Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II (Academy 1/72)
Royal Australian Air Force A35-001
77th Squadron, Williamtown Airbase - March 2018
Kit: Academy #12561
Scale: 1/72
Aftermarket: No aftermarket used, built out of the box with a few scratch built details.
Scale: N/A
The kit is very well detailed as out of the box, however the ejection seat doesn’t come with seat belts which I did scratch built.
US16E Ejection Seat
Another improvement I did was to tint the canopy since it comes in clear plastic without the characteristic yellowish colour of the the real aircraft. I did it by airbrushing the canopy with a mix of Gunze H-91 Clear yellow + Tamiya X-19 Smoke.
The canopy tinting colour |
85% H91 + 15% X-19 |
I also had to scratch built the tyres threads since it is very soft represented on the kit and completely lost after sanding the part.
Talking about the landing gear I also have scratch built the landing light on the nose gear.
Exhaust painting was done as per the photo below with the characteristic off-white colour inside the exhaust.