AAbshier

The work goes on with my two Airfix Lightnings. Both are now fully painted (with one caveat). Here are the 56 Sqn. Flying surfaces with paint and Alclad: I followed with the decals. Eduard messed up on the walkway striping, so I had to do some cutting and trimming to get things right, and also had to salvage some extra striping from my spares box. On the plus side, the Cartograf-printed decals went down nearly perfectly: I was hoping to decal the wings for my 92 Sqn. F2, but I had paint adhesion problems: Looks like I’ll have to partially strip and refinish. Grrr. Meantime, the fuselages are coming along also: Finally, here’s a look at the fully painted nose of my 93 Squadron F2, in four-gun configuration; I thought it came out well: I’m decaling the fuselages now, and will post pictures with my next update. Andy Alton IL

What I did for my 74 Sqn. F3 is scale up the artwork for the 1/48 scale Lightning. Once that was done, I cut out masking templates using the scaled-up artwork. I'm fortunate to have a color printer/scanner to do this with. I don't know how much undersized the Trumpeter bolts are, but you could probably experiment just making black and white copies until you got the size right, then do the color copy. It definitely costs less than getting the decal! Andy

The Trumpeter decals work fine with the Microscale decal system. Keep in mind that the lightning bolts they provide for 111 Sqn. are way undersized; you'll have to paint them on if you want them the right size. Andy

Looks like an F3 on the way, judging from your extended cable conduit and outlet piece. Good work on the extra bits! Have you decided on markings yet? Andy

Those of you with buggered Lightnings, I'm in need of a canopy and some landing gear doors....I'll give them a good home on my otherwise non-buggered F2! Email me here if you can help. Nice work on the F3! Andy

I had to scratchbuild some vents for my 1/32nd Trumpeter F3. Airfix does give you the small intakes on either side of the vertical tail, but you need to mount more scoops on the right side of the fuselage. If you have an Airfix F6 fuselage that's a good guide. Here they are on my Trumpy kit: I made mine from 0.003" brass foil, bucked over carved plastic forms. On the smaller scale, you can probably get away with just carving some inlets and installing them directly. Andy

Well, of course you would show me this AFTER I masked, painted, and masked off the antiglare panel! Harrumph. I'll just leave it as is on these Lightnings, but will definitely keep it in mind for future builds! Andy

Paintwork is well underway on my Lightning. Here is a look at the red areas applied to my F1A: I used Testor's Italian Red, which is a brighter red shade than Insignia Red. I sprayed it over a primer of Floquil Reefer White, using a 50-50 mix of paint and Testor's Universal Thinner, sprayed at about 13 PSI. I got a smoother finish than I've gotten with gloss paints in a long time! I then masked off for the antiglare panel: I used a circle template to get the radiuses on the corners of the antiglare where it meets the nose ring. I saved the circle I created to mask off the radiuses after the antiglare was painted. I used Floquil Grimy Black for the antiglare. Traveling with my F1A in the paint shop is a long-dormant 92 Sqn. F2 project. When I started it in 1998, I wanted to do the four-gun variation seen on some of 92 Squadron's airplanes. Not liking the gun "troughs" that Airfix provides, I Dremeled out all four of them using a small dental burr and a Dremel set to low speed. The pucker factor was considerable, to say the least! Finally I wanted to do the polished nose rings seen on most Lightnings. I tried out using Floquil CSX Black (a gloss shade) as a base coat on a scrap model, followed by Alclad Polished Aluminum. The result was so blindingly shiny I used this for the nose rings on my Lightnings: (I think I now know how I'm doing my leading edges on my Blue Angels A-4F now!) Next: Mr. Surfacer, followed by metalizing. Andy

