The Dragon Rises: Hongdu Q-5 "Fantan" - finished

"Fantan" and base finished

ready to fly CAS missions, using guns, rockets and two FAB-250 bombs to support ground troops

The aircraft is held in place by a strong magnet. The base can be adjusted in height.

The long painting war continues. :-D

The Dragon Rises: painting the Hongdu Q-5 "Fantan" part#3

Today a considerable amount of time went into cleaning the panel lines' excess paint away. After I was done with this step, I added some weathering and dirt to the aircraft, using washes and Tamiya weathering set powders. I think I am going to leave the Fantan this way, finally adding pilot, canopy, payload and base with the next steps.

The Dragon Rises: painting the Hongdu Q-5 "Fantan" part#2

Today I've painted the panel lines. I used Revell's matt black enamel paint, thinned down with turpentine. This needs to dry until tomorrow evening and then I have to carefully clean any excess paint around the recesses. Stay tuned.

The Dragon Rises: painting the Hongdu Q-5 "Fantan" part#1

I have spent this afternoon with painting little details here and there, that I wanted to be finished before the gloss varnish layers are applied.

The decals have been taken from various Soviet aircraft and out of the vaccu-form kit itself. Surprisingly they went on quite easily although they were already pretty faded (probably very old). Good thing about faded colours is: it looks natural on an aircraft that is used by the Chinese navy.

The decals were applied using the Micro Set and Micro Sol solutions. I will let everything dry over night and apply the varnish tomorrow. That will allow weathering and pin (panel) wash with oil paints next week.

I am really excited how the kit turned out. I would have never imagined I am capable of building a vaccu-form model. But I can also tell you: it was probably the one and only I will ever assemble. ;-)

The Dragon Rises: Hongdu Q-5 "Fantan" WIP #8

I have decided to give the Fantan a classic gloss white paintjob like its used with the PLA Navy air units. It just had the first layers painted on, so this is far from being finished of course. I painted the pilot (he's missing one arm, because otherwise I won't be able to fit the ejection seat into the cockpit - I'll glue it in place once he's in there).

Four FAB-250 low drag bombs that will go under the fuselage can be seen as well as a WIP of the Fantan's flight base.

This is what I am looking to achieve once completely painted:

The Dragon Rises: Hongdu Q-5 "Fantan" WIP #7

I have put primer on ;-) All coming together now. Barely visible that it was not an injection-mould kit.

The Dragon Rises: Hongdu Q-5 "Fantan" WIP #6

Another couple of hours went into the build and this is the current status: some more work with putty here and there and I think I really can go over with primer this weekend. *yeah!*

The Dragon Rises: Hongdu Q-5 "Fantan" WIP #5

Slowly everything is coming together. The cockpit canopy (which I took from a MiG 19) still needs some filling with green stuff, the fuselage needs another go with putty in some places but other than that its starting to look like a proper airplane. If works continues to go on like today I might be able to put primer on next weekend. :-)

The Dragon Rises: Hongdu Q-5 "Fantan" WIP #4

It's been a while since I last worked on my Q-5 "Fantan".

I have added the air intakes and put together the two halves of the fuselage. As you can see, a lot of green stuff was necessary to fill the gaps. :-(

I have not sanded the model yet so the filled gaps look pretty rough on those pics. Once having sanded them and adding a layer of fine putty (even more sanding afterwards) I am sure it will be looking OK.

I have ordered a 1/72 scale MiG-19 since the Fantan and the MiG are similar in appearance and the Q-5 is based upon the famous Soviet fighter. Some parts of this kit will come handy to complete the Fantan.

The Dragon Rises: Hongdu Q-5 "Fantan" WIP #3

Today I continued with sanding the parts of the wings and fuselage.

Here is what the wing's upper and lower half are looking like after I sanded them down:

And then glued together:

Obviously the parts will need some trimming here and there but more or less they fitting together quite well.

The two parts of the fuselage.

The fuselage was sanded down to a certain degree, too. I opened up the air intakes and cut out where the cockpit will be placed later on.

The Dragon Rises: Hongdu Q-5 "Fantan" WIP #2

Today I have sanded the first parts of the Fantan. I started with something small to try it and so the smaller rear wings were first to go.

The first pic shows the already sanded parts for the left rear wing. Above those you can see how the parts were looking like on top and from underneath before sanding.

 After sanding them with 120 grid and 180 grid sand paper, they became really thin but to my surprise still very stiff.

At first I thought the wings will be hollow on the inside but after sanding it became clear that the two halves will have a large surface to put glue on top.

Tomorrow the sanding process will contine and I might already have a wing or two show off with. :-)

The Dragon Rises: Hongdu Q-5 "Fantan" WIP #1

Following a few guides on the internet on modelling vacu-form kits, the first steps I took was using a black marker and draw it around the parts in an 45° angle. I tried to mark 50% of both, the actual parts and the styrene sheet around it.

 I then used scissors and hobby knife to cut out the parts. I tried not cut too close to the parts before they have been freed of the styrene sheet left overs around it. Next step will be cutting them out very closely using my hobby knife and then the sanding process will kick off.

The Dragon Rises: Hongdu Q-5 "Fantan"

It took me ages to finally find a copy of the Warrior Model 1/72 scale vacu-formed/resin kit of a NanChang Q-5 on ebay. This one came to me from a guy in Poland.

The Q-5 is a close air support/ground attacker aircraft, currently deployed by both, PLAAF (Chinese Air Force) and the PLA Navy.

