1:72 Airfix BAC TSR.2

[Navy Bird]

37 minutes ago, FZ6 said:

Looking forward to seeing this one. I have the same kit and the CMR Resin as well.

 

Just a few words of warning based on my experience. the CMR bomb bay on my example is shorter than the kit part I'm not sure if this was down to shrinkage so your part might be ok. Mine will need some modification to fit.

 

Also if you fit the electronics bay and the resin nose wheel well they foul each other so it might take a bit of fettling to get them both to fit.

 

Hope you find this information useful and look forward to seeing the build progress

 

Regards,

 

Mark

 

 

Thanks for the head's up.  

 

I took a quick look at the bomb bay in my CMK set, and it seems to fit the Airfix lower fuselage part quite well. At most, it's 0.5mm shorter than the kit part. So I don't think I have a problem there. Yours was 3mm shorter? Wow, that's a lot of shrinkage. I wonder if CMK changed the pattern after finding an error?

 

As far as the avionics bay, I think that CMK might have made a change to the parts, as the nose wheel bay does not look like the drawing in their instructions. Their part is a full 7mm shorter than the kit part, and this difference is all up front where the avionics bay will be. Plus, there is an additional notch cut in the front of the nose wheel bay to provide an extra millimetre or so of clearance. The notch is right where the aft end of the avionics bay will be. It looks like it will be tight, but not insurmountable.

 

And speaking of those avionics bays, I mentioned that I "accidentally" bought an extra one. Would it make any sense to use them both, one on each side? The part is clearly modelled after the open starboard bay on the display aircraft, but I notice that the panel lines are the same on both halves of the fuselage. I'll have to peruse the books and see if I can find a picture of what's under the panel on the port side.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Gondor44]

Just got around to uploading some pictures I took of the TSR.2 at Cosford last year on my way to Telford as I thought they may be of help to you.

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/48415782@N05/collections/72157690569810336/

 

The spare tail I have is yours if you want it as well.

 

Gondor

[Navy Bird]

1 hour ago, Gondor44 said:

Just got around to uploading some pictures I took of the TSR.2 at Cosford last year on my way to Telford as I thought they may be of help to you.

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/48415782@N05/collections/72157690569810336/

 

The spare tail I have is yours if you want it as well.

 

Gondor

 

Great photos, thanks for the link. They will help a lot. I'd like to take you up on the offer for the fin, too, as I haven't been able to find it through my usual sources. I'll send you a PM. Thanks again!

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Navy Bird]

20 hours ago, woody37 said:

Wow, this is going to be a joy to watch Bill. Have you forgotten some metal undercarriage to support all that resin 🤭

 

Hannants just got another £50 of wifey's shoe & handbag allowance, and somewhere in that package is a set of white metal landing gear. I hope this means the model will not suffer any gear failures like XR219, or XR220 when she tipped over.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Bejay53]

As to the lady pilots...I had to find out more:

 

Checking the name on the box " Stratos4". Looks like an anime from the early 2000's. Something to do with a terrestrial meteor sweep squadron. Typical for these stories....young, super skilled, large breasted young women.

i'm looking forward to that build!

 

[Robert]

Looking forward to your build. Is it going to be real world or what if ?

 

Robert

[Dazzio]

1 hour ago, Bejay53 said:

As to the lady pilots...I had to find out more:

 

Checking the name on the box " Stratos4". Looks like an anime from the early 2000's. Something to do with a terrestrial meteor sweep squadron. Typical for these stories....young, super skilled, large breasted young women.

i'm looking forward to that build!

 

 

   2003 to be precise I actually own all 4 "series" from this show. It's your typical teenagers saving the planet from an external threat. Least it isn't Evangelion... Anyhow...

 

  I'll tag along with this build also. I'll also be stealing tips, as I want to buy/build the MS version one day.

 

  Kind Regards,

 

  Dazz

[David H]

Bring on the BWPT!!

 

(Big White Pointy Thing)

 

-d-

[Martian]

Excellent choice of project Bill. As to getting two equipment bays, the portside bay's contents are significantly different to the starboard side so I would be inclined to save my money.

