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Airfix Buccaneer S. Mk. 2


David H

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Evening all,

 

Having come off a steady diet of Tomcats and Corsairs for almost 10 years, i needed a "Palate Cleanser" that i could more-or-less slam together with minimal modifications, and get right to paint schemes, which is the part i love the most.

 

Enter the Airfix Buccaneer S. Mk 2.

Model building enthusiasts of the "Brick" haven't been really ignored, but they have been limited to the mold making standards of their era. With the exception of the lovely CMK Resin kits, most 72nd scale Buccaneers have more or less been shells that are Bucc-shaped on the outside, but sorely lacking in terms of substance in most other places. Not to mention kit makers have had issues getting the shape of the Buccaneer "Beak" quite right.

 

Not so with this kit. I read many build reviews, and without exception have heaped praise on this kit. It ticks some key boxes like being Carrier-Based, and "Cold War" vintage, plus at least over here the Bucc is still viewed as something as an exotic;  you don't see on contest tables very often.

 

Citing the throwaway cliche "Construction began with the Cockpit", you can see what i did here so far. The cockpit sidewalls and tub were painted with Mr Color C335 Medium Sea Gray, and given a wash of water, Future, and Tamiya flat black. When dry this as well as the cockpit tub got a coat of Model Master flat clear lacquer.

Cockpit Sidewalls

After i prepped the painted cockpit tub with some Mr Color Super Clear III, i applied the kit decals. I was expecting these to be a real mess, since the working surfaces were so small, but i was pleasantly surprised by how well they laid down and it was fairly easy to coax them into place.

Cockpit-2 Cockpit -1 Cockpit-3 Cockpit-4

I suppose i could have held out for a resin cockpit set, but the added fuss of removal from the casting block, test fitting, etc. kind of defeats the purpose of making this a "Fast" build. One exception are the ejection seats. I'm keeping my options open there.

Pilots Instrument Panel -2 Pilots Instrument Panel

I glued the cockpit tub into the left fuselage half, and them taped the right half on, serving as a "jig" to hold the cockpit tub and nose wheel well steady while the cement set up. When that was done, i un-taped the halves and mixed up some nose weight from a combination of 15-minute epoxy and copper shotgun pellets. Guidance from Airfix says 15 grams. i kind of guesstimated at that. Wanted to be able to still close up the nose halves after all, plus i really hate working with epoxies.

Installed Cockpit Installed Cockpit- 2 Installed Cockpit- 3

When i glued the nose halves together, i deliberately did not glue the rear end where the halves wrap around the aft cockpit bulkhead- what i call the "Forward Fuselage Splice Point"- in order to be able to "squeeze" or "spread" the aft fuselage as needed to ensure a level, flush fit at the junction.

Assembled Nose

I'll let this section outgas and harden while i go on my next tour and hopefully it will be ready for mate when i get home.

Up Next: The fuselage centre section. Stay tuned.

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Time for another update.

This time, the fuselage centre section.

This is a really clever piece of engineering. In a nutshell, its the summary installation of a lot of bulkheads, largely mirroring the construction of the actual Buccanneer. Just pay careful attention to the assembly sequence. If everything is done correctly, it all slots together in kind of an "Insert Tab A into Slot B" fashion.

Upper Wheel Well Bulkhead installation-2 Bulkhead Installation-1 Wheel Wells- 1 Wheel Wells-2 Wheel Wells-3

The bulkhead at the front holding the intake trunks (C8), and the bulkhead at the aft end (C7) are very simple slot-in-place-and-apply-glue tasks. With the spar webs installed to the lower wings (B9 and B10), its time to glue the upper and lower centre sections together and let em outgas and set up. Something else i can set aside for the next 8 days...

 

david

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Just a minor, no-picture update.

 

Yesterday i installed the upper wing panels. I was in for a bit of filing and tweaking of the leading edges of the lowers, partly to get a level joint between the leading edge of the wing and its associated rebate joint to accept the lower section, and also getting one of the wing uppers to sit more or less level with the fuselage centre section at the hinge point. I also glued on the left wingtip as a test to see how well it mated up with the wing (i'd heard a related horror story with the wingtips on the Victor).

 

Anyway, right now everything is setting up and out gassing and i should be able to pick this right back up in 8 days.

 

david

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Excellent photography (and build) David. 

 

"Having come off a steady diet of Tomcats and Corsairs for almost 10 years". Now, that must have been quite a "journey"!!!!

 

Over the past 30-something years, I have only built 1 Tomcat (which I'm currently re-building!) and a couple of Corsairs for friends.

