My 3rd 1/144 model - Shenyang J-8B "Finback" (Trumpeter)
Some words on the kit first...
Although just as old as the previous one, I found this kit to be a lot more enjoyable. The panel lines are still rather deep, accuracy is not great (I suspect many raised/recessed details were simply interpreted as panel lines - some ventral air scoops towards the rear, for example, are represented as flat contours, just like in a 2D plan) and many details look a bit clunky. The fuselage is split horizontally, with wings and horizontal stabilizers attached already. Unfortunately, this means that some detail is lost at the sides of the nose section due to mould separation.
Only the vertical stabilizers, the nose cone, the twin exhaust section, and the intakes need to be attached, and you're mostly done. Fit is decent.
The decals are sparse once again, and the unit number seems to be ficticious, but they work well, and the actual aircraft doesn't seem to have much more going on.
What's really bad is the canopy. The shape is ridiculous. It starts with a steep wall that rises to a certain height without any curvature, and the rest is pretty much a half cylinder. Another bad part are the intakes. Not only their exterior walls, but also the horizontal air baffles inside are thick and clunky. One of the baffles extends all the way through the intake to be inserted into a slot in the fuselage side and hold the intake in place - a bit like this:
___
|__
|____(Fuselage)
|
----
These are the modifications I made:
- I thinned the trailing edge of the vertical stabilizer
- I replaced the kit's pitot tube with stretched sprue (the kit one was too thick and had some mould offset)
- I thinned the wing fences
- I closed the undercarriage bays, which required modifying one main u/c door because they were not the same size
- I opened those auxiliary air flaps behind the intakes. Since this would give away the thick side walls, I painted most of the inside of the opening black and only left a thin light stripe around the outer perimeter - cheap trick.
- I wanted to see if I could improve the canopy - more on that below...
- I wanted to improve those intakes - more on that below, too.
- Added static dischargers and those "trident" antennas as well as another antenna in front of the cockpit
The canopy:
Fun story. Since the thing was rather thick, I decided to try and sand the front to a less steep angle and polish it clear(ish) afterwards. However, I went too far and ended up with a hole. Smart move.
I then decided that I might as well go with it, and since I didn't have Krystal Klear back then, I simply glued a piece of plastic from a blister package to the front. While all of that is quite a mess from close up, the overall shape makes all the difference!
The intakes:
I decided to keep those plastic tabs because that would be the most stable solution. But how to get the other walls thinner ? (I didn't have micro files yet when I built that kit)
I ended up cutting out the side walls with the tabs attached. Cut the tabs to length, sanded them thin, and sanded the top and bottom walls (which were perfectly accessible now) thin as well. I discovered that - strangely enough - the rear wall of the intake sides, where these would attach to the fuselage, was surprisingly thin. The front sides that would point towards the nose and remain open, however, were thick. So I flipped left and right around.
Since the gap was now bigger after sanding the top and bottom walls thinner, I had to use some filler to close the intakes again, and then blended everything together while also rounding the edges a bit. The intakes still have the wrong cross section (too wide in relation to the height), but that can't be helped.
Colour-wise, I went with a mix of roughly 50/50 white and Vallejo White Grey, plus green dielectric panels and nose.
Gear up once again suggested itself here because if the aircraft is called "Finback" for its ventral fin, I want to show that thing!
I'm quite satisfied with the result, here the pictures:
The original:
The model:
Here you can see how the walls of those auxiliary air flaps look thin even though they aren't.
The intakes of this aircraft are sure interesting. But oh boy, did I butcher that trident antenna!
The one perched on the vertical stabilizer is better.
The loadout looks unrealistic, btw. Using only air-to-air missiles for interceptor missions or only the rocket pods for ground attack missions would seem more plausible to me, but let's just imagine this was a demonstration flight for some politicians and military brass...
Fun fact: The kit came with a pretty toyish-looking twin gun, but I could not find any evidence of that. I came to the conclusion that the little hump under the nose is the gun bulge, and tried to paint it more or less as seen in photographs.
A nice view of the fin!
While the colours on the exhaust section are not correct (too coppery in the front part), I do think that this area really looks a bit like metal, so I'm quite happy with it nonetheless.
It's a relatively good-looking aircraft IMO!
What went well
- All in all, I'm mostly satisified this time.
- I think the intakes look decent, as does the canopy shape (don't look too closely, though!).
What went not so well
- Once again, the clear varnish solved some of the green paint (even after a long drying period) so that I ended up smearing diluted green across the model in some places this time. I think I know what the problem is now.
- Looks like I bent those static dischargers in all directions already.
) model!