 

Martian

[Navy Bird]

3 hours ago, Bejay53 said:

As to the lady pilots...I had to find out more:

 

Checking the name on the box " Stratos4". Looks like an anime from the early 2000's. Something to do with a terrestrial meteor sweep squadron. Typical for these stories....young, super skilled, large breasted young women.

i'm looking forward to that build!

 

 

Japanese animation is really different. Back when we used to have video shops over here, there was an entire section of anime. Quite a unique style.

 

1 hour ago, Robert said:

Looking forward to your build. Is it going to be real world or what if ?

 

Robert

 

I think it will be XR220, because that's the one I have the most references for, and I like the extra link that was added to the main gear. And it's clean, so I don't have to go crazy trying to weather it.

 

1 hour ago, Dazzio said:

  2003 to be precise I actually own all 4 "series" from this show. It's your typical teenagers saving the planet from an external threat. Least it isn't Evangelion... Anyhow...

 

  I'll tag along with this build also. I'll also be stealing tips, as I want to buy/build the MS version one day.

 

Sounds like a pretty bizarre cartoon, but I'm so old I wouldn't get it anyway. For animation, give me Bullwinkle and Terry Gilliam. Look forward to the MS build, you don't see many of those.

 

56 minutes ago, David H said:

Bring on the BWPT!!

 

(Big White Pointy Thing)

 

Yeah, baby! I've been wanting to do this one for a while. I finally said to myself "start the bloody thing already!"

 

40 minutes ago, Martian Hale said:

Excellent choice of project Bill. As to getting two equipment bays, the portside bay's contents are significantly different to the starboard side so I would be inclined to save my money.

 

I was wondering when my favourite alien would show up. You know, we had a TV show over here back in the 60s called "My Favorite Martian." Reruns are probably on YouTube. Thanks for the note on the port side bay. I think one will be enough for this build anyway. I had bookmarked your quarter scale WIP, but the pictures aren't there anymore. !@#$!@$!! Photobucket! Any chance you can point those links to where the photos reside presently? I know it's a PITA to do that, I've been slowly working through my threads. But I recall that your build had a lot of extra goodies done do it, and your techniques would be of use to me. Just a thought.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Martian]

Unfortunately I made the mistake of using Phototurd to store my TSR pictures. I am happy for you to log on to my old account. PM sent.

 

Martian

[Vladan Dugaric]

Stratos 4 series is really quite good. Watch it, you may be surprised by what you find below the surface of what appears to be an average Anime.

 

The characters are animated in traditional Anime 2D cell style, big eyes and all you normally find in Japanese animated films. However, the story is pretty good, bordering hard science fiction.

 

Airplanes have been animated by aviation enthusiasts who put a lot of thought into detail. All aircraft except the titular Stratos 0 (which got renamed to Stratos 4 later in the series) are real (with some modifications), and Stratos is a mix of Concorde, Tu-22 or Tu-160 and B-58. Spacecraft are either real (Soyuz rocket and capsule) or fictional (space station, though somewhat similar to ISS, but much bigger and with more advanced parts, as well as Comet Blaster spacecraft, while fictional, are based in part on lifting body experimental aircraft/spacecraft). This part was done as computer generated 2D wireframe which was then animated by hand, giving very realistic shapes and movement, with a huge amount of tiny details done right (such as correct movement of control surfaces during flight). Surprisingly for a Japanese animation, the English flight terminology has been done very well and pretty much correctly.

 

Space station interiors and exteriors are all 3D computer animation.

 

Soundtrack is simply amazing, with lots of references to The Right Stuff, Apollo 13 and several other well known and loved film scores. Plus there is an entire episode which is a full plot reference to The Right Stuff with plenty of in-jokes.

 

There is plenty of character development, and the story is not of the good versus evil type, so there are no villains in the true sense. There are also several subplots which lead to entirely satisfying conclusions (in both Original and Advance series), but all in all this is a seamless set of episodes which should be treated as one series.

 

Then, there are cats. That itch to go to space. With one full episode dedicated to them. Plus appearing in all other episodes, as comic relief and as commentary on humans being silly.

 

All the locations are all real, and are accurately reproduced in painstaking detail. The only exception is the space station. The main location is Shimojishima island, but there are scenes on Okinawa, Tanegashima (the real Japanese space launch centre) and Japanese mainland.