 

 

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10 hours ago, Shalako said:

Excellent photography (and build) David. 

 

"Having come off a steady diet of Tomcats and Corsairs for almost 10 years". Now, that must have been quite a "journey"!!!!

 

Over the past 30-something years, I have only built 1 Tomcat (which I'm currently re-building!) and a couple of Corsairs for friends.

 

 

If it please the court, M'Lud I'd like to have this entered as evidence..

200-16 DH F14A 011 IMG_0067 DH F4U2 070 DH-FG-1-154 DH F4U-1D 008 DH F8E- Port 005

 

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22 hours ago, Paramedic said:

Looking real nice! Well done on the cockpit, looks (decently) clean and crisp. :) Never built that kit, it looks fun though so maybe i should? They are cool "little" planes..

It might seem strange, but even though i'm a pilot i hate doing cockpits.

Decided to push thru this one as quick as possible. Paint-gloss-decals-wash-flat.

 

Done.

 

Moving on...

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I like the idea you have for a "wash" that includes clear gloss acrylic.  That kills two birds with one stone before you apply decals, doesn't it?  

 

I also like your decision to allow for wiggle room at the fuselage join!  Incidentally, do you expect to build a Falcon 50 at some point?  That's your current mount, right?

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6 minutes ago, TheyJammedKenny! said:

I like the idea you have for a "wash" that includes clear gloss acrylic.  That kills two birds with one stone before you apply decals, doesn't it?  

 

I also like your decision to allow for wiggle room at the fuselage join!  Incidentally, do you expect to build a Falcon 50 at some point?  That's your current mount, right?

Kenny, the wash went on after i applied the cockpit decals but yeah it does help because in theory at least it clear coats over the decals and seals em down.

 

i HAVE been keeping an eye of the Amodel Falcon 50s but i haven't bought one yet. Its really more a question of when i can find time to build it. I've adopted an "Inventory Neutral" kit acquisition policy and i'm just not acquiring kits unless i intend to go right to work on em.

20 minutes ago, Shalako said:

:yahoo::yahoo::worthy:

 

 

All your kits are masterpieces BUT, man that VF-211!!

Yeah, everybody likes the VF-211 bird. i did it before it was cool!

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Excellent work so far, I'm just a slight bit ahead of your build and it does continue to build up nicely but just keep an eye out on that front fuselage bit. It does fit nicely but mine must have dried a tiny bit skewiffed, I dont think it will make much difference further down the build but I know it is there! Just be aware that there is a bit of wiggle room there, if you know what i mean! Keep up the great work!

Bob

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1 hour ago, moaning dolphin said:

Excellent work so far, I'm just a slight bit ahead of your build and it does continue to build up nicely but just keep an eye out on that front fuselage bit. It does fit nicely but mine must have dried a tiny bit skewiffed, I dont think it will make much difference further down the build but I know it is there! Just be aware that there is a bit of wiggle room there, if you know what i mean! Keep up the great work!

Bob

bob, i've been looking at that. I purposely did not glue the fuselage sides to the rear bulkhead, so i can line up the skins and all of those curves in the vicinity of the intake sides. Right now i'm trying to get the upper and lower wing panels to play nice along the leading edges. Nose section will come later.

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5 hours ago, David H said:

It might seem strange, but even though i'm a pilot i hate doing cockpits.

Decided to push thru this one as quick as possible. Paint-gloss-decals-wash-flat.

 

Done.

 

Moving on...


Same here with cockpits; well, except the pilot bit. 
 

Edited to add; that F-14 is just gorgeous.

 

.

Edited by mark.au
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16 hours ago, David H said:

It might seem strange, but even though i'm a pilot i hate doing cockpits.

Decided to push thru this one as quick as possible. Paint-gloss-decals-wash-flat.

 

Done.

 

Moving on...

 Maybe that´s why? Nothing special for you..?

I don´t either - but I´m not a pilot, so what´s my excuse? (Just lazy?) ;) )

 

It looks great anyways. And hope you had a nice tour. ^^

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Hi Kids!

 

Time for an update. The middle of the mighty Bucc has been built up, and the aft fuselage has been glued in place. I've selectively glued one area at a time, allowing things to set and harden up before i muscle certain parts into better alignment. I started with the upper part of the fuselage last nite, and today i'm gluing the first half of the belly. The rubber band is holding the parts close together after i flowed liquid cement into the join....

