Yso

I have been watching the JASDF eagles for some time on the internet, and seeing how cool they are, decided to make some of them to my collection. First of all, this anniversary scheme was a winner. So for first attempt, i tried to get a decal sheet about this plane. Sadly no decals are available. Or if man can find one, the price for it is horrifiing. So i deciced to get some use from my graphics knowledge, and try to make a sheet of my own. Looked at lots of pictures on the net, and draw the mayority of it already on my computer. Some days or weeks, and the pre prints will come out from m

Finished.

After finishing the missiles, it was just sitting on my shelf for a long time. But every time i was looking at it (among the others), i had a feeling it is missing something. It has closed canopy, no opened panels, no small red or other colored thingies hanging from it, representing a parking plane, or something. So i decided, to get a fresh start, and trying to make a little diorama with it (for the first time of my life). So i looked through my modelling stash, and schratched some covers etc. This is how turned out. (Have to make a cable connection from the helmet hanging on the pitot tube,

THX spang. It will be not mine. It will be a birthday present for my wife's grandfather. :D

THX, building this kit is not an easy task, but manageable. Have to do a lot of modifications, to get it in to a decent looking model.

At last, it is finishecd. I made a lots of little mistakes, but the result is satisfactory.

THX Silenoz. Yes i was using the salt technic to achive this effect. Used some lighter gray colors and heavy diluted white, than made a new mask with salt, and paintbrushed some darker gray and black. Then added some light coat with the base colors. After this used some pastel chalks to finalize the effect. The underside needs more dirt. I agree. :) Later i intended to return to that section.

At the final stretch. The antennas, open canopy sections, and the landing gear is needed. Ok, and some more dirt on the underside, some exhaust fumes, and so on.But now i can see the light at the tunnel's end.. Really. :)

THX spang. After a lot of sanding and filling, plus some coat of mr. surfacer it looks like this. Oh and not to mention the paneling and riveting work. (In some places i made mistakes, but i leave them for now...)

Hmmm. Nice legs.. I mean landing gear... :D :D

THX! Plus a little progress report. The canopy is molded in one piece, so i sawed it into pieces, to be able to build it in an open position. The moveable pieces will be replaced with some vacuformed ones, because the pieces cutted out are badly fit, and look odd if i just put them onto the fixed ones. Along with this, the propeller's axis was replaced with a piece of a needle, and some small stuff was glued into place. Only the landing gear's pieces are resting on their sprues. ( But not for long. ) Hope you will like it.

Before the first layer of primer. There are tons of putty applied already, and i am afraid, more to come later.

Congrats on this build. Flawless as always. Can hardly wait for the F-15 build. Maybe i can learn some new things for my future Eagle builds.

If you have to schribe exact curves, or "impossible" shapes (what cannot be done with schribing templates or a simple rudder), you can make your own templates from a sheet of plastic. After doing this template, you can use a needle to schribe the surface instead of a scriber. (With the needle you can only make shallow passes, but after doing 3-4-5-7-8 times, the result will be satisfiing. :)/> ) This is what i was doing to my F-14 by my own templates. The wing has some slips too, but this line was more than a "komplex shape", with lots of curves to all direction. :)/> Plus this i

Looking good. I made some full reschribing in the past too on my models (Revell F-14, Testors F-14, Monogram F-8 Crusader etc...) If someone will take time to do it right, can make a huge upgrade to theese older model kits. (So to say, sometimes theese older kits have less shape issues than the new ones, and on the other hand the detailing is very poor on them. But this can be corrected by a talented modeller. :) )