1:72 Special Hobby Blackburn Skua

[stevehnz]

Thanks Bill, it could well be an old style extinguisher. A drift sight is a gizmo which enabled, don't ask me how, the navigator to work out what the rate of drift due to cross winds etc, something to do with sighting on the sea surface or somesuch so I'd guess a sort of vertical telescope with a system of cross wires.

Steve.

[Arpie]

Always liked the Skua, cracking work on the cockpit

Edited January 22, 2014 by Arpie

[Navy Bird]

Hi mates,

 

Well, I've finally got that pesky PB4Y-1 out of the way. Geez, what a pain that kit was. Remind me not to volunteer for such a crazy idea again! So, back to the Skua!

 

The fuselage is together, and the wings attached. For a Special Hobby kit, this one required surprisingly little filler. Just a dab of putty here and there, and a few smidgeons of Mr. Surfacer and this is what we have:

 

 

 

 

Next up, I had a go at the resin engine, cleaning it away from its pour block, and then adding eighteen little exhaust pipes. These will end up looking like they're leading into the collector ring at the front of the cowl. The photoetch piece is nice, but very delicate. I won't be doing much with that until things get assembled into place.

 

 

The cowling was supplied as two pieces, and in the process of cleaning up the seams, I sanded off four clasps (I think) that were probably for removable panels. I'll add these back with card stock.

 

Next up, I will finish up the engine, and get the fuselage and cowl painted. I'll be going for an aluminum skin, probably the aircraft shown on the box art. The instructions say the plane was painted aluminum and was not natural metal. I will probably still use Alclad, but just two shades - one for the metal parts of the fuselage and a slightly different one for the canvas control surfaces. What do you guys think?

 

Oh, and this little goodie arrived in the post today:

 

 

This is a small vacuform machine, able to handle up to 5" x 5" plastic. It's intended to be used by dentists (how do you get your jaw on this thing?) but it's sold over here for hobbyists as well. Normally this sells for $150, so I had my buddy in Hong Kong look for one. He bought it in China for $50, and my import duty was $1.86.

 

I hope it works! I wonder if I have anything that needs to be vacuformed?

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Stew Dapple]

That's looking very nice indeed Bill

I have a feeling that you will find something that you need to vacuform now you have the capacity to do it

Cheers,

Stew

[Procopius]

The fuselage is together, and the wings attached. For a Special Hobby kit, this one required surprisingly little filler.

!!!

I'm inclined to give more credit to the builder than the manufacturer on this one.

[Navy Bird]

On 2/26/2014 at 08:32, Procopius said:

!!!

I'm inclined to give more credit to the builder than the manufacturer on this one.

 

I appreciate the compliment, but this one went together nicely. What I've learned with these kits is that the lack of alignment pins, etc. means that you can make a small mistake here and end up with a big problem there. You really need to study all of the different ways that things can be assembled, dry fit like crazy, and plan what you're going to do. And clean up the edges, etc. completely. Try to think three steps ahead in the instructions.

 

I didn't do anything to the wing roots, they fit just right all on their own. I had to do the typical Special Hobby "sand away half of the wheel wells" before the wings halves could be joined, but that didn't take too long.

 

There was no definitive assembly method in the instructions for the cockpit floor and bulkhead. And without alignment pins, you can assemble it in a variety of ways. I kept dry fitting and taping things together until I had a plan that I thought would work. I got lucky - it did.

 

I screwed up the exhaust pipes, though, and I'll have to live with it because they are super-glued in and I cut off the excess so the engine would slide in the cowl. Unfortunately, the pipes won't quite reach the collector ring, missing by a couple of millimetres. I have the exhaust pipes curving up, while they should be curving forward. But I have planned very carefully to not post any photos that show that!

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Navy Bird]

Oh, fudge! (Only I didn't say "Fudge." I said THE word, the big one, the queen-mother of dirty words, the "F-dash-dash-dash" word!)*

 

So it was like this - when I was assembling the main landing gear and attaching them to the model, I discovered that they had this weird backward rake. That can't be right, I thought, with a certain degree of smugness. It must be another one of those famous Special Hobby short-run "sand or otherwise modify to fit at assembly" problems. After all, the side view drawing on page 1 of the instruction sheet clearly shows the main gear struts perpendicular to the bottom of the wing, not with some goofy backward rake. I mean, who would design an airplane like that? Looks like a nose-over waiting to happen.

 

Well, I can fix that, I said with even more smugness. So I got out my snippers, and I snipped a little here, and I snipped a little there. And I made the landing gear look just like that nice drawing on the instruction sheet.

 

And then I found this:

 

 

And this...

 

 

And then this:

 

 

Oh, fudge! The landing gear are perpendicular to the ground, not to the bottom of the wing! But these are pictures of the first and second prototypes, surely they fixed this Serious Screw-up before Sending Scores of Skuas to Scandinavia to Sink Ships!

