A Dill Hill To Die On (Area 88)

The finished model:

The scene:

While waiting for the enhanced radar defence system for the Area 88 mountain base to come online, Saki orders around-the-clock recon missions be flown. However, after both Recon 2 and Recon 5 go missing, Area 88 dispatches a F-111 Aardvark to investigate.

Pilots Eric and Harrison criss-cross the costal area near Dill Hill but find no sign of the attack. Suddenly, they become the first victims of Project 4’s T-10 Anti-Aircraft Mines – a mine field of burrowing missile launchers that are capable of launching their payload at an unsuspecting plane as it flies overhead.

Check out the original manga scene from Chapter 075 “The Grim Reaper’s Fugue” here:

The story:

This is just a bit part of the story, basically an opportunity to introduce the aero-mines as a deadly threat. Rather than just have a nameless/faceless aircraft fly by and explode, we get Eric and Harrison as the unwitting “red shirts” that fall victim to the trap.

Even though it’s not much to hang your hat on, it’s 6 pages of story that gives me a chance to build a F-111 Aardvark as part of my 1/144 Area 88 project. Honestly though, I’m not a huge fan of the ‘Vark itself – it’s not that I dislike it per se, but I just have no real feelings for it one way or the other. What moved this particular build up the priority ladder though was my desire to be part of the cool kids at the 2019 “Vark Fest” group build at Scalemates.com.

The kit:

F-111E Aardvark by Mini Hobby Models

The build:

Since my Area 88 1/144 builds are meant to “capture a moment of action” from the manga, I decided to try my first real explosion… but I kinda chickened out. I really should’ve tried to chop the fuselage in half and make the fireball a real ball, but after I only put it the one LED light on top, I didn’t feel like trying to retro-fit one on the bottom as well. It’s strange though, because this would’ve been a kit certainly deserving of being chopped in half.

There aren’t many F-111 Aardvark kits available in 1/144 scale, and almost all of them are descendants of the ancient Crown mould. The two most readily available are the strangely expensive Minicraft and the very cheap Mini Hobby Models reboxing of the Trumpeter rip-off. I went with the Mini Hobby Models mainly because of the price tag.

To make it into a passable ‘vark takes a lot of work though. First off there are no real panel lines to speak of… and what are there are raised. So I basically had to sand the whole thing smooth and scribe all my own. I think I did a pretty good job, and I was rolling along until I hit the wings. That’s when I discovered that Trumpeter hadn’t bother to actually make two wings. They’d just stamped both sides exactly the same and expected that no one would notice. So, after scribing one side, I had to take a picture of it, flip it, print it, and then use that as a guide for the other side. It wasn’t hard, but it was a pain.

The other main problem area was the intakes. They’re not even close to reality, so I had to cut them off and completely rebuild them. It’s not perfect, but I think it looks better than it would have out of the box, so I guess I’m satisfied.

Anyway, take a look and feel free to tell me what you think.

The box… slightly crushed as always when ordering from Aliexpress…

So yeah… the sprues… Not a ton of details on these sprues, but we can fix that.

Quick dry…fit…ish proves it will look more or less like a ‘Vark when it’s done. This one’s gonna need some love.

The canopy on the F-111 is pretty distinctive, so and this is not it – even after I added a bit of framing to the canopy… we’ll need to explore Plan B

First thing to do is start scribing some panel lines… like… ALL of them. Painted the interior of the canopy with Tamiya Smoke (X-19) just to see if it’s going to work.

Conveniently, Trumpeter decided to off only one wing for both sides instead of a mirror image. So I had to make a copy of the scribe lines I’d already done, make a mirror image, and then glue some paper onto the wing and scribe out the details. It work

Let’s get to work on the air intakes… another distinctive ‘Vark feature… which was also largely incorrect on this kit.

A bit of cut tubing covers most of the gaps.

A bit more plastic sheet and some missile tips sanded to about a quarter round (but not quite) seems to have done the trick.

Yeah, I think I can live with that. Still a bit more scribing to do on the nose though.

Closed off the air intakes. I also managed to break off the wing posts, so now they’re glued in place. Oh, well.

Ok… I took the business end of a file to the canopy. Does that look better?

I couldn’t bear to blow anyone up, so these two safety dummies will be practically invisible inside the cockpit.

Everyone nestled safely in place, so time for some putty… and sanding!

Skipped a couple of rounds of masking and painting… but now it’s got camouflage.

Final bit of paint… now to work on the base.

Base done, panel line wash, check. Explosion fireball, attached.

One Reply to “A Dill Hill To Die On (Area 88)”

Entrapdak_Nation says:

October 4, 2022 at 9:04 AM

You’ve devoted so much time and love to the Area 88 manga, and to these models. As a fellow Area 88 fan, I salute you. English-language fan material for Area 88 is hard to find, but your website is a gold mine for it.

I can’t wait to see your scale model rendition of the combat flashback from “Bandit Report”, as well as your English translation of the manga pages. Hoover Kippenburg was my favorite character in the manga, so it will be nice to see his Kfir in this scene.