Here's another one I started earlier.

[Biggles87]

This should really be in a KUTA build but I missed the last one and the next one will be outside my airbrushing window.

This is where I left it when I withdrew from the Battle of Britain GB having run out of time.

I have now glued the rest of the Barracuda oil cooler and radiator and the carburettor intake in place and given the wing underside a coat of primer.

You may remember that I attempted some of the panel lapping on the rear fuselage by spraying primer on selected areas. This proved not entirely successful and some of the panel edges are a little ' soft ' due to the fact that I used normal masking tape rather than something harder like Dymo tape, note to self for future reference.

After cleaning up the the panels I re-scribed the fuselage and marked the lines with a pencil so that they would be more visible in any photos, then set about putting some rivets on the wing root fillet. The kit plastic is very hard and my RB scribing wheel made no impression at all so I tried a pounce wheel which is much more robust, but the effect wasn't much better so I think I will leave it with just the scribed panel lines. The fuselage and wings were finally joined but when I removed the rubber band around the fuselage the lower rear part sprung open so I will close this again with copious amounts of superglue at a later stage.

 

 Normally I would leave the cockpit entry door open but the aircraft I am depicting ( N3093 "QJ A" 616 sqdn  as flown by Dennis Gillam ) has an emblem on the cockpit door so this will be closed and I have used one from the Tamia kit after carving off the crowbar as it has better detail. 

I am now waiting for some warmer, dryer weather so that I can finish spraying the primer and then get to grips with the HGW positive rivets on the rear fuselage.

Thanks for looking, feel free to comment.  

 

Cheers

 

John  

 

Edited May 8, 2017 by Biggles87

[CedB]

Very nice John - pleased to see you back on this one  

[Biggles87]

Wed 17 May

Just a quick (non-photo) update to let you now that I haven't given up again.

 I didn't get as much bench time as I would have liked last week and most of it was spent attaching the ailerons.You may remember that I tied the control column back and to the right and so wanted the ailerons displaced to match. The down (port) aileron wasn't a problem because there was enough surface contact area to apply the glue, but the up (starboard) aileron was another story because the only contact area was at the inner and outer ends( due to the gap between the wing and aileron ) which proved to be insufficient, as I discovered after I had knocked it off twice. In the end I made some hinges which gave me four rather the two small contact areas which so far has been enough to withstand my clumsy handling.

 I have also started applying HGW rivet transfers which is going to be very time consuming, I am putting them directly onto the Halfords acrylic primer after it has had a light buffing. There will be about twenty lines to apply and yesterday afternoon I did four in an hour, just to give you some idea.

I'm hoping to have something worth showing by the end of the week.

 

Cheers

 

John     

[Biggles87]

Sat 20 May

This is where I've got to with the rivets so far ( both fuselage sides ), the shiny line just ahead of the tailplane still needs the film removed, and the solid silver lines come from the edge of the decal sheet and will need to be removed before painting. The rivets themselves do not seem to be very positive and I have yet to be convinced that they will not disappear beneath a coat (or two ) of paint. We shall see.

I removed some of the rivets along with the film, most have now been replaced, but I keep seeing more small gaps which I will attend to before painting starts. Still to do are the framing around the radio and battery hatches, and a line parallel to the main lateral one from below the cockpit door to below the radio hatch.

I had originally intended to use Humbrol acrylic paint so that I could scrape it from the aluminium undercoated wing root areas, as is my usual practice, but I think I will now use Xtracolour as enamel paint will give more protection to the rivets, when masked and try something else for the wear and chipping.

That's all for now. Thanks for looking and feel free to comment

 

Cheers

 

John     

 

[CedB]

Nice rivets John (one, two, three...)  

[Cookenbacher]

Glad to see you back at this one John!

[heloman1]

That looks rather special, I do like Skyradders. However, I've never stood outside an airbrishing window, so please can you explain what it's like are they double glazed or just single? I'm totally confused, there's enough in my modelling life to be worried about windows.

 

Colin   the quzical.

[Biggles87]

Hi Colin the quizical, just being pretentious. I mean my " window of opportunity " for airbrushing, as my man cave is partly under the house it get's too cold and damp for airbrushing between November and March, and I don't airbrush in the house.

Thanks for the support Ced and Cookie, resuming riveting on Wednesday, we had friends to ( long French ) lunch today and tomorrow a friend is coming to help me re-hang a heavy barn door and replace some posts around the stables.

 

Cheers

 

John

 

[Biggles87]

26 May

I finished the fuselage riveting yesterday and decided to mist a coat of primer over them to give some more protection

 

Here's the result, can you see them through the primer? No, neither can I, they have completely disappeared. Thinking back I suppose I should have tried some on a mule and put some paint on them, hindsight's a wonderful thing. To say that I'm disappointed would be an understatement, the air in my man cave was blue at about 5PM yesterday . Having spent a lot of time on this kit I am determined to have some dome headed rivets to go with the " lapped " panels and have sent for some from Micro-mark after seeing evidence that they do work on another website. While I'm waiting for them to arrive I might try to impress some rivets on the fuel tank armour as this is thin Plasticard and not the original hard kit plastic, and make some fasteners on the cowlings. 