 

There are some dark themes in the story line, which have been offset by quite a lot of humour, as is done in many literary and cinematic works somewhat similar to how Star Wars offsets dark themes by comic relief. However, in Stratos 4 the same characters change between comic relief and serious scenes, some more than others.

 

Series 1 and 2 (OVA = Original Video Animation) have been both subtitled and synchronised in English (though, there is Japanese soundtrack to choose should one be inclined to do so), and English synchronisation is well done by voice actors and actresses that do a lot of Anime synchronisation (so their voices may sound familiar to those who watch Anime). Series 3 and 4 only have Japanese soundtrack and English subtitles. Subtitles are not particularly accurate, so in English soundtrack version it is noticeable that subtitles are only approximate to what is being said (though the meaning is the same).

 

In late 2015 there was a Blu-Ray release for Japanese domestic market, but it probably does not have any English soundtrack or subtitles. Unfortunately, Studio Fantasia which made the series went bankrupt around that time, so there is very slim chance of international Blu-Ray release. It can be found on DVD, various streaming sites for Anime, and even on YouTube. Soundtrack is available on 4 CDs, and it can also be found on YouTube.

 

Quite a lot of useful info about Stratos 4 can be found on TV Tropes and some basic episode information is available on Wikipedia.

 

Edited October 3, 2023 by Vladan Dugaric

[stever219]

8 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

 

Hannants just got another £50 of wifey's shoe & handbag allowance, and somewhere in that package is a set of white metal landing gear. I hope this means the model will not suffer any gear failures like XR219, or XR220 when she tipped over.

 

Cheers,

Bill

XR220 almost literally fell off the back of a lorry.  The completed fuselage had been loaded onto a trailer for the journey from Weybridge to Boscombe Down for reassembly and first flight: in order to meet vertical clearance requirements (can you imagine the press hullabaloo if Britain's newest low-level strike aircraft had got stuck under a low bridge?) the main undercarriage had been retracted and the nosewheel leg had been removed.  Roland Beamont himself, IIRC, commented (Aeroplane Monthly article) that the trailer didn't appear to be up to the job but everything went according to plan up to the moment that it arrived outside the hangar at Boscombe Down where reassembly had to take place.  Outside the hangar was parked RPB's 2-seat Lightning: attempting to back "round a corner" to pass this the driver all but jack knifed the trailer and it rolled onto its left side with the fuselage still firmly attached and only just missing the parked Lightning.  A significant number of catastrophic amusement outages occurred, after which a plan to recover the fuselage was devised.

 

The plan involved raising the fuselage on airbags with a sling round the forepart and a cable attached to the starboard tail plane spigot.  As the fuselage rose and rotated towards an upright position the starboard undercarriage was to be lowered by hand pumping until fully extended.  A further cable was then to be attached (port tailplane spigot or jacking point?) and the lift continued until the port undercarriage could also be pumped down.  With the fuselage now supported on its main undercarriage the nosewheel leg was then reinstalled and the fuselage could then be moved.

 

Despite the weight of the fuselage surprisingly little major damage was done: rigging checks showed that very little or no distortion had occurred and the thread on the end of the port tailplane spigot was almost completely undamaged.  However a surprising amount of crud (swarf, rivets and even some tools IIRC) were found inside the airframe behind damaged panels.  The port camera fairing was, unsurprisingly, completely demolished.

 

Part of the reason for moving the prototypes from Weybridge to Boscombe Down was the available runway length at the latter: Roland Beamont amongst others had expressed great concern that, had first flights been undertaken at the BAC company airfield at Wisley, a brake and/or brake 'chute failure either during a rejected take-off or landing would have had the jet through the hedge and straight across the Portsmouth Road.  With effect from XR225 onwards a degree of common sense was (finally) to have been applied with final assembly and first flights to take place at Warton; '225's fuselage was in the join-up jig at Warton on cancellation day, having arrived there on the back of another, more suitable lorry, less than two weeks before.

 

If wifey's shoe-and-handbag money has been (more wisely) spent on a set of SAC legs they should address the slightly-overdone splay on the main legs and help keep the wheels upright: I've seen a number of models where the wheels have quite a lot of toe-out, a bit of a ruptured duck look, because of this.

