Now that Telford is done and dusted I can finally start on the Jag.

The kit I'm building is the 1/72 Italeri Jaguar T2. I will use one of the kit decal options, the one with blue and yellow chequers on it as per box art.



I've started tonight, and so far I've cut out the NACA duct on the top and fitted a slice of plastic a la Neils build. I then glued the rear bits together. Not worth a photo obviously!

Jen.

Glad to have you join us Jen, dare say you'll be showing us some stunning work on this one soon enough

Very sweet of you to say so Col, but I'm not in a very masterpieceish sort of mood at the moment. I think I might be suffering from burnout after the frantic pre-Telford building or something
I'm struggling to get motivated even though I've been really looking forward to doing some projects for myself after the show, just bloody typical isn't it.

Oh well, I've been soldiering on in twenty minute bursts of modelling between wandering around the house and staring at the compy.



Here you can see the current state of play. The cockpit is OOB and black, not much to see there then. I cut the fairly pathetic moulded shoulder straps off the seats and added some generic 1/72 belts. They look slightly better than before but completely fail to capture the complicated look of an ejector seat. I might yet pay for Pavla ones.....
Everything fits ok ish so far, but just check out how horrible that intake is! I might end up doing a Mike and making some fresh ones.
The other thing you can see in the pic is my home made CBLS thingy for practice bombs. Every single photo I have of my jet has these fitted to the outer pylons. I know that Heritage do some which were actually mastered by Falcon and look plenty nice, but I objected to the fact that the postage cost more than the item; so I made my own. Tight? Me?

Jen.

Hmmm... If you do make some, I'd be interested in a couple of sets... especially one for my ACT. Those kit ones are a bit of a fit aren't they...

Karl.

Most of the progress on this has been the intakes. The kit ones were horrible and didn't fit together or to the fuselage either.
I lined them with putty and spent many many many minutes rubbing it out again to end up with a slightly more pleasing result. I'm not 100% happy with them as I think the corners are now probably too rounded, but when they were less rounded, they looked too square.....





I've also added the gun bulges and faired them in. I fitted them in such as way as to make the fit as good as possible at the top, as it's much easier to fill the bottom. Good job too because I ended up with about a 1mm gap on both sides!
All the other seam sorting is done, and I scribed in the main and nose undercarriage doors, because Italeri didn't bother.

Any feedback on the intakes would be much appreciated fellas.

Jen.

Hey Jen, looking good so far

Bex

Don't think the intakes look too bad Jen. Maybe just a smidge on the rounded side but nothing that can't be sorted with a few swipes of the round file. Alternatively you could take the easy route and go for the intake blanks

I had a similar problem with the intakes on my Hasgeawa Jag. They are basically too narrow vertically. whether they are the right height- or the right width, I'm not sure, but they are definately not the right shape- I managed to engineer a lot of this out by careful buggering about. Also, from looking at photo's, it seems the Jag intake is pretty flat along its top side, not curved like in the Hasegawa kit.

I always intended to put blanks in anyway, there's nothing to see down the intakes apart from daylight coming in the exhausts!

I think they might be a tad too shallow, which is probably what's making them look too rounded now. The left hand one has come out slightly better though. I'm not going to deepen them though, that would be waaay too much faff.

Jen.

Jen did you get any further with the scania

Ted

The other thing you can see in the pic is my home made CBLS thingy for practice bombs. Every single photo I have of my jet has these fitted to the outer pylons. I know that Heritage do some which were actually mastered by Falcon and look plenty nice, but I objected to the fact that the postage cost more than the item; so I made my own. Tight? Me?

thats what makes you a skilled modeler, man. Looks good.

What isnt apparent from the pics is just what IS wrong with the intakes. Maybe Im just thick in the head...

Hi Jen,

I like your progress so far, although the very wide lazy streak in me argues that the Italeri intakes look adequate (note not necessarily correct). Tough call I'm sure as to how much effort to expend on them, but all that really matters is how close they are for your satisfaction. Just on the topic of CBLS, from what I can see you've created a very fine representation. I'm yet to scratchbuild mine (either -100 or -200 series), but when I do, I hope they turn out comparable to yours. It looks just right and by itself is worthy of more photos; perhaps later when painted?

I'm looking forward to see how the rest of your build goes - everything suggests it will be absolutely awesome.

Cheers,

Andrew

I've got the intakes to a place where I'm pretty happy with them now, just a bit of final faffing and I'll call them done.

