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Hello,

This is my first Group Build and as is my wont I've probably bitten off too much especially given the short timescale.

Most of the ingredients for the build are here

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Definite overkill on the workfront building that lot.

Here are the main contenders

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The transfers for the Spitfire will come from the Iliad set

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The Italeri Hawk has had its transfers pilfered and the plastic returned to the stash

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So where does the Buccaneer fit in?  Well, I'll be building the aircraft in flight so I need a crew for the Hawk and as neither the Revell nor Italeri boxings provide any drivers it was a stash raid to find suitable volunteers.

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As the Buccaneer will also need its crew one of my first jobs is going to be casting copies of these.

 

My aim is to produce something similar to this painting, though the cliffs are probably beyond the time we've got.

 

70years-spitfire-web.jpg

 

Joy of joys I've discovered that both aircraft have aluminium undersides and the Hawk will need some butchering of its rear end.

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5 minutes ago, Angus Tura said:

Nice concept, Andy. I hope you're a faster builder than me...

 

Alan 

Thanks, I'll certainly need to not hang around as I'm not that fast usually and the Hawk is not going to be as straightforward as I thought.  

Anyway much of the modelling time yesterday was used producing this....

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The lesser spotted clear workbench - it didn't last long

 

The one ingredient not shown in the OP is a Master pitot tube that I need to collect from Mr.Jolly before Thursday.

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Yep. I know what you mean. I need to pay a visit to our Mr.Jolly, "Laughing Dave" of the Halifax Modellers' Centre after a rummage through paints already got.

 

The Hawk can be perfectly straightforward if you ignore "Rivet, not only counting, but annotating Dave" of Cumbria, of this on-line parish.

 

Alan

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@Dave Swindell, @Angus Tura Good to have you along.  I could just build it out of the box, but having read Dave’s history of the Hawk rear end I had a look at the chosen prototype and it smacked me between the eyes.  The back end is just so different to that in the kit.  It does look as though it should be relatively easy to rectify.

Today I’ve made a start on the casting of the crew.  It didn’t go smoothly but that was my own fault as my maths went awry and I put three times the amount of catalyst in the first pour of the silicon mould.  It should take twenty four hours to set but this was done in half an hour.  It seems to be ok though and I’ve been able to do the second pour as well.  Tomorrow or Tuesday will show whether the first part was a disaster or not.  Photos tomorrow when I can get on the computer.

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May I add, 

Its part of the 19 Squadron Anniversary scheme to have the belly gun pod fitted.

19 Squadron were not only the first to fly the Mk. I Spitfire but they were the first squadron to fly a cannon armed one, the Mk. Ib, which they commemorate by having the belly gun on this scheme

Many modellers miss that point,

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@Black Knightit will definitely have the cannon mounted though I will refrain from throwing in a build of a MkIb as well as the MkI, I'm not completely mad (just partially).

 

I've found a constructional video showing how to build this particular aircraft - https://lvv.ac.uk/announcements/the-lvv-now-has-an-raf-hawk-t1a

 

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I've spent some time this week preparing a crew for the Hawk.  It's been a few months since I did some casting so it took a while to get going.  Here are the masters (thanks to the Airfix Buccaneer) ready for the pour of the first half of the mould.

 

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As I said in a previous posting I made a mess of the maths calculating how much catalyst to add and put far too much in.  The result was that the silicon went off very quickly.  This should be smooth and virtually white, not lumpy and grey

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The second pour went ok and some chaps were cast.  Meet the brothers Gordon - Flash to their mates

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Believe it or not the early ones from the mould actually turned out reasonably

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Still a bit of cleaning up to do, especially the top of the helmet where the experiment with a thin strip of plasticard as the sprue gate hasn't really worked.

The problem with the flash got steadily worse and the first half of the mould was very obviously shrinking.  The decision was therefore made to redo the first half.  Here the second half has been coated in a thin layer of vaseline (must buy a proper release agent) and the 'masters' re-inserted ready for another pour.

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Comparison of the Buccaneer pilots with one from the old Airfix Jaguar showed them to be quite vertically challenged.  So, another raid of the stash produced more crew candidates from the Harrier GR7, Provost and Sabre.  Another mould ensued and once I start casting I'll use whichever size crew fits best in the seats.  Speaking of which I've been working on the cockpit today.  The seats took a lot of fettling but have gone together well in the end.

