Rising Squall: Aegis 2

Daniel
Shotgun!
And cheers from a fellow dcs infected (though I havent tried this particular campaign)

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Parts of the assembly are done and today I painted the landing gear bays.
Today something strange happened.

While painting Tamiya X-2 White I saw something like bubbles forming on the sprayed paint.
You can see it on pictures 9 and 10.
Does anybody have an idea how this can happen? Did I use too much paint drying retarder? (Which is my best guess) Or was the coat too wet or both?
I can't give any ratios, but I used X-2, isopropylalcohol for thinning and Tamiya acrylic paint drying retarder.

Maybe I can fix this somehow. Luckily it's hidden in the gear bays...

Decal sheet is still WIP. I placed some of the decals twice to have a spare one, should I make a mistake. Decals for other projects are placed as well because I'd like to use the complete sheet of waterslide decal paper.

S M
Decal sheet looks very cool. The roses looks just like in the game images. Are you using transparent decal paper? How are you going to manage the white parts of the decals?

Slavo Hazucha
Woohoo, I better check in here very quickly!

Cool project and start - decals look excellent too 👍 Very much looking forward to this taking pace!

Pics 9-10 look like some Alien-acid spilled over those parts, highly interesting... Never had anything like that, closest was spraying over details where some water/cleaning liquid (water + glass cleaner or similar) was still hidden in the recesses and brought out by the airflow, but it never got so large/consistent.

Bruce Huxtable
Really nice inspirational piccies, WhiteGlint 🙂 That reaction is very weird - it is only on the flat areas, so is there something different there? Bet you can't do it twice! 😉

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Welcome aboard, mates. 🙂

Cheers, Daniel. The campaign was quite fun. As I am not a hardcore sim pilot and just want to have some fun while still keeping the simulation aspects it was the right campaign for me. The missions were simple in a way that there were no complicated procedures but you still had to know some stuff about the Hornet. Dialogue and setting were very anime/Ace Combat which I love a lot.
Though flying jets is a lot of fun and I am hyped for the Eurofighter, I feel like I am more of a whirlybird pilot. (Ka-50)
But maybe that's because I still totally suck at BVR engangements 😄

@S M: Thanks! I am using transparent decal paper. To be honest, everything that is white is a huge headache to me as your normal printers don't print any white.
Right now I am thinking about making some fitting masks and paint the white myself before applying the decals. The downside is that making mistakes is absolutely not an option that way. As an alternative I am looking for a company that would print it for me on decal paper.
I considered buying white decal paper as well but then I also need to do very precise cuts. The OADF roundels for example are too small for my circle cutter. Maybe I need to buy one that can cut smaller circles.

The decals wouldn't be possible without the help of a friend of mine. He does stuff like that for a living and knows how to use photoshop and he "redrew", for the lack of a better term, the tail art and most of the other decals on the sheet. Thanks, buddy.

Thanks Slavo and Bruce. Until now it didn't happen anywhere else. Not in the main gear bays either, which I sprayed a bit later because I forgot them at first. Hopefully it doesn't happen again on this kit.

wilky
I've been getting bubbles in my Tamiya rattle can paint.
It's really annoying me.
I don't know why it's happening either

Robert Podkoński
Watching of course 😉

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Welcome wilky and Robert.
Yeah, strange stuff happening with Tamiya paints. Didn't use spray cans that often. Which reminds me I need to order some Tamiya clear in a can.
It's nice for spraying decal paper.

Progress report:
I painted the engines and the cockpit. I am happy with the result of the front dashboard, not so happy with the rest of the cockpit.
For the MFD I used Tamiya Clear Green and went rather heavy with it.
Parts of the fuselage have been put together and the leading edge slats have been installed.

There a lot of gaps I need to fill and sand on this bird. Let's see how this goes...
The canopy also needs some sanding and polishing to get rid of the seamline.

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Main colours applied. While it looks really nice I think that I didn't choose the correct colours to represent the aircraft from the game. The grey on the upper side of the aircraft seems to be a bit too dark. Maybe some gloss coat will help change its look.
But I am quite happy with the marbling effect I have achieved at this stage.

Nozzles and stabilizers are only dryfitted to see how it looks. I will fix them after decals, weathering and so on are done.
I also began painting the missiles and bombs. The aircraft will be armed with some two AGM-88, two AIM-9L, two Mk.82 and one larger JDAM.

The decal sheet still had some free space but I couldn't wait and printed them already. As it is transparent I need to mask white areas correctly and paint them myself 😭

Welcome Roland, nice to have you aboard.

Robin (WhiteGlint)
I painted some of the details on the aircraft, like the gun port (is there some special name for this?) on the nose as well as engine detail in some metal colours.
The ordnance is currently WIP and that will probably the last time I am painting missiles and bombs with my brush. I can't get a nice result. The brush strokes are always too visible.

