#10 - OTDAEABT 2 - Maly Modelarz F-5 E Tiger II

[Gharbad]

It seems there are several varieties of Sidewinder.
The other pair is quite a bit smaller, and has the front fins with an angle, like this picture here:
File:AIM-9L DF-ST-82-10199.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I assumed they all had the angle, don't know why, it's obviously not true when you Google it, which I did...
Hmm.

Edit:
Double delta canard is a more proper name apparently, and it seems that showed up in 1978

[Gharbad]

I'm almost done!

Here are some better shots of the landing gear.




You can see the other missle there, and I think it's the sidewinder... I'll take a closer picture of the other one later.

Here's the drop tank. One seam was absolutely perfect, and the others were very, very close.


This is the hook for carrier landings. I assume there's a more technical name for it.


And finally, my canopy.




It was fairly precarious for a while. I took the template that was supposed to be the glass skin, and had to modify it by trial and error. Took quite a while.
Once I had the transparency in the right shape, I taped the bottom edges to sort of hold the shape. I edge glued the pieces of frame to the fuselage, and then tucked the transparency behind them - that held decently and then I put some CA (found some non-dollar store Krazy Glue in my house) down into the seams. Once that held, I attached the front piece of frame with more CA. That was the worst part, because it randomly didn't want to hold but my fingers did. I almost ripped out what I had up to that point... Eventually it worked out. It's not exactly the right shape, and the vertical frame portion is supposed to be vertical. Oh well, I really don't have much control over how that came out beyond the initial shaping.

All I have left is one more missle and some tiny details.

Edit: Though the CA holds, it's still very weak. It couldn't hold the frame to the plastic unless you never touched it again. Right now the plastic is pushing outward at the frame, which is held by regular glue to the fuselage, but the front piece is held by the CA to the plastic and/or fuselage, I don't know. I expect it's mostly the paper-to-paper holding it right now.

[rmks2000]

It's really coming along very nicely! Canopies are tough. All-purpose glues like Grab it or Duco Cement might work better than CA.

[birder]

That looks good Kuba for not molding a canopy, really good. If you think more contact between the plastic and paper needed you can use some testors window and glass maker around the edges, dries very clear, but is still a bit flexible. Might give the canopy some protection. I mold any bubble type canopies (but can't say they always turn out nice:D).

[B-Manic]

Looking good Kuba. The wingtip missile is definitely a sidewinder possibly a J type. The other one, who knows. The variants of this bird can carry a multitude of weapons. They can carry a load of about 7000 lbs.

Here is a loadout sheet for a 5B http://cybermodeler.com/aircraft/nor.../f-5b_wpns.gif

and a nice cutaway showing a pretty hefty 5A loadout http://www.flightglobal.com/airspace...er-cutaway.jpg

[GreMir]

I was always fond of the F-5E and you are doing excellent job on this kit.

[Gharbad]

Thanks guys. Every other post suggests something else, I'm going to end up with 20 different things to buy! I guess I'll just have to try something else every time I come across a canopy.

Thanks for the diagrams Doug. And you pointed out an oops... I assumed it was a poorly drawn AIM-9L, but you're right - it's a 9J (or P or N). Either way, that means I put the canards on the wrong way!
This page has all of them
Raytheon AIM-9 Sidewinder
I'll have to fix that. Luckily I didn't do the other missle yet.

After searching for everything listed in the table you gave, nothing really fits! I thought it might be a different AIM-9 variant, but looking at the link I just gave, there's not that much size variation between them.

[Gharbad]

And I'm done!

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. A lot of tiny misfits between sections bug me, but I'm scared to try painting that. I'm not very good with a brush it seems.
The most significant fix I had to consistently do was enlarge formers, and that's also the cause for most of the misfits.
I can't say I'm a very patient modeler, so quite a lot of things could've been done better. I'm still happy with it, because I accepted that about myself a long time ago :p

















Now I'm not sure what to do... go onto an awesome model, or do another Wasiak for the contest. It seems almost all of my eligible models are Wasiak... I can do a Dauntless, F-18, or Me-410. They're in order of ease. I also have some others, but really don't want to do them right now. Any votes?

[rickstef]

Go for the Top Gun display

Hornet

[redhorse]

It looks really good! But, I think you should go do a really complex model next