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Aces II ejection seat

Back in May, I saw Topgun: Maverick in the cinema and it got me really inspired to make something aviation-related. Rather than building a model kit, I figured it would be fun to scratch build something. After a bit of thinking I decided that that something had to be an ejection seat.

Aces II ejection seat

I particularly liked the look of the Aces II seat, which is used in many aircraft including the F-15 Eagle, F-16 Viper, F-22 Raptor and A-10 Warthog. I found some really nice technical drawings of the Aces II seat online, which came in very handy for getting the basic shape and placement of the detailing right.

Aces II schematics

This is by no means a perfect recreation of the schematics, though. I was more concerned with getting the overall ‘feel’ right. I also didn’t build the seat to any particular scale. Instead, I scaled the image so that the side view was exactly the height of a sheet of A4. In other words, this thing was going to be pretty bloody massive!

Aces II ejection seat 
The basic structure was made out of polystyrene sheet. I then started adding the details out of thin card. 

adding rivets
The many, many rivets were made using a hole punch.
adding details
And then glued on, one by one.
work in progress

Right about the time that the left image was taken, I got a little bit exhausted by the scale of the project and put it aside for a little while. But then in July I went to see Topgun for a second time and got straight back to building the following day. (The second viewing was in 4D, btw. Bit pricey, but totally worth it!)

The cables were made out of plastic-coated floral wire. The emergency oxygen tank on the side and the cushions were made out of polymer clay (Fimo). As you can see, the clay didn’t really want to conform to the curvature of the seat and broke into several pieces. Rather than starting over, I hotglued the different sections of the cushion to the seat and filled in the gaps with Milliput. I also sculpted some other small details in Milliput.

F-16 ejection seat

And after a lot more detail work, it was time for painting. There aren’t that many colours on the model, so base coating was pretty straightforward. Although, it would have been if the polymer clay hadn’t somehow reacted with the paint, causing it to not dry properly and stay sticky. Giving the polymer clay sections a couple coats of a very hard polyurethane varnish seems to have solved the problem.

Aces II ejection seat

The detailing, particularly black lining each and every single bolt, was quite a bit more work. But it was totally worth it in the end. To break up the large grey surfaces I gave the model a wash of burned umber paint. The end result looks a bit more dirty than a real ejection would ever be allowed to get, but it does add a lot of character. I really couldn’t be happier with how it turned out!

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