Another Project to sit on the Shelf

[Gondor44]

As the title says, this will probably end up sitting on the shelf unfinished for months or more likely years    however it's one of those things that when you get the urge to build something you simply must build it no matter what else is on the modelling table.

So for everyone's delectation and encouragement I hear-by inform the gathered members of this esteemed institution that I will attempt to construct, for the edification of the populous one of Hawker's finest never built aircraft........
The P.1027!

Having seen a few builds of this version of the Tempest and having a collection of intended real world builds of the aircraft linage, I realised that perhaps I should get around at some point to build this version of the Tempest especially as I have been building a Mk1 series II Tempest.

First this I did was locate some drawings which I found HERE as drawings 57 and 58. These drawings are as they state in 1/72 sale, if you handle them correctly. I found that I had to print the drawings off in Landscape and to fit the page while printing onto A4 paper.

So drawings: Check 

Next a kit to modify.... well I could buy off the internet as there is nowhere local for me to buy anything or I could use the Academy one I have part started in my stash. Sounds good until you read a review or two, in my case from looking at the Valiant Wings publication Airframe & Miniature No.4 "The Hawker Tempest" by Richard A. Franks, which says "the fuselage is 2mm short and it's not all up the front or back, it's mid-way. To correct it, you need to split the fuselage at the point where the rear bulkhead in the cockpit sits". Not really a problem as the nose is going to get cut off so why not make this modification as well, and 2mm is quite a large amount, 144mm/14.4cm which is roughly 5 inches off the top of my head  There are other inaccuracies that are also mentioned but are minor compared to the length issue. Anyway, that's a kit sourced too 

Propellers  contra-rotating propellers to be exact! Now the front of the Rolls Royce Eagle (1944) has quite a large area behind the propeller hub's and after looking at the Wikipedia entry for the engine decided to use the propellers from the Wyvern which was initially powered with the same engine and indeed the rear section or the propellers has the same diameter at its rear. The front part though...... A chat with TsrJoe and I ended up digging out a set of Shackleton propellers which have the right diameter as in the drawing as look as if they have the right shape too. Not only that but the front part of the hub looks to be the right shape going by the drawings! The rear of the Shackleton propeller hub will also roughly fit inside the Wyvern rear hub so I should be able to fill and shape the Wyvern part with the Shackleton part inside it, so that's the propellers sorted as well 

So that leaves working out what to do with the engine and radiators under the fuselage. Well the engine should be relatively straight forward. I have both plan and side elevation drawings which I can use for templates. The head on drawing can be used to produce a template for the rear of the engine as well. Both the plan and side templates will have to modified to fit around each other and the central tube which I will fit for the modified Shackleton propellers to fit into. Other than making up box's for the exhausts to fit into, not checked out anything to make them though I am considering using some small diameter tubing, I am thinking of using the bottom of the kit's radiator for the under engine intake in this build but I haven't checked it yet so I may have to use something else. Time will see what happens.

Right. That's the build started so it can now sit around for months on end without me doing anything else to it. Heaven forbid I actually pick up a saw and plastic and actually have a go at it 

Gondor

[corsaircorp]

Hello Gondor,

Come on, come on, let's see...

Can't wait to look at this piece of bravery.

We surely need to be edified

Sincerely.

Corsaircorp

[neil5208]

Reminiscent of the XP47H Thunderbolt,. Will be interested in your solutions during this build. Good luck.

[Gondor44]

Nothing done to the plastic today although I was cutting out pretty shapes from the drawings only to realise that its easier to draw centre lines and areas to be cut out when its part of a sheet of A4 

So I thought no problem, just print off another couple of sheets! Wrong  My modem decided that it would not allow me to connect wirelessly to my printer which is in a different room     

It's late and I am not going to go rooting around playing with lengths of electric string to reposition the modem/router so I can easily access it in the future and hopefully sorting out the connectivity problem at the same time.

Isn't technology wonderful    Problem solved, at least as far as printing off additional sheets by copying some of the extras I made 

Gondor

[Christer A]

Looking at those pictures it has all the potential to turn into a powerful looking beast.

Good luck!

[Gondor44]

3 hours ago, Christer A said:

Looking at those pictures it has all the potential to turn into a powerful looking beast.

Good luck!

@Christer A thanks, the built ones I have seen do look rather powerful.

 

Well no plastic has been harmed so far, other than cutting a section of plastic tube for the propeller shaft, or should that be propellers shafts as its a contra-prop?

