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Eduard 1/48 Lysander (Limited Edition) - Special Duties in France


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I'd just like to say that whoever was responsible for the choice of that horrible "Lord of the Rings"-style typeface on the box should be shot. Really.

 

This is going to be yet another Special Duties Lysander. I'd like to build John Nesbitt-Dufort's all-black Lysander from 138 Sq., famously pranged in a French ditch (and then destroyed by a train) in January 1942. Tail number was T1508, squadron code would have been NF, but I don't know the aircraft letter, or how the plane might have been marked--photographs don't seem to cover the necessary parts of the fuselage. So there's a problem ahead.

 

So far, I've got to the stage of assembling "largest paintable units" of interior detail, using Eduard's photoetch.

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Above are all the bits that needed gluing together or modifying at this stage.

The tray seat came together fairly easily, and will be painted and weathered a bit before the photoetch harness goes on.

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I built myself a little rudder bar assembly, rather than just tacking the photoetch rudders on to the cockpit floor, as the instructions require. This was mainly because I want a slight rudder offset.

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A little bit of wiring, made from stretched sprue, on the visible rear surface of the instrument panel. I gathered my wires into two bundles, because a lot of this wiring seems to join a couple of cable runs on either side of the cockpit.

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And of course the vexed rear compartment. I've elected to make it very stripped-down. Here's the extended flooring and the plywood bench, made from styrene sheet:

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I also removed the gun-related fittings from the rear compartment cover. For the radio stowage, I've come down heavily in favour of the sliding shelf discovered by @dnl42: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235057615-lysander-iiia-sd-161-squadron/page/2/

This makes sense to me in terms of creating space for people, luggage and supplies in the cramped rear space. Given that it will be out of sight, I've done nothing to represent it in modelling terms except to provide the rails on which the shelf would slide, which will be partially visible in the completed model.

 

I'm not sure about the armour plating behind the pilot. Given the need to reduce weight, and the the nature of these missions, I'm currently planning to omit it. But I'd love to hear from anyone who thinks otherwise!

 

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While painting and assembling the interior parts, I wanted to make some progress with the wings. I wanted to dry fit these to the locating flanges which attach to the top of the interior assembly, rather than discover a problem later.

 

I want to depict this one with the flaps and leading edge slats deployed, which happened automatically at low airspeeds. (I chased around for a while trying to find more information about a passing reference in Hugh Verity's book, about passengers being asked to "push back the automatic flaps as they left the aircraft", which would also have stowed the inboard slats, but didn't turn up anything that gave me confidence to model the aircraft with that geometry.)

So first I had to carve big chunks off the wings:

lysander-wings-1.jpg

 

The Czech Masters resin conversion set provides flaps and the parts for the outer slats--a replacement wing edge, the slats, and three supports for each slat. But there are no inboard slats, which is a significant oversight. Again, I took a leaf out of @dnl42's book, and built my own inboard slats.

I used the central part of the section removed from each outboard leading edge to create a new leading edge for the inboard section of the opposite wing. Once these were in place, I stuck some Tamiya masking tape over the area, traced out the required shape, peeled off the tape and stuck it to some 0.1mm aluminium sheet, cut the sheet around the marked outline on the tape, discarded the tape, then taped the lower edge of my flat aluminium shape to the underside of the wing leading edge in the correct position, and moulded the aluminium around the leading edge. This produced a pair of slats that should look convincing once undercoated.

Finally, as you can see, I placed the supports for the extended slats provided in the Czech Masters set--and there are enough spares to provide the necessary parts for the inboard wings as well, provided you don't lose too many to the carpet monster. (These are not actually the right shape to match the real structures, but they'll make it so much easier to align the slats that I've let them be.)

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I'll leave the slats off meantime, for ease of painting.

 

The subsequent dry fitting of the wings required a little trimming of the locating flanges to get a fit, so I was glad to be able to do that with the flange part in my hand, rather than already glued to the complicated and delicate interior assembly.

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The interior is assembled. Positioning the upper tank, behind the pilot's head, was a bit of trial and error, since the Eduard diagram is unhelpful, to say the least, and it's a tight fit. The unpainted flanges at the top connect to the wings, in due course.

My depiction of the rear compartment is that the plywood has been given a coat of interior green, and is just starting to get a bit worn, with just a little wood showing through and some dirt on the floor and bench--nothing too bad, since in January 1942 the French pick-up service hadn't been running for long. In a couple of places where there should be holes (like the tranverse support in the cockpit floor) I've contented myself with filling the "holes" with LifeColor black panel liner. I'm anticipating that once sunk into the fuselage assembly the impression of a dark cavity with something beyond will be convincing. Either that or I'm just too lazy to drill out the holes properly--we'll see how it turns out.

