Chequered BE2c: a few questions

[Seahawk]

My B.E.2c with black and white chequered fuselage (Airfix 02104) crawls towards completion.  I normally don't do WWI (seduced by the box-art again!) so have a few questions for the WW1 experts and in particular those who have already completed this kit.

 

1.  The Airfix instructions appear to show the exhaust pipes as slightly canted inwards.  I always thought they were vertical.  Who is right please?

2.  The Airfix instructions show the engine nacelle as painted in Humbrol 64.  This seems a very light grey to me.  When I built the Bristol Fighter and D.H.4 back in the 70s, we were pointed at a colour more like Dark Sea Grey or Dark Admiralty Grey for similar areas.  Are Airfix benefiting from more recent research or have they got it wrong?   (I see the Windsock publication on the Sopwith Pup refers to Battleship Grey for such areas but the colour equation is given in Methuen (IBI, ICI) which means nothing to me.  If not 64, then what instead?

3.  Are the Airfix fuselage roundels sufficiently opaque to stop the underlying chequers showing through or do I need to apply them over a white backing disk?

4.  The rudder stripe transfers do not quite meet on the centreline.  Poorly matching touch-ups look worse than none at all.  Any tips on paints for a perfect match to the blue and red, ideally straight out of the tin?  (I'm currently inclining towards a 50:50 mix of Xtracolor X603 Flanker Blue/Grey and Humbrol 109 WW1 Blue.)

 

By the way, it is not that long ago that Airfix transfers were a very bad joke.  Fortunately Hornby changed all that.  In particular I take my hat off to the person who designed the transfers for this boxing.  This is the most ambitious transfer scheme I can recall attempting.  The alignment of the chequers is not quite perfect (given some of the compound curves on the fuselage spine it's hard to imagine how it could be) but fit, flexibility and opacity are all excellent.  Well done!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Black Knight]

1. Exhausts; they could be any which way. I have photos of Be2c with exhausts; straight up, canted rear wards, canted forwards, extending up above the top wing, up above and back over the top wing, turned downwards and ending in front of the bottom wing, extending down and going under the bottom wing........

2. Panels were 'grey'; they were not as fussy about which 'shade' of grey, as long as it was grey

3. I can't answer; not built mine of this one yet

4. I find - Blue; Revell 51, Red; Humbrol 174, good matches for the WW1 colours but I can't say how they match the decals. I usually paint my rudder stripes

[Unkempt]

On 1/6/2018 at 11:03 AM, Seahawk said:

3.  Are the Airfix fuselage roundels sufficiently opaque to stop the underlying chequers showing through or do I need to apply them over a white backing disk?

 

 

 

 

 

That's mine, and I'm going to say it'd look better with a background. Can just see the black through.

[Seahawk]

Thanks to you and Black Knight for your helpful answers.  Even at my glacial pace things move on and I have answers of my own to some of the questions now.  As regards the fuselage roundel I put one (Fantasy Workshop) backing disk under one and two (Modelart) disks under the other when that proved less than totally successful.  In both cases the backing disks proved less opaque than I would have liked and in both case the chequers are still visible, though discernable rather than obvious.  Still, covering black/white chequers was always going to be a tough call.

 

PS You must have done an excellent job on your model for it to still look that good at such a magnification.  Well done.

[Unkempt]

Well thanks, it's not perfect but I was pretty happy with it. Very nice kit IMO.  RFI here:

 

[alancmlaird]

Regarding the angle of the exhaust stacks.....these should have a fixed position, i.e leaning in towards the centreline at the top. They cannot be any other way as the position is fixed on the real thing by the width of the V8 cylinderheads and exhaust manifold at the bottom, and the support 'V' stays at the top which pick up either side of the centre section/wing edge structure.
However, the Imperial War Museum BE2c when it was hanging from the roof of the attrium did not have the 'v'supports fitted, and the stacks splayed outwards for many years (probably too much trouble to go up on a wobbly ladder to fix them. It also had incorrect wings skids fitted (Bristfit?), which I think Airfix copied on their kit. Haven't been there since it was moved downstairs - is it still the same?

[wmcgill]

It's probably not worth worrying too much about any accuracy or detail problems for 4207. The original checkered 4207 was a B.E.2f which had different wings (angled tips, less struts and uneven widths, like a B.E.2e or R.E.8). The checkered fuselage was the same as the B.E.2c in the kit. 

[Seahawk]

13 minutes ago, wmcgill said:

It's probably not worth worrying too much about any accuracy or detail problems for 4207. The original checkered 4207 was a B.E.2f which had different wings (angled tips, less struts and uneven widths, like a B.E.2e or R.E.8). The checkered fuselage was the same as the B.E.2c in the kit. 

