1/32nd Macchi C.205 “Veltro” - Completed

[Arniec]

Great progress Rich. after looking at the pictures I find the model a little bit dissapointing. Specially the exhausts. My model isn't that good either, but what can you expect for a tenner. Although I had a look at the pilot in it and it is even better than a Hasegawa one. maybee I will use it.

Cheers,

[trickyrich]

Great progress Rich. after looking at the pictures I find the model a little bit dissapointing. Specially the exhausts. My model isn't that good either, but what can you expect for a tenner. Although I had a look at the pilot in it and it is even better than a Hasegawa one. maybee I will use it.

Cheers,

mmm the exhausts are crap, as I mentioned in your build post I'm doing the same thing and replacing them with Quickboost ones.

The cockpit is giving me hell at the moment, nothing really fit at all, plus the instrument panel doesn't actually fit on anything!! A post shortly to update on all the dramas!

[Tomoshenko]

Lovely work, especially the detailing, but blimey there's some graft involved sorting out all those misshapen blobby bits and air bubbles etc.

[trickyrich]

Sorry for the late update this beasty and the SM.79 have been keeping me very busy! Truth be told I’m spending more time researching the two of them than I have building for the moment!

Ok an awful lot of time has been spent on the cockpit and trying to get it all to fit together. Initially the resin cockpit details looked quite good but as I’ve been working on it it’s become not quite as nice. The finish and details of the side panels is a bit rough and there is no easy way to fix them other than rebuilding the lot! If the cockpit was more open or had another panel that allowed more of it to be viewed then this is what I’d be doing! But seeing as it is quite cramped and not that much can be seen then I’m not going to get too worried, as there are bigger issues to sort out.

I’m quite happy with the seat, the same can’t be said of the IP, it was a real bast##d to put together and I didn’t know how I was even going to fit it! There’s quite a bit more to do on it so hopefully it will start to look a bit better.

Ok the fit of the cockpit has been really worrying me as with all the test fits it just didn’t want to go together at all and nothing fitted. After lots of research and looking at other peoples builds I finally figured out what I need to do. So this morning (I fly off to work this afternoon) I finally cracked the fit issues. The sidewalls needed to be taken down to “rice paper” thickness, plus the interior tub in the fuselage was reshaped as well.

This then allowed the cockpit floor to fit snuggly against the sidewalls, but it still sat far to far forward when the seat is fitted as well as the armoured headrest. Without this headrest its correct position the floor and seat are in the correct position. To get them all to fit, as it is then the seat is hard up against the joystick! Looking at the shape of the headrest compared to photo’s of the actual thing, shows it to be the wrong shape. So after so grinding and profiling I came up with this.

It may not be 100% accurate but it now at least allows me to fit the cockpit with everything “relatively” in the correct position.

Surprisingly the IP actually “sits”, there’s no actual structure to hold it there, in place! I was going to make a frame up out of plastic rod to help hold it in the right place, but I may be able to get away without it now.

And of cause once I got the cockpit all to fit nicely now the wing won’t!! A wee bit of grinding sorted that out!

Speaking of the wing I did make a booboo with the RH aileron when I was cleaning up the wing. It should have been slightly curve as it reaches the wing tip. I had mistakenly made it straight. So a wee bit of plastic strip and some careful profiling was required to sort that out. Plus I’ve started to mark out some of the panels that need to be added as well.

And finally the rudder, I still can’t find the issue that was mentioned in the original review of this model, everything checks out (I have a slight feeling that this model was revised at some stage as there are some bits with are quite different from the review one???). So it was just a case of thinning it down a bit and making sure the profile was right. I will have to do the same with the elevators as they’re a bit thick and blunt!

This one is fighting me all the way but after this mornings work I’m back on track. I’ll probably put her to one side next break as I quite happy to be where I’m at at the moment, so I’ll be doing more work on the 152….maybe.

[Arniec]

Great progress Rich. This is fighting you all the way. I hope you will finish this one.

If this one doesn't finish you can always do the 21st century one.

