A couple of
years ago, I made my regular pilgrimage to the International Air Tattoo at RAF
Fairford, and this time I’d arranged to meet a couple of friends there. One of
them had never been to an airshow before, and was suitably impressed, especially
by the sound of the F-15 as it did its display. He’s often spoken about it
since, so as a 40th Birthday present for him, I decided to make him a
model of the plane that had stuck in his memory so well.
First question
was scale. I’d got a 1/32 Revell Eagle in the stash, but doubted whether
he’d ever have room to display it at about two feet long. I tried the 1/48,
but that was larger than I’d expected, so in the end I decided to attempt my
first fighter in 1/144th scale. I’d made bombers and airliners in
this scale before, but never a fighter, and when I opened the Revell box and saw
the small size of this project, I knew my friend would be able to display this
ANYWHERE…
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As for the
construction, there wasn’t a lot to it – the main fuselage halves had the
wings and stabilizers already moulded on, but the poor fit of the forward
fuselage to the main fuselage, and the fuselage halves between the trailing edge
of the wing and the leading edge of the stabilizer, necessitated some filling,
sanding and rescribing of the whole top surface. The most disappointing parts
were the undercarriage, as the oleo legs were so fragile and the wheels were
mismoulded to the extent that I couldn’t make a decent job of this bit. (If
you look closely, you’ll see that I actually put the nose strut in back to
front. Whoops.) There was no cockpit at all, this area being just a blank area
under the canopy. Still, I suppose really that the kit manufacturers consider
this scale to be mainly aimed at the younger modeller, being pocket money
priced.
The kit I had bought
had the “Tiger Meet” tail decals, but I decided to do away with these and
make up a fictitious set of tail codes with my friend’s initials as the
squadron code and his surname Gibbs approximated by the serial number, G1885. I
airbrushed the camo pattern with Tamiya acrylics, putting down the dark grey
first, then putting down blobs of Blu-Tak as masking material before
overspraying with the lighter grey. Alclad Aluminium was used on the tail area,
and Alclad Steel was used on the exhaust nozzles. A coat of Johnson’s, a black
pastel/water/soap wash in the panel lines, and a dullcoat to finish.
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Unfortunately,
the kit instructions made no mention of noseweight, and although the model stood
ok throughout the build, once I put the nozzles in place, the jet became a
tailsitter. I had to flatten some airgun pellets and stick them inside the
intakes, and it ONLY JUST balances now. Anyone building this kit, take note…noseweight!
I took some
photos of the finished article, and showed them to my friend, who had no idea I
was building it for him. I asked him to guess how big it was, and was gratified
when he guessed it to be the same size as my 1/32 scale F-16. I showed him the
picture of the plane next to a table fork, which surprised him somewhat. He
seemed happy enough with the finished article when I presented it to him, and
after all, what else can you get for the man who has everything? His own
personalized jet fighter, that’s what…
Dean
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