Plan B - Airfix SR53 - finished (34 hours)

[AdrianMF]

Hello All,

 

It was painfully obvious that I wasn't going to do the Fairey Long Range Monoplane in time for this GB, so I have paused it. However, while reading Bonhoff's excellent S6B post, I got to musing about kits you could slap together on a Saturday morning. So, this being Saturday, I tiptoed down to the garage at 7am...

 

I always remember looking at the Airfix SR53, thinking "I don't build jets, but if I did, I'd build that one!"

 

Build a classic, hard to find, red stripe baggie?

 

Gulp. Not on my watch!

 

"Hello, my name is Adrian and I have a red stripe collecting problem." Welcome to the group Adrian.

 

So how about the beautiful Freightdog model? 

 

Nope, it would take too long to do properly.

 

But how about this?

 

The Ursus repop, acquired for peanuts on EBay years ago. Same plastic - perfect!

 

Including Gort:

 

And a wacky stand:

 

If only I had some references:

 

The fairing on top of the tailplane is wrong, but the fuselage is wronger, being too deep:

 

A Saturday morning build needs a thumbprint:

 

To make the fuselage shallower, the lower edge was brutally bent upwards, getting back some 3mm of added slimness:

 

The airbrakes have a side with an ejector mark and a smooth side. I put the smooth side out but then realised that it is flat. The ejector pin side is contoured to match the fuselage:

 

After all the bending the lower fuselage needed some brutal filing to restore some mating edges. This took the stand slot away:

 

Add air intake trunking:

 

Gort and the seat do not measure up to the Freightdog one:

 

Time for a new interior and seat:

 

And painted up with some hypothetical red bits. I would demand a button that said "rocket booster!":

 

I had glued the wings together and got the undercarriage in:

 

glued up the fuselage:

 

and cut my finger open when the blade broke when I was trying to make the front undercarriage door fit:

 

I took this as a sign that it was time to make lunch...

 

Next up was to remove the end of the tail fairing to get it off the trim tab, and to extend the front a bit:

 

Reshape the canopy to use as a vacform master:

 

Sand down the wings to get the undercarriage doors level. Note that the plastic has a yellow skin - dried moulded release agent?

 

Components ready for assembly:

 

Thogether and filled:

 

Canopy is a plunge moulded, first try:

 

And sprayed with Halfords white primer in the garden:

 

So I should be able to finish this one!

 

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

[TonyTiger91]

Good grief! 

Well done Adrian !!

 

I didn't know that there had been a repop of this kit.  

I was worried at first; thought that you were going to use the red stripe one. I've seen them sell for enough for a new pair of tyres for my car!

 

Superb progress. I think Gort is fantastic !  

 

Looking forward to this world record build!

 

Best regards 

TonyT

[keefr22]

13 minutes ago, TonyTiger66 said:

I was worried at first; thought that you were going to use the red stripe one. I've seen them sell for enough for a new pair of tyres for my car!

 

 

I've just had a look on flea bay & the only kit on there is one of those Ursus re-pops that would probably get you the other two...!!

 

Cracking work Adrian, takes me back to modelling 50 odd years ago (when the red stripe kit would have been pocket money priced, but for some reason is one of the very few Airfix kits I've never bought) - the only difference is that lovely vac canopy replacing the opaque glue smeared one I'd have stuck on. Oh, and the lack of gluey finger prints everywhere else!

 

Keith

[AdrianMF]

Hello All,

 

Day two dawns. A change of personnel...

 

"Move over, darling"

 

A smaller pilot, possibly from the latest Airfix Me109. Fits like a dream:

 

Canopy on, masked and another coat of Halfords white primer:

 

Decals are all Xtradecals and the letters are very fragile. Two steps forward...

 

And done! The glue inside the port wing still hasn't dried out from yesterday. The perils of fast builds - 34 hours for this one!

 

Two more pics in the gallery.

 

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

[bzn20]

We had this very 'plane XD145 in our Tail bay (3) Base Hangar ,Brize in the late 70s for ages getting a respray and IRC some bits that were missing made up to look like the real things, could have been the missiles but not sure.. spent ages looking over it. Anyway one weekend we were working and an old man was having a hangar visit being shown/escorted 'round by someone. He stopped mouth open staring at it. He was one of its  pilots ! Made his day ! Think it was done for Cosford by the Brize Norton Aviation Society.

Edited July 9, 2017 by bzn20

[bzn20]

I just found a PDF you want to go down to page 3 for the details of the Brize job. Also gives Magazines and date refs for further reading..

 

https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/documents/collections/69-A-696-SR-53-XD145.pdf

 

It gives a full list of flights and tests carried out with dates.

[AdrianMF]

Thanks BZN20! I will have a look at the PDF when I have my proper computer out...

 

It is a lovely aeroplane. I've seen it a few times at Cosford. I've just realised I did this build without looking at any of the reference pictures I took!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Cookenbacher]

Super cool Adrian.

[Gorby]

You didn't use Gort!

34 hours! I know someone who has been working on this kit for about 6 months!

It's an excellent model, of an amazing aircraft, I just wish there was a decent 1/48 injection moulded kit.

 

You say there are more photos in the gallery - not being familiar with the group builds, where would I find that?  

[keefr22]

Cracking job Adrian, that scrubbed up really well!

