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1:72 MPM de Havilland Sea Vixen FAW.2 (TT) XS587


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Hi mates,

 

For my next project I've decided to build the rather unruly MPM/Xtrakit 1:72 Sea Vixen. After all of the bad reviews and general harassment this kit has received, one might be tempted to ask: Has Uncle Navy Bird lost the last tendrils of his sanity? Has he no other plastic to glue? Well, I can state rather emphatically why I'm building this kit: Because it is there.

 

So, much like the earnest explorer planning his assault on Everest, we must first take stock of our raw materials (and in the case of this kit we do mean raw):

 

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In addition to the kit, the keen observer will notice a beautiful Model Alliance sheet of transfers, some Eduard painted photoetch, and a Pavla nose cone replacement, given away by its slightly darker shade of grey. The especially keen observer will notice the pinion tanks for the FAW.2 Sea Vixen, while the kit is clearly marked FAW.1. The boom extensions are required since I wish to replicate this rather colourful version, XS587, during her days as a ... I don't know, target tug perhaps (methinks that's what TT stands for)? Here is the decal sheet instructions for this scheme:

 

XS587

 

Lovely, isn't she? Thanks to a very generous fellow Britmodeller who sent me the boom extensions, it looks like we have enough to start with. (I've already determined that the black stripes on the bottom of the fuselage are shown at the wrong angle on the artwork, so we'll correct that if we live long enough to get to the painting stage. More on that later.)

 

I should also note that I have a brand new tube of putty, just waiting to be opened when I start assembly. It's a big tube (0.45kg), but it's a big job.

 

Since the initial photography session, I've acquired the FAA Models resin correction kit which will help greatly on the hot end of this bird. Another interesting aspect of this kit is that includes its own resin aftermarket parts, including the two ejection seats. The odd part of this is that the bang seats are for dwarfs. What scale are these things? The pilot wouldn't be able to see over the instrument panel! Here we see the kit seats on the left, a pair of seats from PJ Productions in the center, and two seats left over from a CMR kit on the right.

 

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They're all supposed to be 1:72 scale Martin Baker Mark 4 seats (different versions), but only the CMR seats look the correct size. I also have the seats that came with the FAA set, and they're the same size as the PJ seats. Such decisions. Reminds me of the old line that when a man has one watch, he knows what time it is. When he has two, he's never quite sure.

 

So that's my plan. You can help me by pointing out the known inaccuracies of the kit - no wait, that will take down Mike's servers. So don't do that, just talk me out of this!!

 

Cheers,

Bill

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Bill,

Given your past history of 'polishing turds' (Trumpy Lightning), I'm looking forward to seeing this epic unfold! I've no doubt the end result will be simply stunning.

Mark.

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I'll be watching this for sure, I have the Xtrakit FAW2 on its way to me. At least I can consign the crappy Frog copy I have to the darkest, dankest place on Earth that it came from :suicide:

Chris

Edited by chrisrope
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On 11/9/2012 at 05:59, pte1643 said:

Those seats in the centre look about right shape wise (seat cushions etc) but they have "Figure of Eight" firing handles... Vixens had single loop handles didn't they?

 

I believe the FAA Models seats have the single loop handles. I agree that the FAA seats and the PJ seats look the best shape wise, but when I look at photos of the Sea Vixen, you see just how close the top of the seat is to the canopy. Only the CMR seats are this tall.

 

vixseat

 

Of course, maybe the cockpit floor is too low in the kit? Should we raise the bridge or lower the river?

 

By the way, the Pavla nose fits very well on the MPM kit, even though it is designed for the CyberHobby kit. Since CyberHobby seems to have copied the dwarf ejection seats from this kit, it's possible that other aftermarket parts for CyberHobby will fit here as well. I may go out on a limb and buy the Pavla resin cockpit too. It looks stonking in the photos.

 

Cheers,

Bill

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Hi mates,

 

There was a great thread that ran over in the Cold War forum dealing with the length of the Sea Vixen booms. In this thread, it was learned that there are two different overall length figures that have been published, 53' 6.5" (which is the correct length) and 55' 7" (which is an incorrect figure). I took the Sea Vixen drawings that I have, and printed them twice at 1:72 scale, each scaled to the different overall length figures.

