1/48 Kinetic F-5A Freedom Fighter "The Arctic Tiger"

Gallery Article by Sten Arne "Tiger27" B Brunsby

Norway Constitution Day

 

      

This is by far the most colorfull F-5A Freedom Fighter that ever served in the Norwegian airforce.

She was repainted for the NATO Tigermeet back in 1997 and retained the colorsceeme ever since. Today this jet recides at the RNoAF Museum in Bodø, Norway

Scale 1/48th

Kit: Kinetic

Extras : Eduard photoetch, scratch, needles,pins, jammydog tape, Resin cocpit (Wolfpack).

Decals , KAR-Decals (longe since discontinued). Vingtor and the scratch box.

Paints from Games Workshop, Gunze and Vallejo.

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The Norwegian Air Force did a bunch of modifications to the F-5's during their service life. 

RWR, Chaff/Flare pods and a new avionics suite was among the modifications. 

Most of these modifications are in the box but some I have to add. Most vital of these are the RWR sensor on the nose and the cocpit modifications. 

These are relatively easy. For the nose sensor I just took a piece of sprue, glued it on and cut/sanded to shape. Referance pics are easy to find on the net. 

The cocpit modifications are also strait forward. Basicly the instrument panel is the same just with an RWR display and the HUD/UFC is the same as on the late model F-16C/MLU's 

I did cheat abit by using the Zoom set by Eduard to get the instrument panel. Then I took a UFC panel from a F-16C Block 50 PE set and topped it of by modifying the HUD to look right. 

The cocpit tub and seat is from wolfpack and with Eduard's PE it looks quite decent to my Mk1 eyeballs. 

The rest of the build is pretty much out of the box. A few antennaes where added from evergreen, but that's about it. 

Now the paint sceeme is really the challenge on this build. I decided to give it a go by splitting the job in two. First the yellow/black stripes, then the rest. And the Black stripes last. It just kinda made sense to me. 

First I masked off the canopy and put down a layer of gray AK primer. Now for the fun part. Painting yellow is a Bi****.. but here is how you do it. First a thin coat of Tamiya flat white, this will make the yellow pop. Now the yellow itself. 

Finding the right shade is not easy. After some experimentation it came down to Games Workshop , they had more or less the right shade, Yriell Yellow to the rescue a cupple of drops of orange to warm It up and there we go. Now how the heck to get this thick paste through the airbrush. Easy peasy, thinned with Tamiya X-20 and a few drops of Vallejo flow improver made this work like most other paints. I did build up the yellow in a few thin coats and it worked. 

Next up is the black stripes. I found ut painting gloss black just did't work so I used the flat one instead, a lot easyer to work with. Now I did have to repaint the stripes a cupple of times but when I finally got them the way I wanted I sealed them down with gloss and was happy with that. 

The wings and back part of the jet is standard FS 36270 , Gunze took care of that part after masking off the tiger part. 

When dry back out with more flat black to paint more stripes. My Infinity airbrush did short work of that and now things are starting to get together. 

The decals I got from a friend of mine are almost 20 years old, to be on the safe side I used a cotton bud to ad a thin layer of Micro decal film on the top an with a little fiddleing they went on. The rest of the decals was taken from the F-5 sceet by Vingtor. 

Another headacke was the sidewinders. I pulled some from the spares box as the Kinetic kit don't have -L's in it. Did the same to get the yellow as on the jet itself. And the stripes where handpainted using Games Workshop Abbandon Black and a fine brush. 

Some minor details from the spare box. Found a helmet that I tiger striped and there we go. 

My tiger is finished, and I must say I'm quite happy with it. It was a real PITA to get the tiger stripes done the way I wanted them but when I got them they looked as good as I can get them. 

Hope you all like it
.

Sten Arne B Brunsby

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Photos and text © by Sten Arne B Brunsby