HAF T-6G Texan

[Pappy]

G'day people,

 

This will be a placeholder for my WIP. I will be using the 1/48 Italeri boxing.

I bought this kit second hand and the box included one complete and one partially started (but complete) kit so excellent value.

 

Although the box says Italeri, the instructions included are from Heller and I believe the original mould was Occidental so I guess this is the Occihelleri kit?

 

 

Pappy

Edited April 7, 2021 by Pappy

[RidgeRunner]

Welcome to the GB, mate. You build will add further breadth to the group. Excellent stuff!

 

Martin

[Pappy]

On 4/4/2021 at 4:23 PM, RidgeRunner said:

Welcome to the GB, mate. You build will add further breadth to the group. Excellent stuff!

 

Martin

Cheers Martin,

 

Here are the contents of the unstarted kit

 

 

Aaaand we are off!

 

So first up I attached the exhaust collector ring to the dummy engine firewall. The engine exhaust 'opening' is solid

 

 

 

This is an easy fix, after drilling the pilot hole the opening was carefully reamed out until it looked more convincing

 

 

 

I then spent a while cleaning up the cockpit framing. I also discovered that the right frame in the unstarted kit was missing some sections of the bracing struts, luckily I have two kits!

 

 

Cleaning these frames up is a tricky affair and I really hate sanding of mold seams on round parts. This kit also seems to have quite a few sink marks on the thicker parts as well as some mold slippage and I was actually contemplating replacing all the inner bracing framework withe plastic rod but persevered with it. These are the cleaned up parts

 

 

Pappy

 

I made a start on adding the PE fascia plates representing the inner fuselage structural details

 

 

 

Edited April 5, 2021 by Pappy

[Wez]

A good start Pappy, what's the colour scheme going to be like?

 

[Pappy]

3 hours ago, Wez said:

A good start Pappy, what's the colour scheme going to be like?

 

 

G'day Wez,

 

Thanks,as for the colour scheme I have a few options but I have yet to decide, 

 

Pappy

 

Edited April 5, 2021 by Pappy

[Pappy]

G'day people,

 

After a monster sesh of adding PE goodness to the cockpit frames, I ended up with these,

 

 

 

A quick test fit against their respective fuselage halves just because,

 

 

I can't wait to get painting but I won't get any time until the weekend. I did however get to make a quick start on the donk

 

 

I still need to add the push rods and front of the crankcase but I need to clean these up first as there is a considerable amount of flash, which is not unexpected given the age of the molds and era of the kit design but the detail is very nice with individual cylinder cooling fins visible

 

Pappy

[85sqn]

Nice work and good to see another Occidental offering!

[Shalako]

I think the addition of the etched set makes the kit look much, much better!!

 

Keep up the good work mate!!

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

 

P.S.: You say you will finish it as HAF? You mean Hellenic Air Force? Because, they had some really interesting paint finishes.

[Pappy]

8 hours ago, Shalako said:

I think the addition of the etched set makes the kit look much, much better!!

 

Keep up the good work mate!!

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

 

P.S.: You say you will finish it as HAF? You mean Hellenic Air Force? Because, they had some really interesting paint finishes.

 

Yup, HAF - Hellenic Air Force. I agree that there are some nice schemes to choose from. I may need the longer exhaust and covered wheel hubs for some options though,

 

cheers,

 

Pappy

 

 

[CliffB]

I've got PE envy, particularly as the Texan canopy let's you see it all 

[John Masters]

Looking good.  Keep at it!

[Pappy]

On 4/7/2021 at 3:44 PM, CliffB said:

I've got PE envy, particularly as the Texan canopy let's you see it all 

 

As well as all the mistakes

 

3 hours ago, John Masters said:

Looking good.  Keep at it!

 

Cheers John

 

G'day people,

 

Made a quick start on painting up the cockpit today,

 

 

A quick blast of Interior Grey Green (IGG) on the cockpit sides followed by the uze wash'n'drybrush. The rear turtle deck also got the same treatment

 

 

I am not sure about the interior colour of the engine cowl. IGG seemed like a safe bet but also happy to be persuaded others wise (natural metal, Zinc Chromate Yellow, Interior Green, Bronze Green etc. if there are 'experten' about. A lot of current examples have been restored and I don't really trust that the restoration was necessarily faithful to the original specs. Also,  I wasn't happy with the thickness of the cowling edges so this was thinned until I was happy. The bare plastic contrasted nicely against the painted section to judge my efforts

 

 

Pappy

 

 

[RidgeRunner]

I like the green you’ve used here :). It seems to match the real aircraft very well.