 

Keith

[keefr22]

38 minutes ago, Gorby said:

You say there are more photos in the gallery - not being familiar with the group builds, where would I find that?  

 

It's usually at the top of the individual group build forum Gorby, as here;

 

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235017857-gallery/

 

Keith

[AdrianMF]

I built a quick stand using some coat hanger, balsa and paper and grabbed some shots in the last light of the evening...

 

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

 

[Dermo245]

Brilliant stuff Adrian.. 

 

Never built one but takes me right back to seeing it in an Airfix catalogue  

 

Dermot

[AdrianMF]

Thanks chaps! It was good fun and my last weekend of modelling (indeed, of being at home) until the end of August...

 

27 minutes ago, Dermo245 said:

Never built one

It was always on the series one stand at my local newsagents and I loved the header card art work, but I loved WW2 planes with guns and rockets and bombs a bit more! My wife (who has sound judgement, apart from her dubious taste in men) pointed out that I must like it quite a bit if I have three kits...

 

Regards,

Adrian

[spaddad]

tasty

[Gorby]

Thanks Keith - I found it, and lots more! I wondered where they were all hiding.

 

 

Lovely build Adrian - I want one more!

[AdrianMF]

Sadly I'm at work today and travelling tomorrow morning, because I've just remembered I picked up a Fly 1/72 Rotachute kit a couple of Telfords ago. Would have been perfect

 

Reading from Wikipedia: "On 14 March 1941, the M.10 model was successfully air-launched from a Boulton & Paul Overstrand."  Now that  would make a fine diorama!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Bonhoff]

Me like that you've posed the plane in the same position as the Airfix illustration....

[Caerbannog]

Great build Adrian -  and a great read

René

[TonyTiger91]

Excellent! It looks superb Adrian !

 

The canopy and pilot really make a difference. I really did like Gort, although I can see why you didn't use him.

 

Where will he go now, he's quite special?

 

The Rotachute diorama sounds wonderful. I read a little about the development unit. It couldn't be more eccentrically British if it tried.

 

At one point they were towing a 'rotabuggy' (a jeep with a rotor and fairing), gliding with two chaps in it, towed at speed behind a 4.5 litre Bentley !!!

 

When I read things like that, it makes me proud to be British !

 

Well done Adrian, thank you for a lovely and record speed built gallery entry.

 

Best regards

TonyT

[bentwaters81tfw]

I built the Ursus jobbie a few years back, then gave it a facelift when Paul Parkes printed a new decals sheet for both prototypes.

It is not a repop of the Airfix kit, it's a different set of moulds. I discovered this when Pete in Lincs sent me an Airfix basket case this year, which I rebuilt. The panel lines are all different.  Ian at Kits for Cash does a nice resin kit in 1/48 under his Simian Models banner.

[Head in the clouds.]

Love it and right up my street, and all in 34 hours. You did have me worried when you were talking about the Red stripe kit though.

[AdrianMF]

Thanks for the kind comments chaps...

 

On 10/07/2017 at 18:00, bentwaters81tfw said:

It is not a repop of the Airfix kit, it's a different set of moulds.

 

Hmmm... that's an interesting assertion. Several things spring to my mind:

 

• I could have bought Ursus plastic in an Airfix bag, which would explain why my two sets of plastic look the same. After all it was a second hand kit and it was only 15 quid. But the header card looks too tidy to have been opened and resealed and the plastic is *somewhat* different (see below). I've only looked through the bag though, and at the time it was a fairly cursory comparison - "oh, yeah, it's a repop" - but I've looked at my photos a bit harder since.
• On my two kits the panel lines on the fuselage and flying surfaces are exactly the same, even to the point of having the same imperfections (raised edges by the grooves on the fuselage, blurring of the control surface engraving) so they look to be, if not the same mould, then a copy that looks too exact to be achievable with the technology of the time/place except by taking a mould back off the moulding. Maybe someone had scribed extra/different panel lines on your "basket case" kit? I know I have on mine.
• The smaller parts also look exactly the same and, more tellingly, glaringly wrong in exactly the same way: the rockets, the wheels, the seat and Gort are all the exactly the same. With the same proviso as above.
• However, the sprue layout is different! On my "Airfix" the rockets and wheels are opposite sides of the sprue, on my "Ursus" they are the same side. The Airfix runner does look like a blob of plastic (a bit like, say, the Bristol F2B that they released around the same time), so maybe Ursus re-arranged the mould with a more sensible runner - I don't know enough about mould engineering to know if that's possible or not, but Airfix have upgraded their kits over the years to include more modern pilots on existing runners.
• Why would Ursus go to the cost and trouble of engineering a brand new mould of an obscure research plane, and then make it not much better than an existing kit, in the days before ebay and silly prices?

So I would tend to think it's either a re-jig of the Airfix mould (which Airfix presumably don't have any more) or it's a very (spookily) close copy which included most of the flaws of the original (it's a rare kit from 1958, not a perfect one!).

 

Thanks for raising the issue, it has been interesting to think about. I wonder if anyone out there can shed any more light on the the history?

 

Regards,

Adrian 

 

[Gorby]

This suggests that the Ursus kit was derived from the Airfix kit, sometime in the 1970's.

 

https://www.scalemates.com/kits/158651-ursus-saunders-roe-sr-53

[bentwaters81tfw]

A noticeable difference is the scribed engine access cover (s) on the spine. Airfix is ,one piece, Ursus is 2 panels.