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G'day people,

I recently acquired this kit and could not wait to start it.

I have been slowly gathering some aftermarket bits to stuff into the kit and I just needed the kit itself. Thankfully I was able to acquire a mint example for a reasonable price.

The kit is reasonably simple despite the daunting size, essentially, all the sub-assemblies are attached to either the top of bottom fuselage half, the only external items being the undercarriage and ordnance.

First job was to persuade the Aires resin cockpit to fit into the upper fuselage. Aires provides a cutting diagram which is actually rubbish, if followed, you will remove too much material and end up having to fill some large gaps.

I decided to make my own template by drawing around the rear of the cockpit bulkhead and transferring these dimensions to the kit' bulkhead, but first reduced the outline slightly as the final fit would be achieved by careful filing. I used a micro saw to saw around the front of the kit's instrument coaming which is moulded in place. I also used the moulded seams along the horizontal sections of the cockpit sill as a cutting guide.

After about an hour I ended up with this,

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I used a couple of Blu-tack sausagees to temp hold the cockpit tub in place while I tested the fit of the resin instrument coaming,

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Simples!

Pappy

Edited by Pappy
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Awesome work so far! Is this the Trumpeter 1/32 kit?

No.

The answer that you seek is in the thread description

G'day people,

I have worked on the seat today.

The Tamiya seat is quite a nice rendition of the ACES II variant used, however the detail included in the Aires item is stunning. I have taken pics of both seats side by side for comparison purposes.

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I managed to break off the MOR handle and did not notice until later, I'll have to scratch up some sort of replacement, bugger!

The Tamiya item has the seat rails moulded integrally, to which some cockpit 'furniture' is attached. The Aires item is a separate unit allowing it to be installed after the cockpit tub painting has been completed. One thing to note however is that the Aires seat includes the guide rollers along the rear ede of the seat. This is great if you wish to depict the seat in a diorama,in the process of a seat change for example. If you intend t install the seat however, remove these roller guides otherwise you will not be able to fit the seat between the guide rails. Again, this is not explained in the Aires instructions.

And all tarted up!

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I also painted the white cockpit sill areas.

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To be honest, I had never noticed this detail until I started doing the research for this build.

Since I had the white in the airbrush, I also shot a coat over the main gear undercarriage doors

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These are normally closed on the ground except when undergoing maintenance, so these were attached to the lower fuselage half.

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cheers,

Pappy

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Flippin heck! Great job on the seat, clearly no contest for the kit seat, that Aires seat is awesome. I used a Quickboost seat for my F-16, it's essentially the Aires seat with resin belts - all good, BUT, it doesn't include the rails that the Aires seat does so I had to scratch them.

I'll be watching your progress and taking notes for my Nighthawk build. Great stuff.

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Cool - I got the Tamiya kit when two seperate stores had a sales: One on the Tamiya kit and one on the complete CMK set - got everything for well less than 50 euro :-D However I only removed the casting blocks from the resin sets and washed them and did some DIY etch parts. Will be watching your build with interest - your start is quite excellent :goodjob:

Rene

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Flippin heck! Great job on the seat, clearly no contest for the kit seat, that Aires seat is awesome. I used a Quickboost seat for my F-16, it's essentially the Aires seat with resin belts - all good, BUT, it doesn't include the rails that the Aires seat does so I had to scratch them.

I'll be watching your progress and taking notes for my Nighthawk build. Great stuff.

G'day Parabat, Aires are funny like that. The Aires seat I have includes all the gubbins behind the seat which cannot be seen once installed (the F-16 seats are the same), as I said it would be ideal to depict in a diorama with the seat removed, and the cockpit tub could be shown off to good effect as the panels for the floor and kick panles are all there.

Nice job, will be watching this with interest.

Rick

Thanks

Cool - I got the Tamiya kit when two seperate stores had a sales: One on the Tamiya kit and one on the complete CMK set - got everything for well less than 50 euro :-D However I only removed the casting blocks from the resin sets and washed them and did some DIY etch parts. Will be watching your build with interest - your start is quite excellent :goodjob:

Rene

G'day Rene, sounds like a serious build, perhaps I should be watching you! Would it be possible for you to post some pics of the resin pieces?, I have only ever seen the CMK box at and instructions. I would love to compare their resin with the Aires set. I am especially interetsted to see what they have done with the undercarriage parts,

cheers,

Pappy

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G'day people,

Today's installment continues with getting the Aires cockpit to play nice with the nose gear bay. The Aires resin tub is located directly above the nose wheel well (NWW) and unless both of these items are thinned, you will not be able to close the fuselage halves. I began by cutting off and sanding down the resin pour stub on the base of the cockpit tub.

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Note the hole drilled into the base. This is the locating hole for the nosegear unit which pokes through the NWW roof.

Next up, I sanded back the roof of the NWW roof until is was just about level

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I stopped when the roof began to separate!

