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Bristol Britannia - F-RSIN Plastic 1/144


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I'm joining in with the F-RSIN Plastic 1/144 Britannia. Just a placeholder for now, I'll start it in a week or so once I've made some space on the bench.

 

This GB wasn't going to be a high priority for me, but that has changed in the last week, as my Dad passed away last Saturday and I'm going to build this Britannia in his memory. I have my Dad to thank for cultivating my love of aircraft and aviation. He started taking me to Manchester airport when I was so young I can't really remember it, and at one point we would probably have been on the terraces on top of the piers at some point every weekend. We went to museums and airshows together, even going on a tour of European airports once that took in an airshow at Sion in Switzerland. He cultivated and encouraged my modelling too - he wasn't the one that started it - (that was a family friend who gave me a Matchbox Lightning for my 7th birthday) but he gave me the basic skills and encouraged me to develop them. Over the years, aviation would always give us plenty to talk about, and he would always ask what I was building.

 

Dad had a thing for Vulcans (who doesn't?. The Vulcan was the highlight of the Woodford airshow for both of us every year, but as a child he lived next door to an Avro test pilot for a few years and he remembered seeing the prototype flying over his house) but his real interest was in classic British airliners. In particular he loved the VC10 and the Britannia. So for Christmas in 2015, when Roden had recently released the Britannia kit, when he asked me what he could get for me the answer was obvious. So why am I building the F-RSIN kit? Because of Dad's (lack of) online abilities! I sent him a link to the Roden kit at Hannants so was a bit surprised when he gave me the F-RSIN kit. He was pretty useless at online shopping - over the years, attempts to suggest things for him to buy online for family birthday and Christmas presents turned into me buying everyone's presents and him sending me the cash (by post, no online banking either for him) as he would struggle to get an online purchase to work for him every time. So it wasn't at all surprising that he didn't manage to follow the link to the Roden kit and buy it, but I was quite impressed that he'd still been able to search for a Britannia and buy a kit! 

 

Dad was very pleased that I wanted to build a Britannia but, having had a not-very-enjoyable experience with a previous F-RSIN build, I wasn't in a hurry to build this kit and it has languished in the stash for a few years. But since he passed it has taken on some importance for me and I'll be building this in his memory. Dad, this one's for you, and when I can get my hands on the new Airfix Vulcan I'll be building one of those for you as well.

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Time to get started. First up, here's what's in the box:

 

F-RSIN Britannia

 

Clearly a short run kit. The surfaces of the parts are quite rough and will need to be sanded smooth, there are engraved panel lines which look ok and also look deep enough to survive the smoothing of the surface. But despite all that it actually looks fairly good. There's surprisingly little flash.

 

BOAC decals are included. I've got aftermarket decals for RAF and A&AEE Britannias, but Dad would have liked to see it in BOAC colours so that's what I'll be doing. This is going to mean wings and lower fuselage in natural metal so I'm going to have to put a lot of work into getting nice smooth surfaces.

 

Started by assembling the main airframe components:

Britannia WIP

 

Here I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised. I didn't have a lot of time or energy for modelling today (was watching Dad's funeral online at midnight last night - having been denied permission to travel by the Australian government - and struggled to get to sleep afterwards) and didn't expect to get this much done. The parts went together pretty well - there was a little sanding of mating surfaces to do, but not a lot, and it isn't going to need a lot of filler. F-RSIN kits don't have a good reputation but this doesn't seem at all bad so far. A bit of work to do with the sanding sticks tomorrow though!

 

thanks for looking

Julian

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Now that I've got my Unarmed GB builds out of the way I can press on with the Britannia - forgot to photograph it today though. I've carried on with assembling the wings but hit a bit of a snag: There are four inserts to go at the back of the engine nacelles, comprising the jet pipes and pen-nib fairings beneath them. Each of them comes in two halves. Somehow, for the outboard engines I've got three right halves and one left half! Hard to see how this could have happened except that one of them was loose, maybe when it was packed my kit was given the wrong loose part. I'm going to build it up using a bit of plastic tube and plenty of filler.

