1/48 Academy F-5E Lightning

[silentbob33]

I've been working on this one for awhile, bench time has been a little scarce lately. While I was digging around in another Lightning kit looking for ideas on how to add detail to the cockpit, I found an Aires cockpit made for the Academy kit. So I used it here since the other kit's cockpit was pretty good on its own. Here are the cockpit parts.









Here it is all put together.





And now she's looking like an airplane.



I used some spare Warhammer 40K pieces to represent the cameras in the nose, but forgot to take pictures of them before I glued the halves together. Once I get the weight figured out to keep it from being a tail sitter I'll get the nose attached and some more pics. Any comments/critiques are welcome!

[BlackSheep214]

Brilliant!

You can/could brush a bit of black wash in it if you’d like. The reason I do, I liked how it tones down the green zinc chromate to a bit of a worn look to it. My preferred wash is Testors Black Detail Wash.

[speedgraflex]

Cockpit looks clean and sharp. I have the non photo recon version of this kit (unbuilt). I am wondering how hard it was to align the fuselage and what your plans are to add nose weight.

[silentbob33]

Thanks guys!

Speedgraflex, I've got to say that the alignment was all right, though I did have a step where both the nacelles meet the wings. I still have a bit of filling and sanding to do but I feel like it could have been much worse. I have a couple of big fishing sinkers that I'm going to put in the nacelles and a few smaller sinkers I'll put right in front of the cockpit but behind the camera section.

[KennyX]

I dig what you did with that cockpit, that’s good work! And I like the looks of that kit as well. Looks like a fun build!

[speedgraflex]

Thanks so much!

[Floki]

Looking great so far SB, I'm guessing the Academy kit goes together alot better than the old Revell kit does.

[jkim]

Looking good! I built the Academy P-38 kit with the Aires resin cockpit a while back and as I remember, it went together fairly well.

[silentbob33]

Thanks guys!

Floki, it goes together much easier than the old Revell kit. I built one several years ago when I came back to the hobby and let's just say I'm glad it didn't survive the Great Crash of 2012. I have another in the stash and plan on applying a lot of hard learned lessons on it when I get around to it.

[Medicman71]

Very nice! The cockpit looks great! I didn't know that this version of the P-38 was called the F-5E.