I’m taking a break from working on the F-4 I’m modeling to work on its weapons. I’ve spent two or so hours on the four Sidewinder and four Sparrow missiles, and their pylons. That’s just clean-up and paint. I hope to finish painting them tonight or tomorrow. I’ll probably spend about the same amount of time on the six bombs. And yet another two to three hours on the two fuel tanks.
I’m doing a cursory job cleaning up the weapons. There’s sink marks all over them, and I don’t have the desire to spend even more time cleaning them up. One thing I may do is put a strip of Pactra tape – what I’m using to do the gold and black stripes on the missiles – over the ejector pin marks.
Anyway, that’s nine or so hours on the external stores alone. I suppose other folks could do it faster, but I’m still learning as I go. After that, I’ll start decaling, and then all that’s left is the landing gear.
Yay! The end is in sight!
How long does it take the rest of you to do the external stores on jet fighters?
I started on the Academy 1/32nd F-18C a few months ago, and decided to build all of the external stores first. After building, filling, sanding, and then painting and decaling, it took me almost a month to get them done (working almost every night!!). And I still haven’t finished some of the decals yet. I started to get annoyed at it. So, I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL!!! Sometimes, too much is WAY TOO MUCH!!! I think the next time that I build something with that much detail, I’ll build the plane first, then build the external stuff afterwards, whenever I feel like it. At least the plane will be finished and on a shelf for display. I can always add the external stuff later, huh?
Good luck on the F-4. Is it the 1/32nd Revell “MiG Killer”? If so, I have the same kit, unbuilt. Let us all know how it builds up.
I’m working on a Monogram 1/72 F-4J. There’s a great review of this kit here:
. http://m2reviews.cnsi.net/scotts/viet/mono72f4j.htm
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I’ve got Fox One decals for VMFA-333 – to depict the plane from a crew that got the only Marine air-air kills in Viet Nam.
So far, I’m pleased with the kit and pleased with the work I’m doing on it.
One thing I wish I had done was prime the missiles before I tried to paint them. I’ve primed other parts of the kit with Testors light grey spray enamel and then painted the aircraft colors with Testors MM Acryl paints. But, I thought I could skip the priming step for the small parts. I was wrong. The paint doesn’t adhere as well as when I prime. As a result, I don’t think I’ve saved any time by not priming. [:(]
It’s funny you should say that. It seems that the crew of the plane I’m modeling used all their stores getting 1.5 MiGs. :
. http://www.mca-marines.org/Gazette/sting.html
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If I really wanted to model the plane after that mission, however, I’d hit with a hammer and set it on fire. It was a SAM casualty. [;)]
