In-flight F-22 Aggressor, Italeri's Raptor (1/72)

[mchoo2005]

Hi all... Last week, I decided to start my 1st build for 2011... As I was staring at my stash (only have, literally, a bit more than a handful), I was mulling over whether I should build an Su-47, F-14 Jolly Rogers, or one of the two Raptors I have (an Italeri and a Revell). I ended up picking up the Italeri Raptor. I bought this Italeri rendition AFTER the Revell one, with express intention to build it as an aggressor bird.

EDIT: Here's a fictional background...
------- Start: What if/Fictional Background -------
With the US economy still in downward spiral, with no recovery in sight, the military is under pressure from Congress to dramatically cut their operational cost. One of the first victims was the 65th Aggressor squadron. The politicians simply could not see the reason for maintaining a dedicated "training" squadron. The Air Force senior generals refused to completely lose the capability, so they came up with the idea of integrating Aggressor capability into all operational squadrons. This provides them with the benefit of still maintaining the Aggressor training capability during peace time, as well as being able to deploy the Aggressor birds during war time as "deep penetrator".

The first operational squadron to receive this multi-purpose bird was the 1st Fighter Wing based at Langley operating F-22A Raptor.

------- End: What if/Fictional Background -------


At this stage, I'm planning to use TwoBobs' Blue Fox Bandits decals. Yes... Yes... those decals are for F-16 aggressor. But, I don't care. It is a fictional bird after all. Considering F-22s are supposed to be F-15's successors, I suppose a more plausible what-if is to use 65AGRS sqn decals, but I ain't got those.

As far as colour scheme goes, I have two options below:


At the moment, I'm leaning more towards T-50's colour, since I'm planning to use the Flanker's one on the Su-47 when I get around to building it. Does anyone know the FS number used for this scheme?

Just like the 1st Italeri Raptor I built almost 2 years ago, the part I hated the most was joining the two halves of the top fuselage.


I used the left main gear well for the domed nut that I'll use to mount the plane on a cheap camera tripod. I used Milliput to hold the domed nut in place.


I closed up all the missile bays, except for the Sidewinder bay on the left side. I'm planning to display the plane about to fire an inert Sidewinder.

[mchoo2005]

Another tricky part with Italeri's Raptor is the aileron. I used combination of Tamiya cement and Tamiya Basic Putty to hold the aileron in place, positioned just the way I want them....


I then proceeded with gluing the top fuselage to the bottom part (rear), which presented another challenge. Due to the size of the plane, I find joining top and bottom fuselage halves is always a challenge, no matter the manufacturer. I encountered similar issue with Revell's Raptor that I built 7-8 months ago. I decided to use a different tact, by gluing middle of the fuselage first and let it dry, which is the current state of the model.



I noticed a slight gap on the wingtips, as pictured below. There seems to be some kind of "stray plastic" inside that prevented the wingtips to join perfectly. I made a mistake of not dry fitting first this time. Does anyone know of the best (and easiest) way to fix this? I'm worried that Tamiya Basic Putty may not cut it.

[Maverick]

There are FS numbers available for the 'Arctic Flanker' scheme that the F-16s wear, although any FS numbers for a genuine Russian machine would be approximates as the Russians don't use the Federal Standard.

Nifty idea tho, in fact PhilP from here asked me to do a profile in just such a scheme back in 08.

Regards,

Mav

[mchoo2005]

There are FS numbers available for the 'Arctic Flanker' scheme that the F-16s wear, although any FS numbers for a genuine Russian machine would be approximates as the Russians don't use the Federal Standard.

I'm only after an approximation really. In my eyes, the grey appears to be fairly close to FS35237 albeit these look a bit lighter. I'm hoping someone on this forum knows of a better match (preferrably in either Gunze's Aqueous Hobby range, Tamiya acrylic, or Lifecolor).

As far as Arctic Flanker colour goes, IMHO, this "new" scheme I want to use is nothing like Arctic Flanker. I've got TwoBobs Blue Fox Bandits decal sheet that has 3 different "Flanker" schemes (Blue, Arctic, and Lizard).

Nifty idea tho, in fact PhilP from here asked me to do a profile in just such a scheme back in 08.

Cool. So... did you do one? Mind sharing?

[Maverick]

I agree totally, the PAK-FA scheme is world's apart from the Arctic Flanker.  If you have a chat to Redstar72 on here, he might be able to help with the colour callouts.  He's from Minsk and an absolute goldmine of info on all things Russian & a top bloke to boot!

Also, here's the F-22 I did for Phil.  If you're interested, this is also a link to my Photobucket page.

http://s150.photobucket.com/albums/s101/Maverick65au/

Regards,

Mav

[Taiidantomcat]

Very nice progress so far and I am looking forward to seeing more 

[mchoo2005]

Dude! The Raptor profile is wicked! 

[mchoo2005]

Just a quick update...... A couple of pics of the current state of the Raptor... Been busy these past few days cleaning up unwanted/unused crap around the house, re-arranging the study, and whatnot.....

[Maverick]

Thanks for that Mchoo.  The profile was well received when I did it back in the day. 

I like the Alaskan aggressor scheme, I think it looks really different compared to most of the colour schemes out there.  Both the Russian colours look nice, although I'm not a huge fan of the splinter, preferring the curved edges instead.

Out of curiosity, what scale is the F-22 you're building?  I'm assuming 48th, given the open flank bays?

