1/72 "Lift Here" Models Piper Enforcer nee Cavalier

[TheRealMrEd]

I'll jump in with the Lift Here Models 1/72 Piper Enforcer, which started out as the Cavalier Mustang, an aircraft created for the COIN or counter-insurgency mission.  It began as a creation of Dave Lindsay, owner of Cavalier Aircraft, but as his company was too small to mass produce the design, it was sold to Piper Aircraft around 1970.   Not to be confused with the earlier Cavalier Turbo Mustang III, which used a Rolls-Royce Dart 519 engine, the PA-48 Enforcers used the Lycoming T-55-L-9 turbo.

 

While never accepted for manufacture, they were still 19% ACTUAL  Mustang, and they looked like a Mustang!

 

 

As of now the fuse halves and cockpit stuff have been sawed from sprues, soaked in Green Stuff cleaner, and primed with Alclad II grey primer.  They await December 14th!

 

Ed

[Bedders]

Looking forward to this. Might need one...

 

Justin

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Definitely need one, this will be one to watch. 

[TEMPESTMK5]

Good morning Ed

That is a  very interesting  subject I will follow your build .

All the best

Patrice

[uncletommy]

You go Edster.  I wanna see this one too.  Back in the day when I was flying with the Aeroclub at MacDill, I always wanted to do a x-country down to Sarasota to stop and peek at Cavalier.  Never made it though.

[TheRealMrEd]

Thanks folks!

 

Yeah Tommy,  always meant to stp by at the Bradenton Airport and take a closer look, as you could see the darned thing from the highway.  Like you I also never did....(sigh)!

 

Ed

[Courageous]

Interesting subject.

 

Stuart

[Angus Tura]

This looks great at Lift Here!'s website. I was only previously aware of the Merlin Models kit of this. The Merlin Models one does not look like an easy build. I see with some annoyance that this is sold out at Lift Here! models who, also, seem to have ceased to exist!

 

Do put some pictures up,

 

Alan

 

 

[TheRealMrEd]

Finally it's the 14th, and we're off to the races!

 

First up, all the parts needed to close up the fuselage are painted.  Cockpit is Interior Gray, with some black bits, wheel wells are 34092, Dark Euro Green:

 

 

Some Instrument decals from Mike Grant dress up the I.P. and side consoles, plus a bit of black wash here and there.  Next up the main gear doors are also 34092 on the insides, while the Gear leg doors are Medium Green, 34102:

 

 

Above right, the cockpit is glued into place.  While there is a little square on the cockpit floor to locate the I.P., it is too far forward there, and must actually be moved back a bit (arrow).

 

At least it's a start.  More soon...

 

Ed

 

 

[TheRealMrEd]

A brief update:

 

Above left, the fuse halves are joined and we hit the first problem with the kit.  The ejection seat sits way too high.  Wish I'd caught that sooner.  All I could do was pry the seat back, and sand off almost the whole bottom, but that was only a slight improvement.  Above right, the rectangle where the kit sits needs to be shaved off, maybe even a hole dug into the cockpit floor, with a thin piece glue to the underside of the floor, to sort of rest the seat in a sunken platform.  Too late for me however!

 

Next up, the second problem with the kit;  the one-piece wing has barely any dihedral.  On a multi part wing, you'd usually, just glue on the bottom half, and then fudge the top wing a little to add some dihedral.  No joy here:

 

 

Above left, some sanding of the upper wing cavity edge helps a little.  Above right, more sanding these just leaves bigger gaps and  doesn't help much more.  Will have to try another approach, after I sleep on it a bit.

 

More later,

 

Ed

[gingerbob]

That dihedral doesn't look "wrong" to my casual eyeball?

[Bedders]

Dihedral looks ok to me too. Should only be about 5 degrees. 

 

Justin

[TheRealMrEd]

Alright! You people have done it!  You've forced me to get out the protractor!  Then, I found my problem:

 

 

The wing is thicker, of course, on the inner end.  BUT is also tapers more up from the bottom than the top.  When measuring the dihedral on the TOP of the wing, I only get around two degrees.  When I look at the side views of the real aircraft ( in the air, as well as on the ground , so as to eliminate the perspective problem of looking at a great big wing-tank and tiny, far off fuselage), the tip tank seems to need to be higher up, not quite to the lower edge of the front windscreen.  Therefore, claiming artistic license and my modeler's gut instinct,  I got out the razor saw:

 

 

This results in a straight, but larger gap, giving me a little more room to maneuver.  A little tape, some clamps and some CA, and we'll cank on some more dihedral:

 

 

 

This might seem like overkill now, but when the glue has had a chance to set up and the tape comes off, everything will relax just a little, and we'll see.

 

"Damn the torpedoes -- full speed ahead!"

 

Ed

 

 

[TheRealMrEd]

Hello again!

 

Well, having bit the bullet on the wings, there's nothing to do but seal up the join lines.  For those not used to building resin kits, or those just curious, here's the way I go about it.  I started doing it this way after building a few NMF aircraft, where the joins have to be perfect, or else.  Since this model has an all-paint, and sort of dark colored finish, it would probably not normally need as much mothering -- but, that's my habit now.

