F-22A Airshow Display A/C
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December 11, 2022The canopy color has been subject of many discussions online; I studied quite a few and decided to apply a mix of 4 parts AV poly gloss varnish/1 part AV gold/1 part AV transparent yellow/ 1 part AV transparent smoke.2
December 11, 2022Plenty of ballast to both halves.3
December 11, 2022Main weapons bays are not bad, but comparing with pics of actual a/c I realised the intake ducts were missing.4
December 11, 2022Blu Tac to the rescue!5
December 11, 2022Added some ducting as well.6
December 11, 2022After painting, the bays will look more accurate - even if they won't be noticeable after the AIM-120's are fitted.7
December 11, 2022Nice engine details, again virtually invisible after the fuselage halves are joined. Base coat of AV gunmetal 71-072 followed by various AV Metal Colors.8
December 11, 2022You get the idea.9
December 11, 2022Generally I drill a hole through the exhaust to hold my models for spraying, but this wasn't really an option with this build. Fortunately, Trumpeter provides 2 seta of weapons bay doors (for open or closed options) so I used the "closed"doors and cut a section out so one of my trusty Wolfcraft clamps could hold the fuselage.10
December 11, 2022Here we are, canopy masked and opens covered off ready for spraying. By now we were into July and I decided to hold off on spraying until the apartment cooled back down after the summer.11
December 11, 2022With a bit of time now available, I decided to spend some extra time on finishing the missiles, starting by cleaning up the mould lines then drilling them all to simplify holding for painting.12
December 11, 2022Ready for the copper wire.13
December 11, 2022Missile, anyone?14
December 11, 2022By October the apartment had cooled down enough that I was ready to recommence spraying - In the meantime I also had been building the Tu-22M2, B-2A and Vickers Viscount kits up to the stage of spraying.
Here the F-22 has been primed with AV 71-615 then sprayed 71-275 medium gray overall. Leading/trailing edged were painted 71-046 pale blue-grey then 71-051 neutral gray applied to the leading edges.
A lot of trial and error with the gray/greys as the in-service aircraft have received lots of panel replacements/touch-ups.15
December 11, 2022The upper surface is ready for the camo panels and I thought to spray using masks.16
December 11, 2022Not too difficult to fabricate a reasonable mask, but I after trying on a cardboard template I wasn't confident of achieving the optimum paint viscosity/nozzle pressure.
After looking at the airshow pics of 09-4189 I had found online and seeing how the camo looks faded in many of them, I decided to try freehand.17
December 11, 2022I was satisfied with the result!
For this build, particularly because of the camo panels and for ease of spraying, I left final assembly of the vertical stabilisers and horizontal tails until after the decals were applied.18
December 11, 2022View showing the 4 grays I ended up using.
Apart from the overall color, the rest were applied by hand.19
December 11, 2022For the markings, I used a combination of the kit decals plus custom for the unit and a/c decals.
I wasn't able to match the grays as accurately as I had hoped but they were close enough for my display cabinet.20
December 11, 2022Here's the underside after final pledge clearcoat to seal the decals followed by AV satin acrylic varnish.21
December 11, 2022After removing the canopy masking I cleaned up with alcohol followed by a polish with Tamiya polishing compound (fine).22
December 11, 2022The undercarriage will benefit from some detailing in the future.23
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December 11, 2022
Kommentare
3 11 December 2022, 13:30
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Builds up to a pretty nice representation of an in-service F-22A.
Nicely detailed weapons bays which benefited from some added features.
Just need that yet-to-be released F-35 in this scale.