YF-117 FSD "Ship One", 18 June 1981

780 during one if it's first flights - the camo only lasted a few months before it was painted light grey. 

Box states "Accurate New Tooling": certainly it's much more better than Dragon's first attempt! 

Always helpful to have good references. 

Not many parts! 

First step - weights added so it'll sit on the nosewheel. No cyano here! 

After dry-fitting and slight adjustments, fuselage halves were joined. 

The five FSD aircraft had smaller tailfins, later replaced with the larger production items to provide better stability and control authority.

Cut here! ? 

Of course I cut the left one too short (should have done this operation before attaching them!!), so had to re-attach the tip and file to correct size. 

Like this. 

There was a "pilot" blob in the seat which I removed and also added left & right consoles plus an instrument panel. 

This is the FLIR cover which I scribed beautifully but then put in in such a secure location I wasn't able to find it after painting ? 

Needed to drill for the 5th air data sensor which the FSD aircraft all had.  

After a lot of research and trial & error I decided on Light Ghost Grey overall with AV Flanker Blue/Middle Stone for the camo colours. 

......like this. 

Panel lines done with my recently discovered AK-Interactive weathering pencils 

The dullcoat after decals of Pledge/Klear with 25% AV Matt Acrylic 518 wasn't so convincing, so after curing I used some weathering pigments to try and bring the gloss back. Still not 100% satisfied, but that's why I'm building these 1/144 kits - to try various techniques. 

Last step was to add the 2 retractable antenna clearly visible on most F-117's. A donor 1/48 seatbelt was pressed into service. 

Like this; also added the removeable collision avoidance light. 

Finished!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's the earlier F-117 kit from Dragon, plus the prior F-119 invention from Revell for comparison. 

That early F-117 kit is wildly inaccurate!!