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Vulcanicity's Shackleton MR2


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This is coming along really well and the pitfalls you are pointing out will make life a lot easier for the rest of us who have yet to build this kit. Thank you!

 

Martian 👽

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On 7/3/2021 at 1:15 AM, Vulcanicity said:

 

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From personal experience, you need to sand down the roof of the undercarriage bay to the level of the side pieces. Fortunately, the roof is so thick that you won't sand all the way through it and ruin the detail in the undercarriage bay itself.

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Hello Vulcanicity, glad to see your keeping in touch.         I’m stuck on trying to counter the ‘Batman’ comment with a duck pun…….. but, Dr Quack(ers) has nipped that in the bud.  👅

 

 

 

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On 1/15/2021 at 5:17 PM, Martian said:

How well does the fuselage close up on a dry fit? I have heard that the fuselage floor is way too wide.

 

On 2/3/2021 at 9:33 PM, Vulcanicity said:

Someone has, I suggest, made a signficant cockup there - that's over half the whole width of the fuselage! Even if I hadn't so much as touched any of the bulkhead moulding seams I can't envisage it would have been worse than  about 2mm. As it happens, a bit more fettling of that bomb bay bulkhead and it's reduced to zero, assume I tape and clamp as normal. Tamiya fit it ain't, but it's hardly disastrous!

 

Just found this great topic as part of my research; I'm planning an RAF Changi based Shackleton MR.2 and gathering thoughts on the kit which I've had in the stash for a few years. Reading these comments on potential fit issues got me a little worried at first so I just did a dry fit on mine.  I can also report an absolutely perfect fit with zero gap at all - you couldn't get a piece of paper in between.  I can only think someone had a kit with serious warp issues (entirely possible) or as suggested, made a major cockup somewhere.      

 

Still thinking about which specific aircraft to do. Availability of appropriate red/white serials seems a limiting factor. Currently thinking WL795 (became "Rosalie" as an AEW.2 and is a subject in the Revell AEW.2 kit). I should be OK to use a mix of Airfix & Revell decals as WL795 was an MR.2 in a previous life, joining 205 squadron at Changi in 1967 and was painted with the code "G" and I think was a Phase 3 by then. She still exists as far as i can establish; the former St Mawgan gate guard is now parked at Newquay, partly dismantled, awaiting her fate (hopefully restoration). 

 

Many thanks @Vulcanicity and to @amos brierley for the great info. I will be watching this WIP with great interest for what's needed to the kit! :popcorn:

 

Here's my gal in happier days...

 

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Edited by RichG
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2 hours ago, RichG said:

 

 

Just found this great topic as part of my research; I'm planning an RAF Changi based Shackleton MR.2 and gathering thoughts on the kit which I've had in the stash for a few years. Reading these comments on potential fit issues got me a little worried at first so I just did a dry fit on mine.  I can also report an absolutely perfect fit with zero gap at all - you couldn't get a piece of paper in between.  I can only think someone had a kit with serious warp issues (entirely possible) or as suggested, made a major cockup somewhere.      

 

Still thinking about which specific aircraft to do. Availability of appropriate red/white serials seems a limiting factor. Currently thinking WL795 (became "Rosalie" as an AEW.2 and is a subject in the Revell AEW.2 kit). I should be OK to use a mix of Airfix & Revell decals as WL795 was an MR.2 in a previous life, joining 205 squadron at Changi in 1967 and was painted with the code "G" and I think was a Phase 3 by then. She still exists as far as i can establish; the former St Mawgan gate guard is now parked at Newquay, partly dismantled, awaiting her fate (hopefully restoration). 

 

Many thanks @Vulcanicity and to @amos brierley for the great info. I will be watching this WIP with great interest for what's needed to the kit! :popcorn:

 

Here's my gal in happier days...

 

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The fit issues appeared for me as I built up the interior and painted various parts. I've always painted interior parts before assembly and it was too hard a habit to break.. 😔

 

Al.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/3/2021 at 11:03 AM, Lord Riot said:

Great work on this superb Shack! And even better work on the creation of grassland habitat and the bat surveys! We need as much as we can get. I’ve been doing the BTO garden survey for two years now, and managed to finally persuade the developer of our new estate to manage the meadow area correctly. It’s only an acre or so but it all helps.