IMG_2454 IMG_2455 IMG_2456

I glued on the clear wingtips before sanding out the wing leading edge rebate joints on the underside. Since the trailing edge tips are very pointy (plus they're made from clear styrene), you can see i've covered them with bits of Tamiya tape as a preventative "Bonk-Resistant" measure.

 

The next task to take on are the bulges just upstream of the intakes. General "Buccy Mad" Melchett explained to me that these were retrofitted to Buccaneers as part of Mod 1044 in an effort to reduce wind noise around the cockpit.

IMG_2458

I was intimidated about removing these, but it was surprisingly quick work.

First I masked off the raised  rectangular panel below to protect it. Then, with a curved No. 10 X-Acto blade, i just started whittling away very tiny chinks of the bulge at a time. Once the bulk removal was done, i took a flat file that had a smooth side edge, and just started leveling the area, using the smooth edge to steer the file around the curved perimeter of the "Boss". I did a slight bit of filing the edges of the boss to clean it up a bit, then took a 220 grit sanding stick and a 320 grit Tamiya sanding sponge to sort of clean up the area. The end result looks a little bit rough in these closeups, but given its a featureless area (and somewhat upstaged by the intakes), its probably more than good enough to press on...

Bump Removed- Stbd -1 IMG_2459

Forward fuselage mate comes next. Stay tuned.

 

david

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Well, the front is on, the back is on and now it looks like a Buccaneer.

Assembled Airframe 4 Assembled Airframe 1 Assembled Airframe 5 Assembled Airframe 2 Assembled Airframe 3

Starting last night, you can see i've carried out a lot of sanding. There are some places on the model where two mating surfaces were not exactly level with one another. I hit those areas with Mr Surfacer Black, and as i sand it away i can tell exactly where the high and low spots are as i remove material.

The rear fuselage was attached first and it followed my practice of glue a little bit, bind it up, let it dry, glue a little bit more, rubber band THAT, let THAT dry and then move on.

There were no insurmountable challenges, just some mismatch around the upper curvature abeam the dorsal fairing.

Empennage 1

The "saddle" upon which the tailplane rests needed some filing, so that the stab would sit perfectly horizontal. Given the plane has highly swept wings and tail surfaces, getting the basic alignment is a little tricky because of parallax if all you have to work with is the Mk. I eyeball....

Empennage 2

The shrouds that house the exhaust pipes have been mounted, but not blended in yet. So far these have been the worst-fitting parts in the kit. Lots of filing and test fitting of both the shrouds and the mating surfaces of the fuselage in order to get the fit "in the Ballpark". I think there's definitely gonna be more carving in my future to get those fairings all smoothly sculpted and blended together. Having to install the pipes prior to attaching the shrouds is definitely an inconvenience.

 

Lower Aft Fuselage 1

Here are some shots of the lower forward fuselage splice...

Fuselage Splice 1 Fuselage Splice 2

I just finished the basic cleanup here.

The pictures don't show it well, but a lot of the funky mid-fuselage curves begin just aft of this splice point, so i thought it prudent to clean this area up before installing the intake fronts. Much like other parts of the kit, i glued the forward fuselage in stages, starting with the bottom and finishing with the upper sides. There was a little bit of carving in high places where there was slight mismatch (visualize putting two halves of an Oreo Cookie together, tilted 30 degrees from the vertical), but in the end you can see it cleaned up okay. The Airfix scribing is deep enough to withstand some pretty aggressive sanding and filing.

Since i'm backdating this model to a 1966-Vintage S. Mk. 2, if you see any places that i failed to remove in order to successfully "backdate" the model let me know.

 

So, a little bit of scribing and then intake fronts are next.

Thanks for Shopping, and Fly Navy!

 

david

Edited by David H
Minor editing, gtypographical errors and i deleted some nasty words about sheep.
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I glued the intake fronts (parts A13 and A14) on last night and in so doing, an observation some of you might find useful:

 

Step 37 is where the forward fuselage is spliced onto the fuselage centre section. When i assembled mine, i glued the lower part of the fuselage first, purposely avoiding the sections roughly abeam the back seater's shoulders so i'd have the flexibility to line up the front to back to avoid excessive sanding.

 

That all worked well and good, but when the time came to install A14 and A14, one slid into place with little effort, and one sort of needed to be pressed and held in place.

 

My suggestion is to test fit the intakes without glue, before gluing the upper rear flanks of the fuselage, to ascertain how well the intake mating surfaces hold the upper fuselage skins in alignment. I wish i had tried this before gluing up this area. I hope it will help other model builders get a better fit in this region.

 

More pics to come once the intakes are blended in.

 

D-Smack

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