What if the British government did take up the offer of the F-117A Nighthawk from the Americans and the Royal Air Force took delivery of a couple of Squadrons worth?
Do you ever go around a model show, see a certain model and they are always the same colour and schemes? This is something I thought to myself on a regular basis when I saw models of the F-117 Nighthawk on club stands. They are always black, in USAF markings and some of them even with the "Stars & Stripes" on the underside of the fuselage. I wanted to do my Nighthawk different from all of the others I had seen. The American government had offered the F-117 to the British government, but we turned it down (which was a shame in my opinion!). So for a bit of fun, I decided to do my one in a RAF scheme, just as if we had taken up the offer on the aircraft all those years back. After a look through all of my aftermarket decal sheets, I found one that would work on the Nighthawk. This marking scheme was for a Tornado of the RAF 111 Squadron in their 90th Anniversary scheme, which I thought would look great on the Nighthawk.
Now, this is the Revell 1/48th scale kit and it is not a nice kit to start with. The plastic it is moulded in is horrible and the fitment of the parts is not that good. I did swear at the thing several time during its construction. But I soldiered on with the model and got the main construction done to the painting stage. the model was sprayed all over in Light Aircraft grey, then the tails and fuselage spine were sprayed black after masking of the rest of the fuselage. Fitting the large decals to the outer surfaces of the tails was fun. Again, some swearing was heard from my workshop but after some manipulation, plenty of MicroSol and MicroSet, they went into position with minimal damage to them. The rest of the decals went onto the model without any trouble and they were sealed in with some clear afterwards.
The end of the road was now in sight. There was only some detail painting left to do, slight bit of weathering on the intakes and grills followed by final assembly. For something that was for fun and a bit of "tongue in cheek", it came out okay in the end. The first time I displayed the model at a show, it was alongside my two 48th scale Lightnings on the stand. Someone actually came up to me complimenting me on my build of the Nighthawk. He said it was about time someone did build one of the RAF versions of the aircraft, because he had only seen the USAF ones modelled. I explained that this scheme never existed on a F-117 because the RAF never had them and they were from a Tornado. But he was adamant that we did have them and he had seen them in the RAF grey scheme. I stopped the conversation at that point and let him carry on believing it was a real scheme.
Sorry about the quality of the photos, but they were taken with my phone and I have not got around to doing some new ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment