kiseca

Wings with their pylons were assembled this weekend. Not a big challenge there. The pylons have little C-shaped clips that go on the inside of the lower surface of the wing, while a mushroom shaped shaft on top of the pylon goes through a hole in the wing. The C-clip then wraps around the shaft, securing the pylon to the wing while allowing it to rotate to be manually aligned with the wing's sweep angle. I should have taken photos but didn't. I'll post some later of the instructions. Anyway I was worried about the C-clips becoming detached inside the wing, which would allow the pylon to fall off. They don't clip in very securely and if they fall off once the aircraft is assembled it would be a disaster as I'd have to separate the top and bottom body halfs first in order to be able to separate the wing halfs and get to the clip. Both operations would risk damage to the body and wing. The alternative would be to glue the pylon to the wing, which would mean I'd lose the option to change the wing sweep should I ever want to. So I glued the c-clips to the wing half, trying my best not to get glue through to the pylon shaft itself, thus leaving the pylon free to rotate. Hopefully this means the clip is secure. I am now stuck with a painting dilemna. The wings sweep, which means either the front or the back is partially obscured within the body at any time. This makes painting a challenge so it makes sense to paint the wings before assembling the fuselage. However, I want to paint the rest of the fuselage after assembly (the wings will at this point be in place because of the sweep mechanism) so that I can smooth any joins out before painting them. There are a lot of joins on the fuselage because the vertical stabiliser is separate, the elevons are separate, the cockpit is a separate section, the intakes are separate..... I think there's going to be a bunch of tidying up involved before I can paint all that lot! The problem comes in with the wings.... they are mostly black, but the inner surfaces, the parts that will always be partially obscured in the fuselage, are grey.... and Revell provided decals for the grey bits. Handy because that patch of colour has a complex pattern, these look like they will be much easier added to the wing before they are assembled into the fuselage, but then how will I mask them when painting the fuselage without pulling the decals back off? I might use the decals to make a masking template and paint the grey sections on instead. I need to dry fit the lot together first though and see what's going to look like the best solution. Maybe it's possible to add the decals after assembly if the gaps are bit enough. Anyway those are adventures for later. Pictures will follow as I try solve all that.

Welcome on board! It will be a slow moving topic... I really am a fair weather builder who might manage to trim and sand a half dozen bits in an evening while I'm not focussing on the telly Managed to prime the tub over the weekend but that will need sanding too as I left a run..... I love the Tamiya spray cans but the paint comes out so fast that it's very easy for me to get a run if I don't move it quickly enough. Also had to paint the inside surfaces of the side panels. Firstly because some of it will be visible through gaps in the tub near the front suspension bulkhead / subframe or whatever it is. According to the Haynes manual it's a magnesium casting, bolted to the front of the tub, that almost everything about the front suspension, steering and wing bolt on to. Murray seemed particularly happy with that piece of engineering in his commentary. Second reason for painting the inside surfaces is I noticed that the panel is letting a lot of light through, enough that I think the different areas where it's connected to the black tub versus here it's open behind will show through as different shades. I'm hoping a coat on the back helps minimise this.

I also enjoyed the first couple of seasons of Designated Survivor and think it went downhill after that.

I bought the Haynes manual for the photos but it makes excellent reading too. Race by race description of the results and the changes made to the car, a chapter about all the other cars from that year, a whole bunch of driver impressions at the end, and of course the story of its development. It is very well put together and is a wealth of information. I got one for the Lotus 79 too.

I've always admired the Tornado. I think it's one of the prettiest jets. Some tease it for its huge tail but I've always thought it is beautifully proportioned. With its wings swept back, hungry intakes leaning into the slipstream and shallow glasshouse tucked down low in the fuselage, it looks mean, purposeful, sleek and fast. Then there's its low level performance. At one point it was the fastest aircraft in the world at low level, for all I know it still is. Then there's that brilliant terrain following radar that allows it to hug the countryside at high speed on autopilot. In the Gulf, TFR led low level sorties turned out to be less effective (or more risky) than hoped, but regardless of how irrelevant that capability may be in modern air warfare, it's still impressive what they can make a plane do. I have a thing for aircraft in unusual liveries so an all-black Tornado with some bright sweeping graphics on it is right up my street. This one will be built wheels up, wings back to be displayed in flight, as sleek as it gets. I'll make a display stand for it and have also purchased a turbine blade from an RB199 engine to display with it. I was at first thinking of making a stand out of the turbine blade but I think it will look better on a pair of exhaust mounted perspex tubes and with the blade displayed separately on the base. Anyway first impressions of the kit are very Revell in my experience: I'm very impressed with how much detail is moulded into the parts. There are rivets and sunken panels everywhere, and some wonderfully crisp, tight edges just where they should be, like on the intakes. Surprising then how much flash there is in the mouldings. I'm expecting at some point to find some part that just doesn't fit with its mate, I'm just not sure what that will be yet. Also surprised at that number of parts for 1/72. The cockpit assembly is 15 pieces if you exclude the wheel well that's added to it before it's sealed in the fuselage, for example. So far everything has gone together well at least. On to the pictures. Here's the box art: I haven't done much on the aircraft. So far I've only assembled the front fuselage. I gave the cockpit some definition but it's going to be closed up so I didn't focus a lot on the detail. Still need to clean up the joins. And that's it for progress. Next step is assembling and painting the wings and pylons. Here's the turbine blade. It's easier to find a cleaner looking, and larger, fan or compressor blade for an RB199 but I wanted a turbine blade because they have a lot of intricate detail, with all the channels cut into them I believe to help with cooling. I might try tidy this up a little but there won't be much I can do to change its appearance short of getting it plated - which I worry may hide the holes. They are ceramic coated so aren't going to polish up to a nice shine but I can possibly at least get some of the soot staining reduced. I've got plenty of time before I need that done anyway.