Depth of field not very good on some of the images, I'm afraid. We've had precious little actual daylight in my part of the world, these last few days.

lysander-interior-1.jpg

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The engine, with its PE parts, is assembled. I briefly turned it blue, because I forgot that LifeColor's panel liner leaves a slight blue residue on metallic paint, but a very light overspray corrected that.

lysander-engine-cowling.jpg

The cowling comes in four parts--three curved panels and the front end. I'm keeping the front separate, for now, to make painting easier. I also dug a square hole to accommodate the kit's PE air inlet The CMK exhaust (dark grey, bottom) is a better match for my proposed aircraft than the kit part (pale grey, top), so it will be getting a coat of pale gold-bronze to match the front of the cowling. I think I'll need to mix the colour myself to match photographs, since it doesn't look like any standard paint pot I can think of.

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In real life, the engine's central gear casing was painted semi-gloss black. The cylinders should be quite dark, too. The instructions have you paint them Dark Iron. That should be all right.

 

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Chris

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Well, I messed that up, didn't I? Thanks!

I spent a lot of time peering at photographs to convince myself that "dark iron" was wrong, and there was a flat bare-metal finish to the cylinders. Sigh.

The gear casing's just neglect on my part, though.

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All Bristol engines from about 1931 to sometime after the end of WW2 were black. 

 

A good number of years ago, I read that in a model book/magazine. I then started looking at all the photos I could find, to confirm that statement. 

 

It was right.

 

 

 

 

Chris

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While waiting for my repainted Bristol engine to dry (thanks, @dogsbody), I made an adjustment to the undercarriage. As other have noted before me, the Eduard kit portrays the wheels with shock-absorbers uncompressed, so I did a bit of work with a fine chisel to reposition the wheels a little deeper inside the spats, working from photographs of parked aircraft. Before (left) and after (right):

lysander-undercarriage-1.jpg

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Excellent progress, the slats look good, can't believe the omission by the after market company of the inner slats,  I did a similar thing on the Tamiya swordfish when that came out.  Cockpit details look good as does the rest so far.

Great work 

Chris

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I've finished work on the CMK parts for the horizontal stabilizers.

I seem to have two port tailplanes, to judge from the fitting tabs.

lysander-cmk-tailplanes.jpg

There's no difference between the top and bottom surfaces, and in any case I need to revise the tab position so that I can model the tailplanes in the tilted "Take Off" position (a notorious feature of the Lsyander). So it was just a matter of sawing off the tabs and repositioning them.

lysander-cmk-tailplanes-fixed.jpg

This is slightly complicated by the fact that a triangular plate, properly mounted on top of the tilting tailplane, is moulded into the kit tail:

lysander-tail.jpg

So I laid a bit of Tamiya tape over it, drew an outline of the shape, and then transferred to styrene card before removing the feature and scribing the interrupted panel lines:

lysander-tail-fixed.jpg

 

You'll see I've also hacked out the kit rudder in preparation for the CMK replacement, which I'll eventually mount with a slight offset to match the rudder pedals.

 

And here's the tailplane assembled and in place, with its take-off tilt (and a bit of elevator deflection):

lysander-tailplane.jpg

 

 

 

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The CMK rudder looks like a pretty neat fit when matched against the kit tail, but then needed a little adjustment with filler and sanding once I'd scribed away the kit plastic.

lysander-rudder-1.jpg

 

Here it is in place, completing the tail assembly:

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I've also fiddled the CMK flaps into position:

lysander-flaps.jpg

The kit provides a set of photoetch flap hinges, which are of course configured for the "up" position. I found it was easy enough to clip this part in half along an etched seam, and position the two halves realistically. The inboard hinges are in place; the outboard hinges await further assembly, since they're mounted on the wing struts.

 

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For the life of me, I couldn't work out how Eduard intended me to fit the parabolic reflectors of the landing lights into the spats. The kit is pretty short on locating pins and flanges anyway, but this was just annoying. The kit part seemed to be shaped to fit something, but nothing inside the spats matched. I ended up sanding and chiselling away a significant amount of plastic and fitting them right behind the transparent covers. I suspect they're supposed to be set a little deeper somehow, but here's what I ended up with, once the spats and wheels were assembled:

lysander-spats.jpg

 

Then it was a matter of getting all the big bits glued together. This was a fairly demanding task (for me, at least), because of the struts connecting the wing assembies to the wheel assemblies, and the fact that the locating pins on the bottom of these struts don't remotely fit into the locating holes on the wheel assemblies.

So a certain amount of fiddling ensued, during which I managed to pop off the pair of locating flanges for the wings from their position on top of the cockpit assembly. This made things much easier, and I'd recommend ignoring the kit instructions and assembling the wings and central support structure as a unit before setting them in position on top of the cockpit assembly. I also used the upper central part of the canopy transparency as a spacer to make sure the wings were fitted correctly, as its possible to slide them too far towards each other, leaving inadequate space for the canopy parts.

So here it is, looking a real piebald mess at present:

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Some more detailing to apply before the paint goes on, and I need to consider how I'm going to mask the cockpit. Eventually I want the rear canopy slid back, the front upper canopy slid back, and the port windows slid down, which will involve a bit of work with a razor saw to divide the kit parts. But at present I'm thinking I'll leave them intact for now, and glue them in place temporarily with some weak clear glue while the paint goes on. Then I can pop the parts off and modify them for the final configuration. (He says, confidently.)

