Javelin Squared

[Vulcanicity]

Right, for my next build, and a return from my temporary WIP thread "holiday", I'm going to be building this beauty:

It's a nice kit, modified from the 1980s Heller Javelin T.3, and features fine raised panel lines, decent undercarriage and interior detail and thoughtful engineering.

It has one major snag. When Gloster modified the real Javelin to take afterburning engines, they widened and deepened the rear fuselage. Airfix neglected to do their homework when modifying the Heller T.3 (non-afterburning) to the FAW.9 (afterburning) with this result:

The afterburners and whole rear fuselage are way off what they should be, and the whole thing just looks anaemic. Which is where Britmodeller Troy Smith comes into the picture. With some considerable effort digging around in a pile of old parts, he found this and very kindly sent it to me free of charge:

It's the FROG Javelin, which Troy had made in his childhood and which subsequently got wrecked in a party-based accident. By some miracle, some years later it retains all of the major parts. (no u/c, seats, pylons, or weapons) Of course, the main reason I really wanted it was this:

Not perfect, but far better than the Airfix. A simple cut with a razor saw, some judicious reconstruction, and the main fault of the Airfix kit is rectified! However, as I looked at the forlorn and dusty parts on my desk, an idea came to me. What if, having detailed, scribed, fiddled with and generally tarted up the Airfix (Javelin "A"), I then cleaned up the Frog (Javelin "F") as best as possible? I could put the Airfix rear end on it with a few mods to make it look like the "pen-nib" exhausts of the non-afterburning marks, called it an FAW.1, and hung it on my ceiling with some of the other classic British jets already up there! Two Javelins is definitely better than one, no?

So I'll be building two Javelins together, cross-kitting to get one really good one (OK, I know, It's me, it won't be that good) and a reasonably presentable one. Capeesh?

Edited November 19, 2011 by Vulcanicity

[Lynx7]

You ever thought of working for Westland?

A formidable task and am looking forward to the build.

[Bertie McBoatface]

Interesting idea. Good luck with this one.

[perdu]

I am with you all the way with this one

I built Frog's Jav many years ago, guess what?

I threw away the back end and "pen-nibbed" it

Looking forwards to this immensely

[Radar]

Nice one Vulcan, a great idea and a very unusual approach to getting it right. I'd be tempted to "refurbish" the FROG derelict in it's own right as I love those early FROG kits. Can't wait to see the surgery involved on this one, a reet proper conversion.

Cheers

Ian S.

[Nobby]

I'll be watching this! It's the sort of thing that's right up my street!

[Silver Fox]

Watching this with great interest, I was contemplating this conversion until I moved up to 1/48th sacle due to ageing eyesight!

[CliffB]

Fascinating stuff Phil - I'm looking forward to watching it progress!

Cliff

[Vulcanicity]

Cheers everybody for the enthusiasm! I hope this will be an enjoyable project...

I've stocked up on some goodies for the Airfix: the Airwaves interior set, some brass tubing for the jetpipes, and some replacement national markings (the white on the Airfix decals borders on cream)

However, the first task was to patch up the Frog to a state where I had two complete fuselage halves to use! The bottom half was in three pieces and required plenty of poly cement to bolster the joins. With careful rubber band tensioning, I could also cure some of the mild warpage the parts had incurred in their accident, and get the thick back together more or less straight:

This done, I dunked all the parts into the indomitable Tesco's cleaning fluid. On this, its sternest test yest, the fluid let me down... The Dark Sea Grey and (just about) the Dark Green came off with a lot of scourer scrubbing, but whatever Troy had used for the High-Speed Silver is almost indestructible. Tesco Value's finest just bounces off...

Mercifully the silver coat is quite thin, and rubs down with sandpaper quite well, so all is not lost! I'll see what the undersurfaces look like under primer, and make a judgement then as to whether any more rubbing down is needed.

