Two 1/48 Mk.Vb Spitfires - Tamiya and Airfix (new) - Spitfire collection expansion project - FINISHED! - photos now in the RFI section - 08/06/15

[PlaStix]

Clean and sharp work!Aces bud

Cheers

Manu

Thank you for stopping by Manu and for your kind comments. If you've read any of the previous pages you'll know that, for some reason, I really enjoy working on the cockpit areas even though I know very little will be seen. Ah well.............

I think I'll just change my name to Confused87

In which case I'll go for ConfusedStix! It's pretty much my normal state! Hope you have a pleasant evening.

Kind regards,

Stix

Edited November 16, 2014 by PlaStix

[giemme]

Really enjoying this double build , you really are putting a lot of effort in doing these cockpits. When I tackle my own Tamyia Vb, I'll absolutely refer to this thread for the making

Wine-wise: as I said elsewhere, make sure the wine is a good one ....

Ciao

[Jim Kiker]

A big Thank You to Tony for supplying additional photos; I've saved them off against the day when I build my own kit. It's an odd thing though; there appear to be more issues, though minor, that are cropping up as more modelers tackle this kit. So all together, we need to shim the cowling a bit wider, shim the back edge of the saddle (internal armor), and pinch/rework the width of the saddle to get a proper fit. Very interesting...

And for Stix, beware the height of the Tamiya bulkhead just behind the seat. You are justified to be wary of it. Even using a thinner vac rear canopy piece, that bulkhead will sit too high if you glue it into one side of the fuselage and then assemble the two halves. The only solutions are to shorten the top edge, which is not optimum, or glue/tape the fuselage pieces together, tape on the rear cockpit canopy, and glue the seat/bulkead assembly in by sliding it in from below. This will keep you from having it sit too high when you are done. I minor PITA, but a PITA nonetheless.

HTH, Jim

Edited November 17, 2014 by Jim Kiker

[Karl]

Don't know how I missed it, But I've just found this thread

I did a similar build a couple of years ago using the Tamiya Vb and the old Arfix Vb.

You have done a lovely job on the cockpits

Karl

[PlaStix]

Really enjoying this double build , you really are putting a lot of effort in doing these cockpits. When I tackle my own Tamyia Vb, I'll absolutely refer to this thread for the making.

Wine-wise: as I said elsewhere, make sure the wine is a good one ....

Ciao

Thank you giemme and I look forward to following your build of the Vb. Wine? I can get more if it's cheap!

A big Thank You to Tony for supplying additional photos; I've saved them off against the day when I build my own kit. It's an odd thing though; there appear to be more issues, though minor, that are cropping up as more modelers tackle this kit. So all together, we need to shim the cowling a bit wider, shim the back edge of the saddle (internal armor), and pinch/rework the width of the saddle to get a proper fit. Very interesting...

And for Stix, beware the height of the Tamiya bulkhead just behind the seat. You are justified to be wary of it. Even using a thinner vac rear canopy piece, that bulkhead will sit too high if you glue it into one side of the fuselage and then assemble the two halves. The only solutions are to shorten the top edge, which is not optimum, or glue/tape the fuselage pieces together, tape on the rear cockpit canopy, and glue the seat/bulkead assembly in by sliding it in from below. This will keep you from having it sit too high when you are done. I minor PITA, but a PITA nonetheless.

HTH, Jim

I agree Jim - thank you to Tony for the information - it's good to be forewarned about these issues.

With regards the height of the seat bulkhead - thank you for the advice - even just by eye, and without the canopy part in place, it appears tall. Again it's good to be forewarned - thank you. I will definitely have an experiment before I start gluing anything together.

Don't know how I missed it, But I've just found this thread

I did a similar build a couple of years ago using the Tamiya Vb and the old Arfix Vb.

You have done a lovely job on the cockpits

Karl

Hi Karl - thank you for stopping by. I miss loads of things here on BM - there are so many great builds to follow and I sometimes discover them long after the build has been completed!

With regards your build of the two Mk.Vbs - did you post a WIP and RFI here on BM or elsewhere? I'd be very interested to see them.