 

The MPM kit only comes close to matching the drawings when the wrong overall length of 55' 7" is assumed. (In this exercise, I'm comparing the size and shape on the forward fuselage and wings, not the overall length.) Therefore, the kit is most likely oversize by 3-4%. This is something that even my ham-fisted skills with the razor saw won't be able to fix. I tried this with two different sets of drawings that I downloaded from the net, and the result was the same each time. I have absolutely no idea whether either of these drawing sets are correct, though! :shrug:

 

So, I will work from the drawings scaled to the 55' 7" value. I'll need to shorten the booms by 5mm or so to match. This is not the biggest problem, though. Comparing to the drawings scaled to 55' 7" shows that the cockpit and observer's hatch are not in the correct location! They're off by about 2mm. This error I have to think about - it's big enough to be noticeable, and make the model look "wrong" compared to the real thing, but it also would be a very difficult error to fix, as it affects so many parts of the kit (cockpit, canopy, etc.). My first roadblock! :doh:

 

Cheers,

Bill (who is trying to convince himself that the model only needs to be an artistic presentation that creates the "mood" of a Sea Vixen!)

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(who is trying to convince himself that the model only needs to be an artistic presentation that creates the "mood" of a Sea Vixen!)

I think that is the correct attitude to take Bill! I nearly junked my Cyber-Blobby one half-way through but was glad I didn't because the overall final impression was unmistakeably Sea Vixen not withstanding its issues. If you just fix one or two problems at least you will know that you have improved from the starting position and I think that should be enough!!

Pat

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I'll be watching this for sure, I have the Xtrakit FAW2 on its way to me. At least I can consign the crappy Frog copy I have to the darkest, dankest place on Earth that it came from :suicide:

Chris

Given recent threads here, I am not so sure the Frog mould is so bad compared to its rivals, at least for accuracy.

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=234927023&hl=%2Bsea+%2Bvixen+%2Bboom

David

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I'll be watching this for sure, I have the Xtrakit FAW2 on its way to me. At least I can consign the crappy Frog copy I have to the darkest, dankest place on Earth that it came from :suicide:

Chris

Not so fast young Rope.

Ask yer Uncle John Adams of Aeroclub(John Aero on here)for one of his oh-so-handy

Sea Vixen update sets.

I have one for my Froggie,the bits are way better than kit and as Dave Womby says,

the Frog is not as innacurate as we've all been lead to believe all these years.

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Hmm, I am beginning to suspect that the sly old Navy Birdy has somehow secreted himself in my model stash and is slowly working his way thought the kits that I have been put off building for whatever reason: Trumpeter Lightning, CMR Buccaneer and now the Xtrakit Sea Vixen!

If the Xtrakit Hunter T7, Scimitar and the Airfix Javelin FAW 9 appear in Bill's WIP postings I'll be setting the dog on him, in the mean time I'm going to settle down and see how he gets on :)

Duncan B

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On 11/10/2012 at 17:48, Duncan B said:

Hmm, I am beginning to suspect that the sly old Navy Birdy has somehow secreted himself in my model stash and is slowly working his way thought the kits that I have been put off building for whatever reason: Trumpeter Lightning, CMR Buccaneer and now the Xtrakit Sea Vixen!

If the Xtrakit Hunter T7, Scimitar and the Airfix Javelin FAW 9 appear in Bill's WIP postings I'll be setting the dog on him, in the mean time I'm going to settle down and see how he gets on :)

Duncan B

 

Yes, my dear Duncan, I must confess. There is a Scimitar in my future! But it's the CMR kit, not the Xtrakit. I think that building one Xtrakit (the Sea Vixen) is enough punishment for this lad!

 

While we're here, let's do a couple of quick updates. I think just to be different, we'll start with the cockpit. Xtrakit would have you believe that there is a solid wall between our pilot, and his trusty "guy in the other seat" down in the coal hole. Of course, this is not true, so we have to remove a rather big part of the wall as so:

 

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I've added the consoles, and sanded off all the moulded detail in the instrument panels to make room for some Eduard photoetch. But the set from Ed is for the CyberHobby kit you say! Well, guess what, it fits quite nicely. I think old Dragon may have been doing some "creative engineering" as it is perhaps more than a coincidence that Cyber has the same drastically undersize bang seats, the cockpit parts break down identically, and the PE fits the Xtrakit. Hmm.

 

Next up was to have a look inside the fuselage halves. One is immediately struck by the fact that the inside of each half has several sprue "rods" protruding upwards. These may be part of the mold ejection process, but they look like sprue gates, and they be in the way, interfering with proper construction. So off they must come! Here we can see the bottom, complete with the spurious rods, and the top after I've removed them and sanded everything down.

