F-22A Aggressor

Maciej Bellos
Following!

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Got some work done on the F-22.
Weapon bays have been treated with black wash to highlight the details.
I decided not to paint individual cables because I am not really precise with the brush.
Also, I didn't fill the sink holes in the weapon bays because right now I don't have the right tools to sand them properly.
Hopefully they won't be that visible after arming the bird with missiles.

The cockit is almost done too. The HUD is still missing.
There are some gaps between the intakes and the rest of the fuselage that need to be filled and sanded.
Glueing the underside of the nose to the rest of the fuselage and adding the intakes was a bit of a pain. Not sure, but I think Academy could have handled this a bit differently to make construction easier.

Cuajete
Nice start. Following.

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Welcome Maciej and Cuajete!
Made little progress since last week.
Weapon and landing gear bays have been installed and the fuselage halves are glued together.
Now I can fill some gaps on the intakes and sand them down.

I will upload more pictures when there is more visible progress on the kit.

Robert Podkoński
Looks very good as it is - I would not mind the cables, wash is enough IMHO 🙂 Following with interest!

Harry
The ejection pins are definitely a pain in the ass on this one, especially in the intakes. Have fun!

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Robert, Roland and and kengdad, welcome aboard.
Priming and pre-shading are done. After that I carefully sanded the entire surface.
Maybe I applied too much pressure, even though I tried to apply almost none as the pre-shading became a little more washed out.

Yeah, the pins are definitely a pain. What's more frustrating to me is that I screwed up one of the decals that are placed in the intakes.
I somehow managed to fold it during the application and wasn't able to get it straight. 😠

Next will be the camouflage and some work with the paintbrush on the AIM-120s and wheels.

Robert Podkoński
Looks very promising - I am waiting to see red stars on that Raptor...

Robin (WhiteGlint)
The first two colours are done.
I don't have the accurate colours for the Blue Splinter Aggressor scheme, but I try to get as close as I can get.

While the application of the Tamiya Flat White worked without any problems, I had some difficulty with the blue.
The Air Superiority Blue from Hataka dried midair, and again I have a very uneven surface in some places. Additionally the blue is too light.
Next, I will sand the blue carefully with a 2000 or 3000 grit sanding sponge followd by some Blue from Mig, which I used on my Su-57. It is darker and fits the actual colour better.

I already did the grey trim but I didn't manage to mask them properly. After some time I gave up.
I hope it is easier to mask the other colours and paint the grey again...

When I am finally done with the colours, it's possible that I'll have to sand the aircraft a second time to get the surface smooth again.
Hopefully, I don't screw up the whole paintjob with its sharp edges.

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Sprayed a new blue on the airframe and added Tamiya Dark Grey.
I was kind of sloppy with the masking, a lot of touch ups are necessary, but she is taking shape. 🙂
So far, I like it very much.

Robert Podkoński
I like it very much too already at this stage of construction, WhiteGlint 😉 Looking really awesome!

Alexander
Very original and cool looking paintjob, can't wait to see the final result! 👍

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Thanks Robert and Alexander.

Short update: Currently, I am masking the fighter to add the grey trim on the edges of its surfaces. Quite a lot of masking on this project which takes more time than I anticipated.

Also there are a lot of decals for special panels, vents and whatnot.
I'll try to paint these panels instead of applying the decals, that is the plan at least. Maybe with some metal colours (some kind of Aluminium) to make it kook more interesting without going overboard, hopefully... I am not sure yet.

John Thomas
Very nice work

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Thanks John.
Finished masking last night. I take a short break from this project as long my nephew is here for a visit. We will be working on some deformed naval vessels instead.

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Okay, grey trim is done.
I think this is the last time I am using Vallejo colours with my airbrush...
Either I have a wet mess or a lot of small splatter. I am not able to spray these colours in smooth layers and I feared to screw this up this late in the game.

Now I'm done with the camo. After everything dried I will proceed with some careful sanding followed by the gloss coat.
I am not very proud of the colour application on this jet. Here and there it is quite messy and I have some "hard edges" where colour built up. These areas are still pretty visible. I need to work on my control with the airbrush to avoid this in the future.