 

To affirm the intellectual superiority demonstrated by my decision to reconstruct the kit's landing gear, I posted a question in the WWII forum, knowing that somewhere in the vast league of Britmodellers there would be a Skua-o-phile who would know the definitive answer, and pat me on the back for being such a clever chap.

 

Sure enough, the expert appeared. But his answer: the backward rake was real, and present on all production Skuas.

 

Excuse me while I go off to a corner, pop a few blood vessels, and return calmly to tear my Skua apart.

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. I shall return a better man. With a few stitches, I suspect.

* Apologies to Jean Shepherd.

[Martian]

Don't be too hard on yourself Bill, we have all had moments like this and will all have more of them to come.

Martin

[woody37]

The rake on landing gear was also apparent on the Lancaster, so not as strange as one might think. If you look at a side profile on the Lanc, the gear is perpendicular to the ground when on all three wheels.

I've toyed with the idea of getting one of those vac formers, be interested to see it in use when you get round to it

[Navy Bird]

All fixed:

 

 

That was a close one. Whew!

 

A keen eye will not that two of the components didn't survive and had to be replaced by surplus plastic rod. It's fascinating that SH engineered the kit correctly, but make a mistake in the instruction sheet drawing.

 

I painted the engine last night, today we'll add a wash to it, and try to figure out how to make the exhaust pipes look heat tarnished. If the gods play nice, maybe I can get a coat of paint on the fuselage. Now that I've learned that the inside of the cowling, and the landing gear wells, were most likely silver for my chosen scheme, that will make things much easier. Plus, I don't think the all-silver Skuas stayed in this scheme for long, so any weathering should be quite light.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[ClaudioN]

Some exceedingly brave men flew it, that's for sure - and yes, it had some success in the Norway campaign, mostly against Heinkel seaplanes & 111s. Against any sort of modern land-based fighter, however, it was hugely outclassed.

Its finest hour was sinking the cruiser Koningsberg, being flown direct from Hatston (Orkney) right to the limit of its range.

The Skua did a job for a few months early in the war, but when you think of the huge relief with which FAA fighter pilots received its replacement.... the Fulmar... you get a picture of how far behind the FAA was, at least until the Martlet came along.

Almost 20 years of neglect (the RN only regained control of the FAA in May 1939), coupled with some dinosaur gunnery officers in the Admiralty; together a recipe for slow, obsolescent aircraft which we're being asked to do too many roles in one airframe. It took a long time before the FAA got a truly competitive fighter that was genuinely fit for carrier work. The Martlet, and especially the Corsair and Hellcat, got them there. You could argue that the first really high class British Naval fighter was the Sea Fury.

I agree with these comments, but in fairness I think time should be factored in as well.

The US Navy equivalent of the Skua were the SB2U Vindicator and, to a lesser extent, the Northrop BT. The latter took more than three years to be developed into the SBD Dauntless. French Vindicators (V-156F's) were hacked to pieces by German fighters in 1940 and US Navy SB2U's lacked effective dive brakes, at least initially.

The big difference was that the US Navy also had a dedicated fighter squadron aboard carriers: in late 1941 this meant the Grumman F4F, but in 1939-40 fighters were mostly Grumman F3F's, whose performance was not much different from the Gloster Sea Gladiator (except the superior range).

In the Royal Navy the pure fighter role had been sacrificed to offensive capability within smaller aircraft carrier complements. With hindsight the idea was flawed, but when this became clear, resources for naval fighter development had become extremely thin. The fighter requirement that led to the Vought F4U dated from 1938 and the first production aircraft flew in early 1942. In Britain, specifications for high-performance naval fighters began to surface early in 1940 and would lead to the Firebrand (!) and Firefly, only the latter making any significant operational contribution from 1944.

Which, perhaps, may also suggest that technical development times couldn't be squeezed too much, even under the pressure of war.

Just my thoughts

Claudio

[Navy Bird]

Does anyone know what the combat record was for the Skua? Enemy aircraft shot down vs. Skua losses, ships sunk, etc. I read on one site that "several" pilots became aces in Skuas, but I can't find anything to verify that.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[ClaudioN]

Does anyone know what the combat record was for the Skua? Enemy aircraft shot down vs. Skua losses, ships sunk, etc. I read on one site that "several" pilots became aces in Skuas, but I can't find anything to verify that.

Cheers,

Bill

IIRC, only Lt. Lucy became ace exclusively in Skuas. It may be more correct to say that several pilots who became aces also scored while flying a Skua.

Claudio

[Navy Bird]

Hey, it kinda sorta looks like an engine, Perseus-style!

 

 

Hard to capture with the camera, but the exhaust are a combination of Alclad Pale Burnt Exhaust and Gunze Clear Blue. In just the right light (which will never occur once the engine is inside the cowling!) you get a faint glimpse of something that looks like hot metal. Trust me. I wouldn't kid you guys! Or maybe it's just my averted imagination...

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Procopius]

Holy cow that looks nice.