This is the second build I'm posting on Britmodeller. I mentioned in my previous one (the Tigershark) that I got back into modelling to build a Lotus 79. Well, while I had the Lotus, it made sense to get a collection of 1/20 scale friends for it, and I ended up with four in total. My 1/20 formula 1 collection have only two things in common. Firstly, they are all chosen for their good looks, and no other reason. Secondly, and this may be coincidental or it may be tied to my age, they are all winged cars. Actually they were all competing within a 14 year period, which I guess marks that as a personal aesthetic golden age for me in Formula 1. For those curious, the four cars are the Lotus 79 in JPS colours, the McLaren MP4/2 (in B spec in this case), the Braun sponsored Tyrrell Honda 020, and this Brabham. There are two cars missing from that list.... the Renault RE40, which was the BT52's primary competition in 1983, and the McLaren 1997 MP4/12, which was the last of the wide track, slick tyre era cars before the modern wide track turbo era introduced in 2017. Models for both are available but the Renault is a very expensive kit with some metal parts, and the MP4/12 is available in 1/24 kit form or die-cast at 1/18, so I still need to make up my mind whether to add it or not. The Revell kit also doesn't get good reviews so I'm likely to give it a miss. Anyway enough rambling, back to the Brabham. The arrow-shaped BT52 was designed at short notice for the 1983 season after a late in the year rule change banned ground effect cars, and made Brabham's intended 1983 contender, the BT51, obsolete before it had ever competed. As the rule change was so late in the year, there wasn't a lot of time for teams to develop their ideas for a flat bottomed contender and the Brabham BT52 was thrown together with a lot of guesswork and untested principles. Designer Gordon Murray chose to try retrieve some of the traction lost by the lack of downforce by using a huge, draggy rear wing and pushing as much weight as far back in the car as possible. Hence everything is crammed up at the rear of the car with the radiators as far back as he could get them. In addition, without having venturi tunnels to accommodate, Murray recognised that the long sidepods that were fashionable at the time would now only be adding drag and lift, so he made those as short and small as he possibly could as well. After adding a pointed nose, and a swept leading edge to the front wing, the car gained its distinctive arrow shaped plan view and with its attractive blue and white Parmalat / Brabham colours became a car recognisable across any era. There was very little adjustment built in to the car but it was developed throughout the season. The powerful BMW turbocharged engine got more progressive power delivery as the season went on and also got more reliable. Meanwhile the car itself was developed into the BT52B, with a longer nose recognisable by the flattened bubbles over the suspension compared to the original cars. The B is most identifiable though because the blue and white colour scheme was reversed after its designer, one Peter Stevens - who would later team up with Murray again to style the McLaren F1 road car - realised that the scheme wasn't as attractive and distinctive on TV as he had hoped. Later in the year the B also gained winglets on the end plates of the rear wing. These were originally introduced by Ferrari and soon all teams had them as they improved traction. The BT52 was a successful car but its record also reflects its short development time and lack of testing. The car was unreliable in the hands of Riccardo Patrese, but proved very competitive with 1981 champion Nelson Piquet at the wheel. It carried Nelson to his second world championship, but only managed 3rd in the constructors championship, much due to the high number of DNFs suffered by Patrese. This was the last Brabham formula 1 car to win a world championship and the team would never again enjoy this level of success. My favourite spec for the BT52 is the early B spec, when they reversed the blue and white in the colour scheme, with the lengthened and flattened nose, but before it gained the winglets on the sides of the back wing. However, the original 52 spec was available and in budget so this is what I've gone for. There's an extra detail set available from Aoshima for this kit as well, put the prices for those are well in excess of what the kit itself was worth, so I'm building it OOB. This will be my first attempt at car quality polished bodywork as well, so seemed a useful first attempt at a car before I tackle the star-of-the-show Lotus. In addition, I purchased the Haynes manual for the car, and this has been an excellent resource for detail pictures and component colours... which seem to have changed a lot for a car that only competed for 1 season! The build is going really slowly. I'm doing one step at a time, pretty much following the instructions, which are comprehensive but I do find them difficult to read, or rather, easy to misread, because there's a lot of detail in every step. But that's OK. I build models slowly. I see some of you knocking out 1/72 kits in a week.... I'll never be that fast! I know it's customary to include sprue shots but I'd already started building before I thought about that, so I'll have to make do with a box shot to open with. So far I have completed the drivetrain assembly - engine and gearbox. I did fill in the seams on the exhaust manifold but I didn't do a good enough job of them, the joins are still visible. I have seen others do that better. One thing to improve for the next build. The exhaust pipes have some discolouring on them but the strong light washes it out in the photos somewhat. I used silver paint on the back of the rain light and Tamiya transparent red on the front face. I've seen a lot of race seats in formula 1 cars that look like shells that have been liberally wrapped in black duct tape. I tried to reproduce that effect by brush painting the whole seat in gloss black, and then painting black stripes on top, to make the edges stand out. The effect was partially what I was aiming for, however the scale is rather too big. I think it would look better with twice as many edges. Again, these are clearer in the flesh than they are in these photos. That's where I am so far. I'm currently busy with the tub section, which includes the front suspension and bodywork sides. Will post more pictures as they progress.

