DamienB Posted January 5, 2008 Posted January 5, 2008 (edited) Well as my T.4 build is stalled awaiting some new paint (damn you slow postie!) I thought I'd get started on a single seater; not decided on a paint scheme yet, that will come when I see how well I do with the build. It definitely won't be the spotty Jag, I'm going to use a Hasegawa kit with Airwaves wings for that one. Sooo... it's the Revell (Italeri) GR.1A kit, chosen over a Hasegawa one purely because I haven't built the Italeri kit before. I'm going to use the Scalecast wings with separate slats/flaps kindly donated by markc and, of course, this is where problem no. 1 arises... Spot the difference! Top - kit wings, bottom - resin replacement. The kit wings are a bit too wide in span (I suspect due to the too-wide fuselage spine) and the resin ones are a little bit under. I will examine this all a bit closer to see if I can just budge them outwards a bit and fill the gap but it will depend on the flap positioning as to whether I do this or live with the span. Worries about the span are the reason why I won't be doing the spotty Jag with this kit - it could make placement of all the spot decals a problem. Obviously the resin wing won't be a drop-in replacement for the kit wings - and given the inaccurate spine in the kit, I've chosen to do this... ...which is cut off the offending parts of the kit. In this pic I've completely removed the appropriate bits on the port fuselage half, but just made the vertical cuts on the other half. And that's it so far, back to the razor saw... Edited March 24, 2008 by DamienB
DamienB Posted March 11, 2008 Author Posted March 11, 2008 (edited) This one's progressing slowly... the Italeri kit is a bit of a dog fit-wise, it has to be said! 1. The wing is on! As you can see the fuselage spine on the Italeri kit is a lot thicker than on the Hasegawa one that these wings are designed as a drop-in replacement for, and some work is going to be needed to fair the two together. The filler I've already used was just to fill in the cracks where the resin wing had been broken. 2. Cut off the locating tabs for the ventral fins and used them to fill the slots where Italeri think they should go (hint - they're wrong). 3. The fin needed a good bit of fettling to sit on the spine without gaps and still needs filler. 4. Blanked off the intakes with plastic card to stop see-through effect. 5. The boxy intake on the spine has had blanking plates added inside, again to stop see-through. Cut off the forward locating tab for it and filled the hole on the spine where it would have been inserted too. 6. The intakes are stupendously awful. The inner parts are smaller than the outer parts, so the outers have been bent a bit to match; even so a lot of sanding has not resulted in a smooth join and filler will be needed. The interiors were a disaster area; I've smoothed them out a lot, and run a bead of PVA glue down each corner to try and replicate the curved corners of the real thing. Also thinned the forward edges down a lot. Do they fit nicely to the fuselage? Do they hell... they either go flat against the splitter plate and don't meet the rear part of the intake, or they go flat against that and don't meet the splitter plate. Argh! 7. The cockpit is being tarted up with the Eduard PE set. Consoles and sidewalls are a fair stab at the real thing but very 2D in comparison; I've added the throttle quadrant from plastic rod and a bit of sprue. Ejector seat is an Airwaves resin one; sides and base needed a bit of fettling to get it to fit. 8. Nose cone goes together fairly well (the only bit that has, so far). Have cut out the LRMTS window. 9. A test fit of the nose cone to the rest of the nose found the rest of the nose was noticeably thicker in profile so there'd be an obvious step where the cone joined. Cut off the forward locating pin on the starboard nose half and sanded both halves down at their forward edge. They now match the size of the cone. 10. A test fit of the nose with the cockpit tub in place found that it was very difficult to get it to all line up inside with no way of accessing the tub, so I've cut big holes in the rear bulkhead so that I'll be able to adjust the tub position when I put the nose together. Battle will recommence when I get the chance... Edited March 11, 2008 by DamienB
bexwh773 Posted March 12, 2008 Posted March 12, 2008 Your progress maybe slow Damien, but so far impressive, especially as I know you know a wee abit about Jags so nowt less than perfect will be good enough for you Bexy
DamienB Posted March 15, 2008 Author Posted March 15, 2008 I thought the drop tanks looked a bit odd... The Italeri tanks match the plans in Andy Evans' "Warplane Classic No.1", but those plans are certainly wrong in that respect at least. Handily though the section between the two rearmost panel lines on the Italeri tanks is the right length to remove to make the tanks right. The fins, as you can see, are also different to the more accurate Hasegawa and Airfix tanks so I'm discarding them and replacing them with plastic card.