I have finally figured out gloss paint! I sprayed on the red on my 56 Sqn. Lightning F1A, and it smoothed out to a nearly glassy finish! I sprayed Testors Italian Red at 14 PSI thinned 50% with Testor's Universal Thinner, and it worked a treat, as my Brit friends might say (well, I am building a British aircraft, after all). I also did an experiment using Floquil CSX Gloss Black from their railroad colors line. I sprayed some on one of my paint testers, and it dried perfectly smooth. Today I applied Alclad Polished Aluminum to it. It came out so shiny and smooth, it's almost painful! The Floquil black is much easier to apply than decanted Krylon, too. Looks like all those gloss finish models I had held up until I mastered gloss paint can finally go forward! I also know how I'll do my polished metal areas on my Blue Angels A-4F. It will also work for the polished nose ring on the Lightnings. Nice to get one--TWO--in the win column! Andy

Nice start! I'm about ready to start painting my Eduard/Airfix F1A, and my Airfix F2. Andy

<SHUDDER> I'm still having nightmares about my F3 build! Moving the intake trunk/radar tower was an interesting exercise to say the least. My F2A is going to be Airfix 1/48 scale, by God. Life is too short to pound a second Trumpy Lightning into submission! Andy

Some odds and ends.... The Eduard reissue gives you nice etch flameholders to put in the exhausts. The instructions call for installing them in the right exhaust halves. I thought it would be easier to insert them after assembling the exhausts together. What I did was use some brass tube on hand, measured the distance I needed to insert it inside the exhaust, then use my tube cutter as a limiter: By installing the flameholders from the rear, it was much easier to get good alignment. On the other end, I found that installing the radar tower after assembly of the fuselage halves was easier for getting good alignment. Like I did on my Trumpeter 1/32nd scale F3 build, I first cemented in a toothpick into the radar tower where the lead shot was located for nose weight. On the fuselage, I left the top seam between the windshield and the nose unglued so that the top of the radar tower could be passed through easily: Once the tower was in, I glued the top seam on the fuselage. It was VERY hard to close on my model and I had to really force it; I don't recall having to work this hard on my first Lightning model! Andy

Hi Bill, I knew the 56 Sqn. markings were wrong; I have the ones from the Airfix kit, and will use those instead. The smaller and less ornate badge on the Eduard sheet looks more "right" than Airfix's version (I knew the ornate Eduard badge was way too big) so I may go with that, but Airfix nailed the roundel bars. BTW, XM174 appears to have had its gunports plated over, so I'm doing that one to get out of redoing the laughable Airfix gun ports! XM174 in Firebirds markings The wings are together, so the kink is probably moot at this point. On mine I had too much anhedral and had to shim from the bottom! Andy

Here's a comparison shot of the wheel wells. The top wheel well is the Airfix box-stock wheel well, the lower one is the wheel well with Eduard brass in it, as included in their kit: There's also some brass for the end of the wheel well (sorry about the soft focus): The brass is relatively easy to install, but as you can see, adds a lot of detail. This is definitely one of the better additions Eduard made to the Airfix kit. A few tips on building the wings: 1. Cut off the locator tabs for the leading edges; if you leave the tabs on, there will be a step between the leading edge part and the rest of the wing. On mine, I tack-glued the leading edge at the corner on the distal wing with super glue. Once that was dry, it was very easy to zip the rest of the leading edge in place using Tenax applied from the inside. The result was a nice, smooth leading edge requiring no sanding. 2. Thin the upper wing half where it meets the wheel well; you're adding a little bit of thickness to the wheel well when you use the Eduard brass on it. On the next installment, I'll show more of the cockpit. Andy

