I also filed down to size the fences near the wing tips as they are suppose to be smaller.
Canopy
After Alex showed me the Hawk MK 53 that he had (Alex's kit was posted on ARC subsequently). I decided to pose my hawk canopy in the open position too.
By some insane inspiration, must have been the superglue fumes, I decided that
gluing the canopy with white glue is not a safe method to guard against being knocked off during handling or transportation. So I had to dream up this idea about attaching the canopy using some stronger and safer method !
From my references, the Hawk 100 canopy hinges on 3 points for closing and opening and tension is maintained by some kind of leaf spring mechanism along the canopy rail. I marked out the 2 extreme positions of the hinge on the fuselage and route out 2 groove using my motor tool.
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Next I filled up the groove with milliput. I also embedded 2 small brass rod in order to get a hole that I can insert the canopy pin later on. |
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After the milliput had dried, I made a inverted 'U' shape from brass rod over the holes created earlier. The brass rod used is the same ones used to mold the hole. This will simulate the leaf spring mechanism. |
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Next I turn my attention to the canopy. After marking out the correct position, I cut out 2 small groove on the side of the canopy using my hobby saw. To get the correct thickness I fitted 2 saw blade on the saw. The end result is a groove on the canopy that fits the brass rod nicely. |
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Next I removed the 'left spring' and attach it to the canopy with a tiny drop of superglue along the length of the brass part. When this has dried, what I have is a canopy that has 2 brass pin sticking out by the side so that I can insert them to the cockpit side. This makes the canopy removable during transportation. |
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You should not try this at home folks, unless you are sufficiently intoxicated with superglue fumes and have taken a swipe or two of Mr colour Thinner ! LOL :-P The worst that could happen is the canopy might get cracked or the groove might go too deep and cut thru to the cockpit, needing some major repair. Lucky for me none of that happen to me and you
don't even know its there !
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Final bits and pieces
After the episode with the canopy, I proceeded to the other external bits n pieces. The small fins or 'smurfs' ahead of the horizontal stabs are added. It is on the thick side and the size is out. So I trimmed and sanded it down to scale before attaching it. It has the same problem of big-hole-small-peg but I glue it so that the oversized hole is not visible from the top and fill-n-wipe the resulting gaps on the bottom where it will not be too visible.
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The belly fins pose a slight problem as it does not have any tab or peg to align for attachment. What
I got is just two faint lines marking out the correct position on the kit fuselage. So I
just tacked them using a small amount of cement to get the correct position, adjusting along the way if necessary. After I'm satisfied with the position, I applied more cement to fix it. To add strength, I added thin pieces of stretched sprue from the parts tree to bud up the joint on both sides of the fin. From the pictures you can see the added thin
sprue.
While waiting for the other stuff to dry, I made and installed the blanking plates for the FLIR and range finder on the nose using thin sheet copper as depicted by the references I have.
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I also made the AOA and pitot from stretched styrene and install them on the front fuselage.
The missile rail for the wing tips were also attached. Care must be taken to get a good alignment with the centerline of the fuselage. I also decided to discard the provided drop tank to the spares box and arm the underwing pylon with the 2 extra AIM-9 using the extra launchers provided. The other small parts like antennas are also attached at this point. I also went ahead to drill out the end of the AIM-9s to simulate the exhaust.
Mask and Paint
Masking then starts in preparation for painting. I masked the canopies using thin graphic tape. They are those commonly used for making printed circuit boards or graphic works and is available in various size of from 2 or 3mm. |
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Personally I think the thin graphic tape is the best when masking curves and sharp edges. After masking the edges, I filled in the center portion with liquid mask. This saves time and is very efficient. |
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At this time I attached the front windscreen to the cockpit and masked the cockpit using
Tamiya tape.
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After the liquid masking have dried, I primed the whole kit and all the other smaller parts using Gunze Mr surfacer 1000.
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I left the primer to dry and came back the following weekend to continue with the painting. Having used the washing and other panel lining method, I thought of trying the pre-shading method that I have read about so often on this kit. So I loaded up my airbrush with some
dark grey and went ahead with some pre-shading along all the panel lines on the main fuselage, horizontal stabs and the gun pod . |
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I used the pictures and pattern provided by Alex and those found in the April
issue of Scale Aircraft Modelling to finalise the camo pattern. There are some minor variation to the pattern depicted in SAM when compared to the pictures I got. I decided to go with Alex's pictures and pattern.
I sprayed the bottom of the kit with FS36622 Light Grey, taking care to not paint out the pre-shaded lines. I found out the best way is to start spraying from the center of panels and work towards the panel lines, then stop spraying when you reach near the panel lines but continue with the motion. The overspray when you stop will blend with the pre-shading nicely to get a taint of darker shade near the panel lines. Use misting at further distance later to blend in lines that are still too dark. The effect is not too obvious from my pictures but trust me its there.
The effect is more apparent on the gunpod.
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The camo colours on the top are FS34079 Forest Green, FS34102 Light Green and FS30219 Tan. The paints I used for paining are Mr Colour lacquer paints that I thin with Mr Colour thinner. To lighten the paint for scale effect I thinned the paints with light grey FS36622 in the ratio of 1:3.
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The camo pattern were airbrushed on using a Aztech A740 with a fine tip from the light to darker colours. During spraying of the camo pattern, I could not maintain the pre-shading effect so all the pre-shading on the panel lines were all covered up. I think the traditional washing and panel-lining method is more suitable for multiple/dark colour patterns and pre-shading has a better result on single colour background. However it may be due to my inexperience with this method, I intend to try it out again in another project.
To prepare for decaling, I sprayed on several thin layers of Mr Colour clear coat. After that has dried, I enhanced the panel lines using 0.1mm technical pen, wiping off excess using cotton buds. |
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