Kind regards,

Stix

Edited November 18, 2014 by PlaStix

[Karl]

Hi Stix,

Yes, I did; I couldn't find them at first, but here we go:

WIP

Work in Progress

RFI

Completed build

Edited November 18, 2014 by Karl

[PlaStix]

Thank you Karl! Two great builds! Well done.

[Karl]

Thank you Karl! Two great builds! Well done.

Thanks Stix

Karl

[Troy Smith]

Hi Stix,

You should be aware that the Airfix IP and bulkhead are about 1.5mm too tall and will interfere with the "saddle":

I had to do some non-trivial grinding of the underside of the saddle, as well as the top of the IP to get it to fit properly:

Cheers,

Tony

HI Tony

I was curious about this, I just test fitted the parts, seems to fit fine on mine, both fuel tanks as well. can post a pic, but would take too long now.

EDIT pic added

This is just DRY fitted, note generally good fit, i'd aim for the gap to be at the engine/fuel tank join. Note the plastic is soft, and a 'grazed' the side of the tank. the fuel tank had a thin sheet of metal over and should slightly stick over the lower panel.

just visible here

Aligning the rear joint will be easier with an open cockpit door, as only the above tricky join to deal with. This just DRY fitted remember, some tape on top and some blu-tack to hold the sidewalls in place.

One thing I have noticed is the tolerances are very fine, you really have to be careful about trimming off sprue gates and scraping mould lines, as not doing so can easily cause misalignments, for example, on the bottom of the IP bulkhead, the tab that fits in the floor is a sprue gate, this rest on the lower wing, and if you don't trim it exactly, it would push the IP and floor up. Easy to miss, but a knock on effect later on, possibly the cause of the problem you encountered.

It's also easy to push the front of the cockpit sidewall up a bit, similar problem.

Dry test fit major components, check for alignment and trim as needed is my advice. Note how the sidewall has a small groove on the rear, and corresponding one on the fuselage side. Very precise, but easy to scrape off with careless trimming.

HTH

T

[tbell]

HI Tony

I was curious about this, I just test fitted the parts, seems to fit fine on mine, both fuel tanks as well. can post a pic, but would take too long now.

EDIT pic added

[snip]

This is just DRY fitted, note generally good fit, i'd aim for the gap to be at the engine/fuel tank join. Note the plastic is soft, and a 'grazed' the side of the tank. the fuel tank had a thin sheet of metal over and should slightly stick over the lower panel.

just visible here

Aligning the rear joint will be easier with an open cockpit door, as only the above tricky join to deal with. This just DRY fitted remember, some tape on top and some blu-tack to hold the sidewalls in place.

One thing I have noticed is the tolerances are very fine, you really have to be careful about trimming off sprue gates and scraping mould lines, as not doing so can easily cause misalignments, for example, on the bottom of the IP bulkhead, the tab that fits in the floor is a sprue gate, this rest on the lower wing, and if you don't trim it exactly, it would push the IP and floor up. Easy to miss, but a knock on effect later on, possibly the cause of the problem you encountered.

It's also easy to push the front of the cockpit sidewall up a bit, similar problem.

Dry test fit major components, check for alignment and trim as needed is my advice. Note how the sidewall has a small groove on the rear, and corresponding one on the fuselage side. Very precise, but easy to scrape off with careless trimming.

HTH

T

Hi Troy,

I tried to be as gentle as possible cleaning up the flash around the oil tank opening, but yeah, I think I was a little bit too aggressive with the sanding stick, hence the need for the shim at the rear of the piece.

You are also correct with regards to the oil tank skin needing to sit a wee bit proud of the fuselage below and aft, but you definitely don't want it sitting proud of the engine cover, hence the shim to widen the fuselage.

As for the instrument panel, I was indeed very careful to fettle all of the cockpit components so they fit together properly. The location of the cockpit wall side rails and their corresponding notches in the instrument panel make it impossible to mount the panel too high and yet still close the halves of the lower cockpit tub.

