The Ship Model Forum

My method is very strongly inspired by Kelly Quirk's. I don't have a vice so I used a simple plier mounted on a suction cup. I put a sacrificed F-14 in it. This F-14 as everything around the canopy cut.

Then I thermoform clear plastic onto it. The plastic I used is free: it's simply the cover plastic of the Trumpeter planes box! The canopy is then cut out. Once the frame is painted (Quite quickly on this one, just to have an idea of the result):

arnobiz wrote:Work in progress on one of the Tomcats:

I used most of Starfighter decals but had to complete them with the original Trumpeter decals as the front diagonal stripe is missing on the Starfighter decals (I saw it on all Navy.mil pictures, maybe Patrice Rouyax used another source?):

Also some markings are a bit too tiny I think, especially the numbers. In the picture the "NAVY" underneath is from Starfighter but it looks tiny too (Compared to the real picture) so I might replace it with a larger PitRoad decal. Also, the light blue frame around the cockpit is too small so I had to cut the stripes to only keep the front and rear parts. I will complete this with either paint or homemade decals, I don't know yet.

Does anyone know which brand these decals are designed for? Maybe they are for the Fujimi Tomcats, which I hear are a bit smaller than the Trumpeters.

In fact the stripe was not on the aircraft during first half of the cruise but OIF/OEF markings were there, same with "Estocin" markings on VFA-87 CO A/C. I had to make a choice and to remain consistent with it. I'm not sure sales would meet with unique A/C addon decals in 1/700.

As I always said Trump cats are whatever the scale, only skywaves and fujimi ones sizes are correct in 700th.

Thanks Patrice, I understand. My knowledge of the subject is obviously miles away from yours
Which brand did you use to scale the decals? As I said the "NAVY" seems about 75% of what it looks like on the real aircraft. Is it a problem of variant again?

Lol I agree on the Trumpeter decals, I will remove it it's too awfully printed. I liked the diagonal stripe though...

arnobiz wrote:My method is very strongly inspired by Kelly Quirk's. I don't have a vice so I used a simple plier mounted on a suction cup. I put a sacrificed F-14 in it. This F-14 as everything around the canopy cut.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3582/345 ... 9eb4f4.jpg
Then I thermoform clear plastic onto it. The plastic I used is free: it's simply the cover plastic of the Trumpeter planes box! The canopy is then cut out. Once the frame is painted (Quite quickly on this one, just to have an idea of the result):
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3569/345 ... 23261a.jpg

Thank you Arnaud this was very helpful

arnobiz wrote:My method is very strongly inspired by Kelly Quirk's. I don't have a vice so I used a simple plier mounted on a suction cup. I put a sacrificed F-14 in it. This F-14 as everything around the canopy cut.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3582/345 ... 9eb4f4.jpg
Then I thermoform clear plastic onto it. The plastic I used is free: it's simply the cover plastic of the Trumpeter planes box! The canopy is then cut out. Once the frame is painted (Quite quickly on this one, just to have an idea of the result):
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3569/345 ... 23261a.jpg

Holy cow Arnaud, that is absolutely fantastic!

rouyax wrote:In fact the stripe was not on the aircraft during first half of the cruise but OIF/OEF markings were there, same with "Estocin" markings on VFA-87 CO A/C. I had to make a choice and to remain consistent with it. I'm not sure sales would meet with unique A/C addon decals in 1/700.

Have to disagree with you there, Patrice. The stripe was added before the cruise. There are photos of it (including on the VF-213 Last Cruise boxing of the 1/48 Hasegawa F-14D), with the stripe and the "MUTHA" text on the tail, and the Black Lions had removed "MUTHA" from all their jets before the deployment began, because another squadron had just recently won it.

The earliest photo I could find with a confirmed date on it is this one http://www.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=28937 , taken one month into a six-month deployment.

Not a big deal that it's not included on the sheet, tho--it should be easy enough to mask off and paint if anyone really wants it on there that badly.

As I always said Trump cats are whatever the scale, only skywaves and fujimi ones sizes are correct in 700th.

What part of the Trumpeters are inaccurately sized? Holding a Skywave up to one to compare, they look to be the same length, and the tails look like about the same size, also. And the Trumpeters are the only ones to get the wings' oversweep angle correct for carrier deck stowage--if you try to use Skywaves, the wings aren't swept back far enough, which makes the planes too wide, and that's a big problem if you're trying to replicate a photo, since you can't pack 'em in as tightly. (Also, the side profile of the nose and canopy looks much better on the Trumpys. )

Very interesting-- too modern for me--but interesting nontheless!!

I will be watching!

Jim Baumann

Salut Arno,un petit coucou depuis la France ...
Super boulot que ton porte avions.
Amiti�s R�my

C'est vrai, super boulot

Bravo l'artiste


Jef

Merci, le hangar arrive bientot!

Thank you for your attention Mr Baumann, I would like to go for older ships later: My grand-grand father was Admiral Jaureguiberry so it would be nice for me to build the 1890s battleship Jaureguiberry

A tiny update on the airwing today. Well it looks like a tiny update but it's actually not: it takes so much time to apply all the decals on these tiny planes I estimate it takes about 20-25 minutes to complete the decoration on one plane.

The Starfighter decals are really great, I just wish they included one or two spares for some generic markings (Antiskid and tailmarkings)!
Black lions:



Tomcatters:


Seven down, eight more to go. They still need their canopy and the GMM landing gear. And then it will be the hornets' turn

nice,very nice!

Superbly built.

Beautiful work, Arnaud

Du tr�s bon travail !
Congratulations Arnaud.

Great Work Arnaud

Thanks guys, here is the complete F-14 airwing (Or at least all those who will appear on my flight deck, I don't have enough planes to use all the decals!). You can access a larger picture through these.









I screwed up the blue CAG so it is not as good as the other hi-viz planes because I had to use the Trumpeter decals on the sides of the cockpit If anyone has a spare...
Also, I painted a darker blue layer on top of the decals as their blue looked way to shiny to me.

The next step after a layer of future is to paint all the reactor nozzles (I should have done it before decalling). Then I will start to work on the GMM PE landing gears

the blue decals in the CVN-71 kit ?

No the blue decals from the Starfighter set (You can see them in their original colour on the previous page).

Work started on the Hornets. Black priming coat and grey base. I will then vary the grey shade between the planes to avoid too uniform an airwing. Given the result on the Tomcats I did not mask the canopies, they look black as if I had painted them . These will therefore be painted black with a gloss coat at the end of the decalling process.