This one is my first vacu-formed kit that I am ever going to assemble. That means its going to be interesting... If you look at the box contents, you'll see that the main fuselage and wings are vacu-formed white plastic, while weapons, cockpit and parts of the landing gear are either resin cast or white metal. The metal parts I won't need for the most part since I am going to assemble the kit "in flight" on a flight stand. I am also planning on exchanging the resin cast FAB-250 bombs with plastic ones from Dragon Models' Soviet Aircraft payload kits in 1/72 scale.

Check out the pics:

Contents: decals, instructions, painting guides, resin payload and detail parts, white metal landing gear etc..

Box: includes one kit, several decals for both, PLAAF and Pakistani Air Force.

The Dragon Rises: Lie Shou (Hunter) Air Defense System done

With some delay the Lie Shou (Hunter) ADS is finally done. Nothing too fancy, just a little mission objective marker for Force On Force. I am pretty pleased with how it turned out. The missiles themselves could have been painted a little better but I was in a hurry. I am on vacation and there is a LOT OF stuff that I want to get painted within the next days.
My buddy who is going to control the US forces in the campaign already said he can't wait to blow them up. Well, we'll see how he's doing when he sees what else is going to be part of the opposing forces.

The Dragon Rises: Lie Shou (Hunter) Air Defense System WIP

Progress was made over the recent days. As I already pointed out to, the next topic is SAM sites for the PLA coastal defenses. I had finished the QW-2 shoulder-launched SAM teams last year. Now its time to add the medium ranged launchpads. Funnily enough, Codemasters (who made "Dragon Rising", the PC game my campaign is based upon) seems to have made up these launchers as I was unable to find proof for their existance online.

The missile depicted does exist - its called PL-12/SD-10 - and seems to be a clone of the similar US-built AMRAAM and SPARROW air-to-air-missiles.

Just like the US have made tests with the so-called SL-AMRAAM made by Raytheon built onto a HMMWV as a launchpad, the Chinese were creating the LS-2 ADS (Lie Shou 2 Air Defense System), mounted on a DongFeng EQ2050, which is a copy of the Humvee.

Since the launcher seen in those screenshots seems not to be a real thing, I will call it Lie Shou (Hunter) ADS for my campaign (meaning its an older version of what became the Humvee-clone mounted LS 2 ADS). I really like the looks of these towed autonomous SAM sites mounted on small trailers. This is how they look in "Dragon Rising":

The Special Forces teams have to destroy various SAM sites in order to clear the airspace to call in coalition air support and troop transports via helicopter. There will be more various anti-air systems for my campaign but let's start with my scratch built version of the screenshots:

There is plenty of parts that went into this. Undercarriage from GRAN's SA-2, wheels from RH Liberations' ZPU-4, main body made from Revell Tiger HAP helo's missile pod and a Italeri Leopard 1's search light, missiles and launch rails from Hasegawa's Aircraft missile set etc.

Feel free to leave some feedback, please.
 
 

The Dragon Rises: Kh-41 Moskit (Sunburn) launcher finished!

The chinese Sunburn Launcher has been finished. The Russian-built Kh-41 Moskit aka Sunburn is a tactical anti-ship-missile which some years ago was called the "most dangerous of its kind". China has received some of them and uses them mainly on its navy missile cruisers. However, the Kh-41 was always proposed to be lauchable from coastal defenses as well. My truck-based launchpad is one of these coastal defenses.

For my "Battle For Skira" project, the USMC force recon unit of Razor Two has to launch a series of stealthy night operations to counter this threat to coalition naval forces with "direct action" (that means, blowing shit up). Air strikes to destroy the PLA's missile sites are impossible due to the enemy having established an umbrella of SAM sites (guess what I am building next *g*).

The scratch-built Sunburn Launcher from all angles (1/72 parts used: Diecast Himars missile launcher Truck, Gran SA-2 Launchpad, Armory kh-41 Moskit Resin missile kit):

The Dragon Rises: Kh-41 Moskit (Sunburn) launcher WIP part 3

A little more work has been done to the Kh-41 Launcher. There is still plenty to add and lots of detail to be painted, but here is how it looks as of now.

The Dragon Rises: Kh-41 Moskit (Sunburn) launcher WIP part 2

Today I only found the time to assemble the Armory resin kit of the Kh-41 "Moskit" aka Sunburn. And while I know the thing is really big I haven't expected it to be such an enormous monster of a missile. Mind you - its normally carried by a SU-33 fighter jet!
Now I know why it is called a "tactical" anti-ship missile. In reality it would be 9.38 meters in length, have a range of more than a 100km and carry 300kg of explosives. I can't wait to see my launcher finished. :-)

The Dragon Rises: Kh-41 Moskit (Sunburn) launcher WIP

I finally have gathered all the components to realise mission objectives for my Battle For Skira project. The "Sunburn Site".

In the campaign USMC Force Recon units are supposed to neutralize the threat composed of Chinese Anti-Ship missiles (Kh-41 Moskit alias "Sunburn"), so the fleet is able to establish a bridgehead on the shores of Skira and land heavier units. I want my mission objective to look like the screenshot of the PC game "Dragon Rising":

 
I use a diecast 1/72 HIMARS system to resemble the truck, combined with a launch pad for an 1/72 S-2 Redline SAM (GRAN) and the resin missile of Armory's 1/72 Kh-41 Moskit kit.

This is how its more or less going to look like:

Obviously that's not final. The rubber tires are missing to allow easier painting and the missile has not been removed of any flash yet.

stay tuned!
Chris