I like the cockpit. what colour did you use?! Maybee it's the pictures, but the colour looks a bit to greenish to me.

Cheers,

Edited August 30, 2016 by Arniec

[trickyrich]

Great progress Rich. This is fighting you all the way. I hope you will finish this one.

If this one doesn't finish you can always do the 21st century one.

I like the cockpit. what colour did you use?! Maybee it's the pictures, but the colour looks a bit to greenish to me.

Cheers,

it's probably a bit of both!

The colour was one recommended on the Stormo site, it's Tamiya XF-20. It's called medium grey but it has an ever so slight greenish tint to it, which I think is what we're after with the Macchi's.

[trickyrich]

I know I said I would more or less finish the 152 before doing any more on this build, but the new exhausts showed up while I was at home. So during a small break from the 152 I started fitting them

 

As you can see the moulded ones were pretty crap and the top flame guard was completely missing, The new ones are from QuickBoost and look so much better.

 

 

So to fit them the old ones were ground away with plenty of space for them to move around, this will help with aligning them. I forgot the extra photos as usual, but I did need to trim back the front on the new exhausts as well as either edge of their base, so they’d fit nicely in the cutouts

 

 

 That looks better already. Next I had to make the new flame guard for the top of the exhausts, as mentioned in an earlier post, the lower cowling section sits a wee bit too high and I need to shim it to get it to sit correctly. So part of this shim will form the new flame guard. The shim is formed from a thin sheet of plastic cut to shape.

 

 

So there it is, a lot better than the original and a fairly painless process. It’s a bit hard to see but the section between where the oil coolers sit needs to be reshaped. It too shallow, almost sunken, plus the rear edge of the cowling is a bit low as well. I’ll need to remove the two small fairings and build this area up, I’ll probably do this as soon as get the wings on.

 

 

I also did a wee bit more to the cockpit as I really want to finish up this area and close it up. Once the wings are on and the lower cowling is fitted it’ll be a simple run to the finish. Plus I’ve started painting the cockpit area for the 1/48th 205 as well. I’ll start a thread for that once the 152 is finished…..the workbench is pretty full up and busy at the moment!

[trickyrich]

Just a small update to this. While bits and pieces were drying on the 152 I finally glued in the cockpit and not the easiest of tasks either! I had done lots of test fits and thought I had everything sorted but something went amiss when I glued it in. Of cause using CA glue meant that once it was in place that’s where it was going to stay!  Somehow the front floor section is a bit lower then it should be! It’s not a big issue and honestly you can’t/won’t notice.

It all looks pretty good once it’s all together, but as I suspected you don’t get to see too much at all, which is a little bit of a shame.

 

As you can see it required some extra support!

So tomorrow I should be able to glue the wings on and probably the cowling as well I hope. Once I get the cowling shape sorted then the rest of the build is pretty straight forward.

 

 

[Arniec]

That looks nice.

I have a tip for you. When you want to have some more time to fiddle around with the resin parts I Always use 5 minute epoxy glue.

 

Cheers,  

[trickyrich]

Ok this is a bit of a big update and photo heavy. It’s good to get back to this now that the 152 is finished, plus after how the 152 turned out I feel reinvigorated, ready for more challenges!  And there’s plenty here!!

Ok first up the wing was fitted, I used epoxy for this as it gave me time to set it in the correct position. This was then left overnight to cure. All the test fitting paid off was the joins are near perfect with little to no filler required, the epoxy help in this regard.

 

Once that was sorted it was time to fit the lower cowling and this is where it gets complicated! First up there’s a problem with the profile of the lower cowling. So first up I need to remove the two small bulges, these will be refitted at the end. 

 

As can be seen it’s concave where it should be at least a bit convex!

 

To reshape this I wanted to use a former as a guide, so a slot was cut into the lower cowling where a strip of plastic strip will be added.

 

This was then profiled to the contour I required.

 

Then add some filler, once dry lots of dust time!

