1:48 F-5F Franken Tiger Aggressor US NAVY VFC-111 Camouflage Paint Masks

A tiger put together from several airframes

The two-seat F-5F variant served in the US Navy as an adversary in air combat training. The VFC-111 unit, based in Florida, carries a setting sun badge on the fin and its aircraft alternate schemes copied from real foreign machines. The nickname refers to an aircraft assembled from parts of several airframes, which earned it a reputation as a machine put together from whatever was at hand and at the same time one of the most interesting finishes in the whole unit.

What the set offers

The cut films capture the boundaries of the camouflage fields of this particular aircraft in 1:48 scale. Aggressor schemes typically have sharp transitions and irregular wedges, where hand-laid tape soon wanders and the left side then does not match the right.

What to keep in mind while working

• Check that the model has both seats and the cockpit dealt with, masking is harder on a finished airframe.
• Spray the wedges from the lighter shade toward the darker one.
• Check the edges against the light after lifting, a small overrun can be touched in with a brush.
• Let the films rest on paper when you need to move them.

Training against a differently colored opponent is meant to bring pilots closer to a real encounter with foreign equipment, which is why the finishes of the units are renewed regularly. For the modeler that is an inexhaustible supply of colorful subjects, and on top of that there is no single pattern to stick to. The two-seat version adds a longer canopy, which lets the shapes on the fuselage spine stand out.

The package holds masking films only, not the model and not the paints.