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In 24 hours, VF-124 will be done


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Well, it has been a long long road. But, it looks like my VF-124 bird is finally at the end. Today, I need to get the canopy frame painted, along with the outer portions of the burner cans. The gear is done, but a couple of the gear doors need touchups to get rid of the pink spots that were the result of mistakes I made with the brush when putting on those red door edges (no major biggie). When she is done, I will post pictures of her (probably on Wednesday). I also need to go in with some metallic red and green to do the formation lights.

There were some research errors on the Eagle Strike decal sheet. If I had to do this over again, I probably would have acquired a Hasegawa sheet and used that instead as it looks like they got the stripe angles and widths right. I've been practically having to use my 1/72 Bicentennial Tomcat's placement instructions with my Academy kit as the Eagle Strike instructions just plain suck in spots (no starboard side view, too small top and bottom views). But, considering how late in the game my model is, I wasn't really too concerned with fixing the research errors all that much. Since I've only found a grand total of three pics of this bird (one I found digging through ARCs archives), I don't think anyone else will spot the errors anyway unless they worked on the bird when it was new almost 30 years ago. She looks like a hi-vis Bicentennial bird in all her glory though. I had very good luck with getting the nose band to fit over the radome. It fit perfectly on the top side and only required a little shimming on the bottom with extra stripe material with the VF-2 decal set.

Now, I have a couple questions. First of all, what color have you guys been using to represent A model burner cans? I am going with jet exhaust color, but I am wondering if I can do better then that. Brands available to me are Testors, Tamiya, some Floquil and maybe Alclad (although I have never used Alclad and would be leery of experimenting with it at this late date).

Secondly, since I am long past the deadline to send to Brian, it appears I am going to need to transport this bird myself. This will probably mean a car trip as chear airline tickets at this late stage are unlikely (maybe Southwest) and my current employment status also makes flying myself also not very likely due to the fuel bill involved and the usual crap shoot involving the weather. So, what are some good cheap hotels in the area that I can stay at? Or, might anyone be looking for a room mate? Thanks.

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For the A nozzles, I used gunmetal for the nozzles themselves, and magnesium for the shroud portion just forward of them. Testors metalizer. Don't know if something else would've been more accurate, but I was satisfied with the final result.

Daniel

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Yeah, for A nozzles I mix Model Master Steel, Jet Exhaust, and Aircraft Interior Black into a custom mix. Then I go back with the airbrush with the Aircraft Interior Black and streak all along the petal/panel lines and really "singe" the tips. You can see the results in my VF-102 build here.

Now, the burner CANS themselves, on the insides, are a dingy, burnt, ceramic off-white.

Edited by Andrew D. the Jolly Rogers guy
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Glad to hear your getting to the finish of you gunfighter build. Jeez, I left a lot of details like that off trying to send it off in time. But my build will look fine in the case anyway, I hope. :cheers:

Edited by tomcatter727
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Well, at this rate, it might not be until Thursday when it is done. The Future on the canopy took a long time to dry (all this because I'm trying to correct that overly thick frame lip on the front windscreen). But it is nice to know that there are more build days behind me then ahead of me.

Yup, this Cat certainly is a labor of love. There were many days (especially after John Bibay sent me some late 1980s VF-124 demo bird markings, like what I wanted to do in the first place) that I wanted to strip the gray over white off and go with a much easier to paint TPS scheme. Trying to get feathered edges on the gull gry and scallop it as well was pretty time consuming to do. Hi vis schemes are pretty to look at, but they add quite a difficulty factor into the model. If it were a line bird, I would have done it in flats, but the pics of the bicentennial bird showed it as being a relatively clean glossy bird (probably since it never saw a carrier trap in this paintjob). So that nixed that idea. When I clearcoat, I'll probably go with a 2/3rds gloss, 1/3rd flat mix to tone down the toy like brightness of the Tamiya gloss though as in this scale, it is possible to go a bit too glossy.

The pain is worth it though. :)

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