Here we go with another Lightning! This time it's the Eduard reissue of the Airfix early Lightning in 1/48 scale. This is the Airfix Lighting F1/F1A/F2/F3 reboxed to build either an F1A or F2. For whatever reason, Eduard doesn't provide instructions or decal options to build an F1 or F3, though all of the parts are there to build those versions! If you have the Airfix kit, the instructions will tell you what you need to know to build those versions. This isn't a straight reissue. Eduard altered the molds slightly, making these changes: 1) The raised detail on the side consoles in the cockpit has been removed to facilitate installation of the Eduard etch items. 2) Holes that were flashed-over in the Airfix version for the cable conduits and auxilliary inlet on the fuselage spine are open on the Eduard kit; other flashed-over holes are still flashed over. OK, enough chit-chat, here's what I'm doing. First, the cockpit. Eduard made the same mistake on the color etch that they did with the 1/32nd scale early Lightning set, by making the background color a blue-gray instead of the proper black. To get around this, I made a color photocopy of the etch parts and used that as a guide to cut masks for the areas already printed in black: A quick spray of SP Dark Lark Gray (a very nice near-black), pulled the masks, and got this: Much better. A bit of detail painting and it's just fine! One thing that's rather strange is that Eduard has two etch vertical walls (rather like the vertical wall on the right side of the F-4B rear cockpit) that are supposed to go in the back of the cockpit. I fitted them, but they didn't even come close to meeting the cockpit sills, and I didn't recall these even being in the Lightning cockpit. So I left them out, and used part of the F2 side console (yes, they give you seperate consoles for the F1A and F2) to busy up the right side of the cockpit. Here's the completed cockpit: As you can see, I started to make a go at using the color etch belts on the plain resin seat they provided. I lost one of the harness parts, and after looking at the seat, I decided that it had the same problem as the Eduard set for the 1/32nd Lightning seat: it looked colorful, but just too flat and formal. I'm going to buy the CMK resin seats instead--if I can find them--and use that for the seat. Next installment: the landing gear bays. BTW, even with the etch, this kit is about 200% easier than the Trumpeter 1/32 scale kit. Andy

Just to let everyone know, I sent an email through the Lucky Model web site on 3 January, and I recieved a replacement radome today on 12 January. That's 9 days to get it to me in the United States from Hong Kong. Well done! Andy

Depends on where one's skills are the best. I'm pretty good at painting harnesses and simple etch bends, but trying to twist an etch seat belt so that it looks natural AND do it without stripping the preprinted finish away is a very tricky business. I'd rather paint the harness on a resin seat. Andy

I thought the only "naughty" decals were those showing naked women? Seriously, I've had good luck using Tamiya decals. My method is to soak them in warm to hot water, and use only Micro-set as a setting solution, following the manufacturer's instructions. I've used the markings successfully on a 1/48 Spitfire and two P-47Ds, so unless Tamiya have changed decal manufacturers, this method should work with the big Spitfire's decals. At least I'll know to match the Sky shade I apply to the model to the decals, should I go the kit route! Andy

It does, but it's a plain seat to which PE is added--the harnesses and other teeny-tiny jee-jaws! Personally, I don't have the skills or dexterity to pull it off successfully. Andy

Now that I've found that CMK does them, I'm going to place an order! Andy

When you guys give us color etch parts to put in the cockpit and on the ejection seat that are only slightly larger than a Paramecium, it does kind of diminish the fun quotient of the build. Not to mention the fact that it has whetted my Carpet Monster's appetite with all the flying parts! Next time, more resin, less etch. Kthxbai. Andy Alton IL

I have Eduard's set for the Block 52+ that was provided along with the kit, so I'm set there, unless it is egregiously wrong for a Barak. I am going to modify the 'pit to take new seats (probably Quickboost items) and correct the too-shallow slant of the aux panels on either side of the main IPs in both cockpits. I think I'll stick with wheel replacements. Kinetic's didn't look that bad to my eye, though, unless the IDF's wheels were of a different type. Andy

Wow, now there's someone who knows his subject! Thanks so much for the into. I think I'm going to go with GBU-15s on mine, and leave stations 2, 5, and 8 empty. At least for now! Andy

Nope, Kinetic flat-out missed it! From what I've heard, getting replacement parts from them is like getting the Pope to convert to Judaism, but I'm going to try anyway (adding that I'm reviewing the kits, so MAYBE they want to do this right). In the meantime I'm going to drive on with the rest of the build. Andy

Hi folks, I didn't lose it, I don't think! The parts map for the F-16D shows it as a loose item, and it wasn't either in the parts bags or the box. I just double-checked to make sure I didn't miss it. I'll email Lucky Model, but I'm wondering if there is an easier way. Thanks Andy