JASDF F-2 Cobra Zero

[Mossie]

Nice, I've got a Hornet lined up for camouflage and a F-18L conversion would work well for it. Watching this closely. 

[PolluxDeltaSeven]

Finally back at it. Had a week long conference and then a week to get rid of all the conference germs I brought back. 🤒

So since I'm basing this on the F-18L I wanted to have the "land-based" landing gear. There aren't many good pictures I could find of the gear from the mockups Northrop did. From what I could find just using the gear from the F-2 wasn't quite right so I hit the spares and the 3D printer to come up with something that I think looks close. I also found a 3D print of the F-18 pylon and since the F-18L had 3 per wing I printed a couple to add. Hopefully get some paint on her this week.

Do you only change the front landing gear, or also the main landing gears?
If so, I wonder how you will attach them to the fuselage?

I was facing the same problem with my own JASDF F-18L. The "real life" projected F-18L wasn't supposed to carry Sparrow under fuselage (only pods), giving it more simple wheel well. Well, more simple IRL, but more complicated when you want to convert a 1/72 kit ! 

I didn't feel like rebuilding this part of the kit (at least without a 3D printer), so for the moment I just put into the story the fact that naval main gears could be useful for forward deployment on remote islands 
But I'm still looking for a solution 

[HarryPhishnuts]

Do you only change the front landing gear, or also the main landing gears?
If so, I wonder how you will attach them to the fuselage?

so for the main gear I'm using the main gear from a F-4 cut down a bit. The trick was needing to get the front gear and main gears the right hight so it sits level. Looks close to the little bits I can see in some of the pictures I've found. I know they ditched the gear design of the F/A-18 for a more traditional cantilever type, but it's really just a guess on my part at this point. The F-18L mockup also shows the main gear doors open differently but I'm not working that in because I really don't have any good pictures to go off of.

I am keeping the missiles on the fuselage, actually going to use AAM-4s. Again I'm going with this is the JASDF's interpretation of the F-18L so some creative licensing on my part. The real F-2 is supposed to have a secondary anti-air role so I figure that makes sense.

The tricky part now is I need to create some paint masks for the ocean camo scheme. Usually I'd do that stuff freehand or use panzer putty but the look symmetrical left to right so need to find a way to pull that off.

[PolluxDeltaSeven]

Do you only change the front landing gear, or also the main landing gears?
If so, I wonder how you will attach them to the fuselage?

so for the main gear I'm using the main gear from a F-4 cut down a bit. The trick was needing to get the front gear and main gears the right hight so it sits level. Looks close to the little bits I can see in some of the pictures I've found. I know they ditched the gear design of the F/A-18 for a more traditional cantilever type, but it's really just a guess on my part at this point. The F-18L mockup also shows the main gear doors open differently but I'm not working that in because I really don't have any good pictures to go off of.

I am keeping the missiles on the fuselage, actually going to use AAM-4s. Again I'm going with this is the JASDF's interpretation of the F-18L so some creative licensing on my part. The real F-2 is supposed to have a secondary anti-air role so I figure that makes sense.

The tricky part now is I need to create some paint masks for the ocean camo scheme. Usually I'd do that stuff freehand or use panzer putty but the look symmetrical left to right so need to find a way to pull that off.

I see we face the same problems ! 

For the moment, I'm taking a F-15 front landing gear, and keep the F/A-18 main landing gear. Without good pictures of the F-18L undercarriage, I'm not ready to try heavier work on it.
But I love your idea of F-4 gears !

For the AAM, I'm still hesitating. AAM-4 on the fuselage and/or wingtips are logical choice (and I have this beautiful Hasegawa JASDF Weapon kit that waits for years in my stash!), but I just LOVE the look of the Sparrow on the wingtips of the F-18L. As real life F-2 do carry Sparrow IIRC, why not !

As for the painting, Ocean Camo Scheme is beautiful, but not that simple to apply (well, at least with handbrush and spray can). Are you using airbrush ?

[HarryPhishnuts]

Ok she's getting there. Had to come up with my best guess for the lighter blue but I think it looks close enough. If I had been smart I'd put down the darker color first as it would have made cutting stencils out much easier. In the end I just used panzer putty to get a pattern that looked good enough to me.

