Before the current
1/72 Raptor by Revell there was the Italeri/Revell kit, and this one is the old
Revell rebox of Italeri's early F-22 Raptor. This model was made before the new
operational F-22 kit was available and I tried to make it an operational bird
with little modification.
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The cockpit is
standard, I just added few details like
a HUD, seat belts and the canopy
mechanism.
It took me several
attempts to achieve a decently tinted canopy.
I mixed ink (red, green and black
from marker pens) with Future and dipped the canopy into it.
There are some bad
fitting parts that require filling and sanding. The most annoying ones are:
weapon bays (if you want them closed), intakes, upper fuselage parts (behind
cockpit) and vertical stabilizers.
The main gear wheels
look ridiculous and were replaced by spare F-15 wheels. Since their diameter is
slightly smaller the finished model is somewhat tilted backwards.
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The real challenge was the
paintjob. To make a long story short, the camo is made of iron + black + gray
(dark areas), silver (bright areas) and light gray (edges). Masking the edges
prior to applying the gray was awful, it took 2 exhausting hours! Next came a
coating made of Future + black (marker pen again) to dull the entire camo
scheme.
Few decals were applied, the rest (tailcode and missing aircraft numbers) was
hand painted. The final coat is a clear flat.
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And this is the result of 13 busy
but enjoyable days of modeling. 13 days is very quick in my books and
it turned out not too bad.
Deun
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