The Netflix Formula 1 series is Drive to Survive. I've really enjoyed it. Not too surprising as I'm a lifelong F1 fan but it seems to have found a whole new bunch of fans for the sport too.

That recent Chernobyl mini-series was pretty good too, I thought. The one with Jared Harris. And Carl Sagan's Cosmos. And as a kid, I really liked Battle Of The Planets and Robotech... later childhood years had a great appreciation for the original Battlestar Galactica (I got a long way into the remake but gave up eventually), 240 Robert, CHiPs, Riptide, Mike Hammer (with Stacy Keach), MacGyver There were some great comedies like Three's Company, Benson, Who's the Boss, The Cosby Show (tainted now, obviously)... I grew up in South Africa so most of our TV was sourced from the USA as Actors Equity meant we didn't get much UK sourced television. Still, none of these doesn't hit my top 5, which remains as posted previously. Twin Peaks still tops the list though Breaking Bad really does run it close in my book. Partly because at least it comes to a conclusion!

The real thing is one of the most beautiful cars I've ever seen. Pictures don't do its curves and proportions justice. I didn't even know they existed until a shiny red one pulled up next to me one sunny Saturday morning outside an Alfa garage, roof down. Actually that was a Giulia Spider, with a wide intake on the bonnet, but the body is the same. Way back then, I could have picked one up for the equivalent of a few thousand GBP. Now they're all well over 50k..... This is one kit I have considered purchasing but have not because I just don't believe I can do the real thing justice. I think you've done a great job on the model. and I agree with you that the ride height at the rear looks too high on the model. It doesn't need to come down by much, they do have some rake, but it looks like the kit exaggerates it a little.

Most of mine are repeats from earlier posts. In order from favourite to 4th favourite: Twin Peaks Breaking Bad The Expanse Airwolf Surprised to see Sledge Hammer mentioned earlier. I remember that show, it was funny

I love that colour on it!

Respectfully, I disagree. It was a combat aircraft, that fought against its contemporaries, designed in the same period, with the same knowledge to draw on, to compete in the same arena. It definitely had advantages and disadvantages compared to the popular solutions of the time, far more of the latter as it turned out. It was a unique solution, for sure, but not incomparable. It had competition in its role and performed against it.

She looks great! Funny how puny the engine looks when you consider it was, if my memory is correct, by far the best performing aircraft of the war. With that tiny little stovepipe it would toast all of those huge, heavy, complext and powerful looking multicylinder lumps in any fighter of its time in speed and I think in a climb (where from what I can find it made any piston engined fighter look silly) and acceleration too. Very much ahead of its time in some ways while very much of its time in others (like safety!) Fascinating aircraft and your model really does do it justice.

Concorde is top of the list for me but the B-1B is definitely on my short list of the most beautiful aircraft ever. It's bigger than it looks too, which in part is a testament to how sleek the shape is! I was lucky enough to see one do a flyover in an airshow in the UK. Gorgeous and also very, very loud. I have Revell's 1/48 version in the stash. Haven't plucked up the courage to tackle it yet. I hear the fit is very challenging particularly around the sub-assemblies that make up the front, middle and back of the fuselage.

It's a brilliant job!

I bought hundreds of electronic versions those and Air Ace comics from ebay. They're a trip down memory lane for sure, surprising how many I recognise when I'm reading them. The navy ones were always my favourites but they're surprisingly difficult to single out in batch listings.