The bombs will recieve some weathering to hide a bit of my bad brush skills. I've seen some pictures of Mk.82 bombs and it looks like they are not always that clean.
Maybe I'll have to repaint the AIM-9L again (a third time) as they are too blue and not grey enough. I think they look a bit too much like the training version of the Sidewinder.
HARMs and Sparrows are okay, I think.

The landing gear recieved some simple detailing in form of some painted wire.
I have also realized that the scale of some of my decals is wrong. The text "SECURITY" for example is far too big. I'll either reprint some of the decals or i'll have to cut myself a mask and spray it on directly.

Robin (WhiteGlint)
First decal session is done.
I was a bit anxious about the decals, especially about the ones for the tail. It paid off that I placed some of them twice on the sheet, as two ripped while I was placing them on the model.

Even though I was very generous with the clear coat some of the paint chipped off while I was using a cotton swab to remove the excess water.
Red chipped off very easily, it was okay with the other colours most of the time. I decided to keep it that way and will try to make the most out of it as some weathering will follow anyways.

While it is far from being perfect, I am really happy with the result so far. 🙂

Jos Jansen
Looks promising...how's the fitting?

James C
Looking good 👍

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Thanks guys.
Jos, the fitting is okay for the most part. But I had some huge gaps under the chines (?) near the cockpit. Some filling and sanding was needed where the fueslage halves joined to together, especially near the elevators. And I had to use some putty under the wings where they join the fuselage.

The cockpit is a bit of a letdown. There are no decals included and to make it look really nice aftermarket stuff is necessary or one has to be good enught with the brush, which I am not (yet).

Can't say much about accuracy. It is a bit different than the Hornet used in DCS but I can live with that.

Jos Jansen
Okay, thx mate...one of my next projects will be a F/A-18 from VX-30 Bloodhounds. I'm not sure if I'm going to use the Hobby boss or Kinetic kit?

WIP - US Navy | F/A-18A Hornet VX-30 BLOODHOUNDS | Album by Banshee13 (1:48)

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Hmm.. hard to tell, sorry Jos.
While the HB kit is nice on details I don't know if they are on scale or maybe not overdone or the like. The HB kit's cockpit is a bit short on details, but I see you already got some aftermarket stuff.
Though it does not have that many parts, be prepared to use putty and styrene to fill some gaps.
And, what I realized only later, the intakes are empty, no fans for the engines.

Can't say anything about the kinetic one. But based on your photos it looks a bit more refined and the details seem to be more true to scale.

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Almost done.
I just realized that I forgot to paint the control surfaces of the tail in black. Sadly, I already glued them on the airframe, so some extensive masking will be necessary to protect the rest from overspray. I will use NATO Black because I think it is not too dark.

As stuff like that always happens to me, I damaged the large red decal on the left wing, even though I applied some clear coats over it.
In hindsight I maybe could have painted those with my airbrush, but I would not be able to get the same red as it is on the tail marking.

Before applying the last clear coats, I'll maybe try to hide it under some more oil streaks. Not sure yet.

Pictures of the finished aircraft will follow soon.

Slavo Hazucha
Oils are a great way to make previous mishaps appear as intentional artistic mastery... speaking from experience here 😉

You'll push it through the finish line & will look great (+ bonus points for cool topic). Looking forward to the reveal!

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Because even looking at this model seems to break or rip something off, I'd better call it finished...
One landing gear door and one AIM-7 broke off, while I tried to handle this jet. Sometimes I think the super glue works better with everything else but painted plastic. Some of the decals still have a very visible shine to them but at this point the fear to make it worse is too big to keep tinkering with this kit.

Masking tape wouldn't do the job, as it began pulling of the decals when I tested it on the stabilizer. I damaged another two decals. 🙁
Hence I had to use the good old paintbrush to paint the black. While my brush skills really suck it wasn't that bad, the colour's dark enought that brush strokes are not that obvious (I think).

It was an interesting project and while I still lack a lot of skill and sometimes patience, it was still a lot of fun. 👍
This one's the first 1:48 scale modern aircraft I built and I begin to see the appeal of this scale for this kind of topics. Sadly this things are so huge I don't know where to display them. It is a bit easier with 1:72 scale jets or 1:48 WW2 planes.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen for your interest.
Now it's time to finish the Mirage tank and start with the Zero GB.

S M
Well done finishing this👍 Not everything went well, but next time will be better. The decals looked great, but some seemed maybe too thick and there was silvering on them. Some parts like the center fuselage seems good but the wings are obtrusive imo.

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Thank you S M.
Yes, it is far from perfect and the silvering is quite heavy on some of them. A lot of room for improvements. 🙂

It is a similar problem with the decals on the Mirage tank. Maybe I should use more Mark Fit next time, I was generous with the clear coats but I could not remove the silvering with it. It worked on my Seafang, though.