Sorted the problem with the printer. A button on the side of the modem/router had been pressed switching off the Wi-Fi   The modem/router will be moved over the weekend to a more secure location so the same problem does not reoccur.

Drawings have been amended and are about to be cut out as I type this so the mayhem will start this afternoon 

 

Gondor

[Gondor44]

So after ages brain storming the build I have eventually put saw to plastic! And scissors to paper too!

The templates were cut out of copies of the drawings which I have found are not symmetrical  then they were stuck to some 20thou black plastic card using some Liquid Polly glue so they wont go anywhere and also so that I don't have to transfer details from the drawings to the plastic.

 

 

I still need to trim them a bit but that's due in the next step once I put parts of the fuselage back together as it's now in pieces    I had previously started this kit, painted the cockpit Interior Green and glued the wings together and that was as far as I had got with the build before running out of steam, now that helps a little as I don't have to work on the wings much 

 

Part of my plan is to make the whole engine as a plug in replacement section while using as much of the kit as possible. The horizontal cut in the rear fuselage was made by scoring along a panel line which when replicated on the other side of the fuselage should mean that the rear of the fuselage moves cleanly rearwards by 2mm or in this case by two laminated pieces of 40thou plastic card which my verniers tell me is 1.1mm thick.
Yes I do realise that that is 0.2mm too much, however I did measure the thickness of the saw blade and that matches the difference 

So on with the cutting and glueing 

Gondor

Edited March 31, 2017 by Gondor44

[Gondor44]

I actually managed to do some work on the project. Not much admittedly but at least it was something.

I probably should have taken a picture of the black plastic formers prior to gluing them together but I forgot, however I did find a discrepancy or two in the drawing between elevations    Some may say, "It's a what-if, it doesn't matter" but really it shows poor workmanship not to match dimensions between elevations 

Anyway, here are some pictures of the nose section so far





The white tube is for mounting the propellers into and will be fitted into the front of the engine where the tuning fork gap is once I decide what I am going to do to resolve the discrepancy between the front elevation and side elevations.

Gondor

[Gondor44]

I decided hat the front profile in the drawing was wrong and went with the side view so now all the four central components are in place ready for me to fix the central shaft for the propellers and the front disc as well. So unfortunately not much done over the weekend but I am hoping to get far more done during the week.

Gondor

[Gondor44]

To prove that what I wrote in my previous post was correct, here are some pictures of the small amount of progress made today. The rest of today was spent clearing out some old computer parts including at least two keyboards with PS2 connectors, the round purple ones, and then reorganising the stash to make use of the newly available space 

Remember I said that the front and side views differed in the plans....



Well its not only those that disagree, the length of the nose is different between the plan and side elevations as well 

I know I only got an 'O' level in Technical Drawing, way back in 1977, but I do remember that distances between the same two points in different elevations are supposed to be the same, and I cut both the side and top elevations along the same panel line 



You can see the gap in the above picture very well. It starts to make me wonder what else in the drawings is wrong 



It looks quite nice from the front. I have deliberately left the tube too long as I would rather trim back the tube than try to extend it. While talking about the front end of the engine, I have changed my mind about how I am going to model the propellers, or rather the housing around the rear most set of propellers. Rather than fitting the Shackleton part inside a Wyvern part and then sanding back, I now intend to make a rear plate out of plastic card and then build up the shape with scrap and filler as the front of the part matches the rear of the front propellers housing already so its just the rear that needs built up. In this instance its far easier to add than the remove material 

Gondor

[Christer A]

You're having a lot of fun, aren't you?

[AdrianMF]

Interesting project! Lots of plans don't quite agree in all elevations so don't worry too much. Having an overall length is useful though.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Gondor44]

On 04/04/2017 at 8:17 AM, AdrianMF said:

Interesting project! Lots of plans don't quite agree in all elevations so don't worry too much. Having an overall length is useful though.

 

Regards,

Adrian

 

There is a difference between "don't quite agree" and a couple of millimetres at 1/72! Shows poor quality control and lack of attention to detail.

 

On 04/04/2017 at 7:21 AM, Christer A said:

You're having a lot of fun, aren't you?

 

Apart from the miss-match in the drawings, yes or rather when I get the chance.

 

Gondor

[Gondor44]

I managed to get half an hour or so on this build earlier today and consequently more plastic mayhem ensued! 

The result was the rear of the fuselage in one piece by itself. I had previously glued the cut half to the un cut side to aid in the alignment of the two cuts.



