Evil Carrot's 1/48 Thunderflash

[EvilCarrot]

Hello everybody, this will be my entry for this build: Tanmodel's 1/48 RF-84F Thunderflash

[Lysus]

Really dig this kit. I'll need to get one some day.

[EvilCarrot]

Let's dooooooo it!


The seat on the kit is a bit basic and I couldn't find any aftermarket seat belts specifically for this kit. Quickboost has a resin seat but that's for a different version. After some research and a bit of help from the community I figured that the Quickboost seat for the Tamiya Thunderjet would be a pretty close match. (Though it does seem they forgot to put in a back cushion... ) I added the headrest and armor plate from the original kit. First time working with resin and I have to say it's easier than I thought it would be.


Added a little handle to the left armrest with some copper wire. Here it is painted up together with the instrument panel. The grey for the cockpit is Gunze H334 (Barley Grey) Seat cushion is a mix of two russian greens, seatbelts are Vallejo Dark yellow. Did a bit of drybrushing with one of the Vallejo metal colors and added a bit of brown Tamiya PLW on the seat. Doesn't look too good up close but it's passable from a distance. Need to work on those brushing skills.


Here's the cockpit installed. The same techniques I used on the seat were used for the entire cockpit, but there's also a bit of grey PLW in there. Entire cockpit was given a flat coat with Tamiya XF-86

[Tomcat64]

Very nice start on the cockpit - looking forward to seeing how this comes together

[DrSprue]

Wow awesome pit!! Very cool kit too Neil! Hope you get back to it soon. Count me in even if a bit late.

[RCehFFan]

Looking really good Seb. I will be following along with interest.

[EvilCarrot]

Hi there, been a while. Lots of new pics to show but I might split them into multiple posts.

Finished the Camera Bay, lots of fiddling to do here because there's not a lot of location tabs. The front camera mounts are rather fragile too. Other than than I think it looks rather nice, though not much of it can be seen when the fuselage halves are stuck together. I used a couple of different shades of grey based on the instructions and the reference material I could find and gave it all a dry brush with some aluminium. Camera lenses were masked using discs I punched out of masking tape.



The back end of the fuselage where the exhaust will be installed was done with Stynylrez/Ultimate black primer and Ushi VDR metallic powder.


And here's the fuselage with all the inner parts installed. No real fit problems here.


Before things could be closed up all of the camera windows needed to be installed. Again no major issues except for the bottom window, even after seriously thinning the edge on which it rests I still couldn't get it flush with the fuselage. I'm thinking of adding a few layers of Kristal Klear and polishing them but I'm not sure if that will work.



More coming soon

[EvilCarrot]

More stuff, yay!

So, getting to the intakes and the wings I have to say, engineering wise they are well thought out: you get the parts inside the fuselage right up to the intake fan and on the inside of the wing you get a two piece duct. I did, however, have some fit issues here.

Inner piece of the duct glued in place. I painted these beforehand but the paintwork was a little fragile and I had to do some sanding to get the wings to fit over them.


Here's the other side repainted, I decided to experiment a bit on this: This is AK True Metal Aluminium combined with Ushi VDR chrome powder.


There is a slight step going from the wings to the fuselage. I did some sanding on that but none of it is seen once the other part of the duct is in place.



By now you've seen the indentations in the fuselage where the wings are supposed to slot into. Once again a neat idea hampered slightly by the biggest problem I have with this kit: both the detail and the molding are rather crude.

Let's start with the little fins at the front of the intake, here's what they should look like:


Now I can understand it's hard to reproduce this in scale without the use of Photoetch, but I think they could've done a better job than this. The right part is unmodified, the left part has some sanding and filing done to it.


Here the right part is almost done and about as thin as I'm willing to risk


I also had to sand down the inside of the wing edges and the outside of the intake parts in order to get the wings to fully fit into the slots.


There, that's bett... oh s*** So now the slots for the little fin thingies are way to big and stand out like a sore thumb. The edge of the intakes is also visible, so more sanding and repainting.


I decided the best approach would be to fill the slots and shorten the fins.



There, much better! The thumb is gone!


Speed brakes put in place, I decided to keep them shut. Couple of gaps so I put some sprue goo near the edges. I think after some sanding I might not need to rescribe these. We'll see.


Speaking of rescribing, notice all this lovely panel line detail in the Instructions?


Here's what that looks like on the kit. Note that this was before I did any sanding.