Even so, and with proper alignment of the tub within the fuselage (I must have dry fitted it a dozen times), there was about a 1mm interference between the oil tank cover and the top of the panel (the top pic in my 8 Nov post). This is something that Hyperscale's Brett Green also notes in his build. Given the extraordinarily good fit of the rest of the kit, this one was somewhat of a surprise to me.

Another challenge is the landing gear. IMHO the design, while looking nicely prototypical, is overly ambitious and very weak. What I did was to glue each gear leg to the pivot piece with liquid cement (not CA) and let it dry completely whereupon I drilled a hole about 1/2" axially down through the top of the pivot and into the gear leg to accept a brass pin. I then cut the pivot from the gear leg and temporarily pinned them together using brass rod, but without glue. Having previously glued the forward half-spar to the bottom wing, next I used liquid cement to glue the pivots to the wing and spar as per the instructions, using the pinned gear legs to eyeball the correct splay and rake as the glue set. Once the pivots had dried I detached the gear legs and set them aside to be installed later on in the build, making sure to mark them left and right.

Cheers,

Tony

Edited November 21, 2014 by tbell

[Troy Smith]

HI Tony

thanks for the detailed reply. OK, the dry fitted photo is with just the bulkhead, and not the Instrument panel.

So, I tried dry fitting with the panel, which causes a slight uplift, not as much as you reported, but you would only need a little at the bottom to cause the gap you show.

So, looking at the back of the panel, it's slightly larger than the bulkhead, which I hope the photo shows, and the top sprue gate is in the slanted bit.

I'd suggest for other builders some careful scraping/sanding of the sides of the, and the notches at the bottom corners of the IP, and in particular, the gunsight notch, plus some scraping at the insdie of the tank piece has solved the problem, though this is case of being forewarned. I am doing so at the mo, but doubt have time to upload pics.

EDIT pic. Fits fine.

I have not checked the U/C attchement, thanks for the advice, I'll have a closer look later.

cheers

T

I

[BerndM]

Still impressive work here. looking very good and will be very helpful !

[PlaStix]

Thank you BerndM.

This morning, thanks to Tony's and Troy's advice I decided it was time for some test fitting on the Airfix Vb.

I began with getting the IP cleaned up where it would come into contact with the sides. Here it is dry-fitted into the port cockpit wall:

Then I used Tamiya masking tape to hold the two lower walls together - front:

Back:

From above:

Seems like a reasonable fit so far. I then sandwiched the whole lot between the fuselage sides which I held together with masking tape:

And then the moment of truth - I carefully placed the top on making sure it was positioned correctly on the IP and frame and....:

........it seemed to fit quite well.

I didn't trim anything off under the top where the IP and frame fit - not sure this shows it so well but....:

Here the IP can be seen - I decided not to force the top cover down with tape just to see how well it sat down without any and it seems pretty good even after being upside down for the previous photo:

And from the starboard side:

With that seemingly okay I thought I'd take a couple of photos of how the IP and frame fits the cover piece:

I was wondering if it made a difference because I used the Eduard panel rather than the Airfix one as I didn't have to do any trimming around here.

I also did a little bit of work on the Tamiya cockpit. Firstly adding a bit more detail:

Then I decided it was time to get the fixing of the IP and seat unit started. My main concern was that when I had previously been doing some test fitting the seat frame top looked like it might foul the rear canopy section.

Unfortunately during the process I forgot to take any photos. First I dry-fitted the rear, fixed canopy section with masking tape, but just to the starboard fuselage. Then, after some test fitting, I glued just the IP and it's frame onto the starboard side - the seat frame was not glued at this point - this allowed me to make sure the top of the seat frame didn't come into contact with the canopy section. Once this was starting to hold I dry-fitted the port fuselage and held it together with masking tape. When I was certain the seat was in the best position possible I used CA glue to secure the seat frame but onto the starboard side only.

This is how it looked from outside at this point:

And from underneath:

So both seem to be going okay at the moment with the cockpits.

Comments and suggestions welcome. More tomorrow I hope.

Kind regards,

Stix

Edited November 22, 2014 by PlaStix

[Wolwe82]

Beautiful job Stix, looks realy amazing, keep that up

[Pawel Szczudlyk]

Hello Stix I see that your project is moving forward very well.