Thanks, and well done! All the work people like me do to get things like meadow planting installed only pays off if people take care of it - I know from experience that getting developers to look after habitats is like cat herding, so you have my respect! The BTO surveys are all immensely valuable, I do a Breeding Bird Survey square up on the Ridgeway, and am also a keen bird ringer. In fact, I spent this morning checking Barn Owl boxes (under supervision of a licence holder), and got clawed in the face for my trouble!

 

On 7/3/2021 at 1:45 PM, Dr. Quack said:

P.S. do we call you Batman now??

 

Well, nobody has ever seen Batman and I in the same room...Just sayin'!

 

On 7/7/2021 at 9:51 PM, alhenderson said:

The fit issues appeared for me as I built up the interior and painted various parts. I've always painted interior parts before assembly and it was too hard a habit to break.. 😔

 

Al.

Yeah paint definitely can stuff things up - hence my great caution to sand every mating surface to within an inch of its life! I do still wonder if some boxings of this kit have just got bad shrinkage in places. I have been consistently very lucky with Airfix QC - but one reads many incidences of dodgy parts on here it wouldn't surprise me!

 

On 7/7/2021 at 7:03 PM, RichG said:

. Currently thinking WL795 (became "Rosalie" as an AEW.2 and is a subject in the Revell AEW.2 kit). I should be OK to use a mix of Airfix & Revell decals as WL795 was an MR.2 in a previous life, joining 205 squadron at Changi in 1967 and was painted with the code "G" and I think was a Phase 3 by then. She still exists as far as i can establish; the former St Mawgan gate guard is now parked at Newquay, partly dismantled, awaiting her fate (hopefully restoration).

 

Nice choice of subject! WL795 in your photo is definitely in Phase 3 garb. The natural metal intake for the cabin heating system just below and forward of the crew door is the biggest giveaway.

 

Well folks, an improvement...only a fortnight or so between posts! Many thanks for all the compliments. We are inching along with this one.

 

With a more-or-less complete basic aircraft it was time to add all those little details to replace the Phase 3-standard ones I had sanded off months back. See back on the first page for my sheet of notes and scribbles on what should go where. Thanks to @alhenderson I also had a good set of higher-resolution photos of WR964 which helped clear up some outstanding uncertainties.

 

First, and most obviously missing on the kit is an object on the port nose which I think is a trailing wireless antenna chute. An identical looking housing is present on the Lancaster in the same position. A bit of casting around in the spares box produced this TSR2 camera blister, which formed a suitable base for the housing, while I made the chute out of plasticard sanded to shape and drilled out.

 

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This shot of it in position also shows a small heat exchanger made of plasticard and the Search and Rescue and Homing (SARAH) dipole aerials (supplied by the kit).

 

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On the starboard nose I carved a new NACA intake just below the gunner's canopy, added a tiny aft facing vent and the drain pipe pointed out by Amos a few posts back.

 

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Moving aft we have the ECM thimble antenna on the spine and another smaller antenna aft of it. You can also see I have started the nerve-shredding job of masking and gluing in the tiny fuselage windows. My new cut holes for the relocated galley windows were surprisingly close to the correct size, but having no flange inside to catch the glazing meant that fitting them required a steady hand!

 

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On the port rear fuselage and underside aft of the radome are some more scoops and vents, including one big enough to drill out.

 

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Away from the vents I have also sprayed and weathered the bomb bay. This still needs some details picking out.

 

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Lastly for today, I have been making a start on the nacelle fronts and props. The four rad intake fronts at the top right are the first objects I have airbrushed "in anger" following 22 years of painting models with a hairy stick. I think they look quite good! Ages ago I did a series of tests to identify a satisfactory new brand of paint to supply Dark Sea Grey, since Humbrol no longer produce the old 164 as an acrylic (that, and the fact that Humbrol acrylics increasingly seem to be made out of textured exterior house render). I settled on Mr Hobby Aqueous, and I have to say it covers beautifully and looks the part to my eyes.

 

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Here are the props and spinners. An unintended, but immensely welcome consequence of building a Phase II aircraft is that the prop tips were still Yellow. I think painting red-white-red stripes or attempting to use the kit decals would have been the proverbial camel's back straw!

 

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Until next time. I'm off to stop typing about modelling and do some modelling!