 

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I assembled the intakes next, not bothering to paint the inside. I'll get to that later. Luckily, walk-around photos here on Britmodeller clearly show that the Sea Vixen intakes have visible seams right where the kit seams are! Score one for dumb luck, my new best friend. After test fitting, it seams that separation between the intakes may need to be adjusted, so I whacked off the bar connecting them together. I may regret this later!

 

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The Vixen had a black cockpit, which is quite boring. I always paint "black" cockpits with a very dark grey, as I find that this seems more realistic. So out came some Gunze H333 Extra Dark Sea Grey, and a quick paint job covered the pit and the insides of the fuselage:

 

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Now, the question of the hour is which seats to use? We previously had a vote from the audience for the PJ Production resin Martin Baker Mark 4 seat, which I agree with. However, test fitting revealed that the seats won't be high enough, and will need to be raised a bit. I cut up some leftover resin blocks (yes, Mother, I had my gas mask on) and glued some pieces onto the bottom of the seats. The taller spacer is for the pilot.

 

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The FAA Models resin set has a nice replacement engine intake faces, which make a huge improvement over the kit parts. However, once the kit is assembled (assuming the notorious "Xtrakit Sea Vixen in the bin" bug doesn't strike) it's going to be really hard to see this. But, of course, we modellers will rest easier knowing that the extra detail is indeed in the kit. Somewhere.

 

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Back to the cockpit - let's play with the photoetch! It's amazing how well it fits. Here are several photos that show the pit after the PE was installed. Black on black doesn't photograph that well, but I think you can get the idea. The top of the pilot's instrument panel protrudes above the fuselage, and fits quite nicely without any modification to the cockpit opening.

 

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There's some additional detailing that can be done, as the real Sea Vixen pit is quite busy. I also did some work on the PJ bang seats, painting and adding the Eduard etch. I left off the various handles, levers, and fiddly bits that Ed provides for the cockpit and the seats. I will add these later, when there is less of a chance for them to disappear in one of those "photoetch at the speed of sound" zinging moments, as the piece flies through the air only to be found months later courtesy of bare feet.

 

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OK, time for me to get back to work on this bad boy!

 

Cheers!

Bill

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One thing I forgot to add - the instrument panel for the radar officer has to be moved back several millimetres from where MPM/Xtrakit would have you put it. Strangely enough - the same holds true for CyberHobby (according to the instructions in the Eduard PE set). Another odd coincidence...

 

Cheers,

Bill (who assembled the fuselage halves last night - with no cursing! The fit was much better than expected, once you figure out the "secret.")

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...The fit was much better than expected, once you figure out the "secret.")

G-clamps and a sledgehammer?

Interesting how Cyberhobby just happened to make an identical kit. Must have measured the same twisted and bent wreck in the back of some breakers yard with the same dodgy tape measure...

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On 11/12/2012 at 17:57, Col. said:

G-clamps and a sledgehammer?

Interesting how Cyberhobby just happened to make an identical kit. Must have measured the same twisted and bent wreck in the back of some breakers yard with the same dodgy tape measure...

 

LOL. Nah, it's not that bad! More like four clothes pegs:

 

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OK, let me describe the secret to getting these guys to fit properly. First, you can't just put the two halves together and glue. You've got some preliminary work to do.

 

Test-fitting revealed that the width of the forward fuselage (near the intakes) was not the same for the top and bottom pieces. This is no doubt due to the sides moving towards one another after being taken out of the mould. The bottom of the fuselage was considerably narrower (2-3mm) than the top. This is the reason why you can't make the intakes fit to the lower fuselage. What a lot of people have done with the kit is to get the intake trunks to fit on the top and bottom of one side (port or starboard) and then they've got a HUGE mess on the other side, impossible to make it fit, and usually resulting in the top and bottom fuselage pieces "twisted" relative to each other. Here, I think, is a better way:

 

Fit the intake trunks to the lower fuselage first. Make a temporary spreader (I used a 3mm diameter rod) of the correct length to push the fuselage sides out so that the intake trunks fit on both side. (You don't have to trim the bar off the front of the trunks like I did or cut the trunks into two; this is totally unnecessary.) I placed the spreader where the rear of the cockpit would normally be and I used superglue to get a quick bond between the intakes and the bottom fuselage. But don't take the spreader out yet, as the superglue is not strong enough and one side or the other will pop if you do. Instead, with the spreader still in place, use a strong epoxy to make a permanent bond. I put the epoxy on the inside of the fuselage where it meets the intake; I also put a lot in-between the intake trunks and the belly of the fuselage itself. Hey, and while you're at it, glue a bunch of fishing weights inside, too, as I'm quite sure that the Vicky will need it.

