Kfir

The office is done - save the ejection seat. After some hesitation I decided to use some Eduard photo etch, mainly to improve the ejection seat. The kits parts and decals for the instrument panel are fine and do not require an upgrade IMO. 

The AMK kit has a very good fit and everything went smoothly so far. 

Some drybrushing brought out details. Placing lights with a lighter shade of black 😉 brought some depth. PE parts added to the appearance, as did a dark grey wash. 

Ready to close the fuselage. 

Fit is great. Detail is great. I really like this kit so far. 

Grrr. Scratched the intake cone and spilled glue on it. Penaltyround. 

Fixed.  

Looks like a Kfir. If treated gently and carefully the kit goes together pretty well. The wings required some more scraping and sanding but then fit was very good. A few touch ups with superglue here and there should be sufficient. 

The ejection seat pimped with Eduards PE. This really adds to it. 

Eduards PE enhanced the office details nicely too. 

Closing the canopy turned out to be quite cumbersome.  

Endless scraping and sanding on all contact areas required to achieve a decent fit. But I will get there - sooner or later. 

There are two holes in the upperside of the wings that should close with the installation of the main landing gear. I did not like this concept and closed the holes and sanded them flat. Now I can finish my paint job and install the MLG afterwards without having to touch up my paint job again. 

The transition from nose cone to windshield showed a step, so I shimmed it with some thin plastic card and some Mr. Surfacer (not shown). 

All bits and pieces attached. Only one intake to touch up. 

Almost ready for paint. 

First try with the dreaded Red Line Hataka paint. This worked very smoothly with Vallejo Airbrush Thinner on the Griffon bombs. 

The position lights were represented by dotted lines only. So I cut them out, superglued some clear plastic card in, sanded them flush, polished and colored them with clear red and blue respectively.  

Like it better that way. 

 

A drain which is found on both sides of the plane was depicted on one only. So a hole was drilled and some brass rod inserted. 

The area in front of the windshield should be ready for paint too. 

First primer coat is on.
Unfortunately I forgot to paint the canopy frame with the interior color first. Grrr. 

Imposition: carefully sanded down the primer from the canopy frame. IPA did the rest.  

Preshading. Did not work with the airbrush so I brushed it on. The canopy frame received the interior color. 

Marbeling - or better to say: Leoparding - done with masks. 

Let´s see how those masks work for the three tone camouflage. Application was acceptable. Some touch ups are still necessary. Usually I would start with one color all over and add the next one on top but then I will loose more of the preshading with the second layer of color. So I will try to airbrush each color on the designated areas only. 

Started with the weapons.  

 

First color slashed on. 

second color done. As you can see with all the additional masking tape, the precut tapes are no care free solution. Apart from that I do not like the effect of the preshading at all. Contrast is too strong and paint layers build up too thick when I ameliorate it. With my Super Mystere I used the postshading techniques and I liked the effect much better. So I will stop here and take a deep breath to decide how to continue.  

Note to self to show the colors I used for the IAI Griffin LGBs. Surprisingly the color charts state a monochrome green for the Griffins while the box art shows at least two colors. I did not find any pics of Israeli Griffins, so I had to stick to pictures of a colombian one. But as this is an IAI product and I do not think that they would have applied a different paint job especially for Colombia, I suppose that the israeli ones had the same design. From the pictures available I mixed a light olive drab for the fins, a darker green for the charge and a light reddish brown for the guidance segment. Quite a bit of effort for the ordnance. 

But doesn´t look too shabby. 😉 

After a successful test on a fuel tank I opted for another technique to get rid of my paint job than sanding and rescribing. A slight rub with IPA removed just the coloured layer and the shading without damaging the primer too much. Done mostly with cotton buds I had good control over the process. Here the very expensive tightly rolled Tamiya cotton buds shined as they didn't disintegrate even with more forceful rubbing. 

That is the result. I am quite happy with it. I will let it cure for a day and give it a light sanding before I start the next attempt on the camouflage  

First color applied (well actually the second as the lower part was already airbrushed and masked) and some variation added. Those are quite subtle. Maybe I will enhance that later on a bit more. 

The plastic masks served as templates for homecut kabuki masks as I prefer working with that masking material. Eager for the second round 🙂. 

2. round done with some shading. 

Green lights are on for green. 

And finally the third color is on. 

Paint job is not perfect (as expected) but should form a decent base after some touch ups. 

I have been pondering quite a bit about the color of the lower part. The instructions call for H308 but that seemed much too dark if I look at my reference pictures. So I finally opted for C314.  

Basic paint job of the fuel tanks done. 

Will redo the landing gear. This received the H308 gray as recommended in the instructions too but I all the pics I've seen show a much lighter color. I will go with white as this is the color of the wheel well too and was recommended in instructions of other Kfir kits and other contemporary israeli planes with 3 tone camo. So going for white seems plausible. The rims were sometimes dark gray. So here I might stick to the AMK instructions.  

Before touching up the camo I decided to spray all the little details. The black part at the fin tip is not mentioned in the instructions but is clearly visible on all planes. 

Chrome and high gloss for the rear "window", burned iron for the gun shrouds, dark gray for the laser guiding device (?), black for the cone. 

 

 

Now let's grab them brushes. 

Ready for ordnance. Paint touched up too. That was more difficult than expected as the colors behaved not nicely when brushed.  

Finished the exhaust. 

Not too unhappy with the result. 

Was considering a resin upgrade but decided that the kit part is quite decent as it