1/144 PLA NAVY J-10C

by newca

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  People's Republic of China National Day 

 

It all began 4 years ago. There was not many pics and details about the J-10 that the moment, but when I saw some blurry images on the Internet of this new beautiful Chinese fighter, I just couldn't help telling myself, I must have one---model of coz. As you know, only Trumpeter released it in 72 scale years ago, and I happened to have a unbuilt 1/144 F-16XL on hand, so I decided to start from zero.  

I almost calculate the size of J-10 all by guess, once again, I don't have any information about the real jet back in 2002, so my progress is rather slow, that's why it took me so many years to finish it...Luckily I found one photo showing a J-10 side by side of a J-7(MiG-21F13) then, so the basic frame is easier to create, and I'm more lucky that by the year 2005 I put my scratch building beside a Trumpeter J-10 kit, it just looks half size of the injection kit! 

First step the fuselage, I cut off the F-16XL wings, and make canard wings, main wings and tail wings from plastic cards, then use card board to build belly air intake. I kept the original F-16XL canopy for the J-10, the cockpit has one pilot figure inside, the scale is 1/144 so I think it looks ok without making other details. 

Since more and more data of real J-10 have been discovered in recent years, I decide to make it a little bit different. This is a "What-if" article actually, I added an arrestor hook to make it a shipborn version, landing gear was modified from 1/144 F/A-18C. IRST, LANTIRN like system and wing tip missile rail are also my personal taste :) 

For the weapon load out, the PL-8/SD-10 missiles are also scratch build, antiship missile is based on the ARII 1/144 weapon set, drop tank was taken from a 1/144 MiG-29 kit. I buried pegs on the missiles and drop tank, so no glue was needed to put them under the wings. Also, the landing gear structures are also interchangeable, to simulate flying and station status. Canard is movable. 

Tamiya and Gunze spray cans were used, and I drew some lines by pencil, it's too hard for me to scribe so many lines by knife on such a little plane kit with complex curved body. And I managed to stick ARII 1/144 weapon set stencil on it, but the decals just keep falling from where they should be, so I give up, keep the fuselage blank until I got custom Low-vis Chinese Navy decal from my friend Garfield maybe next year...

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The most painful step to me is dealing with putty over the fuselage, especially wing root. Cos I don't have modern plastic kits modeling technics but only experience making wood kits decade ago. Time and time again I want to quit after failing to set putty correctly, with countless try and support from my family and friends, the project survived.

Great thanks to all those helped me, and Happy birthday China! 

Thanks for watching my poor technics of building and shooting.

newca

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Photos and text © by newca