Was wondering why the OP wasn't responding but it looks like this thread is from 2019! That'll explain it then

Stunning model and excellent photography! The detail, finish and setting all look top class.

It might not be accurate for the aircraft anyway even if it is very well done and looks realistic. I've seen some models of WW2 aircraft with paint wear and chipping on the wings, the wing roots, down the sides of the fuselage, what looks like years of weathering on the original paintjob. Some of these models look absolutely beautiful and I wish I could get that level of skill. Some look very realistic and IMO look much better than they would if they had a factory fresh paintjob instead. And that's what matters to me with the models. Are they interesting to look at? Any weathering can enhance that factor, and look realistic, even though I suspect it might not be. Would a WW2 combat aircraft have survived long enough to weather to that extent? Most are shown with weathering on the original paintjob, whereas the impression I have gotten, at least from accounts I've read from bomber crews, is that the wear and tear on a bomber with mission experience is more likely to be the general factory paintjob with lots of battle damage repair work done to a standard of finish much lower than what left the factory. So it would have random patches of replaced panels where the paint is perhaps a slghtly different shade to the surrounding panels because it's newer, and has been applied with a big sloppy paintbrush. I've seen some models represented like that, but while they might actually be closer to the truth than an original paintjob worn down by thousands of hours of attention from mechanics and aircrew, the latter to me still looks more "real". I asked a friend about that, someone who did serve in an airforce, and he said I'd be surprised how quickly they weather and the paint wears off them, so maybe I'm wrong. but to me it doesn't matter either way. It can be real and not look real, or it can look real but be inaccurate, and between those two I prefer the second option. He also had a great comment for me when I presented the carefully measured and applied D-Day stripes I put on one of my models. He said I did a better job than the real thing, and sent me a photo of someone in war time sitting on a wing with a large tub of black paint, a huge sloppy wet paintbrush like you might use to paint a garden fence, and he's smearing D-day stripes down the wing . So that's how it was, but if I modelled it like that, and just slopped the stripes on by hand without bothering to mask off the borders, it wouldn't look realistic, it would just look rubbish. As another example, I know many leave the molding seams on the tyres of Formula 1 car models, because apparently that's how they would have come out of the tyre factory. I don't know if that's true or not, perhaps it is, but to me it just looks like a model part where the modeller didn't remove the seam line. It might be perfectly accurate, but to me it doesn't look it. It breaks the illusion of realism. But getting back to the OP's question, I have no idea what actual weathering mechanism pre-shading is trying to emulate, but I do know that I've seen examples where it ends up giving the model a lovely patina that not only adds detail to take in and gives life to the model, but looks perfectly plausible as a representation of how the real aircraft might have looked. And I've seen others where the preshading looked totally fake. It breaks the illusion and the model would have been better without it. If I could build a good looking model weathered to within an inch of its life that looks like a Spitfire that's seen 40 years of active service, never had a panel replaced and never been repainted, I'd do it. I'm just not skilled enough, and I don't have the patience. So I tend to stick with a close-to-factory-fresh finish with some token washing and powdering if the end result just looks too flat and plasticky.

The image links are broken for me. Is that just me or do any others also see broken links? Clearly they were working 30 minutes ago...

I've got that one in my stash So far my experience with it is limited to a quick look at the sprues....

Removed because I quoted myself instead of editing myself

That sounds like a good summary, exdraken. My impressions from the limited bits I've read about them in air-air combat (which my comment was specifically aimed at) is that it's not an aircraft that has often had a significant advantage over whatever opponent it was facing, and the impressions from the Angolan border war vs MiG-23, and the Iran - Iraq engagement were both that the F-1's struggles were mostly electronic. This could be expected if it was the attack versions (A or AZ), which don't have radar, engaging with radar equipped MiGs. But I haven't checked if that is true or not. Similarly I'm pretty sure an F-14 can pick up and engage an F1C at a far greater distance than the F1 can respond at. And support from infrastructure on the ground was probably a big factor in both, as would pilot training, but the aircraft itself undoubtedly makes a big difference. I think WW2 showed that very well and as technology has improved, the competency of the aircraft itself has taken a steadily bigger piece of the win / lose equation from the pilot. My overall impression is that the F1 is an aircraft that can make a reasonable account for itself in the air but doesn't enjoy superiority over its contemporaries and frequently met opponents that were at least a match for it.

Seems to have struggled in combat, but to me one of the most beautiful aircraft made. And certainly a success, in terms of numbers sold and time spent in service. I think it was capable but not outstanding and often found itself matched against more modern, more capable opponents.

Good call. Distinctive look, sold around the world, gained at least some fame in "Iron Eagle" if not reaching the dizzy altitudes of Top Gun.