I had had the CEEBLY set aside ready to go, but then last week we had the company of a 12 sqn Tonka in the hangar, armed to the teeth with one CLBS.
Upon crawling around underneath to have a look at it I could see I'd got it a bit wrong, but that's the danger of working from only two photos - both of which were from the front!
It was an easy fix though, and it's pretty much done. I'll post some pics later.

Jen.

I'm keen to see what needs done to the intakes Jen, not an area I've paid much attention to on the Revell kit yet. Well, other than spotting the ridge caused by the locating pins but that was a bit obvious even at first glance!

Great to hear about the intakes, sounds like you've successfully avoided my usual pitfall of spending so much time on one small area all for dubious gain and a big case of the doldrums!

With the CBLS, you didn't happen to get photos or dimensions of the one on the Tornado did you? If so, would you be willing to share? Irrespective, my desire to see more pics of both your Jag and the CBLS remains. Considering your previous reference of head-on photos, that's an amazing bit of scratchbuilding. I've spent hours looking at phots in books and online and have come up with 'close enough' drawings sketch scribble on a napkin, but have yet to commit razor saw to precious scrap plastic. When I do, look out world! It will undoubtedly be the most accurate handmade model of a superseded, forgotten bit of stuff hung on planes that saw service no greater than fifteen years ago. Nice touch on the 'armed to the teeth' reference too; still chuckling! It seems as though discarded 1300l bags will be the next weapons to undergo the JDAM/GPS guidance fin and vane kits upgrade.

Whoa, better rein in my slightly narrower digressive streak. Keep up the great work, and looking forward to your next update.

Andrew.

A much needed update here!

In the end, I decided against moulding and casting intakes. I would have struggled immensly to mould them because I have no vacuum equipment. So I stuck them on and left it at that, they do look a lot better though. In answer to a couple of people who wondered what I found wrong with them, the two parts were misaligned (caused by moulding) which left large steps on both of the intake lips; very unsightly. They also didn't fit the kit very well and had very square corners.

The bad fit to the kit was mostly resolved by chopping off the locating lugs along with a little trimming. The square corners and misalignment were ironed out by Milliput.
Anyway, they're on which allowed me to fit the wing.
The fit of the wing is so good that I decided to use Milliput on it. Ahem.





I've also plastered Milliput on the rear underfuselage insert, and in this shot you can see my big superglued gaps around the gun inserts.
Once this is all rubbed out I will be getting close to primering at long last.

Today I received my CBLS mould back from Neil. I thought you might like to see what they look like



Jen.

I feel your pain Jen - that filler pattern looks very familiar!

I think your Ceeblys are too modern for my Jag build - I need something more like this ....

http://members.chello.nl/m.waterloo/images...f-4m_Jaguar.jpg

... Shouldn't be too hard to whittle, but yours will look great on a future build or two I have planned (might be forced to buy a Lancastrian set too).

Steve.

The ones mine had on in the pictures were different again! Obviously a lot of different CBLS out there!

The ones I've made were based on the 200 series purely because that was the only one I could find pictures of. On the manufacturers site (Flight Refuelling) it stated that it was used by the Jaguar so I decided that will do for me.

Does anyone have any or know where I can get some Pavla or other good seats from btw?

Jen.

Jen- you realise the CBLS-200 is available x 2 in the Hasegawa 1/48 JASDF weapons set... don't you...?

And for normal non Japanese type modellers, it also includes 6 x CBU-87

I also just realised you are doing this in 1/72 so I will go and shut my head in the door now

Do you need a volunteer to slam it?

Jen wouldn't be as nasty as you- just cos I've just worked a 16 hour day

No need to slam your head in a door Mental, that would hurt!

Maybe just, er................... read the posts before replying????

Jen.

Wouldn't hurt us. . I reckon he should risk it. . .

Latest progress.....



The beast is finally nearly ready for paint. It's taken three lots of primer and rub down to get here
I've rescribed all the bits I lost and since this photo was taken I've filled the windscreens and pitot joint. All I have to do now is drill out the gun tube things underneath at the right angle, having filled in the kit ones.

Hope to start getitng some paint on today

Jen.

It looks bloody fantastic Jen! I know what a beeyatch the Ita kit can be, I've battled somewhat with mine, but you have done a great job

Careful with the guns, there's only one on the T.2!