 

(Sorry, I didn't take any photos of this part of the process. I hope I've explained it so you can understand it. If not, please ask!)

 

Let the epoxy cure for a day or two and remove the spreader. The fuselage sides are now held apart by the bond with the intake trunks. Now when the top fuselage was test fit, I found the alignment to be reasonably good, and certainly nothing that some filler won't fix. I then attached the top fuselage in the "normal" fashion. You noticed the clothes pegs - these were necessary to get a good bond along the trailing edge of the fuselage. Oh, be sure you locate the cockpit and wheel wells inside the before you seal up the fuselage!

 

So after all of this, I added some filler inside the intakes and along some of the seams, and along the splitter plate and sanded smooth. This was just a couple of hours work. Here is the result (bottom is up in these photos):

 

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While I was waiting for the epoxy to dry in the previous exercise, I took the opportunity to re-shape the tops of the tail fins. This is a subtle fix to the kit tail fins which are a bit too flat on top. In this photo, the re-shaped fin is on the left, the original on the right. The area that I worked on was the top at the front of the fin.

 

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By the way, the flat airfoil shaped pieces that fit inside the fuselage where the wing fold mechanism would go, along with similar parts that go into the outer wing assemblies, are absolutely required to maintain the correct thickness. This ensures that the match between outer wing and fuselage will be good.

 

More to come - so far, the kit is not living up to its reputation as nearly impossible to build. I know what you're saying - "you're not done yet." But I've built worse!

 

Cheers,

Bill

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Bill, you are rapidly getting a reputation for making the impossible seem easy. It doesn't look so bad after all but I've been caught out by superior modelling skills before!

I am seriously considering rescuing my unbuilt Sea Vixen from a pile of unwanted kits that are going to be sold off for charity (Help for Heroes) though.

Duncan B

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Hi mates,

 

Time for a quick update. First thing up tonight was the air conditioning/windscreen demister channel that runs along the left side of the cockpit, and then continues further down the fuselage towards the engines. As the kit is moulded (and this is a fault on the CyberHobby kit as well) the shape of this channel is wrong, a victim of making it one piece with the top fuselage. Here is what we're starting with:

 

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It shouldn't be flat-sided up near the cockpit, blending smoothly into the fuselage. There should be a noticeable demarcation line. The channel on the kit gets wider towards the back, and actually gets a bit higher above the fuselage. Again, this is incorrect. To fix this, I think we just need some sanding. I used some sanding sticks to put an edge between the channel and the front fuselage, and I then made the width constant, but with a flat top back by the engines. Hopefully this picture shows the difference:

 

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Next up, I added the boundary layer vents (I think that's what they are) and the vanes inside the intakes. These are such a noticeable part of the intakes, they really have to be there. All of this I made with some card stock. I looked at all of my pictures of Sea Vixen intakes, and it was apparent that there was some variation in the placement of the vanes, and whether they were at a bit of an angle. Here is what I ended up with.

 

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Before we do any priming to check for defects in my sanding, I also want to make a fairing over the end of the rocket pod pockets. Since my kit is for an FAW.1, this area is left uncovered. Notice the area behind the bulges next to the front gear well.

 

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On the FAW.2 that I'm modelling, there are fairings covering up the notch at the back of the rockets. Plus, there is also an interesting bracket of some kind, I suspect it's part of the target tug modification. It's just to the left of the boarding ladder in this picture, below the pitot tube or whatever that fiddly thing is that's sticking out of the side of the fuselage.

 

XS587-1

 

As it turns out, the fairings are included in the kit, making this fix pretty easy. that's it for now, back to some more research about the length of the booms. I think it's pretty obvious that the booms will need to be shortened, and this will no doubt affect the fuel tank boom extensions. This is reminding me of my recent Lightning kitbash - you fix one problem, and there is another one waiting for you! :):):)

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. Duncan - I wish! I don't think of it as skill, I think it's just an application of the scientific method. But when everything else fails, there's always the bin!

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On 11/14/2012 at 09:18, martin hale said:

If you can overcome the problems with the booms I think you will have an uber cool Vixen in that scheme!

Martin

 

Hi Martin,

 

It is a very attractive scheme! I've modelled so many grey aircraft - when I see a colourful scheme like this, I have to go for it! The booms are on the schedule for tonight!

 

Cheers,

Bill

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