Off with the Faireys - Fighting Zvezda's Battle

[Putty Animal]

Hello, I'm new here!

 

I had the good fortune to discover Britmodeller recently and have been reading my way through all the fantastic builds, reviews and discussions presented here.  I've been so impressed and inspired by all your talent, humour, enthusiasm, insights and cups of tea that I thought I'd sign up perhaps try to take part in some small way. 

 

I didn't want to show up to the party empty handed however, so I thought I'd show some of what I'm working on at the moment.  I should probably come out with it straight away and say that I'm rather into 1/144 - for better or for worse!  The scale has come a long way since the bad old days of Crown and Revell micro wings.  There's some great stuff out there nowadays.  Although sometimes things do take the odd step backwards...

 

They say misery loves company.  So here's my Zvezda 1/144 Fairey Battle.  😅

 

**********************

 

I've been cracking on with this for a good long while now, so I'll break it up into a separate posts to get things up to speed.

 

I've always loved the Battle.  It was on my wishlist of Airfix kits as a nipper but never seemed to appear in the shops round here.  Decades later, and I was still wanting one.  When the Zvezda kit arrived I snatched one up quick, hoping for a fast and accurate build.  Instead I got a Monopoly counter.  A wargamer's piece that could be assembled in minutes and was best admired by setting it upon a broad table, and standing arms folded and well back!

 

 

So... Have at it I said.

 

The first thing I did was to sand off the fabric effect from the rear fuselage. The Battle is an all-metal aircraft and only the control surfaces were fabric covered.  Once that was done I shaved down the location lugs inside the fuselage to give them a loose fit. It makes it much handier to open and close the two halves doing a lot of test fitting and measuring.

The measuring is where things began to get a little out of control. Using Richard J Caruana's scale drawings and a lot of photographs I was able to start taking spot dimensions to check accuracy of the kit. As I went I found that there were quite a few key areas where Zvezda's Battle was coming up short. A little later I also obtained some slightly better drawings by Kenneth Merrick and was able to use these too.

Starting out with the fuselage, I took the position of the leading edge of the wing as a sort of datum and began checking everything from there. The length of the nose was good. The position of the forward canopy was just a shade too far forward and easily corrected. The sides of the pilots cockpit were cut too low and needed some work to build them back up. The decking behind the cockpit was meant to be curved rather than flat. These things seemed fairly straightforward and I planned to make a new canopy so I wasn't all that concerned. The further back I went the more serious things became however. The rear fuselage was short be about 2.2mm. Good enough for 144th is a phrase I never liked.  It's the same as saying 9mm is near enough for 1/32. Imagine if Tamiya were out by that much on one of their Spitfires. People would be howling!

I was able to trace the fault to the area between the two cockpits. Adding a spacer there would make the observers position the correct length when complete too.
Below are a few shots of the build thus far. The plan is to open up the cockpits and show them with a new set of canopy pieces in the open position. The cockpits have been cut out and given a more accurate outline. A temporary decking piece is in place (I later decided to make this from brass) and I've started doing the setout for the rear cockpit opening.
 

 

 

By now I was getting nervous every time I got the calipers out. The cowling was too sharp.  The tailplane too short.  The wingspan was pretty good and I didn't think to look much further than that. Later I discovered that the chord of the wings was just over 1mm too narrow. It's that slab of a wing that is one of the key features which really identifies the Battle, so I resigned myself to having to fix it. Shortly after that I also found that the wings sweep back too steeply by about 2mm at the wingtips. Add to that a number of serious issues with the underside of the wings, and I very nearly put the whole lot in the bin at that point. Eventually though I plucked up some courage and got out my trusty jewellers saw. I cut the wings down the centre, then scored the wings at the position of the undercarriage (the width of these is correct for 1/72 by the way) and bent the leading edges until they pivoted forward. After that I added strips of styrene to get the wings to the correct width.

 

 

 

Getting there...
 

 

After all that I began work on the rear cockpit area.  I thinned down the sidewalls of the fuselage and corresponding area between the wings so much that I began to break out in a sweat.  I couldn't just detail the side walls of the fuselage as the wing root joint would be much too visible from inside. Instead I made a U-shaped tub from brass that fitted up under the sill of the cockpit aperture. I added a floor and some sidewall structure from styrene and sprue.  The first try at this was a little too shallow for the plethora of Vickers drums and other equipment, so I thinned things down even further and made a new-improved tub that looked much better than the first (took a quarter of the time too!).

 

 

 

Lots of priming and putty followed in order to correct the fuselage profiles.  The decking between cockpits was cut from brass and the holes drilled and widened with the tip of a scalpel.

Cutouts for landing lights were made, and various other fiddly bits.

 

 

 

 

 

I'll leave it there for now.  I hope you like it.  I'll add some more soon.

Thank you all!

