F-5E Aggressor

by Steven St James

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This is the Monogram F-5E High Tech!) version of the kit in 1/48 scale.

Additions to the kit were the Black Box cockpit, which in itself is a kit. The Two Bobs Decal sheet, a Cutting Edge radome and lex conversion and some photo etch.

I started by scribing the kit. The method I prefer is label-matic tape, varying templates from Hasegawa and Verlinden. A tritool scriber for straight lines and for circles and shapes, the trusty needle in a pinvise.

The hot section of the aircraft is sort of wide open for possibilities, so I took 'em. I found 2 plastic tubes, fitted them into the burner cans and used the photo etch burner parts in the back to give the cans some depth. I don't know if it's accurate (when do I ever know??) but I liked the look.

After attaching the radome and wing extensions, I noticed that they didn't match up exact, so I over-built the areas with magi-sculpt and then sanded until everything matched up. Once I was satisfied with this, I re-scribed the area.
I'd taken the tailplanes off of the kit so that I could make sure all of the seams were sanded away and drilled little holes in the fuselage to accept brass rods I'd put into the tails. I wasn't sure if these are moving surfaces on the real aircraft so I glued them back to the kit in the same position I'd removed them.

The painting started with flat black overall (again) and then I followed up with Gunze colors.

To begin with, I shot the entire aircraft again, this time with gloss brown, then, I went over it with the same browns used on the Israeli fighters (the numbers escape me now). First I used the dark brown, but since it was lighter than the gloss brown, I was able to get the pre-shaded look that I like.

Then, I used Tamiya masking tape to cover the areas I wanted dark, then I shot the lighter sand color. Once finished, I removed the tape and got the results that you see.

The rest is pretty simple. The lights were Tamiya clear red and green over gloss white and the two lights on the wings were chrome sequins that I used and puched out little disks for the top and the bottoms of the wings. Once glued on with some white glue, I painted them red and green as well.

I'm sure I left plenty out, but this is about all my tired brain can remember.

Enjoy the shots!!

 

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Model and Images Copyright 2004 by Steven St James
Page Created 26 August, 2004
Last Updated 26 August, 2004

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