1/72 Hasegawa SV-51 Step-by-step

[Jinnai]

I aquired this kit today as a commission for a friend of mine, combine that with my new digital camera (Sony Cybershot: 5.0mp w/ 4x Optical Zoom) I decided to share my work in progress with Hasegawa's newest offering: Nora's SV-51.

Most of this is OOB, however my friend wanted some little extras done, such as raising the landing gear. So I started work on what I could to begin with, keeping everything in front of me.

[Jinnai]

To start off with, I cut the front and rear landing gear covers out of the sprue. I then cut pieces of 0.4mm sheet styrene, and afixed it to the back of the gear covers for support. Then I trimmed the connection points that attach the original open covers to the fuselage.

[Jinnai]

Here are the rear landing gear covers. It's really important to keep them flush while drying, using extra glue gives it a little bit more playing time to get that final finish perfect. Also, the SV-51 has panel lines going across the covers, so they need to be kept in line also.

Don't worry if any glue seeps out through the gaps, as these will be rescribed later when the glue dries.

[Jinnai]

Shown here is where I've glued the now closed covers to the landing gear bays. The actual bays themselves will still be glued to the inside of the kit of added stability. This part is actually slightly difficult, as you're trying to keep the covers flush with the kit. If they sink in too much, you'll need to cut it out and reglue it in. If they sit raised slightly, then you can just sand it back.

I've fiddled with raising the landing gear on all of my Hasegawa Macross kits, and by far, this is the 2nd easiest kit to raise the gear on. The easiest being the YF-21. Sofar the YF-19 was the one I've had the most trouble with, as the nose gear has the molded on gear bay with the kit. Still working to get that one right... one day.

[Jinnai]

Here's another shot of the closed doors glued to the kit. Later on, I'll put some Mr. Surfacer around the edges of the doors, then sand back and rescribe to make it perfect. There's a bit of a gap on the doors on the legs of the kit, but it's nothing too major.

With the nose, I test fitted the piece constantly with the assembled nosecone to make sure it all fit flush while it was drying. Had I not done that, it'd be rather annoying when I go around to fixing the nosecone to the fuselage.

[Jinnai]

I've got the completed cockpit shown here, minus the ejection seat handles, as they interfere with Nora's head. If I were to glue them now, I wouldn't be able to glue Nora to the seat. So, prepainting first, the assembly. Something I.. don't particually enjoy.

The control stick was quite annoying to fit in, plus.. I don't think it's long enough. You can barely see it between her legs when Nora sits in.

[Jinnai]

And athough you can't see her very well, here's Nora. Since my friend wants to put his SV-51 with (come on..we all know it's coming) Hasegawa's VF-0D to recreate the scene from OVA 3, I thought I'd position Nora looking to the left like she does in the same scene.

More to come.

[Stamen0083]

These shots should appease our friend for the time being, don't you think?

I hope you would cover some necessities, such as ejector pin marks and whatnots on the gear doors and gear bays. Granted, you won't have to worry about that, but you're taking the easy way out, so :-P

Should I understand that this kit is far superior in quality than the VF-0S joke?

[Gerwalker]

Thanks for sharing!! Can't wait to see more!

[Jinnai]

These shots should appease our friend for the time being, don't you think?

I hope you would cover some necessities, such as ejector pin marks and whatnots on the gear doors and gear bays. Granted, you won't have to worry about that, but you're taking the easy way out, so :-P

Should I understand that this kit is far superior in quality than the VF-0S joke?

It had better appease him, otherwise I'll keep the kit. =p

As for the inside of the gear doors, each door has the standard 2 hasegawa sinkholes that need to be filled. For the leg gears, there are several shallow sinkholes that need to be filled, on the nose gear (under the cockpit), there are 5 that may be difficult to fill.

I'll take a photo later.

[Angel's Fury]

Keep us updated on your work!

[Jawjaw]

Awesome - I've been waiting to see someone build this kit. I hope to build this kit myself sometime so this will be very helpful to me.

[Myersjessee]

keep it up please!

[David Hingtgen]

Wow, that IS a good kit to make the gear up--and you say the YF-21's even easier. Hmmmn, I'm converting my unfinished YF-23 to gear-up, maybe I should make a matching YF-21 to go with it.

[cobywan]

I aquired this kit today as a commission for a friend of mine, combine that with my new digital camera (Sony Cybershot: 5.0mp w/ 4x Optical Zoom) I decided to share my work in progress with Hasegawa's newest offering: Nora's SV-51.

Most of this is OOB, however my friend wanted some little extras done, such as raising the landing gear. So I started work on what I could to begin with, keeping everything in front of me.

I see Mortar Headds in the background! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

[Stamen0083]

I see Mortar Headds in the background! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

Be jealous, for he acquired an original Phantom recently.

[cobywan]

I see Mortar Headds in the background!  Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

Be jealous, for he acquired an original Phantom recently.

But I have an original Twin Tower Jagd Mirage. So there.

I'll get my Phantom. Oh yes...I will.

Nice to see more build-ups by the way.

[Chronocidal]

You're right, man that looks good.

Btw, I'm also working to make the YF-19 gear up... what are you planning? Cutting the gear well out entirely may help, but I wonder if it would be too much weight to just fill the gear well with lumps of clay, and press the doors into it.

[Stamen0083]

But I have an original Twin Tower Jagd Mirage. So there.

Ouch. Must have put a pretty damn big dent in your pocket :-P

[cobywan]

Naww. Just my credit rating.