For the loading I'm going to use AAM-3 and AAM-4 as well as ASM-3 (btw those were a pain in the donkey to put together). However I can't decide whether to paint them as blue training missiles or white/grey live rounds. I've still got gears and such to finish so I can leave that for later.

[DogfighterZen]

[HarryPhishnuts]

As for the painting, Ocean Camo Scheme is beautiful, but not that simple to apply (well, at least with handbrush and spray can). Are you using airbrush ?

So I'm airbrushing it, the biggest problem with that Ocean Camo is it's actually symmetric left to right. I tried using transfer paper to create a stencils but since I put the lighter blue down first it was a "negative" stencil which just didn't really work right. In the end I fell back to using panzer putty and just trying to get things close enough 

[kerick]

Well it looks great to me! Carry on!

[PolluxDeltaSeven]

As for the painting, Ocean Camo Scheme is beautiful, but not that simple to apply (well, at least with handbrush and spray can). Are you using airbrush ?

So I'm airbrushing it, the biggest problem with that Ocean Camo is it's actually symmetric left to right. I tried using transfer paper to create a stencils but since I put the lighter blue down first it was a "negative" stencil which just didn't really work right. In the end I fell back to using panzer putty and just trying to get things close enough 

Honestly, I never noticed it is a symmetric camo, but now I understand the difficulty !

But your result is great, really ! And as it is a what-if, we can imagine plenty of stories to justify that this F-2 is different from the IRL F-2 

Personaly, I don't have airbrush. I wanted to use spray cans but can't find the appropriate colors for this specific camo (that's why my almost finished model stays in the shelf for almost two years now).
But seeing your build is motivating me to finish mine too ! Maybe I'll go for one of the F-15J splinter camos, so it would be both doable by hand brushing, and different from your own built.


Can't wait to see you finished model !!

[HarryPhishnuts]

Personaly, I don't have airbrush. I wanted to use spray cans but can't find the appropriate colors for this specific camo (that's why my almost finished model stays in the shelf for almost two years now).
But seeing your build is motivating me to finish mine too ! Maybe I'll go for one of the F-15J splinter camos, so it would be both doable by hand brushing, and different from your own built.

I had to play around with a mix of colors for the lighter blue and finally settled on 3:1 Vallejo Air Intermediate Blue and their standard blue. Looked close enough for me. Splinter camo would be cool, I've seen pictures of some of the USN F-18 aggressors in different splinter schemes and let's face it, most any of the JASDF schemes are gorgeous.

[HarryPhishnuts]

So just thought I'd post an update. It seems I always hit some kind of stall at about this point of the build. Paint and decals came out nice. Not really weathering too much as most picture of JASDF plane are pretty immaculate. When I started fitting the main gear I realized it wasn't really working. I was trying to use the main gear from a F-4 however that gave a really narrow stance that just didn't seem realistic. Looking at the F-18L photos and those for the YF-17 the gear angle out slightly to give it a wider stance. So rummaging through the spares didn't really come up with a solution so trying to come up with a 3D print for the main gear.  On vacation next week so probably another couple weeks to wrap this one up.

[NARSES2]

She really suits that scheme 

[Gondor]

She really suits that scheme 

That scheme suits almost anything. Nice build.

Gondor

[kerick]

There's always the wheels up option.

[HarryPhishnuts]

Ok she's finally done. Overall pretty happy with how it came out. I ended up having to come up with my own main gear design and 3D print it. After some trial and error I finally got something that worked. Actually the Hasagawa weapons gave me the biggest problem. You have to glue all the fins on the anti-ship missiles with almost no guide slots to speak of. 

I've always had a fascination with the F-18L, ever since seeing mockups of it in aviation magazines back in the early 80s as a kid. Kept thinking that may have been what the USAF would have ended up with if it had selected the YF-17. This gave me the chance to build that out and play with the idea a bit.

Now I just need to decide if I want to do some nice simple OOB kit next  or go ahead and dive into the second half of this project with the Vought 1600 (aka Navy F-16).