 

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Some small, fiddly progress. I decided to divide the upper canopy part into its static and sliding portions at this point, because I think this will make the positioning of the canopy parts easier.

Here's the kit part:

lysander-top-canopy.jpg

And here's the necessary division, which involves a little awkward side cut with the razor saw:

lysander-top-canopy-divided.jpg

The tail wheel also needed a bit of work, removing a fairing and shortening the part.

Kit part again:

lysander-tail-wheel-part.jpg

The chunky fairing needs to go, and the remaining part needs to be trimmed down to reflect a shorter (and compressed) oleo strut.

Here's the final assembled tail wheel:

lysander-tailwheel.jpg

 

I fitted this temporarily so that I could get the correct orientation of the fuselage, to fit the ladder vertically (there are, predictably enough, no orientation holes in the fuselage):

lysander-ladder.jpg

 

Finally, some bits and bobs have had a coat of paint:

lysander-parts-painted.jpg

 

The engine is now black, thanks to @dogsbody.

The propeller is slightly tricky to assemble, since the kit gives no indication for the correct angle of attack of the blades--photographic reference required. I've used the short kit spinner, which sits entirely in front of the blades, because that seems to be a match for photographs of my chosen aircraft.

The front part of the cowling and its associated exhaust have been coated in a mixture of Titanium Gold and Bronze.

Interior green on the inside of the canopy parts, using a Montex interior mask, and a little grab bar formed from brass rod and stretched sprue on the inside of the forward canopy.

And the odd grey object in the middle is the message hook with a coat of primer, which was (I think) removed from later pick-up aircraft but is visible in one photograph of Nesbitt-Dufort's plane. The kit provides a resin part for the fuselage attachment, and a tiny photoetch spiral hook, but requires a length of styrene rod for the middle portion. I managed to mangle the little hook while trimming it, so what you see above is a hook formed from stretched sprue wrapped around the tips of a set of needle-nose tweezers.

 

 

 

 

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The rear canopy is not a good fit in the closed position, so I ended up assembling the cockpit canopy (with a view to a partial dismantle later), and masking the rear compartment.

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It looked a lot less messy once primed.

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Then a couple of coats of Tamiya black diluted with white and a touch of blue, added the slats and part of the cowling, and recoated.

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It needs some small areas painted in other colours (ladder rungs, pitot tube), but it's just about ready for the decals.

 

Here's what I have to go on:

T1508-1.jpg

T1508-2.jpg

This is January 1942, so I'm thinking A.1 roundels for the fuselage sides. I'm a bit puzzled by the appearance of the upper wing roundels in the top photograph--they almost seem to have a thin dark outer ring, like yellow on orthochromatic film, but I haven't encountered such a thing.

There are no evident squadron letters on the side of the aircraft, but I guess red lettering might not appear to great advantage in such a photograph. At present I'm going with omitting lettering altogether, and adding the correct tail number in 8" red.

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Very nice work so far.  I read Hugh Verity’s book some years ago and promised myself a Lysander for the collection one day.  Yours has pushed me along that path a bit more.  Looking forward to seeing your result.

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Thanks all, for the encouraging comments.

 

14 hours ago, Jfgred1 said:

How good is the joint of the wings to the fuselage/cockpit?. is it too weak?. Does it need extra reinforcing from what comes in the box?

The wings connect robustly to the central strut section and its associated flanges. I did find that easier to assemble once I'd inadverently popped the central strut/flange part off the cockpit assembly--you can use the central transparency as a spacer and assemble the whole deal on a flat surface, rather than juggling delicate parts in midair. The connection between the whole wing assembly and the rest of the aircraft is potentially quite delicate--really just a four-point connection between struts and support framework. But once you get the canopy parts glued in place, above and below the wings, that firms up a bit.

If you have a closed canopy, then the way the upper and lower canopy parts come together like a clamp around the wing roots will make a pretty robust joint overall. Because I'm going to have the upper cockpit canopy slid back, I have a slightly less firm connection. That said, having used CA on bare plastic surfaces when I reattached the part I'd dislodged, I'm pretty confident of my four-point connection with the rest of the aircraft.

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Decals are on. I now have a fair bit of weathering to do, and need to produce a matt finish at the the end of all that. I'm not looking forward to that--matt varnish on dark surfaces never seems to work out well for me.

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The markings are from the kit decal sheet--pre-1942 roundels and tail flash were supplied. These took a bit of work to bed down, with repeated applications of Micro Sol. I was disappointed in the minor bits and pieces of red text, which seem to be printed out of register with an underlying white layer. In retrospect I should have scanned the decal sheet and printed my own version on transparent film to avoid that. The tail number is assembled from a Fantasy Printshop sheet of 8" red RAF letters, and it kind of emphasizes the shortcomings of the kit's red lettering. Sigh.

 

(The scribbly little number "4" to the right of the ladder is my own addition. In Barbara Bertram's excellent and entertaining memoir French Resistance In Sussex, she recorded that it was customary, before leaving England, to chalk on the side of the aircraft how many packages (luggage, supplies etc) were stowed in the rear compartment, so that nothing could be overlooked during the frenzied few minutes on the ground in France.)

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