jargonking

Finally the moment has arrived to close up the fuselage.... first thing was to fit a mounting for the brass tube that will be used to support the finished model...I found a wheel from an old Revell Bridgelayer that had a hole in the centre the exact size of the brass tube...this was cemented into place set at a slight angle so that the Batwing will be banking to the right.... Inside I applied plenty of 5-minute epoxy to ensure it stayed put.... Here's the tube test fitted into the socket...note in the background the latest addition to my Bat arsenal, the Ertl Cocoon vacform.... Two lengths of wire were fed through the brass tube... The power feed was fed through the socket and connected to the remaining wires from the wing/belly lights and cockpit...this stage is always a little fraught due to the proximity of the soldering iron to the kit, molten metal and styrene don't really get on... The upper fuselage was then tacked into place using CA glue before clamps were applied and Plastic Weld cement was run along the joints. Here's another lighting test, this time with all the lights fed from a common feed....

Some small but important jobs before final assembly....the intakes are open to the interior so to avoid seeing right into the airframe I simply blanked them off with some black styrene...I did think of fitting grilles but you can barely see the card... I tidied the feeds to the wing/belly lights then terminated them with a connector block which was epoxied in place...a single feed was then fed back towards the stand position...notice the styrene reinforcement where the stand fits, once the light feeds are all married up I'll send a single long feed down a length of brass tube that will fit into the stand.... I glued the cockpit tub into the upper fuselage then placed it on the wing for a final check to ensure none of the additions affected the fit....nearly there!...

Time I drafted in some help with the build....

A little more progress...I'm itching to get the fuselage together but there's loads of little jobs to do first. I offered up the wing light transparencies and found that internally they were too narrow to fit over the LED. Since I couldn't widen the transparencies the only other option was to narrow the LED's....I managed this using a chisel blade and very carefully paring the round LED to an oval shape.... I then lined the wing light housings with aluminium tape.... The poorly fitting canopy was next....I had to sand about 1mm off the rear edge of the windshield to get the canopy to close flush. The kit part only features a frame on the front edge so I added framing to the sides and rear edge, the rear frame being doubled up to disguise a flaw in the clear part... Here it is test fitted in place...it's remarkably clear and shows off the interior really well.... I've also added copius amounts of filler to the awful joints in the lower wings....

Looks good to me....try running a very dark pin wash into the panel lines and around the moulded detail then finish with a drybrush using progressively lighter greys...I'm thinking Humbrol 64 followed by 147. Also use a small brush to pick out the odd panel in a different grey and also some of the tinier details in a metallic.

With the cockpit done time to move on to the airframe....first another small improvement....the guns in the wings are ok but I wanted something more realistic.... I drilled and filed out the moulded guns... Then they were replaced using small lengths of telescoping aluminium tube...the tubing is simply glued in place from the back... And the result speaks for itself... I now reattached the wings to the lower fuselage taking care to feed the wiring through the wing joint.... The gaps from last time were still there so I inserted some Evergreen strip to ease the filling process... I thought I might test fit the canopy before the upper fuselage goes on....the windshield fits reasonably well.... The problem lies with the canopy which is designed to open...even after removing the hinge at the rear the fit is poor to say the least.... Some work needed here I think.... More soon....

One thing that slipped past me was the incorrectly moulded chest badge....seems Ertl based it on the shape of the Batwing rather than the one on Keaton's suit.... They did supply a decal too but it was out of register and oversize so the only alternative was to print my own. I found a suitable logo online then shrunk it down to the correct size in a graphics program....I then printed off a few onto white decal paper.... The decals were then overcoated with some lacquer and left to dry. I carved the raised detail off the figure then applied two of the decals, one on top of the other to give some opacity .... The single white LED was installed in a light box made from sheet styrene and fixed behind the instrument panel. The etched holes were filled with Kristal Kleer then touched in with various Tamiya clear colours. The screen was given a slide made from a spare from the ParaGrafix Blade Runner Sedan set.... It's hard to get clear pics of the panel lit but to the eye it looks terrific... So with Batman painted and decalled I could finally put the cockpit together and connect all the lights to a single power feed....here you can see the side consoles pretty well... Note the reflection of the forward screen in the lenses of the spectacle sight... Flashlit I can see a few areas that need touching in.... The view forwards shows the front screen.... Now to shoehorn it into the fuselage.....

Some more progress.... First up the man himself, now minus his feet for a better fit....I primed him grey, painted the visible face parts with acrylics then masked him using liquid mask...I then gave him a coat of satin black.... He was then lightly drybrushed with Revell enamel no. 9 Anthracite Grey which is really just a shade off matt black...this helped pick out the detail on the suit. I then gave the chest badge its first coat of yellow...the kit provides a decal for this but it's out of register and oversize....I'll do another pass with the yellow then pick out the bat symbol with a fine brush. The belt buckle was a test to see how the colour looked but I need to use a more brass-like shade...once I get the colour right I'll paint the whole belt... Also completed were the belly lights...I simply fed a white LED, suitably insulated, down each brass tube then fixed them in place with epoxy and aluminium tape.... Powered up they look really good...I'm going to use the kit lenses which should diffuse them nicely.... As soon as Batman is finished I can get him in the cockpit and start to get the whole thing together....