Welcome to the forum.

 

Have you a source for that please?  I haven't unearthed any photos of 4207 but 4366 and 4548 were still B.E.2cs: see p.35 of Ray Rimell's The Royal Flying Corps in World War I.

[wmcgill]

4 hours ago, wmcgill said:

It's probably not worth worrying too much about any accuracy or detail problems for 4207. The original checkered 4207 was a B.E.2f which had different wings (angled tips, less struts and uneven widths, like a B.E.2e or R.E.8). The checkered fuselage was the same as the B.E.2c in the kit. 

 

3 hours ago, Seahawk said:

Welcome to the forum.

 

Have you a source for that please?  I haven't unearthed any photos of 4207 but 4366 and 4548 were still B.E.2cs: see p.35 of Ray Rimell's The Royal Flying Corps in World War I.

OOps, what an entrance! Sorry my mistake. It was very early and I shouldn't have tried to work from memory. There is a photo of B.E.2c 4207 on page 25 of Windsock Datafile 172 "THE RAF EB2c AT WAR!" which confirms that Airfix have got the right type of aircraft.

 

Interestingly in Datafile 42 "RAF BE2C" they illustrate B.E.2c 4207 on the back cover with vertical stripes all over it's fuselage but the "7" in the serial number is conveniently obscured, as it is for the 2 photos of it on page 35 of the same Datafile.  When I mis-spoke about a B.E.2f I was remembering A1350 which was finished in the same B&W checker pattern. There's a photo of it in Datafile 14 (understandably) misidentified as a B.E.2e.

 

In regrades your original questions (based on the photo in Datafile 172);

1.  Exhaust pipes do canter inwards slightly.

2.  Engine nacelles are very dark grey, not light grey. Maybe Humbrol 123?

3.  Sorry haven't built it to be able to advise.

4.  Sorry haven't built it to be able to advise.

 

Other notes based on the photo in Datafile 172;

a. Tail skid brackets are not bare wood. Only the skid is wood, the vertical strut was wrapped in linen and painted, probably PC10 and the angled brackets were steel tubes and black.

b. Wings are very dark on the top side so use a very dark PC10, not the pale khaki illustrated.

c. Interplane struts are pale varnished wood, not dark wood as illustrated.

d. Wing cockades should be positioned 1 extra rib further outboard. 

e. Wheel covers might be clear doped linen as illustrated but more likely to be painted, probably the same blue as the fuselage cockade.

d. Wing skids are dark, probably PC10.

f. I can't see good evidence for the checkers on the top wing centre section.

 

Again I apologize for going off halfcocked earlier but hopefully the above makes up for it a little. 

 

 

[Seahawk]

Thanks for the clarification.  It takes a good man to admit his mistake so openly and honestly: I think you'll fit in here fine.

 

It's reassuring that there is a photo of this aircraft out there somewhere.  The additional details from it look very useful: thank you.

[Seahawk]

Well, now my B.E.2c has limped over the finish line, it's time to give my answers to the questions I posed in post 1:

 

1.  Exhausts: see posts 2 and 6.  I went for vertical.

2.  Engine panels: based on post 2 and photos in various of Ray Rimmell's Vintage Warbirds series I eventually went for a grey that looked about right to me.  It turned out to be Xtracolor US Neutral Gray which was pretty close to Humbrol 64 as proposed by Airfix.

3.  Fuselage roundels: no, they are not opaque enough to hide the underlying chequers (see post 3).  I used 1 Fantasy Printshop backing disk under one and, not being happy with that, 2 Model Art backing discs under the other.  I'd give the Fantasy Printshop backing disks 6/10 and the Modelart ones 7/10 because neither do what it says on the tin - but hiding black/white demarcations is as tough a challenge as it gets.  I see Xtradecal do some white backing discs as well: no idea whether they are the right size (both the above were perfect size-wise) or how well they would work.

4.  Matching the tail stripes: I found Humbrol 102 a perfect match for the red (NB ancient tin so there was pigment in the paint and it dried matt) and my suggested mix of Xtracolor X603 Flanker Blue/Grey and Humbrol 109 WW1 Blue fine for the blue: no idea what the relative proportions were once I had finished tweaking the mix.

 

Things I would do differently next time;

• I'd forego the option of a turning prop and glue the engine camshaft cover onto the front of the engine at a much earlier stage.  It was practically the last thing I did on the build, it didn't quite fit and last minute trimming of an assembled and decalled model is not ideal.
• I'd at least try securing the interplane struts to the top wing with superglue.  Once the jigs were removed Tamiya thick still allowed too much play and I found getting 8 struts to fit in their locating holes in the lower wing akin to herding cats.   

