1/72 Airfix Pucara

[sunray]

The kit decals aren't the best so I will using a set from Hannants and the pilots will be from a Revell set if they fit.  Anyway here we go.



















The kit has recessed panel lines and no locating pins.  Also after dry fitting a few of the parts the fit isn't the best but thats the price you pay for doing an old Airfix kit.  The first job I did was to workout where I was going to attach the bolt in the fuselage for the stand which wasn't a problem as it is going to go near or enough in the middle of the wing roots.  Before that I added a small of squared plastic rod to give the cockpit floor support a bit more strength and to act as a guide the keep the support vertical.



I did the same for the support in the nose wheel well.



While it was easier to get to I closed up the nose wheel well using scrap bit of plastic to support the nose wheel doors.  Next I used a pair of calipers to find the centre of the fuselage.





Then using a 4mm drill I made the hole for my M4 bolt.



Then I did a bit of test fitting.







As the kit plastic is a bit soft I added another bit of scrap plastic to give the plastic around the bolt a bit more strength and to make the level area where the head of the bolt will sit to give a better joint.



I then stuck it all together with quick drying epoxy.



The epoxy gives a strong and tidy joint.



The support or marker for the cockpit rear bulkhead required a bit of help.



So I added a touch more plastic to both sides of the fuselage halves to help as a guide for the bulkhead.



While I was waiting for all the glue to cure I moved my attention to the wings which were a good fit.



Now for the fuselage which wasn't a good fit.  The fuselage halves were warped but when pushed together they weren't any large gaps.  To attach the halves I decided to glue them in stages.  I started at the tail.  As I have said before there are no locating pins so I used the panel lines of the fuselage halves as a guide.  So I lined up the panel lines on the tail section and I clamped the tail fin.  Then I applied the Tamiya Extra Thin.  I waited until the glue had a good bond on the tail then I moved down the fuselage ensuring that the join was rock solid before pulling the halves of the next section together, clamping them and gluing them together.  

As I came nearer to the wing root I taped in the cockpit floor\nose wheel well section in place and again pulling in the fuselage halved I clamped them together.  Luckily they dropped in quite well and again I glued in position.  The problem I had was no matter how I tried there was a big step on both sides of the cockpit\fuselage wall where it joins the cockpit floor\nose wheel section. (if you know what I mean).  To get around this I decided to try and balance the amount of step on each side then when I came to fill and sand them down they would look the same.  So using my homemade Tamiya Extra Thin filler I applied a thin layer to start to build the lower step in the fuselage up.  I waited over night for it to harden then I sanded it and I applied another layer.  I kept this up until the fuselage sides were level.  The downside of doing it this way apart from the time was that you lose a bit of detail but this can be added later.  I would of took some photo's but I couldn't find my camera.  Anyway while I was waiting for the filler to cure I ran so filler down the main fuselage seam lines to fill any gaps and I sanded them smooth.

Once all this was done I added the rear cockpit bulkhead using the guides I installed earlier then I attached the wings.  Luckily I found my camera so I can show you the result.





As you can see there is a bit of a gap at both wing joints.  So as "Blackadder" would say "bugger".  At first I though that one wing would be bigger than the other because one gap is wider than the other and it would put the balance of the aircraft out but when I measured the actual wing parts one was smaller and it balanced out the wings, if that makes sense.  So that was that problem solved.  To sort out the gaps in the wings I just used plastic shims glued in the gaps then once the glue has cured, I cut the waste away and sanded them down.











Now for the tail plane.



To attach the elevators wasn't a hard job.  All I did was to make my own locating pins out of copper wire.  The good thing about the copper wire is as well as supporting the elevators you can bend it helping with alignment.  So armed with my copper wire and drill I made a hole in one of the elevators and using CA glue I attached the wire.



Then I cut down the wire.



I then aligned the elevator with the tail and I used the copper pin to mark the tail so I had something to follow when drilled a hole in the tail.  I didn't drill the hole all the way through in case I made a mistake.  Happy with the location I drilled another hole in the elevator and glued in another copper pin.



I marked the tail again but this time I drilled the hole all the way through.






 

[Procopius]

In fairness to Airfix, I believe this is a reboxed Special Hobby Pucara.

[modelglue]

11 minutes ago, Procopius said:

In fairness to Airfix, I believe this is a reboxed Special Hobby Pucara.

