Loaded for Bear - F-35B in Beast Mode
Landing gears are the bane of my existence - fiddling with the struts, praying they end up right and trying to glue them after they are painted only to have the paint strip off is a pain - so I pre-assembled the gears prior to painting. This way, the struts are perfectly aligned and positioned for final assembly into their respective slots.
The Hasegawa nozzle is well engineered to twist for whatever flight mode you want. Tip for making the parts move smoothly is to use the airbrush needle lubricant.
As I noted earlier, the kit is almost Bandai-level idiot proof…
Lift fan
Cockpit in place
I tested out five combinations of Have Glass paint to get this one right. The AK Real Colors was a waste of $$ - too brown. In the end, I settled for the Gunze C37 + AK Extreme Metals Polished Aluminum blend
Priming
I wanted to give this kit a bit of a pre-shade, but most of this was covered up when I had to fine tune the color.
C37 + AK Xtreme Aluminum in a 3:1 ratio is what worked best for me. Mr Leveler was added to the mix @ 50-50 ratio
no F-35 is complete without masking
One downside to the kit was the lack of details on the GBU decals - so you will need to print or buy a set to make it more realistic
The newer color on the left was more realistic than the original F-35A using MMP
MMP would have been excellent - had it not been for the pronounced purple tint
Final comparison
the canopy was tinted with a mix of X-19 and X-24 using a 5:1 ratio. This was thinned to 50% with X20A thinner. I think a 4:1 may be better given the golden tint on the actual F-35s.
Wheel cables and heat staining on the nozzle flaps
This was a really enjoyable kit for the 1:72 scale. Availability of this kit in the US is a bit scarce, but definitely worth it.
Kommentarer
32 3 June, 03:18
CaptGPF
Thank you everyone for your likes. 😀
Harald. I put the two side by side to show the differences in the paint. It was an eye opener to see how there was so much variation on such a color!
Giannis, I used X-19 + X-24 using a 5:1 ratio. Perhaps a 4:1 would have worked better. I'll note this in the pictures for reference.
RichardL from this forum deserves the credit for the Have Glass mixture I based the new build off of - arcforums.com/forums..70-who-got-it-right/
Thank you everyone for your likes. 😀
Harald. I put the two side by side to show the differences in the paint. It was an eye opener to see how there was so much variation on such a color!
Giannis, I used X-19 + X-24 using a 5:1 ratio. Perhaps a 4:1 would have worked better. I'll note this in the pictures for reference.
RichardL from this forum deserves the credit for the Have Glass mixture I based the new build off of - arcforums.com/forums..70-who-got-it-right/
3 June, 15:49