[Navy Bird]

Thanks mates - great info on the anime and the lorry. I wonder how the lorry driver felt after the incident - nowadays, the press would be all over him I suspect. Oh well, stuff happens as they say.

 

So how about I actually do some work on this bad boy? The first order of business is to see how the aftermarket will attach and what, if any, modifications need to be made to the kit parts or the resin. In my experience, you usually have to do both and I'm expecting that here. Since I want to display the starboard avionics bay open, I have to cut out the panel from the fuselage. I use a couple of different techniques to do this - sometimes I use a scribing tool (specifically the one from Tamiya which can remove a lot of plastic quickly) and continually re-scribe the panel lines until I've broken through. The plastic is quite thick on this model, though, so I decided to use the old drill and hack technique. It's important to not get your drill holes too close to the actual panel lines, as you need some plastic left to do the final shaping. First, use a marker to show where you want to drill:

 

 

Then I used a small woodworking drill of 0.050" diameter to make some pilot holes. All drilling was done by hand, no electrons were consumed.

 

 

These don't have to be precise, because next it's time for larger drill sizes that eventually overlap each other so that the inner portion of the panel is free. And it ain't pretty! This looks like a meteor strike, perhaps betraying the kit's Stratos 4 origin.

 

 

Now, with some sanding sticks and scalpel blades, this was cleaned up in a satisfactory manner. I took my time to make sure that I didn't go beyond the kit's panel lines, but I failed to remember to do one specific thing (as we'll learn later).

 

 

Some wise person once said "measure twice, and cut once." As someone who spent most of his life in the metrology industry (metrology, not meteorology, geez) you would think I would know this. But alas, I did not measure the actual resin avionics bay which, of course, is slightly smaller than this opening. All is not lost, as the vertical edges of the opening can be built up with strip styrene and we'll all be happy. Except the clod who made this extra work for himself. Dolt.

 

Now, the avionics bay itself has to have its pour block removed completely so that it won't interfere with other components. I think this is one of the most common issues I see with resin parts - folks not removing all of the pour block and then complaining that it doesn't fit. Well, we take injection moulded parts off of the sprue before assembly, right? It's the same with the pour block. Let's have a look:

 

 

See that extra layer of resin on top of the avionics bay? That's the pour block and it's gotta go. The temptation is always to start going at it with sanding sticks but this might take you a while. Never being one to shy away from potentially debilitating tendon severing, I prefer a razor saw.

 

The key to getting a clean cut is to saw a little bit on each of the four sides, and work your way around the block several times. The cuts you make will serve to guide the blade of the saw and you cut deeper and deeper, so you don't get off track and cut through the inertial guidance and terrain following radar boxes. Soon, the pour block will pop off, and life will be swell (unless you slipped and actually severed a tendon - for this I advise rapid application of superglue and a trip to the National Health).

 

 

We'll find out later how well this fits, especially with the cockpit, nose gear, and bomb bay resin. I then had a look at the cockpit (and beautiful it is!) but in order for it to be in its proper cockpit-esque position, in-between tightly closed fuselage halves, the locating tabs for the kit cockpit have to be removed. Not unexpected, but Ugh! just the same. The only tabs that don't have to be removed are the ones at the bottom, and this includes the various bumps underneath the section of fuselage between the two cockpits. This is because the rear instrument panel in the CMK set fits in this area. I removed all this stuff with a Dremel tool and a round bit, some very coarse sandpaper, and an occasional expletive. I think I also accidentally removed an alignment peg or two, but who needs those? I build Special Hobby kits!

 

All of that was followed by some fine sanding and Bob's yer uncle.

 

 

The resin pit needed to have just a slight sanding on the sides in order to have the fuselage halves close as they should around it. Luckily, the avionics bay does not interfere with the cockpit in any way.

 

 

You'll notice that the cockpit tub has received a coat of Dark Admiralty Grey - I can't tell you how many times I've sanded things to fit only to find they don't fit once they're painted. Tolerances are such a pain.