2020-11-07-14-22-27-001

 

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Slow but steady progress this week.  I must say that the parts are taking a lot more preparation than I'd expected.  It's a step up from the Hudson but a lot more work than I thought would be involved.  The panel lines on the starboard fuselage were very indistinct so I had to be spend quite a bit of time working out where they were and reinforcing them with the scriber.

The cockpit has been painted as has the exhaust. Exhaust was painted matt black on the inside, Alclad Aluminium on the outside and then a very light misting of jet exhaust to the end.  The outside of the fuselage has been painted Dark Earth around the exhaust in the hope of reducing the amount of painting with the exhaust in place.   I fitted the airbrake housing to the fuselage side first and then the exhaust to both.  The airbrake housing wasn't a particularly positive fit but I think I've positioned it without any gaps.  The end of the exhaust was masked before fitting, just hope I can get it off at the end.

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I've checked that the seats and crew can be fitted with everything buttoned up.

The wings have been assembled.  I started with the undercarriage doors as I felt it would be easier to fix now whilst I can get to both sides, rather than potentially fighting them wanting to disappear inside the airframe.  I found that the port doors fitted well, but the starboard was not quite as good with a slight gap in places.  I ran Mr Dissolved Putty around the inside edges of the door and this has closed the gap up sufficiently without requiring any further tidying up.  I also put quite a lot of effort into thinning the trailing edges.  They're not perfect but better than the doorstop that they were.  The upper and lower parts of the wing were glued together last night and the edges have been tidied tonight.

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I wanted to make sure that the canopy was going to fit before closing up the fuselage.  More cleaning up ...

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Don't know what the black mark on the left is other than a reflection.  The main canopy has some flash but not as much.  However, there are fracture marks around the sprue gate - not a lot I can do about that.  The front piece is also going to require blending into the fuselage as there are a couple of noticeable gaps at the front.

I've also painted the inside of the air intakes light aircraft grey and will mask this and paint the camouflage colour before gluing them together and seeing what touching up is required.  The camouflage wraps around inside slightly.

Tomorrow hopefully the stand fixing point will hopefully get sorted which will then clear the way for fitting the wing - oh joy, another bad joint.

 

Thanks for looking

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Sorry for the blurred photo but does anybody know if the two 'supports' between the air intake and the fuselage exist on the real thing?  I can't find a photo that shows the area clearly enough.

 

IMG_20201114_184004

 

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2 hours ago, Black Knight said:

I just happened to have a Hawk book next to me.

Answer is yes, they are part of the airframe. The V one is ok. But the two dots are really short bar type fittings

Thanks, I’ll leave them then.

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10 hours ago, Andy G said:

Sorry for the blurred photo but does anybody know if the two 'supports' between the air intake and the fuselage exist on the real thing?  I can't find a photo that shows the area clearly enough.

 

IMG_20201114_184004

 

G'day Andy,

 

Looking good.

If you head over to the BM walkarounds/jets/Hawker Hawk T.1  there are two hawk WA's with some good pics of the intakes taken from above. As already mentioned, the two smaller supports are overscale but they exist!

 

cheers,

 

Pappy

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Sorry, I've got a bit behind in posting updates on progress.

 

Thanks for the info on the intake supports.  I've looked at the walkaround and decided on leaving the supports as they are.

 

I've sorted the fixing point for the stand.  I use telescopic brass rod and tube.  The stand will have a brass rod vertical and this will slide into a matching tube that I've fixed into the fuselage immediately aft of the belly gun.  This is further back than I'd like but the model doesn't weigh much so hopefully will be ok.

You can just see the tube in this photo.  It's held in place with 5 minute Araldite.

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Oh, and I've also closed the fuselage up!

I had thought about leaving the intakes until after the wing had been fixed but thankfully tested this beforehand as you can't get the intakes on once the wing is fitted.

Intakes have had filler applied along the seams - Mr Surfacer 1500.  This has since been cleaned up and the dark earth on the front lip touched up using a cocktail stick.

