spejic Posted May 7, 2021 Author Share Posted May 7, 2021 I was going to glue on the vents on the side when I realized I didn't drill out the holes you need for that. That's ok - you just shine a flashlight through the other side and you can see the place you are supposed to drill. I figured that out years ago on this very kit when I closed up the wings before drilling out the holes for the pylons. A wiser person would have learned from history. Anyway, the bigger problem came when I was dry fitting the wing for gluing (it's not actually glued above, as I was still figuring out the fill for the gaps along their length). I found the gear bay wasn't lining up with the indent in the wing part. It turns out the whole internal cockpit/gear bay structure was twisted clockwise a bit. I could not let that stand because the canopy would not fit. So I snapped the nose off, split the fuselage halves back to the intakes, and used more brute force to mostly free the internal structure. The back of the cockpit is glued back more or less the right way, and when that's dry I'm going to install some internal structure to hold the gear bay in the correct orientation. I assume this all gets fun at some point. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
helios16v Posted May 7, 2021 Share Posted May 7, 2021 Rework & corrections is half the fun.....so I keep telling myself. It'll be worth it in the end. If you had just pushed through knowing you could've fixed it, the misalignment would've irked you every time you looked at it sitting on the shelf. This is all assuming of course that the repair/correction is within your abilities. Sometimes you just have to do the best you can, and move on hoping you've learned a thing or 2 to watch out for on future builds. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
modelling minion Posted May 7, 2021 Share Posted May 7, 2021 This does all sound like heavy engineering rather than modelling, such can be the jot of our hobby. Whilst it does sound drastic I am sure that you will sort it out and that the end result will look all the better for you having done it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spejic Posted June 4, 2021 Author Share Posted June 4, 2021 On 5/7/2021 at 9:26 AM, modelling minion said: This does all sound like heavy engineering rather than modelling, such can be the jot of our hobby. Whilst it does sound drastic I am sure that you will sort it out and that the end result will look all the better for you having done it. Yeah, this kit is fighting me so hard. I had to break off the nose of the aircraft and adjust the cockpit/gear bay twice to get it right (maybe?). Anyway, I'm finally getting some time again now that the busy season of work is starting to end. I'm in the seam fixing part of the build. The wing root gun ports are another one of the 38,873 notably problematic parts of the kit. The kit instructions are wrong about which part to install on which side - you have to reverse them. They are also undersized. The way I am dealing with it is to place a shim to slide them forward a bit, and install them as even with the bottom of the wing as I can - this way I can preserve the large amounts of detail there. I'll build up the tops with filler to even it out. And is that gap in the forward landing gear bay what everyone else got? It's massive. You can lose a small dog or the will to continue living in there. I don't see a way of repositioning the internals to make it fit better even if I had the will to break the kit apart a third time. I installed the landing gear and it seems to be at the right angle. I guess I'm just going to have to break out the Tamiya two-part epoxy to fill it because anything lesser won't fix that canyon. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
helios16v Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 I had actually attached the nose gear well to the belly pan much earlier than the directions called for. So instead of being attached to the fuselage sides, I’m actually attached where you have the gap. Granted if I didn’t do it this way out of necessity trying to make a resin cockpit fit I very well could’ve been in the same boat. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stefan Buysse Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 6 hours ago, spejic said: The wing root gun ports are another one of the 38,873 notably problematic parts of the kit. The kit instructions are wrong about which part to install on which side - you have to reverse them. Hi, Oops, I read this just after I installed them according to the instructions. But then I checked. Are you sure that the instructions are wrong? If you reverse them, that small aperture next to the barrrel (I figure it's gun camera aperture) is on the topside. Looking at pictures, I believe it should be on the underside. About the gap in the nose gear bay. I'm building a C, an E and an F. I have practically no gap on the C. On the E and F, I have no gap at the rear like you, but a big one towards the front. On all three, colsing the fuselage involved quite a bit of fiddling. Cheers, Stefan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stefan Buysse Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 Hi, Strange things keep happening here. I see that the aperture is on the underside on your model too. Maybe the instructions caused some confusion because the aircraft is illustrated upside down there. Cheers, Stefan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
modelling minion Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 This one really does seem to be putting up a fight doesn't it. The fit of the nose looks good to me and it also looks like your plastic shim should take care of the worst of the gap around the wing root gun ports. Hopefully this will be the end of the nasty fit problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spejic Posted June 4, 2021 Author Share Posted June 4, 2021 5 hours ago, Stefan Buysse said: Strange things keep happening here. I see that the aperture is on the underside on your model too. Maybe the instructions caused some confusion because the aircraft is illustrated upside down there. It could be that. It could be only an issue with the Brazil Skyhawk instructions. It's hard to tell now because I can't tell which part is which number. In any case it's pretty easy to tell because the pin forces them to be very offset if you put them in the wrong way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spejic Posted June 4, 2021 Author Share Posted June 4, 2021 7 hours ago, helios16v said: I had actually attached the nose gear well to the belly pan much earlier than the directions called for. So instead of being attached to the fuselage sides, I’m actually attached where you have the gap. Granted if I didn’t do it this way out of necessity trying to make a resin cockpit fit I very well could’ve been in the same boat. The main problem is that the whole assembly only has one really well defined attachment point, which is on the E17 structure behind the cockpit. There are shallow depressions for the side instrument panels, but there is some play there and there are no pin and sockets like you find in modern kits nor anything for the gear bay, instrument panel, or very front of it to bond to with certainty. Installing the E17 part incorrectly could have made the whole assembly too high, but the sidewalls look right and I didn't have any trouble enclosing the cockpit within the fuselage halves so I don't think I did that. I guess I'll find out when I try to install the canopy. The torque I experienced was probably because of the high part of the side instrument panel I installed, although I thought there was enough clearance when I did the dry fitting. I'm just used to 1/144 aircraft and 1/700 ships. This is my first 1/48 model. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spejic Posted June 6, 2021 Author Share Posted June 6, 2021 I've ended my experiment with the shims behind the gun ports. While it does put the forward end in a better place and improve the alignment of the parts to the bottom, it makes it mismatch the leading edge curve of the wing, and would require massive sanding to fit that. I don't want to lose that leading edge detail. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
modelling minion Posted June 6, 2021 Share Posted June 6, 2021 Good choice, far better to keep the detail on the leading edge of the wing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spejic Posted June 14, 2021 Author Share Posted June 14, 2021 (edited) I'd thought the busy time at work would have ended now but my boss has other ideas. In any case I found a good 20 hours recently to get some work in and I spent it puttying, sanding, engraving, and installing almost all the little bits. I installed the slats now because on this particular aircraft the wing undersides, wing tops, and slat wells are all the same color. The kit is resting on the only thing I could find quickly - a durian pancake a coworker gave me that I'm too scared to open. A few things to note: Hasegawa will have you install the late A-4F ECM antenna/close quarters stabbing weapon on the nose of the A-4M but the M's version is a slightly different shape. I cut off the tip and installed a bit of plastic rod in there. Easy enough. From what I can tell, there isn't supposed to be a panel line at the tips of the rear fuselage chaff insert part, so I filled and sanded that part smooth. It's nice also having a TA-4J boxing of the kit so I can borrow a few tiny parts that flew off this kit at some point or another. The next thing to work on is the seat. I'm just going to slightly detail the kit one. It will probably take me another month or two at the rate I'm going. But this kit is going to stay on the front burner for sure. I'll keep the updates on my progress coming. Edited June 14, 2021 by spejic 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
modelling minion Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 Please do keep the updates coming as you have spent an awful lot of time and effort to get this far and we would like to see how it turns out. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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