 

First a little masking tape to protect adjacent surfaces, then some Bondo Glazing and Spot Putty:

 

 

This is sanded down with the judicious use of a tiny rat-tail file (above right) and some rubber sanding blocks of various shapes:

 

 

These are three sets that I've collected over the years.  You just wrap sandpaper around the shape needed, and away you go.  These are available from wood worker type stores and on-line, not from most Big Box stores.  Note that on the lower row, the thin edges are shaped differently from one another, such as square edge, pointed, rounded, slanted, etc.  Highly recommended, if you can find any!

 

Next a coat of Mr Surfacer 500 (thick primer) atop the spot putty:

 

 

And when that's sanded down, we're finally getting somewhere.  You will note that the horizontal stabilizers and the wing tip tanks have been added, and that I have chosen to black off the turbo exhaust fro the inside, as opposed to using the entire exhaust piece as provided, which did not fit really well to the inside contour of the fuselage.

 

Well, that's it for now.  More anon.

 

Ed

[Alan P]

Now that's original! Something else I like about groupbuilds is the novelty of new subjects which I've never heard of 👍

 

Nice to see this kit getting the Ed treatment!

[Cookenbacher]

Great work so far Ed, you are never afraid to go the extra mile!

[Graeme H]

What an interesting build, loving it

[TheRealMrEd]

Hello all, back again.

 

Next up are the weapons pylons,.  They are added now, because the wrap-around camo is applied over them as well.  We begin with the innermost and the outermost pylons as they are both unique.  The other three pylons per wing are all the same:

 

 

Above right, the others are all the same, in the kit.  There are, however, some details of note:

 

 

"A", "B" and "C" denote the different type of pylon.  Note that the large pylon "A", as well as the two outermost pylons are positioned almost on the leading edge of the wing, whilst the other two are back from the edge a bit.  Also note the position of the tapered end on pylon "A", whereas on pylon "B", the taper is toward the front.  All the pylons are flat on the bottom sides, while the top side follow the curvature  of the wing. This is shown on pictures of the real aircraft.  Pylon "B" should possibly just a little more inboard, but I can't be sure.

 

Next, the antenna are added to the tail:

 

.

 

The next thing will be adding the canopy and fairing it in...  be back then.

 

Later, y'all.

 

Ed

 

 

[TEMPESTMK5]

Good evening Ed

Very good job on this very intereseing build .

Patrice .

[gingerbob]

17 hours ago, TheRealMrEd said:

 

 

 

What are the dark lines?  Just alignment aids, or something more? 

 

Also, it looks like there might be "remnants" of the three identification lights under the starboard wing, between outer pylon and tip tank- I can't imagine that those would still be there on the Enforcer?

[Silenoz]

Looking good so far. Wanted to order one of these, but they were sold out pretty soon. 

 

You are making a nice model while pointing out some pitfalls from this kit...

[TheRealMrEd]

Thanks folks!

 

Silenoz,  I too wish that some of the resin kit makers would re-visit their offerings from time to time.  I do not personally collect models as an investment, and I would welcome many re-issues of resin (and some plastic) kits!

 

Yes gingerbob,  the dark lines are an alignment device, put here to assure that I could draw perpendicular lines from it for the pylons.  My original intent was to use drawing found on-line that I thought were measurements telling how far apart the pylons were from one another, etc., but that didn't work out, as the spacing shown did not match the photos.  One of the other drawings suggested that it was "26" from the tip of the nose to the windscreen, but that didn't work out for feet, inches, centimeters or meters, so I didn't use any of the drawing info -- except for some color call-outs that appeared to be accurate, compared to photos.

 

In the end, I just aligned the  pylons to existing panel lines, as I had no better documentation to go on, nor photos.  As stated, I believe the outboard one may be a little too far out, but that's just a guess.

 

As far as the recognition lights, I can find no photos one way or the other, so I'll probably just leave them on.  Since only around 19% of the aircraft is original Mustang parts, I don't know if the wings were P-51H or what...

 

Anyway, after mounting the cockpit with RS watch cement, it looks like this:

 

 

Above left, the RS cement, heavier in some areas to fill defects caused by my poor trimming of the vacuformed canopy.  After drying, this was smoother with a cloth dipped in 90% rubbing alcohol, then some Bondo Spot Putty was added, and roughly sanded.  The ripply effect on the canopy is two dips into Future or Pledge or whatever, which will be polished down later.  Above right, the big blob of filler is laid atop a patch of medium CA, which was used to fill a bad hole, before the Bondo was added.  Some other sanding of the Bondo has been done at this point.

 

Next, some Mr Surfacer 500 is added before a final sanding:

 

 

And, she;s starting to shape up.  More next time...

 

Ed

[gingerbob]

How's this?  (Nope, thought the link would take us right to it, but if you go to this page:

                           

From: https://www.net-maquettes.com/pictures/piper-pa-48-enforcer/

 

...and keep clicking "More Photos", you'll eventually see a clear photo of that wingtip.

Edited December 18, 2019 by gingerbob

[Courageous]

5 hours ago, TheRealMrEd said:

Next, some Mr Surfacer 500 is added before a final sanding:

You're having a laugh. I've only just got bits cut out and you're heading towards primer...good show.

 

Stuart

[TheRealMrEd]

That's okay, Stuart.  By the time I get into the paint shop, you;ll probably pass me by!

 

Good catch gingerbob.  I was interested to find that in place of the lights, there should be a pitot tube, as well as another light in the right tip tank.  Thanks for the great link!

 

Ed