1/48 Italeri TNI AU F-5E Tiger II

by Ali A. Yulianto

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Indonesia Independence Day 2008 

 

Hi all, Greetings from Indonesia!!  After browsing this web site for quite some time, finally I can submit my first entry to ARC to commemorate Indonesia Independence Day on August 17th. But before that, I would like congratulate Steve for this great aircraft scale model site.

I choose to model TNI AU F-5E Tiger II from Skadron 14 that based on Iswahyudi AFB in Java.  This kit was based on Italeri 1/48 F-5E Tiger kit which has been around for quite some time. The fit was not too precise, especially in the front section below the cockpit. I had a step there that still showed after a lot of sanding and filling. I also decided not to attach the spare tank because after test fitting this also showed to be a bad fit. 

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I built this kit mostly OOB.  I added the pilot figure from the Hasegawa kit mainly to cover up the sparse detail in the cockpit (decal panel actually). This is also my first try at creating my first custom decal. I have the Iswahyudi lightning picture for the tail fin from a fellow modeler, Pak Andreas, and printed it out using a color laser printer. The numbers were from spare decals from other kits while I used the kit decals for the aircraft stencils.

I re-scribed the panel lines as the kit has raised ones, but I think I made them too deep as the panel lines become too prominent. Well, another lesson learned for my next project.

The paint job was mainly done free-hand with some after touches using blu-tac for rougher edges. The colors were custom mixed from Tamiya and Gunze Acrylics, matched with my eyeball Mk.1 to the actual photo. The actual plane actually had different shades and hues, so it’s difficult to have the correct color. Different lighting in the reference photo could also show different color for the same aircraft, so there’s no right or wrong here, as long as it’s blue and gray. 

Thank you all for viewing my model.

Ali

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Photos and text © by Ali A. Yulianto