Converting Testors YF-22 to a F-22

By Larry Hawkins

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This is the Testors kit which was built out of the box except for the modification to the nose, which the kit nose was cut off about 1 1/2 inches and then putty was mixed and poured into the nose section a little at a time until it was high enough so for me to sand and shape to the pictures and the 1/48th instruction sheet I got from Testors. I added a resin aces II ejection sheet from Tac Scale, the kit seat was not that great.

After the nose was done I looked at the pictures of this very classified A/C and noted that the wing tips were reshaped at the trailing edges and preceded to do the same to mine. It wasn't difficult to do this and they turned out ok. The very last thing I did was too scratch the tail plane, which was the elevators. I just took some sheet plastic, cut out the sections that were made from the kit ones and reset the angle of the new ones and they came out all right and they were glued into place and set per the angle as to the plans.

After this was all done I started sanding down the whole plane so to get the surface ready for paint. I returned to the kit plans for the paint pattern and painted it to the kit FS #s. I added one of the AIM-120s that came with the F-4E kit from Revell, the new kit release of the F-E.Detailed the bay the for 120 and same for the AIM-9 on the other side. They were detailed using scale master decals for the missiles. The ED on the tail fins were modified from some decals from the scrap box. After all decals had dried I then shout a coat of flat to seal the decals. And it was finished.

It took 1st place at the Combat Air Museum contest, at Forbes Field, Topeka, KS.

© Larry Hawkins

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This article was published on Wednesday, July 20 2011; Last modified on Saturday, May 14 2016