In the meantime, I shall be composing a little missive to HGW. 

Cheers

 

John    

[CedB]

Rats. After all that work. Annoying.

 

4 hours ago, Biggles87 said:

I shall be composing a little missive to HGW. 

 

You tell 'em John. Strongly worded I hope, a good way to vent your feelings. Are you going to send it?  

[Biggles87]

I will certainly send something, perhaps not my original draft. I bought two sheets, one with double and triple lines, so now I have 1 3/4 sheets which I can't find any use for.

The Micro-Mark sheets work out at about twice the price of the two HGW sheets but I will get about four times as many rivets, and they work as advertised!

Cheers

 

John

[Biggles87]

Here are a few photos rescued from the iPad just to give you an idea of where I was up to, some others are on the memory card of my now defunct SLR and I can't  find my card reader at the moment.

 

The last photo shows the HGW rivets, which I later discovered are not meant to be " positive " at all but just represent a line of silver rivets, so it's not surprising that they disappeared under a coat of paint!.

As my Mig 3 is well on schedule for the GB (famous last words ) I'm taking a little break from it to try the MicroMark rivets, so this afternoon I have sprayed the rear fuselage with gloss varnish. One advantage of the MicroMark rivets over those by HGW is that there is no film to remove after applying the decals, so that should speed things up a bit.

 

More soon(ish) I hope.

 

Cheers

 

John  

[CedB]

Nice to see you back John

Is there a new camera on the wish list?

Good luck with the bramble strimming...

[rob85]

She is looking a treat John!! 

 

Rob

[Biggles87]

3 hours ago, CedB said:

Nice to see you back John

Is there a new camera on the wish list?

Good luck with the bramble strimming...

Thanks Ced. I would like a new DSLR but don't know if I would use it enough to justify the cost, most of my BM photos are now taken with my iPad or a Canon Powershot and the other main use would be at air displays which are a bit thin on the ground around here.

2 hours ago, rob85 said:

She is looking a treat John!! 

 

Rob

Thanks Rob, nice to see that you're still watching. I hope you're feeling a bit happier now.

 

Cheers

 

John

[giemme]

Looking forward to see some progress on this, John Although I can't think of something worse than riveting with decals, considering that I hate decals and don't really love riveting.

 

Ciao

 

 

[(ex)Sgtrafman]

Nice work john 👍

[Christer A]

Nice work there!

[Biggles87]

Thanks guys, I was planning to start the rivets this afternoon, but we've had a major catastrophe. The pool-pump was making a strange noise when I passed it at lunch time and was very hot, so I switched it off for half an hour, then when I tried it again it was dead. Our Intex salt water system is very good, but ( as usual ) our particular model has been superseded and the pump is no longer available separately. Off to  the pool shop in Limoges tomorrow to see if we can find a suitable alternative, as Mrs Bs brother and family arrive in a couple of weeks and their two teenage boys will be hell to live with if they don't have a pool to play in.

 

John

 

 

 

[giemme]

I hit the "like" button but it was more that I'm sympathizing with you - had the same problem a couple of years ago and with three daughters in school age ...    

 

 

Ciao

[CedB]

Um, er, pool pump problems? Nothing to add here apart from my envy...

Do you have Octopus cleaner thingies? I had great fun at Mrs B's Uncle's place in France playing with the Octopus pool cleaning thingie.

Yes, there has been beverage! Retirement celebration with the locals. Hic. 

[giemme]

No Octopus cleaner chez moi, sorry   But I bet you had fun, with retirement celebration    

 

Ciao

[PlaStix]

Good to see this underway again John. Hope you manage to get everything sorted.

Kind regards,

Stix

[Biggles87]

No Octopus cleaner for me either, I think it would be wasted on our pool which is only 5.5M in diameter, it just gets brushed after every use.

I managed to get a few more lines of rivets on this afternoon, it took me about an hour to do  more than I had done in a couple of hours with the old ones, so it looks like it will be a quicker job.

Hoping to finish the riveting tomorrow .

 

Cheers

 

John

[Biggles87]

A small update and a little touch of deja vu ( sorry my keyboard doesn't do accents ) in the literal sense.

After a couple of delays due to pool related matters I have now just about finished the rivets again, but need to re-do those around the radio hatch as I've just found a photo in one of my references which shows that I have simplified them a little. I masked over the hatch itself when I was trying my panel lapping so it is now slightly recessed where it should be slightly proud so I will cement a piece of my thinest plasticard over it when the riveting is finished. 

I used Humbrol decal set on the rivet lines and it has not been entirely successful and left behind quite a lot of sticky residue, to be wiped off when everything has settles, but as everything will be painted over I'm not too worried about the film showing.

You can also see that I have started on the cowling fasteners with my beading tool, I am not entirely convinced about their size. I think they might be a bit too big, in which case I will fill them in and start again with a size smaller, I'll have to look at more photos.

 

Thats all for now, thanks for watching and feel free to comment.

 

Cheers

 

John