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I've made a start on correcting the tail.  A couple of pieces of thick plasticard were glued to the very end and the rest filled in with Milliput

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This is going to take some careful filing and sanding to get it into shape.

 

Cheers

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32 minutes ago, Andy G said:

I've made a start on correcting the tail. 

You're thinking along the same lines as me, Andy. I plan to shape the plastic to fair it in first and then smooth the miliput before it sets to minimise filing and sanding, but this is all that's needed to modify the tail. The top surface should follow a virtually straight line along the spine when viewed in profile. Some Hawks have an extension box like fitting over the rear plate with the rear nav light on it, mine included.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well I must apologise for the lack of updates on this thread.  Work has, thankfully, rocketed over the last couple of weeks and thanks to Covid I've been rebuilding the decking in the back garden in the hope that one day we might get to tier 2.  Lovely weather for it.  It's not quite the Somme out there but I'm sick of mud and soil.

To the Hawk, there has been modelling and a bit of photographing.

The crew have been painted and inserted into the cockpit.  Cruel close up....

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As you can see the airframe is together and most of the detail bits have been added.  These all highlighted the poor moulding of this kit with bits short shot or needing packing out.

Nobody has commented on how my cunning plan was doomed to failure.  Having thought how clever I was being in painting the intakes before assembling them I failed to double check the colour.  The port should be green, not brown, damn.  The inside and front face has been carefully brush painted dark green.  I'll have to mask with tape when I come to apply the green.

Sorry for the blurred photo but hopefully it shows the difference in thickness of the two tail planes

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The overly thick one has been addressed by filing the upper and lower surfaces.  Thankfully they are devoid of detail towards the rear edge.

Jigged up and the tail feathers glued on

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A couple of closeups of the rear fuselage modifications after the sanding has been completed

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The fin insert was modified from the kit parts.  The two halves were glued together and then cut down the panel line.  The section under the rudder was glued into place and the mating surface on the finlet adjusted until it fitted nicely against the other half and sat on the fuselage.

Masking the tail pipe early on was a mistake as glue ran down the pipe when the fuselage halves were glued together and I had a right fight to get the masking tape out.  I don't think it is all out and I've had to try and clean up the rough edges as best I could.  More masking tape has been subsequently applied but just around the exposed part.  Unfortunately in fighting the tape off the pipe to the side got broken off.  This has been replaced with a very short length of 0.5mm nickel silver rod that will have the paint scraped off it at the end.

You may be able to tell from these shots that the underside has been painted aluminium (MRP Super Silver) and masked off ready for the upper surfaces to be painted.

The canopy has been fitted and I've got the same problems as others have found,  I think the problem with the front part forces it to far forwards as well as having a poor join on the left hand side.  With the front too far forwards there is then a gap at the rear.  This has been filled with plasticard carefully filed to shape and then brush painted black on the inside.

More glazing issues showed with the front light.  Just what sort of quality is this junk - 

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I've had a look at one of the Red Arrows boxings I've had in the stash for a while and it doesn't show this problem.

The front of the fuselage was painted aluminium and the 'light' glued on.  The blob was arranged towards the bottom so that any problems with rectification work wouldn't be as noticeable.  Once it had been given time to dry I set to with files and eventually sanding pads down to 12000 grit and it now looks something like what it should do.

 

I've also fitted the Master pitot which was a mistake.  Fitting it was ok but I keep bending it.

Tonight I've sprayed the Dark Earth (MRP).  It's not gone on as nicely as normal, possibly because the compressor is pulling in cold air from outside, or because this hawk just wants a fight.

 

I can safely say that the Spitfire won't be completed by Sunday, it's barely started.  I'm also running out of time on the Hawk.  Thankfully, the prototype appears to have been kept spotless so there's virtually no weathering to do, so I may stand some chance of finishing it.

 

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On 12/10/2020 at 6:30 PM, Dave Swindell said:

You've done a good job with the mods there Andy!

Thanks Dave.

 

Current position - very questionable as to whether it will cross the finish line in time.  There's a possibility, but it's tight

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First time I've photographed in the spray booth.  I'm not sure if it's the booth lighting or the point and shoot, but neither will be used for the final photos.  That green is just weird!

 

Off to unmask!

 

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