Rafale "Nounou" 1/48

Nounou" is the french term for Buddy refuelling





My last model(s) off the bench is an inflight display of two Rafale Marine M08 & M12 Buddy refuelling somewhere over the mediteranean sea during operation Harmattan, the allied actions in Lybia. The image below shows what i wanted to achieve:

The first kit (the nounou) will be the Hobby Boss and the second (the bomber) will be the Revell boxing updated with the bomb racks.

The Revell decals looks much better - They were designed by Syhart decals. The Hobby boss decals are white and hi vis, so they can't be used for this project. Furthermore, the anchor is not centred on the french roundels. I'll thus be looking to buy an extra decal set for the refueller. I simply asked Revell of Germany if i could buy an extra sheet from them and i must say they have a real great Customer service !! That said, with the market price of the revell boxing, i would get the sheet and the model for 23 euros, which is barely more than an aftermarket decal sheet alone ;) That was my backup plan.

The molds are close to one another and at first I actually thought they were the same. But after looking better, they are different all right.
The Revell looks better detailed and close to a modern standard where the Hobbyboss seems to be one of the earlier versions.
The Hobby boss doesn't have the chaff& flares ejectors and the wheels are ugly which is luckily irrelevant for this build.

The Revell has a targetting pod included but the instruction doesn't mention it at all. The specific pylon is also included. They also give you the rear fuselage AA pylons without mentionning anything about it in the instructions.
Both kit suffer from one huge drawback: the intakes are left open and lack the very distinctive intake ducts of the rafale.
D-molds made seamless intakes for them, but I wans't able to source them, they seem OOP. That's too bad as I would realy like to get a pair of them for this project.

Weaponwise, I'll load the refueller with the wing tanks from the Hobby boss boxing. They give you 2 large subsonic wing bag and 2 smaller supersonic wing bags. perfect configuration for a Marine "nonou". I'll probably have to scratch the Douglas refuel pod.
The receiving aircraft will be laden with 4 (I wish I could use 6, but apparently it wasn't done often in the french marine, especially not from a carrier) GBUs, 2 subsonic wing bags and the targetting pod on the chin pylon, and of course the standard AA missile on the wingtips.
I'll also get the handsome rafale pilots from PJ for the inflight scene

the PJ pilots are great but a real nightmare to get into the pits. first the stick is on the right in the rafale and the PJ pilots have the stick in the middle. No big deal since the pit space is soo small that nobody will notice anything anyway. the legs of the pilots had to be cut otherwise they wouldn't fit under the IP and the arms greatly conflict with the glareshield. Lots of surgery were needed on the poor pilots Jean and Philippe :)
that being said the helmet is great and they are very specific to the rafale, so i'm glad to have them.

The resin bits for the hobby boss kit to model the chaff & flares near the flaps went in very easily

 The wings were a bit bothersome to fit and it's much better to insert a mini strip of platic on the bottom half so they don't sag down. The intakes were requiring quite a bit of putty to be mated to the fuselage, but that was expected.

The biggest issue for me with the intake is that fact that you see all the way through the exhaust. I simply decided to shut them closed internally with a sheet of plasticard. Not ideal I agree but it's already halfway beter than to see the innards of the exhaust :)

 
The internal supports for the rods were glued Inside the fuselages with two component epoxy putty. The supporting rods will be slided in at later stages.

 
the noses are giving me a bit of trouble. i have three, the resin wolfpack, the revell and the hobby boss. When i compare them i can say that the HB seems weird.

 

The Revell and HB noses have a direction pin so i can't go wrong. but the resin nose isn't directionnal, so there is a potential to glue it with a wrong angle.

 

And the same with the hobby boss nose mated to the hobby boss model

 The end of fuselage plane is not the same from the revell to the hobby boss kit it seem, so the nose differences noticed on the flat table aren't so obvious once the noses are dry fitted on their respective model.
Still at this stage, i am really not sure which way to glue the resin nose. Matter of fact i don't even know if it's better than the stock HB nose...

Both kits have been fully assembled and primed with Mr Surfacer 1000. I finally decided to discard the resin nose and use Hobby boss'. Both kit need extensive putty, extensive sanding as it seems the moulds weren't perfectly aligned and everyting you glue will require putty.