That explains so much. 

 

Nice work so far! 

[sunray]

8 minutes ago, Procopius said:

In fairness to Airfix, I believe this is a reboxed Special Hobby Pucara.

 

You are spot on the money as I have a Pucara by Special Hobby as well and the sprues are identical.  With the Special Hobby one you get some photo etch and resin seats but because this is going to be a flying display I decided to use the Airfix edition and save the Special Hobby one for another day as I will be building another one of these.  

[Jaffajake]

Using the plasticard shims to fill the gaps is a great idea. That looks so much neater than filler!

[Troy Smith]

neat work Ian

 

one tip for aligning butt jointed parts like the tailplanes is to use the brittle nature of superglue, before joining the fuselage, clean p the parts, and attach the tailplanes with tiny drops of SG,  then drill through from inside, (ideally use a drill bit/rod that match in diameter.)

Once drilled,  sharp tap will cleanly break the tailplane off, the little drops are easy to clean up, and you now have perfectly aligned holes.

in this case you tape the fuselage together,  drill through both sides first, and then do the above.

 

cheers

T

[John_W]

7 hours ago, Procopius said:

In fairness to Airfix, I believe this is a reboxed Special Hobby Pucara.

I didn't think they did and was going to ask that.

[Rob G]

Another Special Hobby/Airfix tie-in confirmation here. I actually have 3 of these kits, 2 by SH, 1 by Airfix.

 

I may have issues. What can I say, I was dropped on my head when I were a wee lad.

[k5054nz]

I sold my Airfix Pucara when I saw the parts, purely because my skills weren't up to the task. Several years on I'm keen to find another. Now, if they made a New Airfix version, that'd be perfect!

 

Nice work Ian, I'm looking forward to your next update.

[Rob G]

2 hours ago, k5054nz said:

I sold my Airfix Pucara when I saw the parts, purely because my skills weren't up to the task. Several years on I'm keen to find another. Now, if they made a New Airfix version, that'd be perfect!

 

A new tool would indeed be nice. In the interim, Special Hobby via Hannants (and probably other places too) have this one still available (so cute with the little boar's head on the nose. Which is why I bought it. )

 

https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/SH72288

[sunray]

Thanks chaps for the comments and excellent advice.  The reason why I put in a smaller pin in was also to give the first elevator more support while the glue cures and to keep the elevator as the right angle. You don't need two pins in the second elevator as the long pin is enough to support the second elevator but also allows a bit of movement while the glue cures to enable me to align both together. (If that makes sense?)

So I glued the first elevator (the one with 2 pins) in position first using CA glue to tack it in position. I trimmed down the long pin as it was a bit too long and I marked the second elevator and drilled the hole for the pin. Then test fitted and adjusted the alignment and I glue the second one in position using CA glue. When I was happy and checked the alignment I used the homemade Tamiya Extra Thin filler to fill any gaps and to give a good bond on both elevators. I left it over night and sanded the joints down.












 

[sunray]

I have done this kit in a different order than I normally do as now I am going to add detail to the cockpit.  When I tried the seat in the rear cockpit the gap between the seat and the side panels seemed a bit big to me.



So I glued pieces of plasticard to the side panels to take up a bit more space.



Once the glue had cured I removed the excess plastic.  I then attached the side panels and control panels.  The control panels required a bit of support, so for this I used scrap bits of plastic which did the trick.  For the interior frame of the cockpit I used thin solder cut to length and glued in place with CA glue.  To finish off I added the throttle levers made from pins and I added a bit of cabling made from copper wire attached again with CA glue.







I checked reference photo's because the seat seemed to be a little low and as I am using Revell pilots I needed to make the seat slightly larger.  All that I did to do this was cut the seat and add a strip of plastic which was an easy fix.



I also made the ejection seat pull from a piece of copper wire wound around a drill bit of roughly the right size.





The copper pull was then cut to size and glued in the pre-drilled holes.





I used the same method for the antenna in the tail plane.





The antenna's on the engine nacelles were made from photo etch sprue cut to size and glued in position.



For the aerial under the rear fuselage I just used pins glued in pre-drilled holes.



As were the control columns.



As I was doing all this I would test fit as I went.