 

 

Now the next issue with the lower cowling. I had replaced to old exhausts with new resin ones and replaced the upper section of the flame guard, this also served as a shim to help alignment issues. But now while doing final test fitting something didn’t look right! It turns out the flame guards are wrong, they taper towards the back where they should be parallel to each other. This photo sort of shows the issue........not very well, but bear with me..... 

Now what to do??? The easy way would be just to add some extra to the flame guards on each side……the hard way would be to replace the whole lot! So what did I do……….

 T

he easiest/hardest way to do this is to replace the whole structure around the exhausts, this I did by making a new assembly from plastic card/strip/rod. Here’s the basic structure I started with, the nice thing with this is I have plenty of space to play around with the correct exhaust position.

 

lt already it looks much better, but I will need to do some major surgery to get it to fit! You can see the difference it will make already.

 

Some filler and more strip added, it’s slowly getting there, will leave that to dry and more on to the next task.

 

 

The elevators, time to fit those. It turns out that the RHS one is slightly forward of the left one..WTF??? So the elevators were fitted and the RHS re-profiled, while I was at it they were thinned down a bit as they were too think.

 

The inner section of the LH elevator was miss casted so a section needed to be added there.

 

The RHS needed a section added to it, this was built up with CA cement, it’s hard to see here, but it’s actually a nice smooth on the fixed section of the RHS elevator. I also started to open up the tail wheel well area.

 

 

Ok time to fit the new exhaust section. The old section needed to be ground out…no going back now. With that done it was CA glued in place.

 

Then compared to the C.202 cowling it already looks so much better.

 

 

Next it was glued to the fuselage, but first I needed to remove a small section from the fuselage, so how does it now look??

Well there’s a small gap at the front, which by luck with the spinner fitted is now completely round! There’s some gaps and the lower profile will need some additional work, but she looks great and how it should look!

 

 

There is a little bit of extra meat on the new section of exhaust so that allows me to do some minor adjustments of the profile to get it looking right. But all up I’m really happy with the results, the gaps are easy to sort out. I considered making a resin copy of this, but seeing how rare this model is I doubt I’ll ever find anyone else building it!!

Ok the last job was to re-profile the spinner. The supplied one for the 205 version is far to sharp and pointy. To fix this I need to use the one for the 202 and shorten and re-profile it, and job for a lath……

 

 

..ok what could go wrong with this………

 

and there’s where I’m at, lots of progress and some important issues sorted out. It’s now just a case of tiding up all the joins and completing the assembly. I’m away for my next break but the by the end of the following one she should be done!! Other than the filling the rest is just minor stuff!!! She looks good beside her baby brother! Thread for baby brother to come shortly!

 

[JOCKNEY]

Stroll on Rich

 

I have seen some of your "what if's" give you less trouble than this, fair play to you for sticking with it, look forward to the next round in this fight !

 

cheers Pat 

[trickyrich]

Gimme a dermal and I'll make it fit!!  

[Arniec]

Whow, what a work!!! I deffinitely go for a 21st Century model now!!!

You have done a lot of work on it.Looking at the picture of the tail it looks to be out of line and swirls a bit to the rigt. maybee that is the problem with the elevators?! I hope I didn't being bad news?!

But keep up the good work.

 

Cheers,

[trickyrich]

52 minutes ago, Arniec said:

Whow, what a work!!! I deffinitely go for a 21st Century model now!!!

You have done a lot of work on it.Looking at the picture of the tail it looks to be out of line and swirls a bit to the rigt. maybee that is the problem with the elevators?! I hope I didn't being bad news?!

But keep up the good work.

 

Cheers,

 

arr not quite, the rudder has a wee kick to the right on it, so thats' why it appears to be off center. This was more due to the CA drying too quick rather than purposely doing it like that.

 

Have done quite a bit more on her, will either update tonight or tomorrow from work.....plus will start the thread for the wee 1/48th version....the cockpit is stunning!!

[trickyrich]

Ok time for a quite update, have an early start tomorrow, head off back to work, 9 hours worth of travelling!

