I am trying to decide whether to just leave these Hasegawa GBU-12’s for my F-15E all green or make them more realistic by painting the sections between the front fins in a brownish color like they are in real life like the picture below.
The only problem is that there are nine of these bombs on this aircraft and if I paint them this way then I am going to have to mask 36 areas before painting which is a daunting task to say the least. [:0]
Do you think they look a lot better with this brown stripe area or would you just leave them all green?
mike, if you are like me, you want the thing to look as close to the real thing as possible and that your skill level will allow you to do. you are right, that would be a major undertaking, and you already know if you are willing to do it or not. i wouldn’t start it if i didn’t have the patience to finish. it seems that you’ve been working on the ordinance package for sometime now, how much ordinance can one bird carry?!! just skip it mike, i’m ready to see it finished!!![:P] have fun, later.
Could you just make a mask from Frisket or something like that? Something that would be reusable and keep you from having to mask each one individually?
Or, maybe find some decal paper and print a section in brown. Then just cut out pieces the proper size for each bomb.
I don’t know Scott.
I am considering using a moveable mask and holding it on the edges of the brown color and spraying the camo green color around the mask leaving the brown underneath.
It would have to be awful small though. [(-D]
IT’s hard to tell from the picture, but that looks like about an 18" stripe judging from the size of the girl. At 1/48 that would be roughly 3/8" so it wouldn’t be that small. Certainly nothing for a master like you!
Well I tried it and it worked fairly well. I have to touch up some of them with the MM Leather enamel that I used again as I was not precise enough with using the hand-held mask. What I did was sprayed the whole fin area with the Leather MM enamel and after it was dry I held the bomb in the double alligator clamp holder I have. I then held the strip of styrene you see in the picture over the leather colored area as I sprayed Green Drab MM Acryl over it covering the areas that should be green again. The strip I used in the photo is Evergreen .010" sheet strips that I cut 1/8" wide with an X-acto and a straight edge. It was easier than masking them all. [;)]
Shows how well I keep up with things. All I know is that McD first built the F-15. For all I know Microsoft is building them now [^]
I know how it is, Mike. I had great plans all week about working on my F-105 all weekend. So far I’ve spent about 4 hours on it because I just haven’t been in the mood.
Edit … OK, so you were right and they are owned by Boeing now [bow] I did find a very good reference area on their site. The link is: http://www.mdc.com/companyoffices/gallery/flash.html
and the F-15 page is especially good.
I saw that guy’s build and it looks silly if you ask me.
The color between the fins in the picture I posted is not even close to Alclad copper.
It is a brown color which designates a low explosive device or a gas generator which moves the fins of the missile.
Here is what I was told over at the F-15E Strike Eagle Forum:
A blue band means that particular section of the weapon is inert, not necessarily the whole thing. For instance the missiles fired at WSEP have a blue band on the warcranium, because it has been replaced by a telemetry unit, but a brown band on the rocket motor, since that is still live. A yellow band means that section contains high explosive, invariably the warcranium. A brown band means that section contains low explosive like a rocket motor or a gas generator (for moving the fins on an LGB).