I'm not sure which earlier version the Frog will end up as, so I don't yet know if I'll be needing the belly tanks. However, they needed to come off for now anyway, as they were glued on wonky and were prohibiting my cleaning up the underfuselage surface. As can be seen, they left pretty horrid scars which will need plenty of filing, sanding and filler...

I don't have any pylons or Firestreaks for the Frog, so it'll have to be a missile-less early version. Therefore the moulded-in fairings where the leading edges of pylon and wing meet could go. Here the outboard one has already been smoothed back, leaving only a panel line to fill. The ragged scars left by the missing pylons have also been sanded back ready for filler. I'm trying not to end up re-scribing the Frog kit, as rescribing one Javelin seems quite enough work to me, and as it'll be hung up the difference would hardly notice. However, where raised lines have been lost in the cleaning-up process (as here) I'm putting them back in.

Meanwhile, the never-ending task with the Airfix has been scribing. And more scribing. The airbrakes in particular are a horrendous job. However, I've done the entire undersurface of the fuselage/inner wing part and am making good progress with the upper surface. My new Tamiya scriber is certainly saving labour and time, but it's no help for the tiny round access panels.

Here I've rectified an inaccuracy with the Airfix: the panel line around the intakes just aft of the wing leading edge is too far forward: and the large access panel forward of it, plus the smaller one aft of it need re-siting accordingly.

Last night, I bit the bullet and made the crucial cut to the rear end. I reckon the panel line provided is the right place to swap the rear fuselage, so that's what I used. My plans disagreed, as well as determinedly suggesting a major chord error with the Airfix wing amongst other more minor shape errors.

However, the plans are Russian, of unknown and suspicious origin, so I'm not convinced... The excess chord, if it exists, is somewhere in the middle of the wing, and I decided that to try and modify this to closer match the plans would make enough of a mess that the kit would look worse than when I started, so I'm going to leave it be. I'm not a Javelin expert, so it is very unlikely to bother me, unlike the well-documented and obvious fuselage error.

Having made my four cuts, I was pleased to note that the Frog bits slotted very neatly into the Airfix bits, and went to bed satisfied

[perdu]

This is about to become "epic"

You have made a great start to it too

It's always a worry when working to old plans isn't it, what's right? What isn't?

Didnt Aviation News do Javelin plans years back, maybe someone with the set could check out the chord for you. To be honest I don't think it will matter essentially, she's going to look very good as is.

[Robert]

Great start there will be paying attention to your build for future reference.

Robert

[jimbuna]

Very interesting indeed.

[robvulcan]

im going to watch this with interest, last year i built a novo boxing of the frog javelin and i have airfix t3 on the to do pile, you done a great job so far,

id have been tempted to rebuild the frog myself.

that tesco value all purpose cleaner is great for striping. i used it my self once or twice now, eats paint with ease.

shame there are no flying javelins i have always wanted to see one fly,

[Moofles]

Now this is going to be good.

[Vulcanicity]

Thanks everyone for your comments and encouragement...

The Airfix Javelin is frankly getting rather tiring: there really are an awful lot of panel lines to scribe. My particular bugbear is the airbrakes, which are time-consuming, and very difficult to get neat. I've done three of four, and I promise you they look better than this in real life!

Apart from the slight error I mentioned last time, the underside panel lines were fine. So I blindly assumed that at least the basic joints on the upperwing would be accurate.

The panel line denoting the forward spar(?) parallel to the leading edge is a good 2mm too far aft, and the span-wise panel line forward of the airbrakes is a good 5mm too far aft. The upperwing gun panels are considerably too small, as is the rectangular panel inboard . There are several other panel lines to be added too!

Luckily, I hadn't etched too many panel lines before realising this, so the delay was only temporary! Here's the starboard inner wing with pencil showing where panel lines are to be added and deleted.