The centre fuselage/cockpit area by itself which not only needing painted correctly as it was painted years ago when I thought all British fighters had green cockpits, it will need the outside filled as there are some sink marks from plastic shrinkage when it came out of the mould.



And the engine sections by themselves too. Although I forgot to take a picture of them as is 

However, I have been thinking that I can reuse the engine covers if suitably modified. First I had to take another copy of the side elevation and draw a line through the centre of the propellers and through the engine area as that is where I have the horizontal former fitted.

This is roughly what I want it to look like



If I position it far enough back from the nose I can use the opening for the kits exhausts for what I intend to build for this aircraft







I do realise the openings are deeper, but a strip of plastic card will soon sort that out!

I also plan to use the radiator cowling, initially I was thinking that I would use the one from the kit to form the basis of the opening for the under fuselage radiator and I still might. but the picture below made me think that I could use it for the under nose intake instead.



Having just checked, the nose radiator that I have left over from converting a Heller Tempest V to a Mk I will form the basis on the forward under fuselage opening and the Academy kit parts will form the basis for the more rear intake.

It's also possible that I may use the rear of the Old Airfix Lancaster rear turret as a basis for the under nose intake as the curvature looks to be similar.

Gondor

[Gondor44]

A little more work completed so far today. The former nose intake has been reduced in its length so that I can pack the inside of what was the sides/cheeks as well as the inside top of the intake to reduce the size in the height of the intake and to form a basis to slim it down on the outside as well. Probably the harder way of doing this but with the tools I have there is not much option.

As per my previous post, I have the forward and upper parts of the former engine covers glued in place and I am working on finding parts of a fuel tank to form the basis of the under nose fairing.

I have also laminated some plastic card for the fuselage extension which will really have to wait until I get the cockpit painted and put together. Why do I always hate cockpits and the possibility of fiddly painting that goes with them?

Gondor

[Gondor44]

Well I thought I had found the perfect fuel tanks, from a 1/48 Hunter, however it was too thin but it did remind me that I had a fuel tank from a Hercules which was duly dug out of its location and checked for size. Width and depth looked really good and the taper of the tanks nose was a really good fit for the curvature towards the nose of the aircraft so a rough note was taken of where to cut it into parts and the rest they say is history as was the tank for its original purpose 







The only problem now that this part has been fitted is that the work I have performed on the upper half of the engine area looks very poor in comparison 



There is enough Hercules fuel tank left to make a cover for the upper part of the engine and I could cut out sections to fit the exhaust area from the original kit but I will have to check the curvature against the drawings to see if there will be any material added to or removed from the proposed replacement upper part for the engine. I could end up rebuilding most of this nose utilizing the fuel tank as the basis and only using the drawings as a guide for the profile on the upper surface and the positioning of the under fuselage intakes. In fact the more I think about it the more likely that is what I will do!

Now if I can find another fuel tank from a Hercules I can consider this method for building a P. 1030

Gondor

 

[Gondor44]

So a few minutes work this afternoon which is going to end up with several hours of work during the coming week 

It all started so innocently 

Quite rightly thinking that I should fit the cockpit parts to the wings would allow me to paint the interior while giving me a surface to work from for the engine.



The next thing was to fit the cockpit floor and rear bulkhead which I had glued together years ago as a single item. Only problem was possibly a slight taper which didn't allow the floor to fit in from the rear of the cockpit. The result was the bulkhead bring broken away from the floor and said floor attached into the cockpit from the front!





So far so good 

I thought I would check the fitment of part of the Hercules fuel tank against the front end of the cockpit. Not good 



As this picture shows as well as the last one in my previous post, the fuel tank is too wide, not by a huge amount, but too wide none the less.

So this means that the work I have done so far on the engine needs to be pulled apart and started again, this time as well as using a similar build process to what I have done so far, this time I will make my own drawings based on the kit with the drawings I have been using as a guide.

Gondor

[Gondor44]

After some searching through various storage box's for spare parts and checking various fuel tank diameters, the F-15 and F-111 and even a Shackleton MR3 wing rip tank are not the right size 

However the radar nose from a Matchbox Meteor is a little on the small size which will do well 

A nose from an NF.14 would have been ideal but as I have been using mine for things such as the front dorsal turret in B-29's, B-50's and Tu-4's I don't have any left so a few NF.12 noses will have to do along with more of the original engine cover than I was intending. Probably going to need to use more filler than I was hoping to use as well 

Gondor

[Gondor44]

Not getting much done on this build at the moment as I am trying to get another model or two finished for the Scottish Nationals in Perth at the end of this month.

 

Gondor