 

 

 

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Aww man, just realised my propellor tips should've been yellow as well!! Didn't even think about that, I just went ahead and painted then red and white. Oh well, not changing them now!

 

I'm interested in the two aerials above the cockpit. Are these on addition to the two that are forward of the ECM antenna on the roof from which wires go to the tailfins? I haven't seen them on any pictures, but it's hard to make out aerials on a lot of the pictures..

 

Also, any thoughts on the colour of the very top of the Orange Harvest antenna? On the pics I've seen it looks like it has a colour of some sort, but hard to tell in black and white. My gut feeling is it might be a transparent red or green, or something..

 

Cheers,

Al

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  • 4 weeks later...

Thanks Bertie, Quack and Al!

On 7/18/2021 at 9:48 AM, alhenderson said:

I'm interested in the two aerials above the cockpit. Are these on addition to the two that are forward of the ECM antenna on the roof from which wires go to the tailfins? I haven't seen them on any pictures, but it's hard to make out aerials on a lot of the pictures..

 

My understanding is that the forward roof aerials and those near the Orange Harvest antenna are early and late positions (respectively) for the masts supporting VHF radio aerial wires. The position is supposed to have been changed with the Phase 2 update, and thus the combination of forward aerials and ECM "thimble" as I have modelled shouldn't have occurred. However the photos you kindly sent show that it did! I'm coming to realise that the Phase updates were fairly haphazard - all the more reason to check one's refs carefully!

 

Some careful study of other images suggest that the earlier masts were smaller and more raked that the later style, so I scratchbuilt them.

 

As for the colour of the OH antenna, I have no idea! It's some kind of darkish colour. I am idly contemplating a visit to Newark in the next few weeks so I might have a look at the MR3.

 

With the aerials and windows fitted and the masking done, it was time to crack out the primer and paint! Here we are with primer and white on and the latter masked off. I used rattlecans for these (I am still trying to ease myself in gently to airbrushing) but had frustrating issues with gravelly primer so I think it won't be long before I sling the cans.

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Then, the big moment - on goes the DSG! The Iwata was a bit spluttery, not sure why although I suspect it was issues with humidity. So the finish isn't perfect but still better that I would have managed with a brush. I am *very* pleased with the masking of the white, which was almost perfect with no creep under of the grey.

 

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With this massive psychological barrier out of the way, it was time to get started with something I am more familiar with...decals! The Shack is a big model and I am not a tidy modeller (note the profusion of mugs):

 

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As you may remember, I am building WR964 of 204 Squadron RAF based at Ballykelly in approximately 1963. The later DSG scheme represented by Airfix is WR966 of 205 squadron based at Changi in 1972. Apart from the Phase differences, there are several key differences in the markings between UK and Far East-based aircraft in this scheme. The Changi-based 205 squadron applied a long white stripe along the upperwing between the spars, presumably to keep the fuel tanks slightly cooler in the Malayan heat (as a former tropical forest ecologist, I can understand!). The reason this affects me is that all the maintenance stencils on these strips are red not yellow, including the "Walk here"/"Walk forward of this line"/"Walk Aft..." etc. Airfix followed this faithfully so I was stuck.

 

Luckily, I managed to acquire this sheet designed for the Modelcraft boxing of the old Frog MR3. Look, Yellow lines!

 

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As long as I don't accidentally stick the Afrikaans text on (unlikely to be comprehensible to the average Ulsterman, and vice versa) this should be easy, right? Well, the slight issue is that the lines and text were rather overscale, and looked comically thick next to the Airfix markings from elsewhere on the wing outside the white cooling strip (yellow, and thus to be used).

 

Not much could be done about the font,  but using a fresh scalpel blade, steel ruler and a steady hand I was able to cut the lines down by slicing them longitudinally.

 

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(Yes, I have noticed the Afrikaans! I didn't use all of this one so the section of writing was surplus to requirements)

Ms Vulcanicity rolled her eyes at this, but I think the results were worth it. The modified yellow markings on the wing look a lot closer to the red Airfix decals than the unmodified decals at centre.

 

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That's it for today - I am still decalling, in between bat surveys...

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That's a lovely looking finish! I'm still a little bit annoyed at the quality of my finish having brush painted many coats of grey and then the gloss 😔

 

Very nice yellow walkways as well, top with with the scalpel - reckon you could be a surgeon with steady hands like that!

 

Al

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