 

Ok so today was mostly spent doing all the other bits plus sanding and filling the nose section, there’s a wee bit more filling required than I first thought!

 

So first up is the radiator. I’m not to sure about the shape as I can’t find any clear drawings of it, a couple of the plans I looked at showed different profiles when viewed looking up. I’m not going to get too bothered about this as it’s not something that will be seen very often. It’s quite close so I’m happy with that…..though I’ll bet it annoys the rivet counters!!!! 

 

 T

he radiator details in PE, but I’ll fit and paint these to blanks which I’ll fit once she’s painted.

Beside even more filling and shaping I added the tail fairing for the tail wheel as well as start hollowing out the tail wheel section. This is another area where a we bit of guess work was required. I still need to do a wee bit more work here. The door for the tail wheel well I’ll make out of brass sheet.

 

And you may have noticed to small brass squares on the elevators, well it’s spreading! They cover of the control surfaces hinges. I also spent some time re-doing some of the panel lines on the wings plus adding some missing panels

 

Whilst on the wings I added some wing tip lights, at this scale things like this really do need to be added.

 

Finally the air-intake was added, I also spent a bit of time cleaning up some of the joins around the lower cowling.

 

Well that’s it now for a couple of weeks, will be away for most of my next break. Will be visiting junior, hopefully will get a nice close-up look at one of the Army’s Tiger helicopters…..if I’m really lucky maybe git to sit in it!!!!

So with where I’m at I should with luck be very close to finishing her next full break I have off, plus at the rate I’m going her baby brother as well. I’ll post a thread for the1/48^th version tomorrow.

 

 

[Giorgio N]

You're doing a great work on this model !

Enjoy your time off, just don't forget you've got people here waiting to see more on the Macchi..

[trickyrich]

Thanks. I'm going to miss this one and his little brother. I was just getting into the groove with this build and was almost ready to paint most of her in a primer/surface finisher. The only difficult part left is the profiling of the lower nose section.

 

I really interested to see how she looks in primer as I'm pretty happy with most of the surface prep work. The paint job for this one is nice a simple.

 

The colour scheme will be for a 1 Stormo aircraft from either 79 or 88 Gruppo, both have the smoke ring camouflage. 

 

Opps the picture didn't attach, here's another go.

 

Edited September 28, 2016 by trickyrich
added picture

[rob85]

Rich you are doing some excellent work on this kit, really improving it! Also well done on battling all the fit issues.

 

 Rob 

[trickyrich]

Gosh it’s been over a month since I last updated this let alone do any work on it!!

 

Ok this was part of the cause of not getting any work done last break….

 

 

My son gave me the grand tour over these, he an Aviation Mech. Fitter in the Army, these things are awesome!!! Plus a future build project as well.

 

Anyway but to the beast! First job up is to get the nose finished…..sorry no photos as I ran out of batteries for the camera at this stage.  The profiling is pretty much there and I’ll sort that bit out is I’m cleaning everything up.

 

The two oil coolers have been built now, they’ll be fitted shortly. Plus I’ve built the two radiator faces as well, these will be inserted later. I had to do it this way as the PE bits, each side is made up of two PE sections, are so thin they’d just break or get messed up when glued with CA glue. These will be painted and detailed before being inserted into the radiator.

 

 

The final last bits of filling were done around the cowling section. Because everything has been glued together with CA clue it’s very had to see what the joins are like so she was given a coat of Mr Surface 1200. A very quick way to show up all the sins!

 

 

…and not to bad at all! The wing/fuselage join I knew would need some extra work and around the cowling is still a little rough but that’s fine.

 

 

 

 

The rear profile from the two oil coolers was always going to be an issue as I have no clear pictures of this area to show what it actually looks like….so a wee bit of guess work. But it doesn’t look too bad and I think is probably quite close.

 

 

 

 

The tail unit is fine.

 

 

The new exhaust cowlings look great, much better that the originals.

