egalliers

Here are photos of the completed model. Modifications and additions: Jet pipe and exhaust turbine face scratch built. Seat cushions and belts scratch built Height of tail increased by approx 2mm Rocket rails scratch built Rivet detail added to circumference of belly tank Added brake lines and actuator rods to undercarriage All antenna replaced with wire Cockpit access step scratch built Scratch built Pitot tube Scratch built Nav lights. Airscale decals used for cockpit instruments. Markings and finish: MRP Extra dark Sea Grey and Sky. Kit stencil data decals Small squadron crest decal custom made All other markings masked and sprayed

In an effort to move this one on a bit, I pushed through and got it finished. Just in time for this weekends Model Expo in Melbourne. All in all, an enjoyable build of an interesting aircraft. My normal `just finished' photos. Studio photos to follow soon. I decided to leave the rockets off due to them being quite fragile and they didn't add anything to the look of the completed model. It will live on my all resin jets shelf for the time being. Thanks for following on!

Cheers guys. I painted the ejection seat. I used a very fine tipped Copic multiliner marker pen to draw in the stitching on the belts and the black lines in the ejection handles. Next up was the rocket rails. I scratchbuilt one good one from plastic card and rod. Fitted with a rocket for sizing. I have used the Aires RP-3 rockets with concrete warhead practice rounds. i then made a copy of the stubs in resin Which I multiplied by 6 pairs. I used plastic rod for the rail part. Test fit. My good mate Les was kind enough to make me up some 803 sqn crests for either side of the tail to match the ones on the real 109 I used the excellent Australian made gloss clear produced by SMS to clear coat the model before applying the stencil data. Highly recommend this stuff. Getting closer to the finish line.

I detailed the ejection seat and primed it. For the belts, I used aluminium foil cut into strips with copper wire adjusters and plastic card buckles. I used a thick piece of copper wire with a thinner piece tightly wrapped around it for the oxygen hose. primed

CJP, Good to see that you are entering into the world of sprayed markings. If I could talk you into getting your own mask cutter you won’t be disappointed. For the cost of a couple of decent kits that will sit in your stash not earning their keep, you could have a cutter that you will use every build! Another small update. I have started to test fit everything to ensure that it all lines up and looks the part. I will start painting all of the pieces of the undercarriage, canopy and other parts now that I have the model mostly done to ensure that I put in an equal amount of effort and not just put these things onto the model at the end as an afterthought. I made up the deck landing sight on the nose from music wire and will electrify it with 240 volts to ensure that wayward fingers and camera straps at model shows are suitably rewarded with an unfavourable zap. To add extra visual presence to the model I have also decided to fit rocket rails and practice concrete warhead RP-3’s, so the search for reference to these items has begun. Will detail my efforts in doing these parts soon. The extra detailing that I put into the rim of the belly tank is quite visible in this photo and is well worth the effort.

Hi CJP, I used Tamiya tape, both the yellow and white flexible type, as well as a custom mask that I cut using my mask cutter for the red nose and forward demarcation in front of the cockpit. I Finally decided on a particular aircraft, WP304 of 803 sqn whilst it was embarked upon HMS Eagle during the early 50’s. It didn’t last too long after this photo was taken. I made up the 109, J and the roundels on my mask cutter and sprayed them. I will do the underwing serials, and the smaller stuff a bit later.

Some more work. The kit comes with resin inserts to simulate the parachute pack and seat cushion, with photo etch belts. I reckon these were going to look a bit stiff so have started to create my own, adding a lot of extra detail to the seat. Here is the photo I am working off. I built up the pack and cushions from Tamiya two part epoxy and sculpted them in place. I will add some more detail before adding the belts. The large belly tank is a major feature of the model and could do with some extra detail. I added raised rivets to the entire circumference of the tank using Archer resin/decals. I painted the bottom of the model using black surface primer up to where the demarcation between the two paint colours will be, followed by pre shading the the top surface panel lines. I mottled the base MRP sky colour Followed by 3 or so highly thinned coats to leave only a small amount of the mottling visible. This assists to break up the solid colour. I have gone for a slight change in MK. No. As I really could pass up on the red nosed aircraft. I discovered that early model F.B MK.2’s had most of the features that I was looking for. The top side was masked and painted MRP Extra dark sea grey, with the red nose masked and painted Gunze ‘red madder’.