DamienB Posted March 23, 2008 Author Posted March 23, 2008 Finally finished the fiddly etched cockpit (I vote for resin for future builds!) and was thus able to get the nose together and add it to the fuselage along with the cannon inserts. Thankfully the thinning of the nose mating surfaces earlier made this bit all go together with just the need for some sanding down and no filler. The nose-fuselage joint, however, is still going to need filler and that's after some fettling to get it to fit in a straight line rather than angled slightly to the side! The fit of parts on this kit is just awful. The filler to fair the two differently sized spine areas together has worked well and just needs a little more work to finish it off. 11. The cockpit still looks very 2D unfortunately, though there are some bits still to add (warning light panel on the coaming edge, HUD etc.) 12. Cannon inserts have had the visible cannon barrel scraped off and a hole drilled instead; also drilled out the gas vent holes. Filler needed around the edges of these inserts, quelle surprise... I'm leaning towards doing this as an early GR.1 rather than a GR.3 now (the instrument panel alone decides it really) - just need to settle on a paint job.
DamienB Posted March 24, 2008 Author Posted March 24, 2008 Mostly sanding down today after another filler session last night. 13. Drilled holes in the ventral fins to take some plastic rod to aid in gluing them to the underside of the jet 14. Drilled ventral fin locating holes in the right places, Italeri designers take note! 15. Filled the incorrectly placed gear door lines and rescribed them in the right place. There's still the line to do that goes along the curved corner of the fuselage, haven't got the bravery up to do that one yet. 16. With the fuselage/nose join nice and level I could get the intakes added (they'd have got in the way of sanding the join otherwise), and what a pain they were. Lots of fettling to get them to sit nicely and they are still going to need some work to fair them in to the airframe. 17. Huge amount of filler here to fair the cockpit bulkhead in with the bit above. Hope this won't affect the canopy fit! 18. I have decided which Jag it is to be - and it's going to be XX723, which was the first Jaguar to land at RAF Coltishall back in May 1974. I've found a piccy of the jet in question, and it had the original sharp nose... typical! So off came the Italeri nose, and on went a Jaguar A nose from a Hasegawa kit. Unfortunately, as the Italeri nose is so undersized, there was a clear 2mm difference in width... so the Hasegawa parts have been sanded down a lot on the mating surfaces to reduce the width, and the Italeri nose bulkhead also sanded back somewhat. It'll still need some fairing in with filler and a good sanding down. I've cut off the laser seeker on the underside of the Hasegawa parts too.
alrite Posted March 24, 2008 Posted March 24, 2008 LoL, Your doing a very good job of an absolute dog of a kit, I've learned to stick with Hasegawa for the future. Have you decided what weapons the beauty will carry?
DamienB Posted March 25, 2008 Author Posted March 25, 2008 Yeah, I don't think I'll be in a hurry to build this particular kit again. As an early delivery/visitor to Coltishall I can get away with no weapons at all, result!
desmojen Posted March 25, 2008 Posted March 25, 2008 I have to agree, it's a real test of willpower this kit is! Mine was the same, and I think DSwoofie is regretting having bought two more for the stash before building one! Jen.
DamienB Posted April 2, 2008 Author Posted April 2, 2008 A late pic of the weekend's progress. 19 - the PE/film HUD from the Eduard set does look the business, almost justifies the 45 minutes of effort it took to cut the damn thing off the fret, clean it up, fold it, paint it, glue the film to it and then finally get it to sit in the right place! 20 - photo doesn't show it too well but I've added (from 0.2mm wire) a representation of the cable loom here on the real thing, plus some plastic card for the various raised panels at the front edge of the coaming and the upright thingy (that I think actually hangs down from the windscreen but it was easier to attach to the coaming). This has all busied up the coaming nicely. After this I also glued the windscreen on and tried to add the canopy. Of course that won't fit because it's so thick and rather than place the ejector seat lower to compensate (it would look sooo wrong) I'm going to have to go with an open canopy - probably for the best, as it's optically so distorted that you'd be unable to see anything through it! Anyway, I taped it on for the time being and then sprayed on an undercoat of light aircraft grey and... minor disaster... the paint turned into cracked egg shell like patterns on the plastic of the fuselage underside, and showed up lots of little pin gentleman's parts holes on the resin wings. Sanding it down and trying again at the weekend. I think I had the pressure too low on the compressor regulator - upped it afterwards for some different painting jobs and had no problem with those.
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