[VanceCrozier]

The Skua is something of an ugly-cool aircraft. Will be watching this bud as I've been watching for one of these Special Hobby kits.

[crobinsonh]

Great work as usual Bill. I am like you - whilst the Skua was not a great combat machine it has a certain fascination.

[VanceCrozier]

Oh, fudge! (Only I didn't say "Fudge." I said THE word, the big one, the queen-mother of dirty words, the "F-dash-dash-dash" word!)*

Famous line from a Christmas Special Hobby Story??

[Navy Bird]

On 3/7/2014 at 14:59, VanceCrozier said:

Famous line from a Christmas Special Hobby Story??

 

Ain't that the truth!

 

If you get a chance I highly recommend the book from which "A Christmas Story" was birthed - it's by humorist, raconteur, and radio personality Jean Shepherd and called "In God We Trust - All Others Pay Cash." I would say it is a semi-autobiographical work, with the Red Ryder B-B gun story spread across a couple of non-related chapters. If you liked the narration in the movie (which is read by Jean Shepherd himself, who also has a cameo) you'll love the book. That is exactly the way it is written. IIRC, each chapter in the book originally appeared as a short story in Playboy magazine, or something like that.

 

"Flick? Flick who?"

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. Rest your soul, Jean.

[Navy Bird]

On 3/6/2014 at 22:30, crobinsonh said:

Great work as usual Bill. I am like you - whilst the Skua was not a great combat machine it has a certain fascination.

 

I really like the Skua. I don't think it's ugly at all. Why, if it had just a huge engine, single seat, bubble canopy, and maybe some different wings and a sleeker tail coupled to a more aerodynamic fuselage, it would be a Sea Fury.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

I really like the Skua. I don't think it's ugly at all. Why, if it had just a huge engine, single seat, bubble canopy, and maybe some different wings and a sleeker tail coupled to a more aerodynamic fuselage, it would be a Sea Fury.

Cheers,

Bill

...and about 300 knots!

[Navy Bird]

1:72 scale canopy masking - the bane of humanity! I don't know about you guys, but it seems that I make several attempts for each panel before I get one that I like. My rhythm is first panel, drink, second panel, more drink, third panel, curse, drink, fourth panel, disinherit children, fifth panel, fall off chair, etc. After about a day or two, I get it finished.

 

 

 

Remember how SH included that nice, albeit wrong, drawing of the landing gear? I happened to notice that a couple of rather prominent vents, name the two for the front oil cooler, are shown very conspicuously in the instructions. But it didn't show them being attached in any of the steps. Any guesses why?

 

Because they aren't included in the kit!    

 

Maybe they thought they weren't that prominent in 1:72 scale - look at how difficult it is to see them in this photo (clue - look at the plane in the foreground and check out the huge "backwards air scoop" bump in-between the cowling and the canopy):

 

 

There are two of these on the Skua, both in the same relative position on each side of the forward fuselage. Well, I guess it's off to the styrene scrap heap to make some vents. SH even put panel lines in the outline of these vents - but they're in the wrong place, too far down the fuselage side.

 

I think these will work, they're better than nothing:

 

 

I love the joy of short-run model building. There's an adventure around every corner!

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Ah yes, but once you have completed all those adventures, you can still end up with an excellent result. Your Skua is looking great. I have a 1/48 one in my stash (I don't do any other scale in aircraft - though the odd 1/32 is a possibility), and I'm going to be using your adventures to inform mine. Hang in there; it'll be worth it!

[keefr22]

Another great build thread coming along here Bill, looking forward to more fun & adventures...!!

keith

[VanceCrozier]

1:72 scale canopy masking - the bane of humanity! I don't know about you guys, but it seems that I make several attempts for each panel before I get one that I like. My rhythm is first panel, drink, second panel, more drink, third panel, curse, drink, fourth panel, disinherit children, fifth panel, fall off chair, etc. After about a day or two, I get it finished.

Remember how SH included that nice, albeit wrong, drawing of the landing gear? I happened to notice that a couple of rather prominent vents, name the two for the front oil cooler, are shown very conspicuously in the instructions. But it didn't show them being attached in any of the steps. Any guesses why?

Because they aren't included in the kit!

Maybe they thought they weren't that prominent in 1:72 scale - look at how difficult it is to see them in this photo (clue - look at the plane in the foreground and check out the huge "backwards air scoop" bump in-between the cowling and the canopy):

There are two of these on the Skua, both in the same relative position on each side of the forward fuselage. Well, I guess it's off to the styrene scrap heap to make some vents. SH even put panel lines in the outline of these vents - but they're in the wrong place, too far down the fuselage side.

I think these will work, they're better than nothing:

I love the joy of short-run model building. There's an adventure around every corner!

Cheers,

Bill

Nice catch Bill. They certainly wouldn't be a deal-breaker for a lot of people, but I certainly adds to the overall look of that machine. Coming along nicely!