Missiles and engine nozzles are painted as well. The canopy does not fit well as long as the seat is installed but I think I can still fix this or else I'll need some masking tape when glueing the canopy. 😄

Harry
I can see why you're unhappy with the paint job. I think it's okay when looked from a distance, it's 1:72 after all. The little rims on the seat are causing the canopy fit issue, see if you can trim the edges down a little bit, or cut them off and glue them at a slanted angle.

Alexander
Yeah, I see that as well - but it looks much better than you think, the awesome look of the whole camo pattern overshadows it. 👍

Robert Podkoński
That's true, WhiteGlint. Your model in the camo you pained looks awesome 🙂

John
Nice splinter paint scheme - excellent work.

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Thanks, kengdad, Alexander, Robert and John. Much appreciated. 🙂

Well yeah, it certainly looks better from afar.
After taking another look at the camo, I think I'll carefully fix some places where I screwed up my masking/spraying. Also the weapon bay needs some fixing as some of the dark grey found its way inside.

Hopefully, the rest of the screw ups will be less pronounced after decals and weathering.
No way I will strip her of her paint and do that again. All that masking... 😭

Even though, I still like it so far.

I'll try some sanding on the seat, thanks. 👍

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Decals applied. Sadly, some of them moved while setting and I didn't notice until it was too late...
One on top of the fuselage the other is the ejection seat marking on the right side of the cockpit.
The red star on the stabilizers are a bit smaller than I imagined but they left over from my trashed Ka-50.

I didn't have matching aircraft numbers. So, this plane became "Aggressor Red 01", although I placed some other grey Number (its "real number") on the lower part of the stabilizers. It looks nice and this is a what-if anyways.
Another decal I placed freely is the Strategic Air Command emblem on the nose of the jet, in front of the fuselage. Its light grey colour looks good on top of the dark grey.

Alexander
It looks quite awesome already nonetheless, WhiteGlint! 👍
For future it might be better to paint the areas yourself instead of decaling them, if they are big enough and quite basic - if you have fitting paints. 😉

Robin (WhiteGlint)
It took me some time to answer, sorry Alexander.
Thanks for your kind words. At first, I planned to paint these areas but when I thought about all that necessary masking I thought that maybe I should try the decals instead. 😄

But I definitely worked on too many decals at the same time.
Sadly, there was another mishap. Even though I sprayed another few layers of clear varnish, I somehow ripped of one of the "Strategic Air Command" decals on the nose while glueing the canopy. I wanted to keep it in place until the glue has dried. 😭

But she is pretty much finished now. Pictures will follow soon.

Robin (WhiteGlint)
It's done.
Despite all flaws and errors on my part I am still somewhat happy with the result.
Thanks everyone for all your kind words and encouragements! 🙂

I decided to add a small and simple base. I wanted to try these AK acrylic textures for quite some time now.
That was fun. Should build more tanks and mecha to play around more with that stuff. With aircraft I feel one is somewhat limited about what can be done as a display base, but I believe I still lack some imagination.

Harry
The imperfections seem inconsequential at the end, congrats!

Alexander
Definetely an eye-catcher WhiteGlint, even with the minor imperfections here and there it will look really cool displayed like that - and from afar nothing bad will be noticeable anyway, so definitely some great paintwork nonetheless! 👍
Overall some very nice finish, like the semi-gloss look (as I always do, 😉 ), and the weapons look great too. 👍

Robert Podkoński
I wholly agree with Alexander here. Good work, WhiteGlint.

Cuajete
Nice scheme, base and result.
Congrats!

Ahmet Eren İspir
Stunning

Villiers de Vos
A very striking paint scheme perfectly done.

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Thank you very much, mates! 🙂

Guy Rump
Very impressive paint scheme 👍

S M
Very cool and well done camo! ? The AMRAAM missiles looks to me too dirty, but atleast there are enough 😄

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Thank you Guy and S M.
Yeah, I maybe should have cleaned the missiles a bit more from the wash.
They are a little bit too dirty for equipment like that. Luckily, they are somewhat hidden from sight.

Simon Nagorsnik
very nice camo

Vincent
Very good looking. Love these "what if builds" keep it up.

Gary Kitchen
Stunning!

Neil
Absolutely! Agree with Gary... STUNNING indeed and most importantly it looks well cool! ?

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Thank you very much, Simon, Vincent, Gary and Neil.

James C
A tricky paint scheme but you've done well. Looks awesome 👍

Robin (WhiteGlint)
Thank you James. 🙂