Australia
is the only country other than the USA to operate the F-111, and is currently
the only country operating these aircraft. These are due to be replaced in 2010
by Super Hornets.
In
1/144th scale we aren't exactly spoiled for choice with F-111 kits. There's the
old Arii kit, which is just about decent, and the even older Crown kit, which is
not so decent. I got hold of a Revell re-boxing of the Arii kit, and I realised
right away that there would be a lot of work involved to bring the kit up to
speed. To make an RAAF version I found a decal set by Novascale (Aussie
Decals sold via eBay) which covered 1 and 6 Squadron F-111s. I also obtained a
few resin detail sets from OzMods.
Work
started with the intakes. On the real aircraft these look like quarter circles.
On the kit they look far too square, and were fused to the fuselage. I went
about trying to re-shape them and separate them from the fuselage.
The
kit has no suggestion of a cockpit, not even an opening in the fuselage. I used
a resin cockpit tub from OzMods and added a few things like joysticks and
panels. This was glued in place after cutting an opening for it. An opening for
the nose gear bay also had to be cut.
After
comparing the model with some scale plans (never a good idea) I found that the
nose was too short by about 4mm, which is kind of a big deal in this scale. To
lengthen it I cut the nose in two places and inserted some sandwiched plastic
card. I also had to add some card around the top of the nose to build it up to
the windscreen. I found the end result to look much more "Aardvark-ish".
Considerable filling and sanding was required to fit the forward fuselage to the
rear without a visible join.
Once
the two halves were joined I took the opportunity to rescribe many of the panel
lines on the upper surface and around the nose. Many prominent lines were either
misplaced or missing. I also scribed the in flight refuelling receptacle
door.
Click on
images below to see larger images
My
attention turned to the rear of the aircraft. The afterburner cans that come
with the kit aren't great. They come in two parts, forward and rear. I discarded
the rear part and made new ones from plastic tubing and foil for the petal
pattern. I thinned down the forward part so that light would show between the
two parts when stuck together.
I
also found that the burner cans were located too far back on the kit, causing
them to protrude beyond the horizontal stabilisers. To remedy this I cut about
3mm from the rear fuselage and ground about 2mm from the back of the burner
cans. All this meant I needed to do a lot of filling and sanding to neaten up
the rear fuselage. Chaff/flare dispensers were made from stretched sprue and
added under the horizontal stabilisers, and the kit ventral fins were
replace with plastic card to make them look more in scale. In order to add the
tail bumper in the correct location, the bump that runs underneath the aircraft
between the engines needed to be extended by about 1cm.
For
the main landing gear I used the kit struts and wheels. However the wheels
lacked any hub detail, so I drilled out the hubs and replaced them with some
taken from a 1/72 Humvee. For the nose gear I extended the kit vertical strut,
and cut the diagonal strut from plastic card. The nose wheels are nose wheels
from Revell's 1/144 Hornet. The pylons which came with the kit were the wrong
shape and lacked detail. I re-shaped them and added a few panel lines.
Australian
F-111s all had extended wings. The kit came with the shorter wings, so I used
replacement resin wings from OzMods. These appear to be copies of the kit parts
with wingtip extensions, so they fitted just as well as the kit parts.
Painting
was fairly straight forward. Currently all F-111s are overall gunship grey
(FS36118) with black noses. I used Gunze H305 and some Gunze metallic
colours for the afterburner cans and surrounding area.
The
decals are fantastic, as well as basic squadron markings and national insignia,
the set comes with wing walk markings and loads of stencils. The decals are ALPS
printed, so some care is require when applying them. The position lights were
from the spares box. I applied a wash using Pro Modeller Dark Weathering Wash
and sealed the everything with a semi matte coat.
Last
of all I added the antennas under the nose and on the spine. I also put in some
intake covers to hide the lack of detail in the intakes.
This
kit took longer than usual to complete, but I feel the extra work was well worth
it.
Christopher Cooper
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images below to see larger images
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