Zombie Fishbed Resurrection 🧟‍♂️

[Max Headroom]

This is another of those projects I didn’t finish and consigned to the Far Reaches. Back in (checks notes) 2014  I participated in the MiG 21 Group Build. For reasons I can’t remember, it fell by the wayside. This is as far as I got 

 

 

I always intended to carry on but well, you know, stuff and things......

 

As a change of scene and being an eternal procrastinator I looked in the box  again the other day and my enthusiasm fired up again (yes I know I have other unfinished business, Beaufighter, Sea Balliol and WHIF Nimrod I’m talking about you - I will return to them!).

 

A quick sit rep showed the state of play

 

So I stared at the sprues for a while and searched the internet for photos of the wheel well and cockpit and now I’m up to here.

 

 
The main wheels tub is a one piece moulding so there was no sidewall detail at all. Some plastic rod, scrap and fuse wire has given it a busier look.

 

 

 

 

Certainly not claiming 100% fidelity but it’s better than before.

 

Next it was time to sort out the cockpit as it was more or less there from....2014. Just a bit of painting and I was there. I also sorted out nose weight to stop it being a tail sitter too.

 

 

 

Currently sorting out the hot end and once that’s done, I can stick to fuselage together.

 

Blimey progress!

 

Trevor 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Max Headroom]

Short burst of activity this afternoon saw me complete the internal gubbins so that I could close up the fuselage. Two observations here. The representation of the tail pipe is in several parts, all of which have positive alignments. However, although there is a locating point for the tail pipe to the port side fuselage you have to be careful how it aligns up when looking through the tail pipe. I used a piece of sprue glued vertically behind the fan blade part. Guess what, I forgot the photo. I then glued the two halves together.....

 

 

 

.....and fitted the spine and fin. The fin is fine but the spine although fitting well to the fuselage has a step at both front and rear. Here is the front

 

My first thought was immediately to reach for the filler, but then when I thought about it, the step was about 5 thou, meaning that I could glue in a piece to butt up to the join. Let it dry and then blend in. So that’s what I did

 

 

The step is eliminated and I can feather the back end smooth into the kit plastic. The seam at the rear end has similar treatment.

 

A note about the masking tape. Mrs H had me decorating recently and we bought the tape along with the other stuff. Using it, I realised it’s kabuki tape, but cheaper.

 

https://www.univarsc.com/products/prodec-advance-low-tack-precision-edge-masking-tape

 

There’s enough on my roll to last me a very long time.

 

Trevor

[Max Headroom]

Next up was to stick on the wings. Must say that I was less than impressed with the join.

 

 

I decided that instead of just using filler, the gap was wide enough for strips of 5 thou plastic card to be inserted. Thin ‘sausages’ of putty would then do the rest. This would minimise the amount of sanding required and so help preserve the surface detail. The underside was only slightly better but there was an awkward seam in the wheel well. For this I decided on another 5 thou plastic strip. Not exactly accurate but it’s part of my attempt to make the wheel bay look busy. The front and rear walls of the main bays in the fuselage are blank. The is an awful lot of plumbing in there and I couldn’t possibly reproduce it faithfully, but again a mixture of fuse wire and scrap plastic will at least give the illusion of business. No photos of that bit yet as as it’s on the list of things to do.

 

 

You can see from the above that my blending in work on the spine continues.

 

Next I looked at the cockpit and her I had a bit of A Disaster. Somehow, the cockpit tub has slipped down in the front, meaning that when I offered up the coaming there was a nuge gap.

 

Curses and naughty words. Deep breath.........

 

Opening up the fuselage was a no no. Only option was to resort to card and sprue scrap. Again this would mean that the instrument panel wouldn’t be correct, but I had to fill in that space. Resorting to a photo of a Yugoslav BIS in an old Scale Modelling, I built up the area thus

 

 

This creates another problem, namely matching my home-brew cockpit blue again.

 

Ho hum.

 

Trevor