Meng 1/48 F-35A Lightning II

[Mr Bowcat]

Hi guys,

I'm at the painting stage on my Harrier build and having to wait for layers to cure, so thought I'd crack on with this.

I'm going for an in flight stealth build so all the weapon bay doors will be closed.

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[papa 695]

Nice, looking forward to seeing this develop Bob.

[Mr Bowcat]

Cheers Ian.

Made a small start on the pit today. I'm adding some colored PE so the tub and IP had the molded details removed.

There is a small shelf behind the pilots seat which seems to be home to some avionic boxes. Unsurprisingly pictures of this new kite are scarce so I used some artistic licence and scratched an interpretation.

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I also got the bang seat together. This didn't have an oxygen bottle moulded in, so I scratched one of those too.

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I appreciate my scratch building isn't up to a very high standard, however this is my first ever go at it so I'm fairly happy with the result. Not much of it will be seen anyway.

I'd also ordered a resin pilot as the kit didn't come with one. I'm a little concerned though as he seems a bit small?? He is the right scale before anyone asks.

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[Mr Bowcat]

Evening all.

Got some paint on the pit today, still got to sort the pilot out, poor fella needs some arm surgery.

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[Guest]

Very clean and crisp Bob, and great scratch work. Lovely.

[Si Benson]

Hi Bob,
It’s a lovely looking bird! Cockpit coming together nicely:thumb2:

[Mr Bowcat]

Cheers gents.

[papa 695]

Very nice work Bob, love the little extra's you've added.

[Mr Bowcat]

Cheers Ian.

Before I can go any further I have to sort the pilot out. I couldn't find a seated F-35 figure so had to go with an F-18 pilot. Of course the right arm and hand are angled toward where the stick would be on any other jet, the F-35 has the stick on the right hand console. I'm going to try and heat up and re-position the arm, failing which I might have to cut, re-glue and fill.

If it all goes wrong I might just have to build the kit wheels down and pilot-less.

[Jim R]

Hi Bob
That looks a nice kit. Meng do some good stuff. There's some very small and very big bits of plastic. Cockpit additions look great. Those panel paint masks look interesting - not seen them before.
Jim

[Mr Bowcat]

Cheers Jim.

From what I've read the masks are essential unless you want to spend 20+ hours masking up with tape.

Having said that, apparently newer F-35's have RAM tape the same colour as the rest of the bird so no need to paint them a different colour/shade.

[Guest]

I'm going to try and heat up and re-position the arm

It’s a resin figure, right? Don’t heat it up with a flame, but use hot water or hot salt.

[colin m]

All looking very nice. And artistic licence, brilliant stuff, I use it often.

[Fernando N]

Nice start Bob and neat additions to the office:thumb2:, the mock-ups I've seen at airshows have even less detail than your kit so the interior details are a guess indeed.

[Mr Bowcat]

Cheers guys.