Early Vietnam North American F-100D

Starting point: another rendition of Hasegawa’s venerable F-100D and Wolfpack decals

The kit lacks the outer pylons but I found a good match in the spares bin.

First job: separating the slats

Wings assembled and LE closed off. Removed wall between main wheel wells which isn't there.

Decided to remove the ceiling of the main wheel wells as well to regain some depth

Added tiny slat rails to the wing (of which I would loose a lot later on…)

Time for the cockpit. Kit's seat and cockpit are pretty useless. Found a seat in the spares bin to use as a starting point for something better.

Scratchbuilt a cockpit on the kit floor

Cockpit starts to look like something, seat still needs to be finished

Boxing in the nose wheel well

building up an intake trunk from two flat pieces. Tricky operation, first attempt failed…

… but second attempt succeeded. Added a bulkhead to blank it off.

Cockpit finished, except for instrument panel decal.

Used a piece of indeterminate tubing from the spares box and the petals from a leftover afterburner of my earlier Italeri F-100F to improve the exhaust.

Fuselage assembly in progress. Before assembly, I rescribed the panel lines.

Fuselage fit is OK, some seams to fill.

Goofed up the lower nose area by filing away too merrily. Now need lots of filling to restore. Detailed the nose wheel well.

Scratch-built the aft cockpit deck and testfitting the ejection seat

Assembled wing and fuselage, added details to the wheel wells

Cockpit ready and canopy masked. Time to close things up.

Stabilizers normally sit tilted on the ground, so cut off the tabs and inserted them in the fuselage and pinned the stabilizers

The kit only provides short 275 gallon wing tanks, but I need lengthened 335 gallon tanks. Modified the kit tanks using a suitable donor from the spares box

Took quite some sanding and filling needed but looks OK under a coat of primer.

Also added some detail to the pylons and ordnance. Rocket pods are from a Hasegawa set.

And on to the painting phase! The first coat of primer revealed that I had some more work to do around the windscreen, which did not fit very well

Time for the base coat. Took the easy way out and used a Tamiya Gloss Aluminum spray can. Actually a bit of challenge to prevent a too thick coat of paint…

Masking in progress around the areas that will receive another color

Sprayed wheel bays green olive drab which according to Internet sources is the best match for the F-100 wheel bay color

Spraying the aft fuselage NMF areas with a 40/60 mix of Vallejo steel and aluminum.

And the hard bit: the copperish discolorations at the back. Man, this is hard. Reaching the limits of my airbrush and airbrush skills here. Needed a paper mask to get the vertical pattern, no way I could achieve it freehand…

Moment of truth, it all turned out somewhat lighter than I had intended and will need some more work with pastel powder. But happy enough with the result so far, at least it is not a disaster.

Giving the panel lines a wash with black. One of the techniques I still have not yet fully mastered.

Added studs below the slats since most of the too fragile slat tracks have broken off.

And on to decaling! Subject comes from a very nice Wolfpak decal sheet I have already used for other kits.

Almost done after three sessions, decided to add more stencils as the airframe still looked a bit too cleanish.

Final weathering with pastel powders. I like this technique. It's fast, less messy and easy too add just that touch of grimness and tonal difference to liven up a model.

Sealed it up under a coat of satin and done with the painting and decaling. Almost there!

Installing the landing gear

Moment of truth, unmasking the cockpit. And what do you know, no disaster underneath!

Adding slats and wheel doors. Realized in time I had to modify the inner doors for this s/n, which was an easy fix.

Made my own gadget to hold pairs of wheels and file a more perfect flat spot than my earlier unassisted efforts.

Adding the final bits and pieces…

… and we’re done!

Opmerkingen

25 8 November 2022, 19:16

Hans Zwetsloot
Hi everyone, it has been a while since I posted something here due to other priorities but I'm back to modeling again. This spring I picked a Hasegawa F-100D from my stash to get back into shape again. It was a fairly recent purchase that I picked up second-hand last year because I wanted to add an early silver Hun to my collection and I had the decals for one in my stash. Hope you enjoy the build.

8 November 2022, 19:48