Regards,

Mav

[mchoo2005]

I like the Alaskan aggressor scheme, I think it looks really different compared to most of the colour schemes out there.  Both the Russian colours look nice, although I'm not a huge fan of the splinter, preferring the curved edges instead.

Well, I do like the curved edged camos too. I'm not a real huge fan of splinter scheme either, except for these ones.

Out of curiosity, what scale is the F-22 you're building?  I'm assuming 48th, given the open flank bays?

72nd actually. I only build 72nd scale models, due to limited space. A bit hard on the eyes, though. 

[Taiidantomcat]

Looking very nice 

[Maverick]

Ah, now I see it in the title, my bad.

Good to see that Italeri have added detail like that.  Given the aircraft's internal weapon carriage, there's nothing worse than a kit that's a 'plain Jane'.  From memory, the earlier Dragon (& Airfix too?) kits suffered from only the centreline weapon bays being open.

I'm a 72nd scaler too.  Used to build quarter scale when I was in the service, but my ex-wife soon put a stop to that once I got out, lol.  Went out & bought a B-52D just to spite her!

Regards,

Mav

[mchoo2005]

Good to see that Italeri have added detail like that.  Given the aircraft's internal weapon carriage, there's nothing worse than a kit that's a 'plain Jane'.  From memory, the earlier Dragon (& Airfix too?) kits suffered from only the centreline weapon bays being open.

Have never seen Dragon and/or Airfix Raptors before. The only companies that made F-22 Raptors that I know of are: Hobby Boss, Italeri, Academy, Hasegawa (only 1/48), Fujimi, and Revell.
This is my 2nd 1/72 Italeri Raptor. Built the 1st one almost 2 years ago as wheels down and all weapon bays opened.
Speaking of "plain Jane" planes, I heard the Tamiya/Italeri X-35 JSF (VTOL) is one such kit, with all weapon bays molded shut (well, no weapon bays, really).

I'm a 72nd scaler too.  Used to build quarter scale when I was in the service, but my ex-wife soon put a stop to that once I got out, lol.  Went out & bought a B-52D just to spite her!

hahahaha! Initially, my wife was complaining a bit about this new hobby of mine (started just over 2 years ago). But I just ignored her. She got the message and stopped complaining after a little while. 

A B-52D? What scale? Even at 72nd, I'd imagine it would've been easily 60cm long? I was a little tempted to build a B-1 Lancer, but looking at the sheer size of it..... I decided to file that away as more of a "fantasy". 

[Maverick]

The Airfix -22 was a YF-22 (I think the Dragon Kit was also).  Both were 72nd, but very basic from everything I've read.  I read the the X-35 was built with moulded bay doors, which is a bugger when building any kind of 'stealth' aircraft.

The -52D was the old Monogram kit in 72nd.  Quite a vast beastie to be sure.  I've still got it (in various pieces) as plenty of moves have seen it suffer over the years.  It had opening bomb-bays (back from the day when moving parts were the in thing), but the bays only had plain interiors with a roof moulded with some bomb-shapes (supposed to be M117s I'd guess) in place.  Quite ordinary really.

I always thought the B-1 looked like a wicked build.  There was a full loadout of ALCMs if I recall correctly but I don't know if the bomb-bays were poseable.  It would certainly be a beauty either way.  There was even a 48th kit of it (by Monogram too I think).  That would be vast, although the corker would have to be (in mainstream injection at least at the moment) the B-36.  I remember a boxing of it back in the 70s with the phrase "The largest plastic model kit in the world" added to the boxtop!

Regards,

Mav

[mchoo2005]

I've been doing LOTS of putty-sand-putty-sand-putty-sand-putty-sand-putty-sand-putty-sand.... Un-freakin'-believable!!! I don't know what the heck happened with me. Barely 6 months ago, I wouldn't have bothered doing so much puttying and sanding. I finally decided that I've done enough puttying and sanding mid last week.

With so much puttying and sanding, some of the panel lines naturally disappeared. At first, I wanted to simply left 'em, but decided to try rescribing for once..... Well, all I can say is I've done the best I could...  

And, oh, along the way, managed to break the port aileron!!! DARN IT!       Good thing I managed to somehow glue it back.

Sprayed a thin coat of primer (Tamiya Fine Primer - Light Grey), realised I bloody missed another section where the front and rear top fuselage joins... MORE PUTTYING AND SANDING!!!  

Anywhoooo.... Last weekend, I started painting this beastie.... Now... for the colour, I decided to do something different here. Rather than the standard 2 shades of grey and white, I thought I'd put some blue tint into each colour. So, some weeks back (probably 2.5 weeks ago), I spent countless hours mixing different shades of grey and blue to try to come up with something that *I think* somewhat believable.

Here's what I decided to use:
- Light grey: LifeColor UA026 (FS36375), tinted with a few drops of Gunze's Aqueous Hobby H322 (Phthalocyanine Blue)
- Dark grey: 3 parts of Gunze H317 (FS36231) + 1 part of Gunze's H322
- White: LifeColor LC51 FS17925 (Gloss White) tinted with a little Tamiya Sky Blue




The bottom part was actually sprayed with Gunze's Gloss White (H1) by mistake. I'll need to respray a thin coat of the tinted white a bit later.

In case anyone is wondering, I was using a template that I created myself.