 

 

Edited December 30, 2018 by Putty Animal

[Pete in Lincs]

Welcome to the madness.

Looks like you're infected already.

Keep them coming.

Pete

[woody37]

Wow, mad but great start

[neil5208]

I know the Fairey Battle was fairly large for a single engine aircraft, could we have a omparison against another 1/144 please. Like the work so far

[Putty Animal]

Thank you for the kind comments.  I'll keep adding more shots to bring the build up to speed so you can see where its at now.  I'll also take some new shots next to a couple of other RAF types for size comparison.  The Battle really is very large indeed for a single engine aircraft.

[stevehnz]

Cripes, now that is dedication. I've seen this attempted done in 1/72. @woody37 did one several years ago and @limeypilot has a build on hold just now (hint ) but to do this in 1/144 is beautifully, wonderfully bomkers, all credit to you.

Steve.

Edited October 7, 2018 by stevehnz

[Putty Animal]

Thanks so much!  I do love the scale.  1/144 has an unfortunate reputation as being an unbuildable novelty.  However when things come together well the effect can be quite wonderful.  Its like a small, heavily armed butterfly just landed on your desk.   😊

 

Here's some more.  The WOP/AG position and area forward into the bomb aimer's spot were detailed a bit further with parachute and seat.  The wireless equipment was added to the rear as well, although this is only barely visible in the sealed fuselage. 

 

 

To get the correctly sized interior fittings to locate accurately I had to thin down the fuselage to the point where the plastic became paper thin.  I was able to make good on this later when the fuselage was joined together by sealing it up with superglue and flushing everything in.   The Zvezda wheelwells were incorrect too.  The width was accurate for a 1/72 model, so I boxed these in to the correct dimensions.

 

 

Up to this point, I had been relying quite heavily on the drawings of Richard J Caruana.  After following them very closely for the first half of the build, I then compared them to photographs and Merrick's drawings. There were several key areas where things were well out of whack.   One of the biggest was the dihedral and I'm so glad I caught it in time!  Rather than being equal dihedral top and bottom, the upper wings are raised slightly. I needed to steam the wings and bend them up slightly to make good. Then add some putty to the upper surfaces to restore them to the correct shape.

 

 

Next was the transparencies and I plug-moulded these from .35mm acrylic sheet. It took a few tries to get the size right.  Again I had been using the Caruana drawings for reference, however I later found that these have a great many inaccuracies and I had to rework a lot of components.  I was delighted to find I had another set of MAP plans by Kenneth Merrick though, and these turned out to be much better.  By this time I decided to switch to the later style of exhausts, and pinched these from a Sweet Hurricane.  The temporary prop is borrowed from the spares box, but I decided to make a more detailed one later on.

 

 

 

That took me a month hard slog, but by that point I figured I'd established a bit of a bridgehead and was in with a fighting chance.  The transparencies are mostly done, aside from some thinning, polishing and final trims. The new 14x piece prop was been made, and the wing is finally attached with a prodigious amount of filler required to tidy everything up.

 

Below are some shots of the main assembly, resting under thickish coat of Tamiya primer.  I couldn't resist a bit of period coinage for scale

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up is the scribing.

[(ex)Sgtrafman]

1/144 - Blimey take away the coin and I'd swear that was 1/72 or bigger! Great work 👍

 

Iain

[Pete in Lincs]

Cor Mister, 'alf a cran? Wot a toff!

 

Seriously good looking Battle there.

Well worth the struggle.

 

 

[Max Headroom]

Now that’s a calling card! I see you’re also already living up to your name too.

 

I have this kit and never realised it was as out of kilter by that much. My only concern up to now was about painting the canopy......

 

Good luck and carry on.

 

Trevor

[woody37]

😜 unbelievable detail

[Martian]

This is going to be something special! No, hang on, it already is something special!

 

Martian 👽

[Terry1954]

Welcome indeed, and what an entrance!

 

I'm a wee bit partial to 1/144 myself, have 3 down and one in build (stalled for some time). You have made a cracking start to this one, and admire your attention to authenticity, with the adjustments to correct dimensions etc. Really looking forward to seeing this evolve.

 

Terry

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

That’s superb!  

 

[You’re not the first to be bitten by Caruana drawings]

[Brandy]

Very, very, nice! Lovely detail too. I will be back on my 1:72 Airfix one soon, I hope!

 

Ian

[Gazontipede]

Wowee. Talk about making an entrance!

I'm convinced some of you lot must have electron microscopes for eyes!

 

Also, some excellent news there Ian. Your Battle wrangling is also a thing of beauty and terror to behold. Wot, no rigging?

[Tony C]

I've got the same kit somewhere in the stash and love what you've done so far! 

 

May well be following you lead, when I get round to building mine.

 

One question though, are the Merreck plans commercial available?