Anyway, to lift the general tedium of scribing, I've finished reconditioning the first sub-assembly from the Frog Kit: the tail assembly. Having removed the paint, this involved hacking, scraping and sanding off huge blobs and runs of 20-year old glue, sink marks, cleaning up the seams (which weren't touched on the original build), scribing in panel lines which the previous processes had destroyed (in the end I did the whole tailplane and the rudder), cleaning up the mating surfaces, gluing the tailplane and fin together, filling the inevitable crack, and drybrushing the whole lot metallic silver to check for blemishes. Apart from some big glue-induced sink marks in the fin from the original assembly, all fine! I decided not to spend ages over cleaning up the glue sinks; sometimes I have to remind myself that this is only the "sideshow" and It's not part of the plan to lavish all my time on it!

[Robert]

I know you are trying not to use any accessories but Airwaves do an airbrake set for the Javelin.

Great work so far.

Robert

[Vulcanicity]

Cheers Robert, I wasn't going to but I'm not happy with them "as is". I have just caved in and bought a set!

[Moofles]

lol, looking forward to seeing the set applied.

[Vulcanicity]

Well neither of my Airwaves sets have turned up yet. Given how recently I ordered the airbakes from Hannants, I can hardly fault them yet, but Model Hobbies are getting a phone call tommorrow lest my cockpit set has vanished into obscurity somehwere in their "to do" tray...

I have been busy with uni work this week, but nonetheless have managed to get a bit done on the Airfix kit, although mostly centred around the Frog rear end... Having promptly received my 9mm brass tubes in the post from Albion Alloys, I set to work hollowing out the Frog exhausts such that they'd fit, and cutting them to length. I also scratchbuilt turbine faces for the front and rear of the engines: the flat bits and fan blades are plasticard, and the bullets are shaped from sprue.

The tubes and faces are not totally accurate: I believe the brass tubes are about 50% too short, and the detail on the rear turbine faces in particular are mostly a guess (For a start, there aren't many surviving Sapphire engines and hence very few Internet pictures). However, if I make the exhaust tubes too long, it seems that I'd have difficulty adding nose weight to counter the sheer mass of the brass in the rear end, and frankly once the kit is complete, the exhausts are going to be rather too dark to see much inside anyway! So I've compromised and made the tubes a bit shorter to save weight, and done the faces as well as I can. The main aim here is merely to prevent a "see-through" effect to anyone glancing up the jetpipes...

[Nobby]

Great job so far! Don't give up though, I see great potential in these!

[woody37]

Where there's a will there's a way. I can see the 'Wil'l and gradually the 'Way' is becoming evident ! Fantastic stuff, great to see old models being recycled, especially to this quality

[Sten Ekedahl]

Great to see someone actually carrying out what I have been suggesting for several years - but not yet done myself! Note that the exhausts should be canted slightly inwards and not parallel as on the Frog kit. A small tip; when parked, the tailplanes always drooped slightly. This is very easy to do. Just saw each side of the tailplane off and re-attach them drooping slightly to the rear.

Edited December 1, 2011 by Sten Ekedahl

[alex]

Great, I stilll have a Airfix Javelin in the stash together with Decals and some PE-frets.

Would it be possible to build a FAW.7, since it has no afterburner? Or are the differences between the Airfix FAW.9 and the "real" FAW.7 too big?

Alex

[Duncan B]

Great, I stilll have a Airfix Javelin in the stash together with Decals and some PE-frets.

Would it be possible to build a FAW.7, since it has no afterburner? Or are the differences between the Airfix FAW.9 and the "real" FAW.7 too big?

Alex

The FAW7 had a different arrangement for the jet pipe area (neither pen nib nor like the FAW9) , Whirlybirds do a resin rear end for it.

Edited December 1, 2011 by Duncan B

[Duncan B]

i have always wanted to see one fly,

It's the first aircraft I can remember seeing fly when I was about 4 years old (1966-ish). It flew over our house doing a climbing turn to port, the noise was very memorable and I ran into the house crying!! It was many years later before I knew what type of aircraft I had seen but the shape was so distinctive I hadn't forgotten it. The aircraft in question would have come from Leuchars and was possibly from 228 OCU that was still there at the time along with 25 Sqn IIRC.