 

Martin

[Pappy]

On 4/8/2021 at 7:35 PM, RidgeRunner said:

I like the green you’ve used here :). It seems to match the real aircraft very well.

 

Martin

Thanks Martin, IGG seems to be a popular choice for the innards!

 

G'day people,

 

I managed to get some bench time today so I spent it swooshing some paint about the interior cockpit framing

 

 

I decided to attach these directly to each fuselage frame rather than to the floor section as suggested by the destructions, mainly as I doubted I could get the aft turtle deck section to play nice with the side frames when joining the fuselage halves. This part was added to the right fuselage and this method allowed me to adjust it to sit square relative to the other parts. Nobody else building the Occihelleri kit has mentioned this issue, perhaps the PE has done something to the fit of the parts or it is just me (most likely!) but I was happy with this approach.

 

Whilst that lot is drying I turned to the wings. My two examples (and likely other people's) suffer from some pretty nasty sink marks in the thick plastic underside sections at the wing tip underside and forward aileron segments

 

 

A quick bit of filling and this was remediated

 

 

Next up the Main Wheel Wells (MWWs) received some attention. In preparation for some more PE goodness, the extant rib detail was removed (which allowed for the prominent ejector pin mark to be dealt with), you can see the before and after here

 

 

and with aforementioned PE goodness added, plus a little wiring as well

 

 

I also cleaned up and thinned the MWW edges for the large single piece lower wing, again before

 

 

and after

 

 

cheers,

 

Pappy

 

 

 

 

Edited April 11, 2021 by Pappy

[Pappy]

G'day people,

 

So more progress. I spent today finishing the painting of the cockpit side tube assemblies

 

 

A few decal placards were added to add some eye candy. The donk also received its PE ignition harness

 

 

The crankcase cover and pushrod tubes fit over this but I think the pushrod tubes look a little overscale and tend to obscure the rest of the donk

 

 

I may replace the pushrod tubes. The upper fuselage is comprised of a separate part that also includes the front cockpit coaming. The instrument panel coaming is a little overscale, luckily, there is a replacement PE part

 

 

I also had a play with the seats. OOB, they look a little chunky. The PE set includes replacements but I was curious to see what could be done with the kit seats. From the l-r, the unaltered kit seat, the kit seat with the sides thinned and the folded PE seat

 

 

The big advantage of using the kit seats (apart from not having to fold and assemble them) is that they have a couple of moulded on rails underneath them that positively locate them on the floor assembly. The seats on the real thing didn't touch the floor  and were mounted onto the support assembly behind each seat but this will not matter as the underside rails will not be seen. The seat pan on the kit seats is too shallow, in reality these are deeper and I presume the pilots at on their parachutes. Finally, the pair of shoulder straps moulded on is very fail and not really worth keeping so it is better to sand these off and replace them.  Clearly the brass seats are superior and I will be using them but I would like to see what I can do with the kit items, I have nothing to lose after all.

 

I spent a lot of time soldering up the seats. Normally I would have just glued them but I wanted to see if soldering was worthwhile. It will produce a much less fragile assembly but it does take up more more time. I initially attempted to apply the solder after running a flux pen around the joint but this was practically useless as the solder just balled up and rolled away! I went and bought some gel flux that is packaged inside a syringe applicator and this was much more successful, so successful tin fact that all the solder melted instantly and I ended up tinning the seat pan. I used some de-wicking braid to soak up the excess solder and had to clean up all the sticky flux off the parts but eventually I was happy with the results but I don't think this will become a habit unless superior strength is required as frankly the juice is not worth the squeeze due the set-up, the additional time and I don't need to add any more chemicals as we already deal with enough nasties in the hobby already

 

Pappy

 

Pappy

Edited April 11, 2021 by Pappy

[John Masters]

Nice work on the interior detail and engine bits!

[Pappy]

On 4/17/2021 at 1:25 AM, John Masters said:

Nice work on the interior detail and engine bits!

 

Thanks,

 

I managed to get the seats painted and installed

 

 

 

 

 

cheers,

 

Pappy

Edited April 25, 2021 by Pappy