CFT v2.0

Woke up today and realized that while the CFT I sculpted last night looked pretty damn cool, it was extremely exaggerated and shaped completely wrong and I hated it for that. I pulled it off the jet and took this opportunity to do some sanding on the dorsal spine to thin it up just a bit.

After studying about 50 different pictures of F-16Is I went ahead and did the easier part of the project and sculpted the nose a little bit. The GHQ model is pretty much flat on the underside but the F-16Is nose is rounded below the wing and this rounded area extends back a bit behind the engine intake. It looks a little too beefy so I might end up sanding it down a little bit more.

I then did some practice sculpting with clay to try and get a feel for how I wanted the CFTs to look. After an hour or so of that I started doing the actual sculpting. It took me about 3 hours to get the first one right and then another 2-3 hours to get the second one to match the first one. This was an absolute headache. I don't know how people out there sculpt this kind of stuff but I guess practice makes perfect and they sure seem to have a shit ton of practice.

The model is far from the perfection I had envisioned for it and it isn't quite symetrical but this is going to have to do. I am at the limit of my abilities to do any better than this. I already have probably 20+ hours invested in this thing and I still have another 2-5 hours to go I think before I can even get the primer on.

Up next is the 600 gallon drop tanks. Attach the AIM-9 missiles. Attach the LGBs. Maybe attach a center drop tank and a targeting pod for the LGBs. And maybe modify the model to go from 3 hardpoints per wing to 4 hardpoints per wing in order to accomodate a pair of amraam-120 missiles.