nimrod54 Posted June 6, 2015 Share Posted June 6, 2015 I was not fortunate enough to know Merv, having joined Britmodeller after the last Tornado GB, but by all accounts he seemed to be the type of person that I would have liked to have known and could have got along well with. I have set myself quite a challenge for this GB and my plan is to to try and build four 1/144th Tornado's, one each from the four operators. This is my RAF entry and will be mainly be buit from the box with the exception of a Retrowings replacement cockpit. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hockeyboy76 Posted June 6, 2015 Share Posted June 6, 2015 John, how good is the replacement cockpit. I know the kit ones pretty duff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimrod54 Posted June 6, 2015 Author Share Posted June 6, 2015 John, how good is the replacement cockpit. I know the kit ones pretty duff Pretty good actually and much better than having the robots in the crew seats. The seats look a little odd but I need to check some references to see what the little box shapes on the headboxes represent. At first glance they look a bit overscale to me so may need reducing, as for the tub the detail is good and should look okay painted up. I think that Domi must have changed the resin he uses because this seem shinier than his usual stuff and the detail looks crisper. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dermo245 Posted June 6, 2015 Share Posted June 6, 2015 Nice, look forward to following! Dermot 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnonymousDFB1 Posted June 6, 2015 Share Posted June 6, 2015 Nice one John 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hockeyboy76 Posted June 6, 2015 Share Posted June 6, 2015 The seat headboxs do look a bit "wrong" I like the kit tho, as you say much better than the robots. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimrod54 Posted June 7, 2015 Author Share Posted June 7, 2015 The seat headboxs do look a bit "wrong" I like the kit tho, as you say much better than the robots. Yes you're right bud, having done a bit more checking they look as though they are non existent. So I don't know what they are meant to represent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hockeyboy76 Posted June 7, 2015 Share Posted June 7, 2015 Maybe early hawk seats? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimrod54 Posted June 7, 2015 Author Share Posted June 7, 2015 Yes possibly, anyway out of curiosity I checked the seats in the other set that Domi produces for the early Revell kit and they look better. RetroWings resin cockpit set and seats for Revell's earlier kit. As for work on the kit I have made a start on cleaning some of the parts up. The sprue gates are little thick so I had to use a razor saw to remove the parts and then a scalpel for a final trim, they still need a clean up with a sanding stick. There are also a few sink marks that will need filling along with some mold release marks to deal with, but the overall fit isn't too bad. The rear fuselage, you can see the sink marks just behind the wing glove and in front of the exhaust. They are worse on this side, there are several areas like this that will require a small amount of filler. But for all of that the overall fit isn't that bad. I have also modified the wings to allow me to fit them after I have completed the fuselage assembly and it will make cleaning the fuselage joint a little easier. This required removal of the pieces that enable the wings to move together and a slot cutting from the inner edge back to the locating hole. The wings as they come in the kit....... ........ and after modification to allow them to be fitted later. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hockeyboy76 Posted June 7, 2015 Share Posted June 7, 2015 Looking good John. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob G Posted June 8, 2015 Share Posted June 8, 2015 Word of advice, if you haven't found it already...the cockpit section on my copy of the Dragon kit needed shimming at the rear end to make it wide enough to match the fuselage. And the joint is all out of whack, so you may some filing to square it up. Now that I know they exist, I'll look into a resin cockpit for it, which means I won't have to scratch build a second seat to match the one I built a long time ago, which means I may actually finish the thing. Thanks for the incidental heads up! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cookenbacher Posted June 8, 2015 Share Posted June 8, 2015 Looking good John. I really like the trick of modifying the wings so they can be attached later, thanks for that. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimrod54 Posted June 8, 2015 Author Share Posted June 8, 2015 First, thanks for the comments and encouragement chaps. Cookie, glad to pass the tip on hope that you find it useful. I have used this on several of the swing wing aircraft that I have made, it makes clean up easier and gets rid of what I feel is a bit of a gimmick. With RobG's advice regarding fit in mind I have added the main undercarriage bays and glued the rear fuselage together. The wings and fin have been dry fitted and as you can see the fin needs fettling to improve the fit and I may decide to lose the little tabs at the wing root trailing edge not sure yet though. There is also quite a bit of clean up to do to the join but some good news is that after an initial fit of the nose I am quite hopeful that this area will not require too much work to get a decent join. Main undercarriage bays painted and fitted. Trial fit of fin and wings shows the small amount of work needed to improve these areas. Next job will be fitting of the resin cockpit and then I can get on with painting that up before a final fit and then I can start to tidy things up. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimrod54 Posted June 11, 2015 Author Share Posted June 11, 2015 OK, after some tinkering about with the fit of the cockpit I have discovered that it can be fitted through the bottom of the nose section, which means that I have been able to assemble the nose and add this to the rear fuselage. As RobG has said the join in this area is a bit off and to keep everything square I lined the bottom edges up first and had to shim the top with some 30thou plasticard whilst checking that it all lined up with the edge of a steel rule. Must make a mental note to add some weight to the nose before I add the offices and lower fuselage panel. The top joint needed shimming to keep things in line. Whilst the lower joint just needed glueing. Then it was time for a dry fit of the lower nose panel to check its alignment. Finally, when everything had set up the shim was trimmed to a rough shape. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hockeyboy76 Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 (edited) Nose weights! Feck, ... Drink!!!! Edited June 11, 2015 by Hockeyboy76 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob G Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Looking good there. I might ditch my first attempt and start another, as the one I have now is... not pretty. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimrod54 Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 Looking good there. I might ditch my first attempt and start another, as the one I have now is... not pretty. Cheers Rob, I have done a wee bit more tidying to this area. There is still a slight step but a smidge of filler should let me feather that back in. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimrod54 Posted June 13, 2015 Author Share Posted June 13, 2015 Work continues on the fuselage assembly and I have finished the join to the rear of the cockpit. I then reshaped the top of the fin leading edge which looked to square, the strange thing is that if you look closely there seem to be traces of the correct shape a little lower down so maybe the tooling was modified at some point. I've also replaced the two ILS aerials on either side with some thin plastic card to give a more scale appearance and once modified the finished item was added to the fuselage assembly. The intake ramps have been covered with some of the plastic card to hide the ejector pin marks and more was added to the area behind the rear seat. The joint at the rear of the fuselage is looking tidier but still needs a little more filling/rescribing and the outside of the intakes have yet to be sorted out. The final job for now was to add some Liquid Gravity to the nose. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnonymousDFB1 Posted June 13, 2015 Share Posted June 13, 2015 Taking shape John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hockeyboy76 Posted June 13, 2015 Share Posted June 13, 2015 Taking shape JohnWhat she said!!May pinch the ILS idea for mine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob G Posted June 13, 2015 Share Posted June 13, 2015 What she said!! May pinch the ILS idea for mine. Only the ILS idea? I'm shamelessly pinching ALL the ideas. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hockeyboy76 Posted June 14, 2015 Share Posted June 14, 2015 I have the Revell F3 which looks exactly the same as yours so no Chaff boxes on the rear. I thought they were an Op Granby mod so some may not have been fitted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimrod54 Posted June 14, 2015 Author Share Posted June 14, 2015 I have the Revell F3 which looks exactly the same as yours so no Chaff boxes on the rear. I thought they were an Op Granby mod so some may not have been fitted. Thanks for checking mate, it may be right that they were not fitted to some aircraft but this photo of ZE339 shows them there so I am going to try and add them. I will check over on the discussion pages and failing that I think I might try and find a decent photo of the underside and use that to determine the size and location by comparing panel lines etc. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hockeyboy76 Posted June 14, 2015 Share Posted June 14, 2015 After a quick read of Ian Blacks Tornado pilot, there are two types of flare pod fitted. Looking at that picture & his book it seems they are the " less draggy Vinten devices" HTH dude. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimrod54 Posted June 19, 2015 Author Share Posted June 19, 2015 Able to grab some modelling time last night whilst the memsahib was out for her weekly horseride. I got some info regarding the chaff/flare dispensers over on the discussion pages LINK , thanks to fellow Britmodellers David Womby and exdraken for their assistance and also to Julien for reminding me of our own reference library of Walkarounds here on Britmodeller. From that information I was able to make a couple of these from some square section plastic and they have now been added. I decided not to bother drilling out the eight holes shown in the photo my lamps are bad enough already. A bit of a tidy up and I think that they will be good to go. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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