Collect-Aire's 1/48 scale
YF-23 “Black Widow II”

by "Bondo" Phil Brandt

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We Interrupt Regular Programming...

Bondo Industries now interrupts HyperScale Broadcasting Network’s mostly WWII, most-of-the-time programming to showcase an example of what’s been happening in the ensuing six decades.

Our firmly WWII-ensconced brethren may be shocked to learn that, in the 21st Century, there are actually aircraft that don’t have props or reciprocating engines, aircraft that regularly fly above Mach 2, airplanes that fire their air-ro-air missiles while the enemy is beyond visual range, and, what I’m sure will be most unsettling to Luftwaffe enthusiasts, that the German Air Force flies many American-designed airframes!

As representative of the legion of aerospace advances, we will examine the construction of a 1/48 Northrop YF-23 “Black Widow II.”

Background

From all reports, the 1991 Next Generation Air Superiority Fighter flyoff between the Lockheed-Martin YF-22 “Raptor” and the Northrop-McDonnell YF-23 “Black Widow II” was an extremely close affair. Although the YF-23 excelled in various flight aspects and was thought by some to be aesthetically more pleasing, the reason that the nod went to Lockheed’s innovative design might have been because of that company’s lengthy record of successfully getting advanced products out the door, whereas Northrop had in the past experienced design and production difficulties.

The Build Begins

At first look, the Collect-Aire kit seemed to be (for a Collect-Aire release, at least) a relative no-brainer.

The massive main airframe, including wings, was formed out of just two large resin castings, the upper half integral with the wings and a lower half including intake trunks. All the modeler had to do was add the slabs and glue in the metal gear. Yeah, right...

Molding

Although overall molding was very smooth, with minimal warping (exception: slats and ailerons which maintained an annoying “memory” to regain warping) and very petite engraving, some of these qualities were for naught because your correspondent’s kit had serious casting flaws in the lower, aft fuselage portion, where some areas were literally paper thin, and it was obvious that additional resin had been poured on top of already cured resin in an attempt to effect a fix.

Then there were the odd surface discontinuities on the top surface of both the large trapezoidal wings. That is, there was a large portion of outer wing surface that was visibly thinner (by just a few thousandths) than the rest of the wing. The discontinuity was very noticeable and ran across each wing chord in a wavy line, requiring aggressive block sanding and applications of 3M Blue Acryl lacquer putty. Some might say it was just another day at the Difficult Kit Division of Bondo Industries!

Fit

One might think that full length, cast-in intake trunks are a very nice innovation in a resin jet kit. Mebbe so...if the inner trunk walls align properly, with a minimal seam between top and bottom castings. If you’re betting that this didn’t happen, you’d be a winner. Aligning the monolithic top and bottom halves required hot water and large C-clamps to coax the assembly together with epoxy glue. Getting the outer surfaces to align–especially the zigzag fuselage trailing surfaces–caused a significant, and I do mean significant, misalignment of the intake trunk joints. Since said trunks are approximately four inches long, it’s virtually impossible to sand any further back than, say, two inches. Luckily, the intakes are under the wings and the trunks have a lot of curvature, so one literally has to peer into the depths of each trunk with a mini-light to see the gaps that exist. I even fashioned a putty application tool in an ultimately vain attempt to fair in the misaligned seams all the way back to the compressor faces.

The severely angled slabs were butt-joined one at a time to the empennage with five-minute epoxy. I would hold the fuselage at such an angle that the slab would be vertical, and I made small adjustments until the epoxy cure was enough to hold things in alignment.

Landing Gear

Luckily the gear struts are cast metal, because this is a large, heavy model.

I’ve even worried that the trailing axle, knee-action design of the mains might not be able to stand up to the weight, but so far, so good...

Cockpit

The cockpit is fairly plain, with a cast metal instrument panel and an apparently cloned resin seat .

I chose a more detailed aftermarket seat.

Clear Parts

The vacuformed windscreen/canopies (two copies are provided) are fairly clear and thin, but must be cut apart if you want an open cockpit configuration. The “saw-blade” aft edge lines of the canopy are very hard to discern in the vac molding, and much care had to be used in the trimming.

To Collect-Aire’s credit, they provide a one-piece resin canopy interior structure which saves a lot of scratchbuilding, again, if an open configuration is desired. What isn’t included is a windscreen structural arch, and this had to be fabricated from .080 sheet and the trusty Dremel-with-sanding-drum.

Weapons

Collect-Aire provides four resin missiles (AMRAMS?) and a launch rack which is embellished with cast metal bay door mechanisms and details. I elected to pass on an opened weapons bay and extended launcher/missiles because IMO the whole assembly adds a clunkiness to the overall sleek appearance of the airframe.

Of course, by skipping the opened bay doors I was inviting the task of gluing and puttying the ill-fitting doors.


 

Finishing

Multiple iterations of the old lacquer primer/Blue Acryl/wetsand/rescribe routine eventually provided a decent surface for the three shades of Testors Acrylic (gunship gray, dark ghost gray and light ghost gray) which mimic the scheme used by many of today’s F-16s. There were some small areas in which the resin seemed to “bleed through” the paint layers (even though the resin had been scrubbed with soapy water and rubbed down with lacquer thinner), creating small, weird shiny areas. Fortunately the final dusting with Testors clear flat minimized this.

Markings

This modeler isn’t nuts about prototype schemes , preferring real world operational ones. Thus, I took advantage of the kit’s 8th Fighter Wing “Wolfpack” hypothetical markings that might’ve been used had the YF-23 deployed to Kunsan, South Korea as an F-16 replacement. Hey, it coulda happened! The excellent decals were custom-designed by Gerry Asher of Fox Three Studios in Fort Worth. Unfortunately, locations for some of the stenciling were not depicted in the instructions. Even the prominent “Wolfpack” logo locations were not shown, so I copied the location of the logo from Kunsan F-16 pix. Some additional stencils were added from an Aeromaster F-16 sheet.

One more resin “beating”! But, as with most of Collect-Aire’s offerings, this bird’s is (so far) the only 1/48th game in town.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled WWII programming.


 

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Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2007 by "Bondo" Phil Brandt
Page Created 31 July, 2007
Last Updated 24 December, 2007

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