1/48 Canadian Armed Forces Rafale B

by Jason Liang

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  Canada Day 2005 

 

Background
Fast Forward to 2010: After almost 30 years of service, the Canadian Armed Forces finally decides to replace their fleet of CF-18 Hornets with the new Rafale B.

This idea popped up in my head when I saw those 'what-if' schemes of the Rafale by David Aungst: what about a Canadian Rafale? So here she is: in markings of 416 Lynx Squadron, based in Cold Lake, Alberta.

Kit & Construction
Like many others, I used the Revell Germany 1/48 Rafale B kit straight out of the box, which is just wonderful, as you might have heard from reviews. The quality of the molding is just awesome, so are the details. The only problem I had when building this kit was a few minor mismatches, particularly around the intakes, and a slight gap on the under side between the wings and the fuselage.

I had to do some sanding on the area around the intakes. Some of the panel lines around this area became shallower as a result of sanding, but that was it.

Here is the gap between the fuselage and the wings. I used masking tape to mask off a narrow strip, applied putty and sanded and sanded and sanded...

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Here's the double cockpit ready to be installed: I liked the detail straight out of the box, so I kept it that way. The image to the right shows what I did with the HUD: I painted clear green on just the edge of the clear plastic piece, and it turned out to have a very convincing glass effect.

Paint, Decals & Weathering

Here's the model before and after painting. The paint scheme was the standard Canadian CF-18 two-tone gray scheme, FS35237 Medium Gray over FS36375 Light Gray. I used Gunze paints. I airbrushed on the first colour, but my airbrush was performing poorly, so I hand-painted the second colour, which gave me slightly varied tones here and there which helped the weathering. The camo pattern was to imitate those found on F-15's and F/A-22's. It just looks cool!

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Weathering was done with a black artists' oils/mineral spirits wash, chalk pastels and a little drybrushing.

The decals were from Leading Edge, and they performed for the most part favourably. Some of them disintegrated when I moved them off the backing sheet.

This was a fun project, taking a break from 'accurate' modelling. I hope you enjoy the pics!

Jason

 

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Photos and text © by Jason Liang