 

Today, I'll see about the nose gear bay, and if I'm lucky will also have a go at the bomb bay. After I shovel the driveway, of course. Memsahib beckons.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[giemme]

In other words, the Ultimate Guide for Dealing with Resin Aftermarkets in Kit Building

 

There are only two points in which my approach differs from yours: I use a chopping Dremel bit to open up panels like you did for the avionics bay (chopping away from a large hole previously drilled in the panel centre up to safely close to the panel lines, then the rest as you described). Also, to remove pouring blocks from resin parts, I often take the easy way out and sand them flat with a Dremel sanding disc - in my garage and wearing an appropriate respirator mask.

 

See, the thing is that I'm lazy . ..

 

Great to see this moving already, anyway

 

Ciao

 

 

[Navy Bird]

Let's see, did I do anything today other than sit at the computer? Well, kinda sorta. I test fit the rather dapper main gear bay and I think it'll be OK. It's a tad short, but luckily not 3mm as reported earlier. Yikes, that wouldn't be any fun. The camera makes it look worse than it actually is, because the resin piece has dropped down a bit. It's darn heavy!

 

 

Next, I added some styrene strips to fix the opening for the avionics bay at the correct width for the resin piece. I then glued the avionics bay into the starboard fuselage half.

 

 

Still some cleaning up to do, but I'm happy with it for now. I then test fit the nose wheel well to make sure everything is OK.

 

 

 

You can see the notch cast in the front of the wheel well for clearance with the avionics bay. I just had to make a slight modification to it so it would fit better with the wheel well. The mod was to sand down the lower aft corner of the avionics bay by 2mm or so. Luckily this didn't harm the details in any way. The hole in that corner that you can see in the photo came from me sanding down the back of the avionics bay after I cut off the pouring block. Methinks I sanded a bit too far there! But you can't see it from the front, so I don't care.  

 

It baffles me why Airfix moulded the piece of the lower fuselage just in front of the nose gear separately. But they did and luckily it doesn't fit too bad.

 

I think the internal resin pieces all fit, and I can get on with painting them and assembling the fuselage. I wonder if I should read any of the instruction sheets...

 

Cheers,

Bill

[SallysDad]

This is really interesting.

[Phone Phixer]

Looks like the cockpit rear bulkhead is going to be tight against the avionics bay.

[Navy Bird]

11 minutes ago, Phone Phixer said:

Looks like the cockpit rear bulkhead is going to be tight against the avionics bay.

 

Fits like a charm - with a tiny gap to spare!  

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. Here's a pic:

 

 

[Phone Phixer]

Nice........almost as if it was made for the job!!

[Navy Bird]

1 minute ago, Phone Phixer said:

Nice........almost as if it was made for the job!!

 

Which cannot be said for a lot of resin aftermarket!   

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Procopius]

On 1/5/2018 at 3:50 PM, Navy Bird said:

If I recall, the corrected fin has an intake in the leading edge. Did all three prototypes have this, or was it specific to a particular airframe?

Based on photo inspection, XR219, 220, and 222 all appear to have it. 

[Graeme H]

Blimey I get sick on Saturday, with some dreaded lurgy, and now I'm sort of feeling a bit better I find this, so is there a chair in the quarantine sections that I may sit in on this.

[stever219]

4 hours ago, Procopius said:

Based on photo inspection, XR219, 220, and 222 all appear to have it. 

IIRC it served the artificial feel system for the powered flying controls, so it would apply to all prototype and pre-production aeroplanes at least.  There's a duct that leads down through the fin spigot to the feel unit bellows I think.

 

Some significant rearrangement within the rear fuselage was planned for production aircraft (mainly to ease congestion within the engine accessory bays) which may have led to further revisions to maintain CofG.

 

There's a very good cutaway drawing that shows this which I first recall seeing in a mid-seventies RAF Yearbook as part of a short article by Roland Beamont about XR219's first and only excursion north of the sound barrier.

[perdu]

Can we arrange for a segregated room for Graeme please, some of we elderly watchers have been warned to keep away from infections because we're old

And I can go in there too, I feel a cold coming on

 

I will have someone coming in at odd times to replenish the cocktail bar and popcorn

I have an affinity to XR220, whenever our club gets in to the Cosford/Telford modellers show I manage to sever veins in my scalp on the front UHF antenna

 

Move across a tad Graeme, this is Bill going to excel