Sharkit 1/72 Edgley Optica

[Hamiltonian]

 

I've wanted to build a model of this eccentric little aircraft for years. Maybe I should have waited to see what the planned release from Avis looks like, but in the meantime here's the basic resin and vacuform kit from Sharkit.

 

Very basic, as you see. The kit also includes decals for G-BGMW, shown on the box art above, but at present I'm toying with other plans.

 

The moulding is pretty clean, but undetailed. A couple of minor holes to fill, and those five pour stubs in the fan duct to remove. I'll add some detail to the cockpit, which at present consists of three seats and a blank instrument panel.

 

The main challenge is going to be the vacuform cockpit canopy, which is intended to wrap around the outside of the assembled cockpit. Two parts are provided for this, but one of them has a nasty crease in my kit, so that ups the ante a little more. The instructions suggest painting only the resin parts, and not the overlying vacuform, but that's going to be an ugly effect. So I'd like to paint the vacuform itself, but that means making myself some interestingly curved paint masks. I also suspect that this one will want to sit on its tail, and there's really nowhere to conceal lead in the nose. Maybe a flight stand, maybe glue it to a solid display base? I'm not sure yet.

 

 

 

[warhawk]

16 minutes ago, Hamiltonian said:

I also suspect that this one will want to sit on its tail, and there's really nowhere to conceal lead in the nose. Maybe a flight stand, maybe glue it to a solid display base? I'm not sure yet.

You can add two lead plates (1 or 1.5 mm thick), shaped like the floor onto it from above.

It will raise the floor slightly, but will serve as counterweight. 

[Hamiltonian]

4 hours ago, warhawk said:

You can add two lead plates (1 or 1.5 mm thick), shaped like the floor onto it from above.

It will raise the floor slightly, but will serve as counterweight. 

Thanks. Good thought. The clear canopy goes all the way to the floor on this one, so that might end up looking unsightly. There's space behind the seats designated for baggage, so I might think about installing some sort of box full of lead back there.

Once I'm a little farther on with assembly, I can balance it on the wing roots and see what sort of weight I'm going to need to tip the balance.

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

Nice project of an unusual design.

Hope you can overcome the kit's limitations.

 

[Marklo]

Nice subject, good to see something a bit more off the beaten track.

You might try using brass sheet instead of plastic card for the interior. I did this for my Horsa last year.

Edited June 11, 2020 by Marklo

[Planebuilder62]

Hi 

Ifyou put a pilot in the seat and put the plane on a stand it will solve the tail sitting problem. With the ducted fan you willnot need to simulate a spinning propeller.

 

regards Toby

[melvyn hiscock]

Drill out the pilot figure to accept a lead lunch 

[warhawk]

11 hours ago, Hamiltonian said:

Thanks. Good thought. The clear canopy goes all the way to the floor on this one, so that might end up looking unsightly.

If You are going to mask that frame-less vacu-form, You can just raise the lower edge of the mask

It's not a Spit or a '109, so no experts to point fingers and laugh 

 

OR... why not dremel-out the floor 'tub' as much as the resin allows, fill it with lead balls, and then replace the floor with a thin sheet of styrene?

Edited June 12, 2020 by warhawk

[melvyn hiscock]

Drill out the pilot figure to accept a lead lunch 

[Marklo]

You could also probably line the inside of the  duct with lead sheet, I’ve used this too and can be bought in 1mm thickness.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Marklo

[Hamiltonian]

Lot of good ideas here. Thanks everyone. What I do is going to have to depend on how much lead I need. So once I have the wings and tail assembled, I'll dry fit the cockpit and balance the thing on the gear location. There are limited options far forward, because the floor is shallow and any added thickness will be noticeable in the narrow floor-level windows. There's some potential under the seats, but then when we get farther back than that it's going to need about twice as much lead because of the shorter lever arm. The fan duct is even closer to the fulcrum of the undercarriage, and I can't see it being a goer without making it excessively thick.

At present I'm thinking I'll put it on a flight stand, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised by the balance test.

[Space Ranger]

As far as the cockpit/cabin is concerned, if it were me I'd try to figure out a way to cut the transparency to fit inside the frames, either as one piece or several pieces that fit exactly in the openings in the frame. Or make a master to vac-form a new, one-piece transparency that will exactly fit.

 

I've been on the verge of ordering one of these kits, but I think, after some reflection, I'll just wait for the new Avis injection-molded kit.

[Hamiltonian]

52 minutes ago, Space Ranger said:

As far as the cockpit/cabin is concerned, if it were me I'd try to figure out a way to cut the transparency to fit inside the frames, either as one piece or several pieces that fit exactly in the openings in the frame. Or make a master to vac-form a new, one-piece transparency that will exactly fit..

Thanks, but I'm pretty sure I don't have the skills to fit individual panes into the frames, not without a massive wastage rate.

I'm reasonably sure I can construct the necessary paint masks--especially since I have a lot of masking tape!

[Rob de Bie]

I've been messing with this kit too, see the photos below. It's a lot of work to make a decent model from it.. I will gladly wait for the announced Avis kit!

 

 

 

 

Rob

 

Edited June 13, 2020 by Rob de Bie

[Hamiltonian]

3 hours ago, Rob de Bie said:

I've been messing with this kit too, see the photos below. It's a lot of work to make a decent model from it.. I will gladly wait for the announced Avis kit!

 

I seem to have been lucky--mine is in a lot better nick than yours, with very little trimming and filling required.