 

 

 

 

So now just a bit…well quite a bit of tiding up to do, so much easier now I can see all the issues. It looks a bit rough in the photos, but that grey shows up every little fault which makes the cleaning up work a lot easier. I’m still on track to start painting her this break.

 

They should look good together.

 

[Giorgio N]

Looking very good ! The finish is very good for what is afterall a resin kit, I've achieved worse in terms of fit on mainstream kits from reputable manufacturers...

[spitfire]

God that looks hard work, but it is getting there.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[trickyrich]

thanks, I've done a second coat after cleaning up everything and it looks even better. Just a couple of wee bit to redo and it's painting time.

 

Spent 2 hours rebuilding the cockpit canopy!!! Was grossly over scale, plus you have to build it from white metal and brass PE bits! It not perfect but it looks 100% better then it was. Will post pic in the morning, need sleep to recover!!!

[Arniec]

Great progress Rich. Maybee a tip for very thin etch parts. to atatche  them you can use Klear or some  wood glue. Or even some clear paint ?!

 

Cheers,

[trickyrich]

20 hours ago, Arniec said:

Great progress Rich. Maybee a tip for very thin etch parts. to atatche  them you can use Klear or some  wood glue. Or even some clear paint ?!

 

Cheers,

 

I did try this but because I had to do so much modification work to the pieces it ended up easier just using CA cement. Plus the brass sheet had to be folded to match the shape of the white metal frame, anything other that CA cement just didn't work!

 

Ok some long hours spent at the bench but not too much to show for it!!

 

As mentioned I did spend quite a bit of time yesterday on the canopy. I knew from reviews that this was a major problem area because the kit supplied one, besides having to make it yourself, was too big. Well saying it’s over scale is an understatement!! Everything that is photo-etched is completely over scaled, I’m not sure how they managed to stuff that up!!

 

The front section of the canopy is made up of two bits of resin, main front screen assembly and armoured screen section. Both were too large, there was only so much I could do without it looking completely wrong, it’s ok now but it still sits a little bit too high!

 

 

The main canopy section is made up of 5 pieces, 4 white metal and one brass PE, and it’s huge!! The side were at least 5mm to long, it looked comical! So first up I shorted the front and rear “U” frames. Next the two side panel frames were fitted, they appeared to be the right size. The brass outer frame was then cut into 3 pieces with sections removed from the main frames to reduce their length, before fitting. I probably should have cut them into 5 sections to reduce the upper frame width….but what I did was scary enough!! Plus I repositioned the opening handles as well.

 

They look much better now, but to help disguise the frame issues I’ll leave the canopy open.

 

 

A coat of Mr Surface 1200 and they look much better, I’ll clean up the cut I made and all should be good!

 

 

 

This is some of what needed to remove!!

 

 

Ok next fun job was the undercarriage covers, and with the PE being over-scaled, these were a nightmare!!  Both sets of U/C covers are about 5 hours worth of work! Be side the fact that the instructions for these were so vague all the brass PE bit were too big! There were two resin doors that they forgot to mention you need to remove a resin plug….it looked to be part of the door. Plus there were no photos of the door just a very crude drawing!

 

 

Anyway after lots of effort and cursing I’ve managed to sort this out as well. They actually look quite good once they had a coat of Mr Surface 1200.

 

 

 

Finally whilst cooking some “Slow Cooked Jerk Pork” (food of the gods!!) I did some work on the prop. The mounts for the propellers are too short (they're made of white metal) and the recesses in the spinner are too deep so I needed to make some mounts up for plastic tube.

 

 

 

Next up the nose cannon barrel, which is also to hold the spinner in place. I made this up from brass tube, unfortunately I took a wee bit out of the opening, So I had to redo that section with more plastic tube.

 

 

 

 

So everything now has had it’s final coat of Mr Surface 1200, so a quick rub down and it’s ready for painting.

 

With luck I get to play with this baby tomorrow!!

 

[Giorgio N]

More great work here ! The canopy looks very tricky, while the final result is indeed great, maybe an easier to work with vacform canopy would have been a better solution to offer the modeller