instructions fail again. Look closely at parts B11 and B12 (TE flaps and aileron on one side). The drawing is quite accurate; there are four locator tabs on each, with two at one angle and two at another angle on each control surface. When putting the flaps or ailerons up, chop off the angled tabs, and vice versa when putting them down. I forgot about this little detail when doing the LE flaps, and they are slightly bowed as a result along their length.

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Dry-fitting; see the bowing due to leaving all 4 tabs in place for the leading edge flaps. Doh!

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More dry-fitting. Install the fuselage intake covers before gluing the wings in place.

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Outside intake covers installed. Be careful to line them up properly with the rest of the fuselage skin.

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Wings installed. Pylons going into place. I have given the ailerons a slight offset, which sometimes happens if the aileron trim is not centred when hydraulics are shut down.

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Time to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather (for a change).

ALF

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One thing I love about this kit is how the wheels and rims are separate entities. It makes it much easier to get a nice crisp line between the black and silver.

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Of course, I leave the wheels and tires off until the end of the process. The landing gear on the CF-5 is quite robust. More so than the T-38. It also sits quite wide. 

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I filled a few gaps, then sprayed the Tamiya light grey primer, followed by Modelmaster Radome Tan. This will be the "lizard" scheme.

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While waiting for things to dry, I worked on the seats.

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First iteration of the green colour. Oops. Looks too dark, and there are a few other "issues" going on with it... :crying:

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I am currently catching up to the present with this thread - real life has kept me quite busy. I know how this story ends, but I will keep you in suspense. Here are the 3 colours I used the first go around (not the right combination quite yet):

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More later!

ALF

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Before I reveal what colours I eventually chose, I will mention that I initially tried some "buff" from Tamiya. WAY too dark.

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This is the mess I had to deal with, the green still too dark.

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As I mulled over what green to use, I cleaned things up somewhat. Rooting through my jars of paint, I found this one (Sky), which I then darkened up by adding about 25% of the original medium Vietnam Green that I had used.

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I like the colours a bit more!

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More tomorrow.

ALF

 

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Something I should have done earlier. This is a link to an older build of a CF-5A from Kinetic in 1/48. I mention lots of little tricks in it, so for those who have not yet built this kit, you may glean something from it.

ALF

 

:rolleyes:

Edited by ALF18
Forgot to add link at first...
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For configuration, I decided to go with an air to ground training load. Two underwing tanks (Station 85 tanks is what they were called, because the inboard wing pylons were 85 inches from the centreline of the aircraft). Tip tanks (CF-5s, especially duals, need every drop of fuel they can get!). Centreline-mounted SUU-20 practice bomb dispenser. We used to drop BDU (dummy bomb units) that would give little puffs of smoke where they landed, on training missions. This allowed us to see if our bombs hit anywhere near the simulated targets on the tactical range (CLAWR).

Here is the practice bomb dispenser. It has 4 tubes for rockets (CRV-7), but on the CF-5 we never used the rockets in this dispenser. The smoke from the rockets was thick enough, and the engines were fickle enough, that there was a high percentage chance of engine failure if firing rockets from the centreline. We therefore used 4-tube rocket launchers mounted on the outboard pylon on one side, but I couldn't find a small enough tube for the rocket launcher. The kit comes with full-size LAU-5003 rocket launchers, with 19 rocket tubes, but those are too large diameter for the smaller launchers.

Another interesting fact is that the external tanks were often mixed and matched between camo schemes at 419 Squadron. I have even heard from reliable sources (Scooby?) that the techs did it on purpose... That's why I am doing these tanks in the silver lacquer colour from the standard training scheme for a Dual.

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On the home stretch soon. Decals applied, and paint cleaned up a bit.

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More soon.

ALF

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Last update on progress. One thing I failed to mention earlier, is to have a good look at references for the nosewheel scissors. The Dual and Single are reversed; I wouldn't trust the instructions from Kinetic to get this one right. The good news is both types of scissors (forward and rear facing) are included in the kit.

 

Here I have dull coated everything after the decals. Time for last paint and finish details. I have added the little red areas on the canopy bow between front and rear seats. This is to warn you not to put your fingers there when closing canopies.

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See the little bump ahead of the 419 moose? This is the anti-collision light, which needs to be painted red.

Not done yet in this pic.

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Strange thing about this kit. The navigation lights on the front of the tip tanks are moulded with regular plastic, and not provided as clear. I used silver pen on them to provide the undercoat for the light...

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Then I used permanent marker to make it look like a light.

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From a normal viewing distance the red and green lights look more natural.

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This little puppy is done.

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Here it is beside a Classic Airframes silver Dual I built years ago.

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Thanks for following along! Next up, a true Canada 150 machine.

ALF

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On 19/07/2017 at 7:10 PM, RCAFFAN said:

Didn't you forget to paint the coaming over the instrument panel black?.....Looks good otherwise.

Oops. Good point. I was just going with the overall grey of the remainder of the cockpit, and was in a hurry to finish. I might try to sneak a brush in there under the windscreen - or not.

ALF

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20 hours ago, Grandboof said:

Nice co;our scheme  

Martin H

Thanks! My favourite. The Grape is my second-favourite. Waiting for Lucky Model to ship me the cockpit PE before I start it, though.

ALF

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  • 2 weeks later...

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