A final tribute to the Airfix transfer designer: this was the most ambitious scheme I have attempted and the various subjects were perfectly shaped and behaved well.  The only minor disappointment was that the stripes for the struts and undercarriage legs made no allowance for the struts' being convex, which meant touching up afterwards.  And you have no idea how far thinned black paint will run under a not- quite-properly-seated white transfer. 

 

Good effort from Airfix: if only they'd put some sharper definition between the wheel hubs and tyres for the hard of painting.

 

[Paul Thompson]

FWIW, being too late to help, I find some of the Citadel blues and reds work well for touching up RFC national markings, depending of course on the exact shade offered by the decal producer. Blood red is particularly forgiving - the blues usually need a bit of tweaking, based on Regal and Ultramarine (those 2 are old pots and have probably been renamed when they changed the pot type).

 

I think I'll try cutting the black from the chequer decals where the roundel is to go with a compass cutter when I come to do mine, if that leaves enough carrier film for strutural integrity. A trickier alternative would be  to mark the roundel position after the chequers have set on the fuselage and overpaint with white. That at least would avoid the build up of decal thickness with multiple backing disks.

 

BTW, I built one of these when it came out, for review somewhere on-line, can't remember where. Mine had particularly horrible steps where the mould had slipped which took a lot of cleaning up and threw the building tolerance completely out. However, I still found the jigs unneccessary. Care lining up the centre section struts was enough to be able to mount the top wing firmly and squarely, using Revell Contacta. I could then get at the centre section more easily for rigging before springing the interplane struts into place.

[Seahawk]

Your experience with the struts may well differ from mine: unfortunately I bent the front centre-section struts out of true trying to "persuade" them to fit into the slot in the underside of the upper wing, after which I couldn't trust them for that firm and square alignment.  Oddly enough, they look okay now.

 

Roundel: even with my most critical eye, I did not detect any perceptible build-up of transfer thickness.  Maybe that was the problem: the disks were too thin to work.  I doubt if the compass cutter idea would work, for the structural integrity reason you give.

 

The only (minor) constructional problem I had was the need to add a 5 thou shim to the front of the left fuselage half to stop the engine pod being out of true but I put that down to my own cackhandedness in assembly rather than the kit.  As for mould misalignment and the need for endless tedious clean-up of flash, that's about par for the Airfix course in my experience: certainly no worse than others like the Ju 87 and Me 262.

[Paul Thompson]

>Your experience with the struts may well differ from mine: unfortunately I bent the front centre-section struts out of true trying to "persuade" them to fit into the slot in the underside of the upper wing, after which I couldn't trust them for that firm and square alignment.  Oddly enough, they look okay now.<

Maybe mine went okay because of the extra squareing up needed to rectify the mould slippage. Serendipitous.

 

>Roundel: even with my most critical eye, I did not detect any perceptible build-up of transfer thickness.  Maybe that was the problem: the disks were too thin to work.  I doubt if the compass cutter idea would work, for the structural integrity reason you give.<  Ah well. Forearned is forearmed, etc. I do have stacks of spare cockade decals I can try if I have to.

 

 

>The only (minor) constructional problem I had was the need to add a 5 thou shim to the front of the left fuselage half to stop the engine pod being out of true but I put that down to my own cackhandedness in assembly rather than the kit.  As for mould misalignment and the need for endless tedious clean-up of flash, that's about par for the Airfix course in my experience: certainly no worse than others like the Ju 87 and Me 262.<

 

I've found it varies wildly with the newer kits. Some have been fine, but the BE2 was the worst. The 1/72nd Ju 87 only needed minimal tidying with sanpaper. The 100 Group B-17 I'm currently doing is a mixture - plenty of flash to pare away, but thankfully no mould slippage, but that flash is on every single edge, and with the zero tolerance engineering has to go. That said, I've not had any of the fit disasters I've read of with the new kits either, but then I always use a headband magnifier to check over all mating surfaces before assembly, which is tedious but saves a lot of grief. It also helps that I occasional fling together old Airfix, Revell, and limited run WWI kits to remind myself how the goal posts have moved over the decades.................

[Ray S]

Seahawk, it was good to see your Be2c in the plastic yesterday! I reckon you did a cracking job on it, and gives me inspiration for when I start mine.

 

Great job, all the best,

 

Ray

[Seahawk]

You are too kind, oh Master.  But the Toko 1 1/2 Strutter is off the for sale list!  Deliciously flash-free.