Thanks Kev. I put this model aside to concentrate on finishing my Boomerang. Now that project was completed, I am onto getting this one finished.My first task was to `lock in' the MK. number that I am intending on doing by filling and removing the 4 vents on the rear of the fuselage near the exhaust pipe that belong to a F.2/FB.2. This model will now represent an F.1. After sanding the wing to fuselage join, I masked up the fairing that covers the wing root and sprayed it with MRP fine surface primer to build up that panel and give it the appearance of an overlapping panel. I did a few small fixes and then primed the model with Tamiya fine surface primer, directly from the spray can. I have marked the model with lead pencil, identifying many small areas that will need rectification before paint. More soon.

Now that the majority of the major work has been completed it was time to start to focus on some of the smaller details. Close examination of photos reveal details that by themselves are no big deal but combined will certainly add a lot of realism to the model. Not sure what role it performs, but there is a small round circle under the cockpit represented with an engraved line on the kit. Most pics show this to be inset and not flush with the fuselage skin. I drilled it out and installed a flat disk punched from plastic card. The next detail that I wanted to add was the small fold out step used to gain access to the cockpit. Like most tail draggers, entry is by climbing up over the wing and this step is right where it’s needed. Represented on the kit by a nicely engraved panel. I chiseled out the hole required I made the step by filing down some brass plate and added the outer cover from thin aluminium window blind shaped to exactly fit the previously chiseled out hole. Dry fitted A small but important detail that will bring the model to life.

More work. I wanted to depict the wings extended to give an overall impression of the size and unique shape of the aircraft. I am not a huge fan of folding the wings on my models as you lose the look of the real thing in its flying form. Although this would save a bit of space in my bursting at the seams display cabinets it was extended wings for me. The kit comes with some resin pegs to position the wings folded or extended and are a nice fit bit I needed to glue the wings in place and wanted to make the fit a bit more refined. I also needed to make the join stronger to avoid it snapping off if the model was picked up by the wingtip as it is now fairly heavy. As can be seen, there isn’t a whole lot of surface area to hold the two parts together. The first thing I did was make the peg significantly stronger by drilling and inserting brass rod along its length. I then drilled a hole into one of the sides of the aileron and inserted a short piece of brass rod that had been sharpened to a point that sat just proud of the surface. This then enabled me to push the parts together, leaving a small mark (just visible) on the other side of the aileron. The short rod was removed and replaced with a longer piece and a hole drilled where the mark was. As I am using superglue to assemble the model, there is very limited time to locate parts against each other. Not only does the brass rod provide greater strength across the join, but it allows precise alignment of parts whilst assembling them given the short period of time that superglue allows for fixing errors! url=https://ericgalliers.smugmug.com/Attacker/i-9srVLpF/A][/url] The wing tips joined to the wings. They join up O.K ish , but as is the short run nature of the kit, some rescribing of panel lines was required so that everything lines up. I didn’t want to re scribe the wing where it folds through the original joint, so I scribed a new line very close to it so that I wasn’t running my scriber through superglue and resin. url=https://ericgalliers.smugmug.com/Attacker/i-wmKpNb6/A][/url]

I am having a fair bit of trouble settling on a particular aircraft to depict. The Attacker had two slightly different versions, being the F.1/F.B.1 and the FB.2 both sort of able to be made from the kit. The kit as presented I believe represents an in between mix of both versions and some thought will be required if you wish it to be an accurate depiction of a certain aircraft. I am certainly open to suggestions and also correction if I have the details wrong. I have a mask cutter, so I am not limited to the kit provided decals for the serial number. The F.1 was equipped with an earlier version of the Nene and had a cleaner fuselage. The kit has 4 vents around the tailcone (see the post regarding my exhaust mod to see what I am talking about) which was a feature of the FB.2 so these will need to be removed. Conversely, the FB.2 whilst featuring the vents also had two small intakes, one on either side of the rear fuselage adjacent to the front of the tail fillet. These are not supplied in the kit so will need to be scratchbuilt if wanting to depict an FB.2. Neither mod would be too hard to give either version but I like to try and get things right. The quandary that I now have myself in is which one to pick? I had a rough idea of the features and scheme that I would like but finding one that has all the boxes ticked has proven difficult. My list so far; F.1 spec, Large J on the tail, red nose, earlier un framed canopy and also the large underbelly fuel tank. Finding a picture that has all of those has so far eluded me. It seems like the best compromise would be to go for the later framed canopy which would give me the rest of the features and all I would have to do is remove the vents around the tailcone. Whilst I try and work out what I want to do (I am going through the same process with my Booemrang build) I can fiddle with some of the smaller details to buy me some time. The kit represents the wingtip nav lights with engraved detail. I cut out the area of the lights and tacked in a piece of clear resin This was easy enough to shape with a coarse sanding stick I refined the final shape by using a finer sanding stick followed by some wet and dry. These lights are easy enough to pop off and I will dip them in clear red and green paint and reattach them once I have finished painting the model.

