1/144 Jet Prototypes

Fancy color schemes, dazzling performance, unique designs and often a lot of media coverage, that's what jet prototypes are all about. Especially during the 60ies and 70ies US aircraft were the real show stoppers. Here are a few of my favorites.

• LS F-15, 6th FSD test aircraft
  
• Crown YF-16, 2nd Prototype
  
• LS Northrop F-20 Tigershark, 2nd pre-production aircraft
  
• Crown Mirage F1, 1st prototype
  

LS F-15, 6th FSD test aircraft

The F-15A is one of those aircraft for which no prototypes were made. Production started with a batch of Full Scale Development airframes, consisting of ten single seaters (71-0280 to 71-0289) and two more fitted with dual controls (71-0290 and 71-0291).
The LS F-15 kits depict an early production airframe. The external differences between an FSD airframe and an early production F-15 are:

Production style wing tips and tailplanes were retrofitted to the FSD airframes to cure buffeting and wing load problems, so doing a conversion to FSD is quite easy.

Being LS's first ever 1/144 jet model, this kit is not flawless but is still miles ahead wrt shape and accuracy over the Otaki, Crown/Revell and Dragon kits (note that ARII reissued both the Otaki kit and the LS kit, the latter being labeled as 'F-15C' cat.nr.23005).

Some things that have to be modified are:

The model was finished in Polly-S 'Air Superiority Blue' FS.35450 with dayglow patches (Revell 25 with a touch of red over a flat white base coat).
The wing leading edges were painted with a Pentel silver paint pen.
Decals came from a Revell/Crown F-15 kit, which happened to have the serials for the 6th FSD airframe added to a corner of the sheet. Borders around the wing insignia were painted by hand.

Date finished: August 26, 1983.

Crown YF-16, 2nd Prototype

The Crown F-16A kit, which was also reboxed by Revell Germany (cat.nr.4006) and later released by Minicraft (cat.nr.4424), is in fact based on the YF-16 design, but was retooled to match F-16A dimensions. The way this was done, makes it easy to convert the kit back into a YF-16 prototype.

The model depicts the 2nd prototype in experimental "Sky & Clouds" camouflage. For the blue (Air Superiority Blue FS.35450) I used Polly-S PCA800. For the 'clouds' color I mixed Humbrol paint to match Ford Motor Cy. 'Wimbledon White', which was allegedly used on the real airframe. Note that my digital camera makes 'skin tones' such as 'Wimbledon White' look warmer and more intense, the sample in the 'paints used' table below is a close match.
The tiny insignia decals came from the USMC section of a Crown Harrier sheet, the tail registration numbers and service markings were either taken from my spares box or hand painted, the aerial refueling aiming mark on the spine was also hand painted.

Modifications to the basic shape (front to rear):

• shortened nose cone.
• flattened the underside of the nose.
• added pitot support and forked tube to nose tip.
• moved the gun muzzle back.
• cut the nose wheel gear door into three pieces.
• cut off the wing tip missile launch rails, shorten the wing tips.
• cut 1mm off the trailing edges of the wings.
• reapplied wing tip launch rails.
• replaced ventral fins with smaller, longer ones.
• sanded down the tip of the vertical tail fin.
• increased outer diameter of engine exhaust near the fuselage.
• finally, added a blade aerial to the fuselage spine between the refueling receptacle and the tail fin and another one under the intake in front of the nose wheel bay.

Date finished: February 12, 1984.

LS Northrop F-20 Tigershark, 2nd pre-production aircraft

LS made a beautiful little kit of the F-20 (cat.nr.1053), this kit was later released by ARII/MicroAce (cat.nr.23008).
There are also some pirated chinese copies of this kit around, one of these even ended up in the Airfix catalog (1998, cat.nr.00103). The Airfix kit comes with a really poor canopy, but offers decals for the 3rd airframe in its gloss metallic gray scheme.

The LS kit features the shark-nose design and the late style canopy with enlarged clear area, so a 2nd or 3rd pre-production F-20 can be made straight out of the box (the 1st F-20 was built as an F-5G using the nose section of an F-5E: narrower forward nose section, different canopy).
LS got every detail right apart from the position of the vertical tail fin: the initial F-5G design had its fin further forward than the F-20, the LS kit has the fin at the same location as the F-5G design had.
The LS decal sheet offers two options, both in the same two-tone light gray scheme: the first is for 1st PP F-20 serial 20062 with USAF insignia on the wings and intakes, the second is for 2nd PP F-20 with civilian registration N3986B and no USAF insignia, both schemes include the 'F-20' and 'F-20 Tigershark' legends for tail fin and nose.
Note that only the second decal option can be used on the kit without modifying the nose section and canopy.

For an accurate 2nd/3rd F-20, the following corrections should be made:

• the vertical tail fin needs to be cut off along the top of the fuselage and moved back by 1.5mm.
  
• the nose wheel leg is 1mm too short, this can be fixed by fitting a piece of plasticcard in the wheel well on which the leg is mounted.
  
• due to the way the fuselage halves are molded, the top of the gun barrels are flush with the nose, the look can be improved by cutting a small v-shaped grove on the inside of each barrel, with one side of the V-shape flush with the nose and the other one vertical against the barrel.
  
• the seat is molded in with the rear of the cockpit tub, making it sit too far back. A new seat should be positioned futher forward by some 2mm with some representation of the canopy hinge scissors added behind it (I did not do this).
  

The model was painted in FS.36375 with FS.36495 underside and FS.35237 anti-glare panel on the nose (basically the same color scheme as an early F/A-18).
Decals came from the LS kit, I painted the anti-glare panel by hand instead of using the decal supplied.

Date finished: August 18, 1985.

Crown Mirage F1, 1st prototype

Okay, this one isn't as flashy as the previous ones on this page, but it is an interesting kit of an interesting aircraft (it was afterall the F-16's main rival in NATO's F-104G Starfighter replacement contest).
This is the Crown kit (which was also available from Revell Germany and Minicraft).
Turning an early model Mirage F1 like this kit into a prototype is mostly a matter of changing the paint scheme, but turning the kit into a proper Mirage F1 is quite a bit more work:

Apart from the roundels, all markings were painted by hand.

Date finished: January 22, 1984.