Finishing touches
We are close to finishing up here, just a last couple of items to complete before we apply decals.
As a stealthy aircraft this element is lost when you hang external stores, but to me the aircraft just doesn’t look right without being tooled up for the job. So next up are our external pylons.
The main underwing pylons are made up of two halves with a centre underside, these go together well and just a light sand on the seam is needed, no filler at all.
Undercoated and finished in our MSG, the central underside is masked off and finished in Alclad Dark Aluminium, and they look quite effective. The pylons are handed along with being specific for outer and inner stations, so be sure to dry fit to get them in the right place.
And speaking of the right place, there are no locating holes in the wing, there are also no clear instructions, so you’ll have to do some referencing to get this right. Add one more complication to this matter, up till now the F35 testing has not yet produced any clear photos of the external stores fit, so it’s best guess time.
Let me tell you up front, I think I got this wrong, as the pylons appear too far back from the leading edge spoilers to me and I think I got the inner stations a little too far out. It looked right at the time, but in hindsight and with some stores onboard, I’m a little irked I didn’t study this enough.
The outer stub pylons for the Sidewinders are again a single piece and finished in MSG, however location for these is simple enough, although they are handed, so deep side of the pylon to the rear folks.
On both the upper and lower surfaces of the fuselage are some hexagonal white panels I must assume are sat comm’s or some other electronic jiggery pokery. It’s out with the masking tape again and a quick coat of white, job done.
Just behind the intake fan door is a humped antenna array that from my reference photos is a dark shade of gray, so again mask up and sprayed with EDSG.
I truly hope I have seen the last of the masking tape now, we can finally get down to decals and bringing this F35 into life as a Royal Navy F35K.