To compensate for the missing panel lines they give you this nice extra mold line to sand away.


So, time to get out the scribers and have some fun! I tried doing some sanding first but that started to remove what little panel line detail there was left. So now the plan is to scribe in the panel lines first, based on the instructions and whatever is still visible on the fuselage, then sand and polish, and then rescribe again where necessary. Fun times!


I know I might seem a little harsh on Tanmodel with this only being their second kit but after seeing all those positive reviews I was a bit disappointed. Sure it's not all bad, engineering wise there's some great ideas in here. If only they had sorted out their molding problems before release this would have been a much better kit.

Anyways, that's it for now. Thank you for reading.

[DrSprue]

Wow Sebastian, nice job on reducing the width of the intake vents... its looking great!

[Tomcat64]

That's coming along really well - very nice work on sorting the intakes out.

[Lysus]

So much work...you're handling it like a champ!

[EvilCarrot]

Thanks guys! Bit burned out on this one atm but I might return to it later this week.

[EvilCarrot]

Small update, haven't got a lot to show because I haven't been taking enough pictures.

I mentioned in a previous post how the bottom window wasn't nicely flush with the bottom of the plane. I managed to more or less fix that with Micro Kristal Klear. It dried nicely leaving a nice clear window. It was then I discovered that the window didn't need to be flush and you were supposed to put in what I think is some kind of door mechanism that covers the window... So I pulled the Krystal Klear back out and glued the fatherless person shut.



The previous and the following picture show some of the scribing and rivetting I had to do. The shiny surface is because I put TET over it to soften the edges of the panel lines and river holes.



I put down some Ultimate primer to see the result and I had to re-rescribe several lines, I pretty much gave up on the re-rivetting. Did a bit more of that on the top which also had some panel lines/rivets missing and the result was pretty bad. I've now gotten to a point where I'm thinking screw this kit. I'm still gonna try to get it painted and weathered by the end of the week but just because I want to get it over with and because I really like the subject.




So, fast forward to today: canopy is on, wings are on, masks are on (the vinyl masks in the kit are mostly okay but some are cut to the wrong shape ) and we're at the painting stage. I put on most of the base colors today, still need to do some bits and fix a few things. I used A Hataka paint set for Belgian aircraft. No serious issues with the paint, just you run of the mill tip-dry water based acrylic stuff. The hard edge camo was masked with clever putty and masking tape.



So far not so good.

[DrSprue]

Looking really nice Sebastian, love the camo work. Hmm putting tet on it to smooth it, cool idea. Me, I only do that when I want to destroy my kit haha!! Yea, but I do see how well done it comes out when you do it correctly.

[Lysus]

Well you've got your carrot nose in it so it probably looks a mess to your eyes. To me it's looking more and more like a great result every update.

I draw the line at riveting...rather, my skill level draws that line for me. It seems from these shots your rescribing was more than sufficient to bring back the detail, particularly at that scale. Like, if it were 1/32 I'd have to suck it up and try, but anything less I just say "meh."

But I'm lazy so don't listen to me.

Can't wait for more!

[EvilCarrot]

Looking really nice Sebastian, love the camo work. Hmm putting tet on it to smooth it, cool idea. Me, I only do that when I want to destroy my kit haha!! Yea, but I do see how well done it comes out when you do it correctly.

Thanks, doc! If you brush it on the edges of the panel lines instead of pouring the whole bottle over the kit it works just fine.

Well you've got your carrot nose in it so it probably looks a mess to your eyes. To me it's looking more and more like a great result every update.

I draw the line at riveting...rather, my skill level draws that line for me. It seems from these shots your rescribing was more than sufficient to bring back the detail, particularly at that scale. Like, if it were 1/32 I'd have to suck it up and try, but anything less I just say "meh."

But I'm lazy so don't listen to me.

Can't wait for more!

Thanks, Jason! Maybe I'm being overly critical of my own work and I did manage to make the scribed lines look more or less acceptable. Some of the rivet lines are at rather odd angles, though, but they don't show very well in the pics. Despite the scale it's quite a big and pricy kit so I've tried to set my own laziness aside to fix it up a bit, with mixed results.

[Tomcat64]

Great to see you're still progressing with this one mate even if it's lost its shine for you.

Like the other guys have said it looks like it's coming together really well from the photos, and that's an interesting use or TET that I might have to experiment with (after some serious trialling on spare plastic!).

Hope you manage to get it over the line!