Thankyou gents. The rear lip of the tailpipe was canted upwards to deflect some of the jet exhaust away from the ground I believe. It wasn’t quite as simple as cutting off the end of the exhaust pipe at an angle, it needed a seperate part made as shown on the 5th pic down which was then reattached to give it the subtle change in angle.

The wing join makes the cannon fairings a bit misaligned as the join passes straight through them. I wanted to make sure the barrels lined up and also fix up the area in question at the same time. First up, I drilled out the holes that the barrels fit into and fitted some brass tube. I then used the length of the brass tube to ensure that it was aligned with the longitudinal axis of the the model and glued it in place. I repeated it for the other barrel and did the same on the other wing. These tubes were then cut off with a small amount protruding to match the area where the barrels fair into the wings and the rear of the barrels themselves, I punched out some disks from plastic card that exactly match the diameter of the cannons. These disks were then fitted over the ends of the brass tubes already glued into the wing and then the wing was filled and sanded to match the diameter of the disks. Notice that I have also drilled a section of brass rod into the barrels that will give them plenty of strength and and also slide straight into the tubes glued into the wings. Dry fitted. I can leave these off until the last minute to prevent them from becoming damaged.

It was time to sort out the exhaust. Whilst I didn’t end up putting in the engine, I felt that I needed to do something about the tailpipe and turbine. There is just a gaping hole there, and although it will be rarely picked up and seen, at least I know it is there and it the solution that I came up with is more than acceptable. Here is the tail end of the model. Some damage is evident, as the bottom lip of the exhaust is cracked and the tail light has been broken off. Not sure when this happened. I cut off the tailpipe and squared it up with a file The closest O.D with the thinnest wall material I could find was this brass tube. I measured the O.D of the tailpipe at 15.04mm, so it was close enough. I cut the pipe at an angle. This was done using the MK1 eyeball as a guide. I then used some tape to ensure that the next cut was going to be square and cut off the end of the pipe to give me the angled piece required. The small end piece was superglued to a longer piece and test fitted. Whilst I was working on this part of the model, I tidied up the outer ring of the exhaust pipe by giving it an undercut as per the real thing by using the tip of a no.11 blade to carve it. I had kept the mould that I had of a Revell Hunter turbine when I made some exhausts for the HK Meteor so I pulled it out of storage and poured some resin. It is an almost perfect fit to the brass tube. Painted and heavily dry brushed so that the detail is visible. Completed and ready to go inside the fuselage. Glued in place and primed. I replaced the rear light fairing with a scrap of resin. The undercut of the outer ring as mentioned earlier has made a lot of difference to the finished product.

Thanks for the comments gents. Onto the tail. In my opinion, I felt that it appeared a little too short and that the rudder angled too far forward. Here it is as presented in the kit. i sanded two flat areas on top of the rudder I grafted on two scraps of resin to give me something to work with. I then glued on a shim to the trailing edge of the rudder using plastic card to slightly modify the angle of the trailing edge and blended the top of the rudder into the taller shape. The bottom of the tail under the rudder of the real aircraft blends into the fuselage with a nice curved fairing. A small detail missed by Iconicair, but easy enough to add. Also notice that I have modified the size of the rudder trim tab, it is much thinner on the real thing. Due to the sanding and blending required, the old trim tab actuator needed to go and I replaced it with a new one carved from a scrap of resin. Fitted to the fuselage and primed. I have also added a very thin strip of plastic card to the trailing edge of the rudder from the trim tab and above present on pics of the real aircraft. The same type of strip is also on the outer edges of the elevators these will be added later. Starting to come together. This has to be my favourite build of the year.