It's certainly going to need some detailing work, and as usual I'm developing a bit of mission creep in that regard: "Ooh, I'm sure I could scratch-build that ..."

[Hamiltonian]

Little bits of progress. Firstly, the canopy frame has an odd skew to it, which makes it sit tilted inside the vacuform canopy, and align poorly with the cockpit base.

Difficult to be certain, but it look to me as if the frame at left (as you look at it) had become stretched at the bottom and thickened at the top at some point. On that assumption, I clipped a millimetre out of the frame, sanded off the prominent "knee" and built up the stretched section with epoxy, to restore as much symmetry as I could. I also fashioned an additional bar for the top of the canopy frame, from strip styrene. (This is an internal bar, which doesn't appear in the external framing, and it's mentioned in the kit instructions.)

That done, it nestles fairly neatly into the vacuform canopy:

(Note to self: give the canopy an antistatic wipe before final fitting.)

 

I got the wings and tail assembled, and did some rescribing of panel lines, which are in places very faint. Still a little work to do on finish, but enough progress to let me dry fit the cockpit floor and check for balance. Here's a cocktail stick rocker at the undercarriage location:

And then I dumped the various cockpit components in their rough locations, and loaded up with lead shot to check the tipping point:

I just don't have enough room to hide that amount of lead gracefully, so at present I'm thinking a flight stand instead.

 

 

 

 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

Nice correcting work there.

Far from being a really bad kit, still surely a challenging one.

Brave man, and fortunately dexterous.

[Hamiltonian]

On 6/14/2020 at 11:20 PM, Moa said:

Nice correcting work there.

Far from being a really bad kit, still surely a challenging one.

Brave man, and fortunately dexterous.

Thanks. It always unnerves me when people call me "brave".

[Back in the Saddle]

I’ll follow along if I may - I’ve always had a soft spot for the Optica.🙂

[Hamiltonian]

Some modifications required to the basic kit, which is intended to depict one of the prototypes, G-BGMW. I'm building a later version, so I've extended the fan nacelle at the rear, extended the elevator trim tab beyond the trailing edge, created a couple of little fairings for the undercarriage, and added a pair of flow directors to the upper wings. I've also removed a long bulge on the underside of the nacelle, which is apparently absent from later models. This seem to depict a little stowable stand under the back of the nacelle in G-BGMW, which is worth knowing about for anyone building that version, because it would solve the "tail sitting" problem if modelled in the "down" position. Reference image of that here. Several more bits and pieces will be added in due course (pitot tube, flap control levers, aerials), but I've kind of committed myself to covering both wings and the upper nacelle with decals, so those mods will wait till later.

I've also drilled locating holes for the undercarriage, and have started adding some detail to the extremely sparse cockpit provided in the kit.

Here are the mods to the main part of the aircraft:

 

The pilot figure is built from two PJ Productions pilots--the head of a transport pilot and the body of a WWI pilot, with a little bit of polythene to give him a long coat.

 

The reason for this odd arrangement is that I'm aiming to build this version of the Optica:

Which is also why I've ended up needing to design and apply my own decals.

 

I'm sure the particular aircraft will be familiar to many Optica fans. It's certainly the first time I ever caught sight of one.

 

 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

Very nice work, and good research!

[Hamiltonian]

I've finished adding detail to the kit's very sparse cockpit--rudder pedals, control columns and the controls between the seats, as well as widening the instrument panel to match the later model I'm building. I've also added the overhead control panel (seen in the image above) to the cockpit frame.

Annoyingly, after spending quite a lot of time endowing the pilot with the necessary long coat and high collar, I've just discovered that PJ Productions' 1/72 pilot doesn't fit into Sharkit's 1/72 cockpit--he's too tall. Part of it is the thick cockpit canopy supports, but there's a definite scale mismatch there too, which I was slow to pick up.

[stevehnz]

An interesting subject in progress here, & an interesting movie your photo comes from too by the look of it, it is on a track down list now.  I'll be keen to see the end result here.

Steve.

[Aeronut]

3 hours ago, Hamiltonian said:

I've finished adding detail to the kit's very sparse cockpit--rudder pedals, control columns and the controls between the seats, as well as widening the instrument panel to match the later model I'm building. I've also added the overhead control panel (seen in the image above) to the cockpit frame.

Annoyingly, after spending quite a lot of time endowing the pilot with the necessary long coat and high collar, I've just discovered that PJ Productions' 1/72 pilot doesn't fit into Sharkit's 1/72 cockpit--he's too tall. Part of it is the thick cockpit canopy supports, but there's a definite scale mismatch there too, which I was slow to pick up.

How big is the mis-match? Remember seat cushions crush when sat on, so a little judicious seat cushion removal might be a solution. 

As to our pilot's problem of being too tall to fit the cockpit, I sympathise, When I started work at the A&AEE I was measured and found to be tall sat down! In RAF anthropometric terms I have a 98 percentile sitting height. As a result I got used for some cockpit integration trials, which is why I know I should not fly in the Islander AL 1 wearing a Mk 4 helmet (required AEA) or the Vigilant T1 motor glider wearing a headset. This last limit I happily ignored for 27 years whilst I instructed Air Cadets on the Vigilant. 🙂 

 

[warhawk]

On 6/14/2020 at 11:58 PM, Hamiltonian said:

I just don't have enough room to hide that amount of lead gracefully, so at present I'm thinking a flight stand instead.

 

Another thing popped to my mind (if not too late):

Why not duplicate the front (floor) part, but in lead? 

Edited June 26, 2020 by warhawk