Not built any realspace recently although I do have quite a few in the stash....so would probably have to be this from a year or so ago....

Steve, just sent you a PM regarding the Lynx....

Yet more kits arrived today....this Batwing build has spurred me on to try and complete my Batkit collection.... Here's the companion to the Batwing....box is not the best but the contents are mint.... And from the sequel, a Horizon original Catwoman.... More Batwing soon....

Looks good as a base coat...next up I'd try some gentle drybrushing in some complimentary greys but do it a panel at a time....maybe a darker pinwash in the recessed areas.... If you've used acrylics as the base coat then you might want to try something like this.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wreblsPaUhU There are several parts to the video but the end results are stunning....

In the Chester branch today....picked up a Moebius Cylon Raider marked down from £29.99 to £23.99....when I got to the till it came up as £11.99 which is 50% off the 20% off price....apparently this is happening with a lot of prices now so don't just look at them, get the staff to check....

It was on our stand...SFM:UK....Steve, the guy who makes the kit, posts on the site. He ended up selling one to Mat Irvine so I'm guessing there'll be a build up of it sometime soon. The kit looked great...flawless castings and some of the best instructions I've seen in a kit....I was sorely tempted to buy one myself, I may still do that....

Looks good to me Rob...my only tip would be to photograph your progress against a neutral background which makes it easier to see all your hard work....pick up a large sheet of pastel coloured card from an art shop and shoot your pics against that....

Only had an hour to work on it today so thought I'd tackle one of the small jobs. The kit provides you with these sorry-looking pieces for the forward guns... In less time than it would have taken to try and make the styrene guns acceptable I manufactured these new ones from small sections of telescoping copper and aluminium tubing....still undecided whether I should attempt drilling out the holes in the cooling jackets.... Test fitted in position they really look the part.... More soon....

In case you're interested, the effects in the Flying Sub look like this..... Anyway, more Batwing coming up....

Thanks....I'm going to run the light feeds down a section of aluminium tube into the base which will be a beefed-up version of the kit base....

The cockpit components were given a coat of Satin Black auto spray from a rattle can.... I then very lightly weathered it by drybrushing two shades of very dark grey.... Various details were picked out using random colours... Here's the instrument panel with the obligatory hair stuck to the screen.... I also drilled halfway down the sight arm on the ejector seat in order to fit some fibre optics to the sight controls....the hole exits in the centre of the panel.... The fibre optic bundle is fed down the back of the seat and is held in place with some metal tape...it exits under the floor and is fed from a single LED... I glued some short lengths of aluminium tube into the side consoles using 5-minute epoxy....these house the LED's that light the control panels.... The LED's were then fitted using CA glue and insulation tape was placed between the anode and cathode legs to prevent shorting.... Here's a test fit of the cockpit in the upper fuselage...here it's unlit... And lit....not easy to see in daylight but it looks good to the naked eye... Note the small rectangular screen...this will be having a slide fitted that will be backlit by the white LED... The lights are clearer in this shot...the holes in the panels will be filled with Kristal Kleer and then individually coloured later....note also the lenses in the spectacle sight, these were done with Kristal Kleer too... I also fitted some brass tubing in the wheel wells to house the underside lights.... Finally here's a shot of the underside of the cockpit tub showing the metal tape used to block out light leaks.... More soon...

Just as an aside from the build, these two arrived from the USA this morning....still sealed too... I already have the Batboat from this movie and also the three vinyl figures. The good thing about this particular movie is that the vehicles lend themselves to some fairly spectacular lighting. The kits are well moulded with a nice satin sheen to the parts...here's the Batmobile... One slight disappointment is the nose being moulded solid....I'll be cutting out those areas with the mesh showing...another disappointment is the lack of figures to pilot them... Here's the Batwing....interesting to compare it to the Keaton version, the stated scale is 1/32 which is about the same... Again the meshed areas along the cockpit sides will need opening up.... Anyway, back to the build....

Mal, if it's just supplies you want such as paint, cement, sheet styrene etc there is a small model shop at the bottom of the hill in Greenfield just outside Holywell on the old coast road. They do sell some kits but it's mainly RC stuff....There's a similar type shop in Wrexham too.

I'm planning on using the kit's base which features the Batman logo but replacing the flimsy plastic arm with a piece of aluminium tube...I'll run the power feeds down this and into the base....I might add some switches so I can knock off the wing lights leaving just the cockpit lit....

Looking good so far....leaving out the glazing is in keeping with the original filming miniatures which had no glazing either to prevent unwanted reflections from the studio lights. Your lighting job looks pretty good too...

I had to hollow out areas of the wing halves to accommodate the LED and wiring....here is the LED glued in place... I then covered the run of wires with aluminium tape to doubly secure it... Finally the two wings were reassembled with the help of a lot of clamps....