1/72 Academy F-22

Gallery Article by Kin Wong on Aug 11 2011

 

Hello to all the modelers. This time I bring you my new Academy 1:72 F-22. This is a new kit, I bought it in Feb-2011.  Started building in Feb. & finished it at the end of Jun.

 

Since it is a new kit, it looks simple, so I tried building OOB.  Open box, you can find a very nice kit, comes with cartograf decals.  It looks great!  But quickly I found some problems; first I try to find out the color numbers, they show in very small fonts, maybe this is in 1:72 scale.  Inside color instructions were also not clear.  So I found out instruction sheets from Hasegawa.  All color information follows Hasegawa’s instructions.

 

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First two steps have no problem.

Step 3 needs some attention. May need some putty.

Step 5 is the air intakes. But I do not know why they make big holes in the floor.  They look funny, so I used plastic card to fill up the big holes, they needed a lot sanding. After installing the air takes inside, I then glued the upper & lower fuselage.  There still was a large gap between the intakes.  Sanding, masking & painting… this is the hard point!

 

You also must paint the weapons bays, wheel bays first. After you masked them, before you paint the fuselage.  

 

The exhaust area also needed me to pay attention, needing sanding & paint first. & I needed ref color information. 

If you choose to open the weapon bays, you need to sand a lot of pin marks 

Over all this is a nice kit, but you need to pay more attention when you start.  I had some mistakes on this F-22, I hope I can have a chance build one more…

Kin Wong

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Photos and text © by Kin Wong