[Putty Animal]

Hi Tony,

I think the Merrick drawings must be well out of print.  I got mine as part of a compilation from MAP publications about thirty years ago.  😓

 

Here's a scan of them at 600 dpi and resized to 1/144.  Bear in mind the windscreen is incorrect though and should be narrow at the base and wide at the top.  Not parallel as shown.  Apart from that the drawings are very good.

 

 

 

 

[Beggsy]

I am blown away by what you've done here.  That interior detail defies belief!  Are you sure this isn't 1:72? 

[Putty Animal]

Cheers Beggsy, you've tumbled me!  I have an inexhaustible supply of giant coins, pencils and matchsticks as props 

 

Here's some more progress.

I let the thickish primer dry and shrink for the best part of the week and wet sanded it very smooth with 2000 grit and something even finer that doesn't seem to have any grit at all. I realised I'd forgotten the nav lights though, so had to chop the wing tips out and insert some bits of acrylic the flush them in. New tyres and separate wheel hubs were made (easier that way) and the beginnings of the oleo legs made from .7mm wire.

The biggest job was scribing the panel lines. Originally I'd planned to just mark them with a pencil, but I really liked the fine lines on the Sweet Hurricane kit and tried to emulate these. Strips of scotch tape were used as a straight edge, and I dragged a sharpened needle in a pin vise backwards along the tape edge to make each panel line without tearing the surface.

I started with the wingroot fillets as the key points, then worked my way outwards. Pretty happy with the result so far. I also scribed the tailplanes and glued them in place, fussing over the alignment. Then I took out a tube of Tamiya polishing compound and spread this along the joins to make good on the seam...

After a moments reflection, I washed off the polishing compound with a brush and soapy water. Then reached for the tube of Tamiya putty and spread this along the seams instead.

Looking very Battle-like now.  I'm very pleased with the contours of the engine cowlings paricularly.  Lots of reshaping there but it was well worth it.

 

 

 

I then began industrially scribing the rear fuselage and undersurfaces and stuck the upper decking in place. The side lights for the gunners position were added too, however I noticed I'd over-sanded the fuselage just ahead of these and I needed to add some putty to pack the area out before adding the glazing. Lots of careful sanding and a test fit showed that I'd done it again.... Grrr!

Below you can see the scribed fuselage and a smudge of putty on what will hopefully be the last adjustment before the canopy section goes on. References all seem to agree that the curved decking between the pilot and gunner was Dark Earth, so I gave this a squirt of Mr Hobby H72 which seems to be the best match for DE.

I definitely recommend using the Scotch tape as an edge for scribing. It made a tricky job rather safe and enjoyable, and kind of more-ish.

 

 

Next up is some proper paint... 

 

[Brandy]

Those drawings have the same error that many plans have. They show the inner end of the wing trailing edge perpendicular to the fuselage. That is wrong, and I see you haven't copied it. Don't change the trailing edge you have as it is correct as a straight edge along the whole length.

 

Ian

[TheBaron]

Determined work on those corrections. Superb results.

Glad to see your work!

[Putty Animal]

The Battle continues, with a surprise attack by land, sea and airbrush...

 

Getting ready for paint, and the windscreen and sidelights in the gunner's position were reverse-masked, by placing strips of tape down as a guide. It makes things so much easier to get straight at this scale.  It looks like more work, but I swear it makes things easier!

 

 

Having the solid edge of the tape frames gives you something to line up against and something to see. Once the tape was on I got some water with a few drops of detergent and gave everything a wash with some wide brushes and soft cloth. Plus a bit of a tickle with some 5000 grit sandpaper if I thought anything needed it.  Then it was out to the balcony for a bit of a squirt... 

 

Just prior to painting I removed the guide strips from the windscreen and sprayed some interior green onto the transparencies. I then put a light coat of black over it and wafted the rest of the gun around the panel lines and wing root. After this opening barrage I then summoned the brown-jobs and loaded the airbrush with a well thinned quantity of Hobby Color H72 Dark Earth.

The paint went on pretty well, but I did notice a few bits of dust on the wings. These were dealt with using the 5k grit and I made good on that when I came back to do the second lighter coat with a bit of white added to it.

 

 

Bringing it back inside I took the windscreen masking off straight away before the paint began to harden too much. I find I get a better result that way. I couldn't resist giving the new prop a bit of paint too and pushing it in place for a test fit. Muttered aeroplane noises may have ensued...

 

 

The Dark Earth was allowed to harden, then later in the evening the masking began.  All the while cursing those Fairey camouflagists for their extra-frilly edges…

 

 

Phew!  Cammo complete.  The demarcation line has far more curves than most RAF patterns so that was a bit of a challenge.

 

 

That's all for now.  Thanks for looking.  Hope you like it! 

[Pete in Lincs]

Very much so. 

[Brandy]

This is really looking very special, great job on the masking! I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the camo on.

 

Ian