Kitty Hawk 1/48 Lockheed F-35B Lightning II - Work in progress
I knew I was going on a very bumpy ride with this kit. Plastic is very soft and a little brittle, full of ejection-pin marks and some weird panel lines. A lot to clean and fix, just what we need for this already complicated plane in itself.
Black dog add-ons really are stunning. The kitty hawk bays are not that great in detail, but this is going to be hell to paint.
Eduard photo-etch sets are a must to improve the cockpit, even the Tamiya (seatbelts as decals? what are they thinking?)
the resin parts have different holes for the door hinges, I have to cover some holes and open new ones. Great.
side by side comparison on what holes should be moved
Fixed, now let's wait further in the build so the doors don't fit or something.
Resin fitting is not great at all. Trimming is needed, but at least it fits with the engine and ducts.
First of many layers of white. This plane is very white, a lot of pieces need it.
cockpit with Eduard parts, the most enjoyable part so far
Taking Eduard colored piece as a reference to match a similar grey. some blue and red to give the violet hue.
The wings and the fuselage have both female pins to match. Brilliant engineering.
Wing and fuselage sit on female pins. I guess I will just remove them and see if I can come up with a decent alignment.
Wing fit, lesbian style
For ladder access, I have to remove the door. The ladder in photo-etch is nice, but looks like an after-thought, because I would be much better engineered if the ladder access was already open, then let the user close it if he wants by cementing the door.
Ladder was easier than thought, the brass is actually quite resistant and folds nicely. At least that sprue is of good quality.
Adding dozens of photo-etch parts into all pieces before another white paint round
The cockpit is starting to look good, but dashboard fit was not trivial.
The canopy is very basic, requires a lot of etch parts. This is a nightmare to work with, a lot of pieces and bad fits. Hasegawa has a way better system, where you assemble everything in plastic, then cement the transparent part. It's not that complicated to engineer.
Eduard seatbelts look great. Painted with Tamiya rubber black, as it gives a matt colour I like a lot, more than pure black.
Dashboard was badly fit, dry fitting didn't work, so I had to remove it and trim down the dashboard so it fits closer to the seat.
Landing gear with Eduard PE parts, the wires are a nice addition.
using perfect plastic putty to erase a little the awful seams from all control surfaces. Can't eliminate fully the seam, or I will lose RAM panel detail.
Spacing out temperature probes
Adding stretched sprues for that spiked look
this was 1h30m, just put some glue, stick a bunch of sprues, cut, repeat
Stratch building to improve the nozzle, reusing some leftovers from sprues that I am not using
Wiring comes from lead wire. Different photos have different components and wiring is confusing, so I am just going along with whatever I feel like
Adding plastic putty to fill out gaps
Titanium color from AK looks exactly like the colour I was looking for the fans, engine, ladder, exhausts and landing gear
Adding panel liner, but the detail makes it very hard to clean it. I had to spray white again to dim the effect.
Wiring painted red, yellow and aluminium. This does the work. At least much better than the original plain one.
It was a very tight fit, with high probability of not fitting in the end. I thinned a little the tube, but it just too hard to work with, specially with the nozzle petals breaking while you move.
To put the petals again, I just glue them to a vinyl mask and glue them back. Not perfect but it does the work. The nozzle is far from immaculate, but I got what I paid for - a bumpy ride.
Technique is: have a brush with paint, and a brush with the thinner to erase the mistake. There will be a lot, but just do a round of black / white / other until you are fed up, or you are just destroying more than fixing. I went with tubes as black, wires as copper, braces as yellow.
the black dog resin is too thick, and doesn't fit. I had to dismantle and remove material from it (filing, with a mask, and outside - it is recommended to not breathe resin dust, same as sawdust, it irritates your lungs)
Fitting is getting better, but I had to remove material until it was just barely in there. At least I do not have to worry about the wheel bay popping out of its place
Adding the ducts, and checking what will go wrong. The shaft is too short, and doesn't fit the fan. Some basic trimming and extending with more spruce did the trick.
The lift fan looks great in PE part and AK xtreme metal titanium. So far the best part of the build, along with cockpit.
Starting with the nose, and closing carefully. A lot of dry fit, to prevent surprises
Surprises just came, but not Kitty Hawk's fault. Resin parts for bay doors are in the way, had do use a dremel to make way.
While closing the nose, now the fan grid doesn't fit. The solution was to shorten the lift fan so the grid fits. My dremel was an unexpected life saver
going slowly edge by edge to close the frame, as my trust in good fits is very low now
Engine didn't fit properly, but all I had to do was to enlarge the alignment holes so I can have the nozzle properly aligned. It will be stuck on vtol mode anyway.
Getting crazy with masking, decided it would be better to paintbrush the RAM panels close to the doors, then I will airbrush a new layer and avoid the doors.
The TopNotch masks are going to be a great help. I couldn't imagine myself doing this kit without them...
...but they are not that good. Sometimes thicker, in some cases with the wrong shape, I believe it wouldn't hurt for them to use them on a real kit and do adjustments to the print cutter file.
Now this is really bad, as the shape of the masks dents is completely different from the piece dents. At this point, I just do not have energy to fix every mask bit.
In these situations, better cut with a tiny scissor and overlap the edges
Finished. We all love masking, right? right? The masking vinyl made it to almost 5 hours. Can't imagine how much time I needed with masking tape. Yet, the masks do not fit great, so do expect lines outside the reliefs, a lot.
Base color is XF-20, adding X-1 to get the main color: 5:1 ratio is too dark, went for a 11:1 ratio (50 drops of XF-20, 5 drops of X-1), and got a nice neutral medium grey.
Masks are incomplete, so you have to do your own in several places. I thought Tamiya was insane on having RAM panels as decals, but now I kind of embrace the idea.
Making the cockpit sensors that are missing from the decal sheets.
Adding a lead wire to make the bay door hinge.
All the leftover pieces for the final assembly, with decals and a varnish coat
Canopy went through a lot: glue marks, bad paint job and PE part glue, a lot of filing and sanding to hide the mistakes. Botched jobv that is partially saved by canopy clear coat. Nozzle doesn't look very metal-ish on the picture, could have a better metal shine.
I saved pitots for last, as I know I would just knock them out. Added a sprue and a hole to make the connection tighter.
Komentarzy
24 3 May 2023, 07:49
Robert PodkońskiSubassembly on the photo #2 looks like some Star Wars movie creation 😉
3 May 2023, 08:44
Gary VictoryReally nice work on only what i can say is a pig of a kit.
I have the version 2.0 kit, I set the fuselage 3 times and im still convinced that mine has some sort of twist going on and a short shot around the tail area has the two half's didn't match in length on one side....!!??? Currently its a shelve queen gathering dust. So my main advice is just test fit test fit test fit.
Good luck with the rest of your build. 👍
5 May 2023, 06:48
Never a Proyes @gary, this is all nice and cute until I will try to close it shut with the engine, lift fan, shaft, air intakes, and 4 add-on resin parts. I am close to that painful time, so all luck wishes are welcome.
5 May 2023, 08:54
bughunterYou said below a pic: " checking what will go wrong." So the question here is not whether something doesn't fit, but where is it stuck? Respect for so much perseverance! 👍
8 May 2023, 05:38
Never a ProBuild is finished. Final pictures in Lockheed F-35B Lightning II | Album by NeverAPro (1:48)
18 May 2023, 08:44