Closing the gear door was rather easy compared to the usual model, gluing the wings to the fuselage required plastric strips under the wing to get the correct angle and to minimize  putty use. The intakes needed quite a lot of putty and the nose as well

The way the kit was engineered is especially weird around the nose gear bay. Lots of sanding required there unless you force the innards to be separated to accomodate the gear bay part. As a result, many kits of the rafale are seen with that awful line where the gear bay part is mated to the fuselage. The fuselage joints below the cockpit are not easy to sand smooth without loosing too much detail.

Both canopy were actually easy to get in place closed, which is hardly the case on most kits. Progress on the Revell:

 

 

Although not correct and not as nice as the L'arsenal pod, I'll use the targetting pod included in the Revell boxing but omitted from the documentation, the chin pylon is already glued in place:

Flaps are separated on HB and attached on Revell, no big deal, they both need to be in for this inflight display
 Progress on the Hobby Boss:

The gun covers and spent cartridge ejector in resin from Wolfpack were used on the HB kit

 

The wingtip pylons of the hobby boss have been replaced with the Wolfpack design - they are shorter and look nicer.
 
Some work on the nose, the HB nose has the static lines too much forward, so they were filled in and replaced with plastic strips which were in turn sanded down (some still need more sanding). I did the same with the revell nose to maintain a semblance of unity in the diorama. The bottom one is longer than the others
 

 

  
The wing bags (at least the larger subsonic ones) were redone using streched sprue. the structure lines are soldering lines. I also detailled a bit more the underside of the wing bags
 

 
 
Both models were then preshaded with dark grey and painted with a mix 75/25 of H306/H307. Then the Inside of the panels were quickly and dirty sprayed with a lighter shade of H306:
 

 

 
Both model were then blended down with a mist of H306. Some antenna and heat plates painted with alclad.
 

 

 

 

 

 
Since I have three rafales to do, I invested in one of the Syh@rt decal sheet which has the walkways masks in vinyl. Nothing you can't do with masking tape, but way quicker. The masks are reusable with a bit of care.

The difference in wingtips

The body of the GBU were painted but I'm not happy with the contrast between the greens, so those go back to the paint booth.

That's better !

Decal time !!
I wanted to stick to the original picture but couldn't do M9, so it will be M12 refuelled by M8.

 

M12 will carry two mica IR and probably to EM Under the belly and M8 will have 2 magic2 on wingtips

 

 

The wing bags of M8 have a bit of artistic licence with the commemorative colours decals. I figured that since M8 would stay over friendly territory, why not :)

 

Next is the refuel pod story
The french navy use the Douglas B827 refuelling pod on centreline stations of the etendard and the rafale.
Since starting that project i knew that scratching the pod would be one of the challenges of this project.

 

AFAIK, the pod is only available in the Heller Super Etendard, afghan warrior boxing in 1/48. A kit I don't have but a friend lent me the parts so I could study them. I also have the Douglas D-704 Buddy pod used on intruder and skyhawk. Since both are Douglas, I took all wing tanks from douglas aircraft in the stash and started looking for possibilities:

 

 

From top to bottom:
D-704 from Cobra Company , Intruder wing bag, Corsair wingbag, Spad wing tank and the B827 pod from the Super etendard kit.

By measuring diameter and lenght, I chosed the A-7 corsair tank.
Cut the tank in 5 parts and assembled the two relevant ones together to come with the same lenght and about the same diameter as the french pod. It's a bit shallower and longer, but that will do.

 

After sanding and engraving , I added the bumps from various stashes (F-16 1/32, A-4 1/32 and made the prop with some PE bits
Some more sanding, painting and detailling and the rafales will have a half decent refuel pod.

 

 

The bomber rafale has been completed first:

 

 



Then the  "nounou" system is completed

 

 

 

 

The hose is 27cm (13m in 1/48) long and 1mm in diameter (50mm 1/1)

The hardest thing was to scracth the drogue. It was done with different plastic cylinders cut to lenght, some metal rods disposed in a cone and glued on the outer side on a bigger circle cut out from thin plasticard.
The outside of the drogue was then circled with toilet paper mixed with white glue.

Luckily I was able to find some dimensions of the real system:

 

 

 

 

 

The last to be completed was the refueller:

And finally all three subassemblies are displayed together and the project is completed.

 

 

 

 

 

Lame attempt at making both rod disappear in this frontal shot

 

 

The same without the support rods

 

 

The project took 6 months of happy modelling to complete !