Graham T

I refitted the plastic fuselage top/spine section that I had sawn off to accept that poorly fitting resin section & in now the process of filling & blending it back in. In the meantime, I pressed on with as much of the Airfix plastic bits as I dare at this stage - airbrake, flaps, ailerons, wing tip lights & pitot (no doubt that'll get snapped off down the line but it does need blending in). The photo shows the main airframe, spine & nose just placed in position - it makes quite a large model compared to the single seater!

You could only do an early T7 (or some export models) from the F4 kit as it lacks the dog tooth leading edge (although thinking about it, that kit MAY have the dog toothed wing that is removed & replaced with the straight edge so you might be OK!). Yes the conversion provides the para-brake equipped tail required - see pics above.

Tidied up the replacement nose & fitted the single gun blister (two troughs are on the part but only the starboard cannon is fitted on the T7 so the other will need filling). Might regret fitting this now as the blister is quite close to the joint between the kit parts & the conversion which will undoubtably need filling! Note that the cannon muzzle is provided pre drilled!

Cheers. I have refitted the previously removed plastic section as frankly it was easier than messing about with the resin part to make it fit! Little bit of surgery, little bit of filling, "job's a good'un"!

It seems that this replacement panel is NOT necessary, if you are willing to carry out a simple piece of surgery to the kit part, which involves removing about 1cm of the "spine" which in turn allows the replacement resin T7 spine to fit. I can say this because I have refitted the plastic kit section that I removed to accept the resin part, after removing said section of spine. There IS some slightly different vent detail on the resin part that one could replicate on the kit part, or leave alone as preferred! And there are four schemes, all for DG/DSG over LAG examples & I'll probably use the IV squadron markings.

Thought I'd have a bash at this! Using the Airfix F6 & the Aerocraft conversion. First the scary part where the kit parts have to be chopped about: Instructions are fairly helpful but the images & text on them are a little unclear! With that done, I turned to the twin seat nose itself. It's a single piece casting, into which the tub, side walls & nose wheel bay are inserted & with careful trimming the fit is pretty good. However, while washing the resin dust of my cutting mat, I managed to flush the two control columns down the sink plug! I can use the kit part for one of them but may have to fabricate a replica! The instrument panel & comming are just dry fitted at the mo so I can check the windscreen fit which seems OK. Then on with the nose cone which required a bit of trimming of the nose wheel bay & just a small amount of filler. And now I encountered the first & only real issue - the resin wing fuselage top which is a mile away from following the profile of the kit. I tried the hot water method to reprofile it but with only partial success, plus the part cracked along the joint between the fuselage top & the actual spine. I'm going to attach the wing & let it go off completely before attempting to fit it. I MAY end up reattaching the piece of plastic I removed at the start! It will need a little bit of surgery but this may be simpler than trying to get the resin replacement to fit! So, I attached the top wing…. Added the resin tail cone…... Then couldn't resist just placing the nose in position to see how it's looking! I'm hoping that the worst is behind me!!!

Just completed & an absolute pleasure by & large. The jet pipes were not a brilliant fit for me but the rest of it pretty much fell together. Lots of decals including for the 1000lb bombs which were massively too large for 1/72 scale so having struggled with one, I chickened out & forgot them!

Terrific job! Hope mine turns out as well!

I see their 1/24 Harrier GR1 is back……..at just south of £100.00! This kit was tooled in the 1970s & presumably those tools are paid for. Obs the kit has to be manufactured, packed, distributed at a profit & sold by the retailer at a profit but really? £100 for a 40+ year old tooling? Their brand new tooled 1/24 Spitfire IX can be had for less!

That is a beauty!!!

Lovely!

Yep pretty pleased with that!

Like it! Very neat!

Ive always liked the diminutive style of the venerable F-5 but, thinking back, I'm pretty sure that the LAST F-5 I built was the Airfix 1/72 kit when I was about 8! In those days I thought the markings were for the Italian AF rather than the Imperial Iranian AF! Anyway I bought this recently & as my intended project (Airfix Vulcan) stalled for want of a replacement part, I thought I'd give it a go. Get past the useless end opening box & it's quite a nice kit although some smaller parts carried a bit of flash which surprised me. The trailing edges of the flying surfaces are razor sharp (careful!). Cockpit & seat are a bit bare looking but (a first for me) I dressed up the latter with some belts from Tamiya tape & actually quite impressed with the result after an oil wash. Fit is pretty good but not perfect; as Kinetic obviously wanted to produce the maximum number of variants from the basic moulds, there are lots of alternative panels that need popping in on the fuselage & these were rather poor & "gappy". The kit provides AIM-9s, tanks, bombs & rocket pods. I went with tanks & pods - the latter are a new style to me (possible unique to the RCAF?) & no colour call outs are provided for them. On the subject of colours the instructions call for 3 x FS shades but if you attempt to follow the pattern provided, it can't be done as the side & plan views do not match up! For this reason its a little conjectural! Decals are nice & thin.

Part arrived, time to crack on!