Italeri 1/72 Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter

The Lockheed F-117 was the first operational stealth aircraft, first flying in 1981. Built by the legendary “Skunk Works”, it used revolutionary computer design to achieve a low radar signature with its faceted shape. The aircraft was inherently unstable to fly and required complex avionics to offset the airframe’s drawbacks.

This kit is the Italeri 1/72 F-117A. The kit is pretty basic and easy to assemble, but has a few significant drawbacks. First, the bomb bay is incorrect, the doors open in the the wrong configuration. For that reason, I built the kit with the doors closed. I had significant problems with the decals disintegrating. I also had some self-inflicted issues with the paint finish.

Here you can see the sprues and the fact that the kit is fairly simple without too many parts.

Added some weight into the nose to ensure the finished model would sit properly on its tricycle landing gear.

Here is the finished cockpit.

Putting the fuselage together. Fit was very good.

Masking the canopy – luckily the sawtooth pattern on the canopy was almost exactly the same size as the sawtooth pattern my Tamiya tape has when cut. Worked out very nicely.

Painted the wheel wells gloss white and filled them with blu-tac. There is also a red strip along the bottom and a tiny red patch. Painted these and masked them off.

Ready for flat black!!! I airbrushed on Tamiya XF-1 Flat Black.

Looks good on top!

Not so good on the bottom! Flat black is pretty unforgiving! So, this led me down a rat hole with the finish. I tried Vallejo Surface Primer Black 73.660 brushed on, hoping it would smooth over some of the rough spots. Total disaster! Left brush marks and looked horrible. Tried to remove as much of it as possible with enamel thinner and acrylic thinner.

At wit’s end, I finally went out to the garage and fetched a can of Tremclad Flat Black and painted the F-117 in a box on the front lawn. This finish isn’t exactly flat, but it does look nice and covered the model very well. It didn’t obscure details and did smooth over a lot of the rough spots. It ended up a kind of semi-gloss black.

Added the landing gear and decals. Most of the small decal sheet was spoiled, the decals dissolved. Bill’s Hobby Shop is looking for some replacement decals (thanks, guys!).

Paints:

Tamiya
X-1 Black
X-2 White
X-4 Gloss Green
X-7 Red
X-8 Yellow
XF-1 Flat Black
XF-58 Flat Olive Green
XF-66 Light Grey (Light Ghost Grey)

Vallejo
Surface Primer Black 73.660

Tremclad
Flat Black