I got it painted this arvo



Topside is done with Gunze Sangyo acrylic Dark Sea Grey.



Underside is Xtracrylix Camo Grey. I can't tell you how much I hate spraying with bloody Xtracrylix. If Gunze is the Rolls Royce of acrylics, Xtracrap is surely Lada!

Here it is with the masking off. I'm pretty happy with it so far, and finally getting some paint on is a huge morale boost!



Jen.

Nice paint job Jen! Looking very nice!

I'm doing a bit of work on mine at the moment and it's certainly going to need some filler! Not looking forward to that...

Did the wings sit correctly on your kit? When I pop mine onto the fuselage they sit about 1mm lower than they should. This creates a horrible step down on each part of the spine where the wing joints are..

Karl.

looks great

They sat at about the right height, just had big gaps all the way around
And then there's the way the spine and canopies have an unequal curve when you look at them head on, and the flat nose that needed building up to make it round, the gun pods, the fin, the strakes, the underbelly......it was a complete nightmare tbh. And it looked so nice on the sprue........

I'd shim the wings with a bit of plastic card if I were you mate, gotta be easier than having to fill across the whole thing.

Jen.

Yep, my thoughts exactly! I've got another 2 of them (a GR.1A and a T.2) that I had intentions of building in the near future... maybe not now!

I'll try and find something that'll lift them up to the right height. They'll still need a ton of filler around them as well!

Cheers,
Karl.

its looking great so far mate!!!!

Nice one Jen - shading is looking spot-on.

Steve.

If you think the wing to fuse join is crap you should try fitting resin wings designed for a Hasegawa kit!
I found the fin needed a fair bit of fettling to get it to match the curve of the spine where it joins - and the underside panel won't fit at all unless you cut off the locating tabs and make some of your own up from plastic card.

Are you sticking the cannon bulges on after painting then, Jens?

I rarely use any kind of Acrylic (don't like 'em) but if I have to use them, such as Tamiya, I thin them with Cellulose Thinners. Seem to spray much better that way.

Nice subtle paintwork Jen, very nice indeed

Thanks peeps, thanks very much

I have been grinding along slowly, and I think I can just make out the light at the end of the tunnel now!



The kit decals were all wrong, wrong sizes, wrong colours you name it. I replaced the roundels and tail codes. I had already fitted the serial and it was stuck, so I'm stuck with serials which are about twice the size they should be.

I did a few panels in different colours and then did a light overspray with Xtracrylix DSG, the Gunze one looked really purple.
I have done a panel wash with Phils dark dirt, but I'm struggling a bit with it because it dries to almost the same colour as the paint! That means you can't tell if it's worked until you put varnish on, not ideal I think you'll agree so I'm going to mix something up in oils to finish off.

Jen.

Looks great! Lot of work but worth it in the end.

Good job Jen,

Don't fore get, the wash will darken with the varnish on, but you could always get the black wash

I made it!

The poor little Jag has been sitting in a corner of the workbench being studiously ignored. I really lost all motivation with it, but the GB nearing a close spurred me on because I hate not finishing GB builds. I had a stern word with myself yesterday and set to in a desperate final frenzy

Once I got all the bits and bobs together I soon realised that there wasn't all that much to do, seats needing making up and painting, fuel tanks and CBLS needed doing and all the little widgets and aerials.
The tanks had a wierd design which left a ruddy great step and gap next to the fins so I chopped the fins off. Once they were out of the way I could fill it all properly and sand to shape. Then I just glued the fins back on.
The seats are Aeroclub, made of white metal and etch. They are very nice but still don't feature seatbelts
I put some tape on there temporarily, I might get some decent ones sorted later.
I then had a big sticking little bits on and painting session and was suddenly nearly finished! All that was left this morning was to fit the intake blanks, canopies and RBF tags. The canopies are open because they don't fit closed which is a shame because I wanted them closed

So here she is



How much does it look like a TSR2 from that angle!





I'll put a couple of other pics in the finshed build thread.

Jen.

Well done Jen. I always liked the 54 Sqn markings, and the camo tanks are a nice touch. I think you must be one of the most prolific builders I know, and they are always cracking quality.
Take care of yourself
Andy

Nice result Jen, it looks much better with the decals replaced. I looked at the sheet for this kit and can see what you mean, they are definitely oversized.

I like the intake covers and RBF tags, how did you do them? And to open canopies look better than closed ones.



Karl.