F-5 Freedom Fighters - W-I-P Part 1

 Just a quick update today.  Back in March I finished a Hasegawa Norwegian F-5 which you can see here.  I was so chuffed with the little guy, that I decided to start on the 2 other F-5s I had in my stash.

They are another ancient (1975) Hasegawa F-5A kit

and an almost as ancient (1991) Matchbox CF-116 (F-5B) kit

These are as I've said - older kits, and have mostly raised panel lines and odd issues like no cockpit - which I was a little surprised at.  The Hasegawa kit comes with a pilot but a very basic chair, while the Matchbox kit has no crew figures and the ejector seats look like comfy Lazy-Boy chairs.  No other cockpit details are provided so I had to make them from scratch.

For the Matchbox kit this included adding such fundamental things as the cockpit floor!

Anyway - their built now and look like this prior to undercoating:

The Matchbox F-5B (two seater) is the white one on the left and it will be painted in Canadian colours and armed with 4 AIM-9 Sidewinders.  I'll be using some very nice looking Hasegawa sidewinders from one of their weapons sets.

The Hasegawa one is in grey - it will be in Dutch colours and armed with 4 AIM-9 Sidewinders, 2 bombs and a central fuel tank.  I like the idea of this one being totally loaded for bear.  Not to far to fly to engage the enemy so it can afford to have every station armed.  I hope the Dutch F-5 to eventually look something like this:

I really like this simple, subtle scheme in the right timeframe for what I'm doing.  All these scheme's come from the 1/48 scale Kinetic Models F-5s plans.

The Canadian one is a bit different.  I don't want to paint it in the standard scheme Canadian Air Force scheme but rather paint it up as an Agressor aircraft, that been drafted straight into action with no time for a repaint.  I have options for this one and am stuggling with which to choose.  Here are the choices:

This is probably my least favourite option

So this is probably the easist one to paint - I do like my greys...

I probably think this one is the coolest - but also likely to be the hardest to paint.

So I'm struggling to decide what to do.  Throw your 2 cents in and help me decide!

Thanks for looking

Richard

Hasegawa Norwegian F-5A(G)

 Well, well, well - once again it's been a while.  It's not like nothing has been going on - but still I've been slack with the blog.  So today I plan to rectify that with a completed model.  The first model of my planned Norwegian force which bizarrely is a Northrop F-5A(G) jet fighter. Just because...

So here it is:

This all started a month or two back when it was a nice day and I had a bit of black paint left in my airbrush so I decided to try something new (with aircraft anyway) which was well beyond my skill level.

So I black attacked a couple of planes I had sitting around with my shakey hands!

Obviously I decided the one that would get actually painted was the plane that required just one colour - the F-5.

So on the next nice day (few and far between here back in January/Feb) I got out my Vallejo Model Air colours and did this

And then added decals

Then I took all the stuff out of the cockpit

And now some fun shots:

Thanks for looking.  Hopefully the next post will be a bit closer than 3 months!

Richard

M1 Tank Platoon

 OK - so in the end I haven't made any changes to these models.  I decided that I wouldn't weather them for now as I don't have the right decals and getting them seems more expensive than it's worth, as once I put them on, they'll get covered by mud & dirt etc anyway.  So I don't really know what to do there.

Regarding turret markings, after asking the question on a few different facebook groups, the markings I really like seem to have been exercise or road-march only.  They were to be whipped off the moment hostilities started.  I still like them, so one day I might add them anyway.  Not for now though...

So here's the finished platoon:

Now the Platoon Commander's Section:

Now the Platoon Sergeant's Section:

And some shots of individual tanks:

Guess which one I stuffed up!

Anyway - that's enough for now.  M2 Bradley's up next.

Thanks

Richard

M1 Tank Platoon W-I-P

 Hi All

This is just a quick post of a not quite finished M1 Tank Platoon.  It's taken me a while to get to this point, so rather than just wait until it's 100% finished (whatever that is) I took a quick snap of them today to share.

I'm pretty chuffed with how these have turned out so far.  I just have to weather them and add a Unit/Tank ID board to the rear of the turret - then they are done done!

I did make a spectacular mistake in the making of one of the M1's that's so bad I can't hide it, so when I take the proper photos, one M1 will be very carefully placed to save my embarrassment!

Moving onto some Bradley's next...  The year of Americans continues...

Richard

 

Progressing my Norwegian project

Over the last couple of years, and especially in the last few months, I've been purchasing the final pieces for my Norwegian project that has been discussed previously here. 

One of the primary reasons I had not pushed my Norwegian project was the lack of a NM135 model.  Recently I've discovered a couple.  One a 3D print file and the other from Hobbyden.  Brian Walsh there has recently produced a NM135, which is a primary component of a 1986 Norwegian  mechanised infantry force.  Hopefully I'll have 4 NM135s coming in the next little while. 

As a result of some commission work I did recently for a friend, I have also been able to get enough troops for a Norwegian platoon, plus a few others. I won't be showing them until they are painted though.

I have a bunch of diecast Leopard 1s and M48A5s so that's the tanks taken care of, with a bit of tinkering.

So what I was missing for my Norwegian's was primarily aircraft.  This has now been resolved:

Obviously the first thing you need is a F-16.  What better than this specific Norwegian F-16A+ by Fujimi.

Next I needed a F-5A Freedom Fighter.  These are relatively hard to find - everywhere you look you can find F-5E which are just not right.  Although this is Hasegawa kit comes with Dutch and Canadian decals, I'll sort out something to make it Norwegian.

The final aircraft I needed was one of these.  Talk about rare as hen's teeth.  Just had to have one of these for my Aerial Forward Observer.  No choppers here pal.  This is an original 1970's Airfix kit.  Only problem is now I feel like I'm being barbaric if I open it up and make it... 

Anyway - that's it for today.  Next update will be another project, where I've actually made some real progress, not just bought stuff.

Thanks

Richard