[Aurora-7]

Ah, thank you for doing this, Jannai!. I just got my kit in and I've been looking it over, planning what to do. One thing is I do plan to have it wheels up and mounted for in-flight. I am also NOT going to paint it in it's original color. It's just too purple for a combat jet, for me. I'll probably use various gray shades.

[Jinnai]

Aurora-7: My friend wants this painted original colours, although personally I like what someone did with the blue and yellow stripes in the SV-51 thread over at models. Quite nice.

David: The YF-21, because of the location of the landing gear, and how hasegawa designed the kit, means that you can just slot the door onto the underside of the kit. Simple, easy, effective. The nose gear is a bit harder, but nothing too major.

Chronocidal: I toyed with the idea of cutting out the gear well on the YF-19, but in the end I ended up making a sheet styrene stack to put on the underside. I also toyed with the idea of filling the well with epoxy putty, however that'd make the nose too front heavy, and if you didn't weight the legs down, even with gear down it'd tip forward. I'm not happy with how I raised the landing gear on my YF-19. I really need to fix it up.

Stamen: STFU.

[wm cheng]

YAAA! another step-by-step...

I am following with great interest - great work so far. Thanks for doing this, looking forward to much more.

[Jinnai]

Time for an update.

Shown here are the main cockpit pieces and Nora, with base coats down. I'm getting myself prepared to flood the cockpit with a black oil wash (I need to retrive my oil paints from a mate), then I'll decal the instrument panel and seal her up.

After washing I'll drybrush a slightly lighter grey over the top of bring out definition, and do some minor fixups that my camera just made apparant.

[Jinnai]

Nora was.. interesting to paint. Instead of using Tamiya, I sat back and made some small custom mixes from my Citadel paints, because I'm more used to using them for fine detail. (I've been painting miniatures for 13 years now).

The flightsuit was followed from the same paint ratios called out on the instructions, while the trims around the helmet and the straps I added a bit more colour too.

The boots, shoulder pads and knee pads called for a black/grey, but from watching the anime I decided just to stick to using a pure black, as grey seemed to not have that much of an effect on a primarily reddish suit.

Also, the instructions said to paint the bottom of the feet pink, but.. you can't see them when she's sitting in the cockpit, so why bother?

The visor was Tamiya Chrome Silver, covered with Clear Blue.

[Jinnai]

Please forgive the blurriness of these next two images.. I'm still playing with my camera.

Shown here is a beauty shot straight down the nose, showing the instrument panel of the cockpit. Awaiting the inevitable oil wash, and decaling. Hasegawa created 4 decals for the panel alone, plus two smaller ones for the mirrors on the side.

If only they did a HUD decal like on the VF-0S.

Stamen: STFU.

Edited April 10, 2004 by Jinnai

[Jinnai]

So as I wait for my mate to finish work so I can get my oil paints back, I thought I'd continue working on the cockpit by sanding the seam line down on the middle of the canopy.

I was stoked when the YF-19 and YF-21 came out, eliminating that seam line down the middle of the clear canopies. When the VF-0S came out, and the seam was reinserted, I was saddened. Hoping that they'd make a difference for the SV-51 considering there is that watermark-like design on the canopy, I was saddened again when the seam was there.

This was wetsanded back, starting from 600 grit, through to 1000, 1200, 1500 and finished with 2000. If I had finer grades, I'd keep going all the way through, but unfortunately I don't have access to such products. Although I'd get them in a heart beat if I could.

Next step from here is polishing, then the future dip.

[Jinnai]

One polished canopy, awaiting the future dip. I need to give it a quick clean beforehand, so I remove any fingerprints and left over polishing compound before the future seals up the canopy.

[Jinnai]

One (dry) assembled cockpit. I like this picture mainly because it shows Nora looking of to the side really clearly, like in OVA 3.

Where's that VF-0D...

[Jinnai]

Canopy added. It's a shame that most of the cockpit is obscured when the canopy is attached. Especially with some of the hard work put into painting it.

But.. I'm proud because I know it's there. It's a detail I couldn't overlook.

[Jinnai]

While still waiting, I thought I'd work on some other little parts for extra detail and such.

I took my microdrill bit which is about a 0.3mm bit, and drilled out the holes on the machine guns. The kit part has detail, but they're very shallow and small barrels, I thought the hole on the barrel could be enlarged, just to make it look a bit more realistic.

Unfortunately my camera was having a hard time focusing on the part (I still haven't figured out how to disable my auto-focus and create new manual focus settings.. my camera has that option, but I haven't had time to play around that much) so I threw the sprue on the scanner. And that still didn't work well, but you CAN see it... even if just barely. My index finger is there for size comparison.

[Jinnai]

One last little picture before I call it quits for the night:

From left to right: DYRL Weapons Set, YF-19, VF-0S and Nora.

Missing: Guld (as I've seemed to misplace him and I have no idea where he is.. probably in one of my 8 drawers full of bits, sprues and parts), Max/Miria (VF-22S, kit is still in bags.. ain't touching it for a while)

Edited April 10, 2004 by Jinnai

[Angel's Fury]

Thanks Jinnai! Keep up with the updates!

[Capt Hungry]

Looking good so far.

Thanks for doing this step by step!

[Jinnai]

Another update. Thank god for the Easter long weekend, and the fact I'm on two weeks holidays from work.

I put a thin black oil wash over the cockpit, to enhance a little bit of detail and put a bit of depth into the colour. It turned out exactly how I wanted it. I still need to finish the ejection seat handles and attach them.