For the props I had to peg each blade into position into the hub to align them then I glued them into their final position using Tamiya glue.



Now it is starting to come together.




 

[SmashedGlass]

Those Revell pilots look to be a wee bit.....wee.

[Booty003]

That is looking really smart indeed, haven't seen one built in a long time.  Lovely stuff.

 

Phil

[sunray]

Thanks chaps.  The pilot looks a bit short in the photo as the seat is too far back as I haven't fitted the rear instrument shroud but once its in he just fits nicely.

[Dermo245]

Looks great and all those extras are really adding to it. 
Cracking work 

 

Dermot

[Jaffajake]

Cracking job. Nice scratch building too!

[sunray]

Thanks chaps.  Here are a few photo's to show the overall look of the kit now.









Anyway I moved on to painting the cockpit.  This I thought would be a pain to do as it was assembled before I painted it but I was wrong and it didn't create too much trouble.  It just took a bit longer to do which wasn't a problem.  First I sprayed inside the cockpit grey and then hand painted the instrument panels black.  I used a cocktail stick dipped in paint to add the detail for the dials and switches and then I gave them a wash with thinned white paint.







I painted the seats and they were glues into place.

[rob85]

Really nice work! Other than fit issues which you have tackled brilliantly, the original detail of the kit looks fairly good?!

 

Rob

[sunray]

Thanks Rob.  I haven't done much model making lately as I have been busy but here is an update.  I attached the arms to the crew and painted them.









I used Citadel paints and washes for the figures with a coat of Klear between them to seal the paint.  Once dry they went straight into the cockpit.









I dipped the canopy in Klear to add a bit more shine to it but I could of got away without it if I wanted to as it was that clear.  I then proceeded to attach the canopy to the fuselage without any trouble using PVA.  There were one or two very small gaps but the PVA sorted them out.





For a 1/72 canopy it has got to be one of the clearest I have come across.

[sunray]

Next I masked the canopy with masking tape and masking fluid.









Once the fluid had cured I could start adding the paint.  As always I primed, then sanded down and then I added some pre-shading.









For the base coats all the references I could find mentioned that you needed 20% of this and 40% of another to get the right shade of brown, green and anodised metal.  So I took my time and found matches for the colours I wanted already in my paint rack.  They weren't exact matches but for me they were close enough and here they are.



The colour scheme I am using is for a Pucara used in the Falklands War (A-529) and I am using Xtradecals from Hannants.  Anyway once I had decided on the colours on went the paint.  I was going to mask the camouflage but for speed I did it freehand.  Once dry I added a coat of Tamiya X-22 varnish ready for the decals.





There aren't a great deal of decals to go on but reading up about the Pucara as you do I found out the Argentine Air Force painted the camouflage on the aircraft once it arrived in the Falklands.  To help show this I followed the instructions on the Xtradecal sheet to fade out the aircraft serial number.  So I added the decals as normal.











I didn't need to use any Micro-Sol as they went down a treat.  I waited until they were all dry and I made washes of the camouflage colours so I could fade out the serial numbers as per the decal instructions using my airbrush.  Then I just sprayed over the numbers.







When I was happy with the affect I sprayed another coat of varnish to seal in the decals.





While this was drying I turned my attention to the props.  I masked them with tape and sprayed them.



 

For the weathering I made up a wash from cheap oil paint and on it went.

















I then gave it a coat of satin varnish to seal in the weathering and tone the gloss down.  Then off came the canopy mask.



















Just a few more jobs and it with be done.

[Pete in Lincs]

You've done well there with a kit that didn't have

the best reviews even when it first came out.

 

I had to keep remembering it's only 1/72nd!

[sunray]

Thanks Pete I have been going like the clappers to finish this today.  One of the last jobs was to attach the antenna.  To hold the model safely I used a car sponge with a few modifications.



This did the job.



Then using EZ Line I attached the antenna using CA glue.



Then I just cut of the excess.



I then made the stand as I have done a few times before from oak flooring and brass tube with a slight bend added.  I joined everything together with CA glue and finally I added the props.  Finished.

  

Now I am off to do the final reveal which is at http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235021641-the-airfix-172-pucara-takes-flight/.  Thanks everyone for your kind advice and encouragement through the build.

[Pappy]

Wow!

 

Lovely job Ian,

 

cheers,

 

Pappy