Hello
to all the modelers. This time I bring you my new Academy 1:72 F-22. This is a new kit, I
bought it in Feb-2011. Started building in Feb. & finished it at the end of Jun.
Since
it is a new kit, it looks simple, so I tried building OOB. Open box, you can find
a very nice kit, comes with cartograf decals. It looks great! But quickly I
found
some problems; first I try to find out the color numbers, they show in very small
fonts, maybe this is in 1:72 scale. Inside color instructions were also not clear.
So I found out instruction sheets from Hasegawa. All color information follows
Hasegawa’s instructions.
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images below to see larger images
First
two steps have no problem.
Step
3 needs some attention. May need some putty.
Step
5 is the air intakes. But I do not know why they make big holes in the floor.
They
look funny, so I used plastic card to fill up the big holes, they needed a lot
sanding. After installing the air takes inside, I then glued the upper & lower
fuselage. There still was a large gap between the intakes. Sanding, masking
& painting… this is the hard point!
You
also must paint the weapons bays, wheel bays first. After you masked them,
before you paint the fuselage.
The exhaust area also needed me to pay attention, needing sanding & paint first. &
I needed ref color information.
If you choose to open the weapon bays, you need
to sand a lot of pin marks
Over all this is a nice kit, but you need
to pay more attention when you start. I had some mistakes on this F-22, I hope
I can have a chance build one more…
Kin Wong
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