The fit was checked constantly and and I am now able to close the fuselage halves. Satisfied the parts would fit, I was now able to start painting the tub. Again, for comparison purposes, I have taken pics of the stock cockpit alongside its resin counterpart,

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Bear in mind the stock cockpit has the kit rails moulded to the seat, so the rear bulkhead looks a little spartan without the seat fitted.

More tub shots,

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And dry fitted to the fuselage

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cheers,

Pappy

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G'day people,

Thanks for the comments guys.

The tub is in

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I glued a couple of pieces of sprue on either side of the tub to re-enforce the joint as I did not want the tub to work iteslf loose after the fuselage halves are joined. Next up, I worked on the Aires instrument panel. This was pretty easy to paint as only the 3 MFD's are moulded on the central part, the remaining detail is in the from of printed acetate instrument faces and PE overlays.

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The kit panel is actually pretty nice, here is a comparison shot

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The instrument coaming has two fold able glare shield panels.At least one is folded back prior to cockpit entry. They have a yellow/black caution on the underside, and this is a focal point in the cockpit. The Aires PE parts were carefully bent to shape after annealing over the gas ring of the stove (make sure to get the approval of a grown up!) and then painted. I am happy with the result.

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The joystick was also painted and weathered

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Test fitting the instrument panel

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And with the seat

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Note, if you attach the glare shield foldy bits, you cannot close the canopy! I have put these parts as well as the PE HUD frame aside and will be attaching these items after the jet is painted,

cheers,

Pappy

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Are the striped "CAUTION" sign included in the kit decal sheet???

Rene

Erm, they are painted on, no decals included!

The stripes and caution are etched into the panels. Once the panels were bent to the desires shape, I painted them black, then used diluted whit paint (yellow in not very opaque) to pick out the stripes and 'caution'. Once dry, I repeated the process with yellow paint, simples!

Superb pit, Pappy!

'pit's are found in fruit, cockpits are found in aircraft, sorry but a pet peeve of mine:P

Thanks very much though

Brilliant cockpit!! :popcorn:

Thank you too!

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Erm, they are painted on, no decals included!

The stripes and caution are etched into the panels. Once the panels were bent to the desires shape, I painted them black, then used diluted whit paint (yellow in not very opaque) to pick out the stripes and 'caution'. Once dry, I repeated the process with yellow paint, simples!

Looks great - i have to check if this is etched into the CMK parts as well...

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Looks great - i have to check if this is etched into the CMK parts as well...

Could you post some pics of the CMK parts, especially the wheel wells,, it would be interesting to see what their resin looks like,

cheers,

Pappy

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No problem - but will be Monday as I am away for a few days. Post them here or PM to you?

Rene

G'day Rene,

No rush, Monday would be great. Eitherin this thread or PM, whatever is easier. I am curious,perhaps others would be too. If I or someone else was to consider building another one, the CMK set may be an option, especially if the Aires set is unavailable/out of stock for example. It also includes gear well details in addition to the weapons bay and cockpit tub resin parts so it also sounds like good value as well,

cheers,

Pappy

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'pit's are found in fruit, cockpits are found in aircraft, sorry but a pet peeve of mine. Thanks very much though

Fair enough! My equivalent is the use of the word "office" for a cockpit. In 16 years of military aviation I don't think I ever heard a single pilot describe it as "the office", but every other build article in the mags... there it is!

And don't get me started on people who refer to my preferred kind of flying machine as a "chopper"!

[Your Goblin office is lovely, though...]

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G'day people,

The next major assembly will be another focal point - the weapons bay.

I will be substituting the kit parts with the Aires set, although I will still need to use the kit trapeze items.

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The parts were pretty easy to separate from their casting blocks, however I will have a bit of a job to remove the remains of the casting block from the door items.

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Further, there was some damage to the main bay item,

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The lower corners of some of the door hinges were broken off. That is going to be a fun repair.

Test fitting has shown that the bay itself fits the weapons bay aperture reasonably well without modification, however the bay sidewalls are a different story.

The left side wall fits extremely well and basically locates within its recess without fuss. The right side however seems to be a little too long and did not want to lie in its recess.

In order to resolve the length issue, I decided that the easiest remedy was to remove the shoulder on the forward right bulkhead.

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Compare this to the left hand side which has not been modified

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This allows the wall to sit in the recess however it would not sit flush with the forward bulkhead. I decided that the problem was this internal cross brace and wire loom detail

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I sanded this back a little as well as removing some detail from the right hand sidewall area adjacent to the cross beam and loom details

In the words of Borat "Great success!"

The two sidewalls will now sit flush and parallel to the bay proper.

Aires provides a small PE fret with some details that need to be added to the rear bulkhead. I don't know what these bits are, but they look nice.

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PE air deflector screens are also provided for the forward bulkhead, but these will be extremely fragile and I will wait until the end to install these.

Does anyone out there in F117 experten land know if the deflectors only swung down when weapons were released. For example, would they be in a deployed condition after ordnance was loaded, or only in flight once a weapon release was initiated?

Edited by Pappy
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