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Hawker Siddeley Kestrel FGA.1 in 1/72


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The self-built outrigger fairings now lift the right shape and are base-painted, the main landing gear door now in its final shape as well.

For this purpose I built and attached the ignition cable for the spinning parachute and its small connection hood also from sheet metal myself.

 

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Here is a picture of the thing, which stands straight on the anti-glare hood of my monitor.
Just can't touch the model just now, because the main landing gear has just been glued in and should dry out correctly aligned. And the place is great because it is nice and bright and on eye level.

 

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If now the templates/decals/punches arrive in time, I will start to detail the chassis, build the pitot tube and finally dump Future over it…

 

Still three days to go!

 

 

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Did you know that a Future coat over Alclad will take away the nice metallic sheen that you have now and make the plane lok like it has been painted with shades of silver paint instead? What might look better is to use semi gloss varnish over the decals to blend them with the Alclad finish. I have read a lot of builds where the alcad wash covered in Fu5ure and the builder regretted it.

regards Toby

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What a great build.

 

Better late than never here is a period Look at Life documentry "Jumping Jets" (Look at Life was shown in Rank cinemas from the late '50s until 1969) this one dates from 1965 and is about the tripartite Kestrel squadron, filmed in glorious 35mm colour. Enjoy!

 

Tommo

 

Edited by The Tomohawk Kid
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5 hours ago, Planebuilder62 said:

Did you know that a Future coat over Alclad will take away the nice metallic sheen that you have now and make the plane lok like it has been painted with shades of silver paint instead? What might look better is to use semi gloss varnish over the decals to blend them with the Alclad finish. I have read a lot of builds where the alcad wash covered in Fu5ure and the builder regretted it.

regards Toby

Yes, I do know as this is not my first NMF plane… but a decision had to made and I will refer to this matter in one of my next posts.

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3 hours ago, The Tomohawk Kid said:

What a great build.

 

Better late than never here is a period Look at Life documentry "Jumping Jets" (Look at Life was shown in Rank cinemas from the late '50s until 1969) this one dates from 1965 and is about the tripartite Kestrel squadron, filmed in glorious 35mm colour. Enjoy!

 

Tommo

 

Whow, what a great documentary… a pity I haven't seen it earlier! A thousand thanks @The Tomohawk Kid

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So, uh, then I wanted to paint the white circles as a base for the decals two days before the deadline...

Since neither the delivery from Hannants (although they shipped immediately) nor from amazon arrived, it was nothing.

 

But there was still enough to do. The chassis is completely on, partly already detailed with different aluminium tones, this time from Vallejo.
 

Of course it still needs some color corrections, but at least all the flaps are in place, and even the landing light is in place, which on the Kestrel is on the nose gear flap instead of the landing gear leg.

 

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I folded the linkage of the hydraulics at the main landing gear door from tea light aluminium.

 

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Time is pressing... now I have to rearrange work steps, because I don't really have time left to build. So I'm testing at a place you normally don't see the self printed decals anyway. And if the polished surface is smooth enough or if I need a future layer. Because then I have good conditions for the wet slides, but the Alclad-typical metallic surface doesn't come out the way I like it. You have to die one death, which one it will be, I choose after drying.

 

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Finally I decided to cut the stupid circle masks, which do not have to be perfect, simply by myself.

First I thought that I would just cut out circles with the curve scalpel, but then I cut directly in the circle template. It's not perfect and you take some material from the template, and the result was a bit bumpy.

By the way, I use tesa painter's tape for sensitive wallpapers, which you can buy cheaply at the hardware store.

 

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This is what it looked like:

 

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Submission date

 

It's getting a little hectic now: 
I' m just building the pitot tube and putting on the last decals. Antennas and a lot of other small parts are still not done or at its place.
 

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Only 5 hours left

 

What a drama again... of course I had paint under the canopy mask again!

For a moment the thought came up that it would not work out. It can't be... so I took out the polish and briefly covered my whole desk again with tools and parts...

 

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After that I could not take any more pictures, because I had to prepare the "rollout".

 

 

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Deadline met, phew!

 

A few remarks later: Not only did I have some paint on the canopy, but I had some thick streaks. It's a real mystery to me how the paint got there, but it was where it shouldn't be. And I couldn't scrape it off with a toothpick either. So I sanded it with 800 paper and then polished it with Tamiya Compound again to a certain transparency. Then I painted a thick layer of Future on it and finally my putty block was ready for rollout.

 

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Just for the sake of completeness it should be mentioned that the pitot tube consists of a syringe needle and a pin, the antennas are made of toothbrush bristles. Except of course the white antenna, which is made of sheet, painted white with a red decal strip around it.
The decals are partly printed by myself, from xtradecal or from the two Airfix kits used. The angle indicator on the nose is an etched part, that was left from another Harrier kit.
I think, that everything is explained comprehensible now. The construction report should always be an exchange of experiences, so that the next one can do better.

 

My personal conclusion is rather mixed. Now, the little jet looks quite nice and I have learned a lot of handicraft again. But for that I did not get another model finished last year, let alone started. That was my Kestrel-year...
But it was more expensive than almost any other model. I had bought three basic kits alone, three books, decal paper, the expensive Tamiya polish, a decal set and punching tools, which could not be used anymore, plus all shipping costs. Of course you can still use the tools, but still this build was the reason for it. You can't tell by looking at the little bird, it probably cost 120 €. It is unusual to calculate like this (it is a hobby), but for the sake of completeness one should not leave this unmentioned.

 

Enough of the dark tones, here's the only current model of Kestrel I know of, and that should be reason for some satisfaction. And I like it in the end. I hope you do, too...

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1 hour ago, nexus11 said:

Whow, what a great documentary… a pity I haven't seen it earlier! A thousand thanks @The Tomohawk Kid

 

I thought that, but I have only just seen the thread. There are some great Look at Life's. Another one is 'Thunder in Waiting' about the UK based Thors.

 

Tommo.

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I've enjoyed following the build enormously. The various metal shades enhance the realism of the model considerably. An excellent and pretty unique model, well done!

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Thank You all for following my republished build report and for bearing with my sparse school English. The finished model can of course be viewed here in the forum.

 

 

 

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A great build and very well documented. Almost exciting towards the end. 

Truly a model of which you can be proud. 

Vielen danke fur die posten

 

Colin 

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3 minutes ago, Kirk said:

...but wouldn't it be fab it you decided to reprint a few for old times' sake?

I'll send cash. :D

 

In case of super urgent need You can use mine… cash is always a good motivation 😉

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