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Showing results for tags 'Rigging fest!'.
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Hi all! Time for my next WIP thread. This project was born out of the fact that I find biplanes stressful. Indeed, Ms. Vulcanicity teases that she can tell when I'm building a biplane because the noise levels in our flat go up considerably! Because of this, biplanes build up in my stash. I currently have a Bristol F2B, RAF SE5A, Stranraer, Siskin, Gladiator, Swordfish, Demon and Tiger Moth sitting there waiting to be built... I have therefore decided on a bold course of action which will help clear the backlog: building two at once! However, fear not for the state of Ms. Vulcanicity's hearing! The theory is that by synchronising all the stressful stages like assembly of the upper wing and rigging, the stress caused will be more than building just one or the other, but not as much as the total of building both separately... The synchrony is further helped by the fact that I'm planning to build these two in a similar scheme. I like the OOB scheme for the Swordfish, so it's going to be a Taranto machine. I have also always wanted to give into that ultimate wartime RAF cliché, the Malta Gladiator. So the Glad is getting the "Faith" treatment as N5520 (I just couldn't do N5519/R - it's just so clichéd!). Anyway, here goes! These are such nice kits that relatively few scratchbuilt additions should be necessary, which will be pleasant after my Lightning build The 'fish is much more of a complex interior, so I'm kicking off with it in order to get a bit of a headstart. The pit builds up into some nice sub assemblies before priming. One of the first things I noticed about the 'fish is that the pilot's seat is tiny. Even a relatively lissom 1:72nd pilot couldn't squeeze his posterior into it. Just the effort of trying to do so has probably given the poor chap a complex. Here's the Gladiator seat for comparison. Helpfully, I've got a resin Gladiator seat in the stash courtesy of a Pavla set I bought for the Heller kit (for some reason I scratchbuilt my own seat for that build!). So I've decided to swap the Gladiator kit seat for the Swordfish one. The shape may not be spot on, but at least the aircraft's theoretical pilot can come off his diet of lettuce and cholesterol-reducing yoghurt drinks. That's about as far as I've got! Hope you enjoy following the build