Keep it going or else

[theanorak73]

well done stix, looks like you got the Airfix together perfectly. unfortunately i had to struggle like a few others.

it's kinda left me a bit on the fence about this kit. although i love some of the new "tweaks" and the wings are beautifully thin, i still think its over engineered on the fuselage.

[PlaStix]

Beautiful job Stix, looks realy amazing, keep that up

Thank you Wolwe - I will try to!

Hello Stix I see that your project is moving forward very well.

Keep it going or else

Hi sdk_uk. Thank you and....... SIR, YES SIR!! :-)

well done stix, looks like you got the Airfix together perfectly. unfortunately i had to struggle like a few others.

it's kinda left me a bit on the fence about this kit. although i love some of the new "tweaks" and the wings are beautifully thin, i still think its over engineered on the fuselage.

Thank you - I don't know why mine has gone together as well as it has to be honest. As I mentioned before it may be because I used the Eduard IP rather than the Airfix one but I don't really know. I haven't had to do any major trimming, I just made sure there was no paint or seams on any of the parts which join. It almost clicks together with a really good fit as you'll see from some of the photos below. I know what you mean about over engineering though - some of the stages for just building up the cockpit tub are quite involved.

This morning I decided it was time time to bite the bullet and carry on with glueing together the (possibly) troublesome Airfix cockpit. I began with fitting the control column/pedal unit onto the port lower cockpit side:

Then I joined both the lower cockpit walls together - this was quite fiddly to do - trying to get all three internal parts into their correct fixing holes. But this is how it turned out with the three other bulkheads waiting to be fitted:

And with everything fitted and glued in place this is what it looked like:

Then it was time for more test fitting to make sure everything still closed up okay with all the extra parts on:

Everything seemed okay so far so I thought I'd better get some photos of the cockpit tub before it's buttoned up inside the fuselage:

So having got the evidence that I'd done some work in the cockpit it was time to start gluing again. Once I'd glued the oxygen hose in place I glued the starboard lower cockpit wall onto the starboard fuselage side and then taped the port fuselage side in place to make sure everything lined up okay. I then placed the top piece in place again and luckily everything seemed to fit well:

Finally I thought it might be worth taking a photo of both fuselages together - the Tamiya fuselage is above:

So at this stage both fuselage sides are just dry-fitted together and held in place with tape. Next week I'll hopefully get them glued together.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Kind regards,

Stix

Edited November 23, 2014 by PlaStix

[giemme]

You did a great job with those cockpit tubs, I'm glad you had no fit issues. Detailing, as usual for your builds, is amazing

Ciao

[Caerbannog]

They both look extreemly good. Great build and report.

Rene

[PlaStix]

Hie Giemme and Rene. Thank you for your kind comments. I'm hoping that I might get something done on these projects early tomorrow morning as I'm out a bit later than usual. Fingers crossed!!

[tbell]

Hi Stix,

Looks like you're doing a much better job than me getting everything to fit properly! One word of caution: If you haven't already, double-check that the dry-fitted cockpit tub isn't inadvertently being pushed down a bit by the oil tank cover. If it is, you may end up with interference between the lower wing and the bottom of the cockpit tub.

Cheers,

Tony

[PlaStix]

Hi Tony,

Thank you - if I do get some tme tomorrow morning I will check that out.

Kind regards,

Stix

[tbell]

...oh, and speaking of potential lower wing/cockpit interference, you may want to trim away the two lines that you've wrapped beneath the IP bulkhead. It sits flush against the Tamiya lower wing when you mate it to the fuselage.

I actually ended up filing off a bit of material from the bottom of the Tamiya cockpit, just to give myself some wiggle room.

Cheers,

Tony

[PlaStix]

It's a good job you're checking over these builds Tony - you are keeping me from a lot of future headaches! Thank you, you're a star! This is why being part of Britmodeller is so good!

Kind regards,

Stix

[geedubelyer]

Cripes! That is some stellar paintwork. So crisp and neat.

Spot on Stix, great job.