[Design / Build] Chengdu J-20 Prototype - Page 11

**frederico** · #**101** 06-16-2012, 03:09 PM

well in my opinion, the plane does look perfect,but hey, i an't you.freddy

**Lex** · #**102** 06-23-2012, 05:29 PM

Hi all

Thanks for the continued interest and support. The project didn't stall, it just reached a somewhat repetitive phase... armaments.

To make up for the lack of progress, I'll write a bit more about this tiny detail. The J-20 is planned to carry the Chinese PL-9 (bootleg sidewinder) and the PL-12 (long-range AMRAAM). The weapon arrangement is the same as the F-22. However when I designed the missiles according to their specifications, the PL-12 were too big to fit 6 of them into the ventral bay, and the PL-9 were also too wide to go through the side bay openings.

I started by researching the PL-9, and noticed a photo taken from a recent exhibit in Beijing's Military Museum. It's a model of the PL-9 but was markedly different from the drawing I had seen. On the PL-9C the tailfins were made longer but narrower, that the tails are now the same width as the canards. It was obvious that this modification was intended to use in an internal weapon bay, and I modified the design according to the photo.

The research on PL-12 went nowhere, until I stumbled across a information booklet from AVIC on an airshow, which has a small picture of a peculiar variant of the PL-12 with the tail fins actually folded up halfway. I concluded that this was what I was looking for, and this modified design fits nicely into the ventral bay.

I don't have details of the swing-out mechanisms of the missiles, but as they're not too visible I decided to use a simplistic design. The image shows PL-12 on the left and PL-9 on the right

**cdavenport** · #**103** 06-23-2012, 11:15 PM

Nice going with the research; it's the details that set the average apart from the excellent.

**gimpee** · #**104** 06-25-2012, 06:25 AM

Nice, the missiles look very detailed. Good research.

**Lex** · #**105** 06-30-2012, 02:10 PM

Missiles all set. All that... took a while...

I consider myself a casual modeller and will often cringe at repetition... The force is weak in me

**frederico** · #**106** 06-30-2012, 09:03 PM

thats one, packed missile bay. hate to be the enemy aircraft going against that

**The Orange** · #**107** 07-05-2012, 02:13 AM

It's really great to see a modeler who has such a wide variety of tastes in genre -
and I really do appreciate such characteristics. We need more like you!

Excellent design and build, the J-20 is a nice looking plane, and it looks like this model is
literally loaded :O

Say, is that Play Arts Kai, revoltech, or am I way off? I think I'm way off on the revoltech assumption...

**Lex** · #**108** 07-08-2012, 05:03 AM

Thanks for the support guys, I certainly don't want to be on the receiving end of this loadout either...

@Orange: it's Strike Witches, WWII-themed witches (what?). It didn't know how to make a good plot but I certainly liked the setting

This is the last leg of the build. All the small details on the plane are now attached, meaning now it must be handled with extra care. One mistake almost doomed the build, the dark colour meant the original alignment marks were made next to invisible (they're clearly visible on the original colour theme), and so I attached the underwing servo casings on the wrong location, by the time I removed them they already left a huge, and visible, glue stain. I scrambled to get it off, and then remembered that white PVA glue is soluble in water. So I wiped the surface using damp cloth and the glue stain returned to its wet, white colour and was wiped off. It helped that the ink-paper combination I used (pigment-based ink on Canon's papercraft-specific sheets) is extremely resistant to water, or doing this would be suicide...

The boarding ladder is also installed (the only removable component). The only part left is the canopy which is in the pipeline... let's see if I can make a good vacform XD