 

The fit of these parts isn't great and will require some filler - it's going to be difficult to get it done well enough for a natural metal finish, but I'm going to try.

 

more soon

Julian

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  • 3 weeks later...

After a bit of a delay I've got hold of the plastic tube I need to replace the missing exhaust part. After a close look at the other three exhausts I wasn't satisfied with the kit parts, so I've cut them off and replaced them with plastic tube as well. I've then built the rear of the nacelles back up with milliput. The milliput hasn't cured yet so it all still looks pretty rough, but here it is:

Britannia WIP

 

I'll get this cleaned up and hopefully then get the build back on track tomorrow.

 

thanks for looking

Julian

 

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I’m sorry to hear about your Father and it’s a bummer that you couldn’t get to the funeral too. I’m glad you have such positive memories and a great motivation for this build.

 

I’ve never seen inside a F-rsin kit before. It looks like fun - I don’t mind doing a bit of work on a kit if it’s basically sound, and this looks like that. Without wishing to jinx it, your build seems to be going very well!

 

Regards,

Adrian

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On 9/4/2021 at 7:02 PM, AdrianMF said:

I’m sorry to hear about your Father and it’s a bummer that you couldn’t get to the funeral too. I’m glad you have such positive memories and a great motivation for this build.

 

I’ve never seen inside a F-rsin kit before. It looks like fun - I don’t mind doing a bit of work on a kit if it’s basically sound, and this looks like that. Without wishing to jinx it, your build seems to be going very well!

 

Regards,

Adrian

 

Thanks Adrian. I think Dad would have been pleased to see how this build's going - I think it's going well. The kit's fairly basic, the plastic has a weird rough surface texture, and the fit's far from perfect, so it's far from state of the art but I don't think it's taking too much work to build it into an acceptable model.

 

After a couple of iterations of fill, prime, check, repeat I'm pretty happy with the nacelles and I've got the wings on. I've had to use a bit of filler at the wing roots, cleaning that will come next, then the same with the tailplanes and on to the painting stage.

 

Britannia WIP

 

cheers

Julian

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Looking great, Julian, the Brittania is a great looking aircraft and you're doing a fantastic job on the filling and sanding - the lines look good. I just thought there how the nose and tail of the Brittania have a touch of the Brabazon about them and that wouldn't be surprising. All the best. Mike

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On 9/18/2021 at 11:28 PM, Ventora3300 said:

Looking great, Julian, the Brittania is a great looking aircraft and you're doing a fantastic job on the filling and sanding - the lines look good. I just thought there how the nose and tail of the Brittania have a touch of the Brabazon about them and that wouldn't be surprising. All the best. Mike

Thanks Mike! Never thought with all the filling and sanding this needed that I'd get a smooth enough surface to take a metallic finish, but here it is - seems to have turned out ok:

Britannia WIP

 

A bit more painting then it's decal time.

 

cheers

Julian

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Tried to get the first couple of decals on today. It didn't go well! The kit decals weren't a good fit and were extremely fragile - a couple of tears in the decals rendered them unusable. So moving to plan B, which is XX367 of the A&AEE using 26 decals. This is going to involve a repaint - the white on the nose needs to come further down and the wings and lower fuselage will be Light Aircraft Grey and the fin and wingtips will be Signal Red. I've got the white done today, will get the LAG on tomorrow. Getting close to the deadline but I still intend to get it done on time. A quiet week at work would help, although I haven't had one of those for a long time!

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Repainted. It's had a gloss coat since I took this photo, I'm hoping to get the decals done later today. If that goes well it should be finished before the GB deadline tomorrow night.

 

Britannia WIP

 

cheers

Julian

 

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Finished! The rest of the decals went on pretty well although a bit of mishandling has caused a little bit of a kink in the cheat line. Nothing I can really do about that now! Painting the props was a bit tricky, but I do like the black and white striped props many RAF aircraft of the 70s seem to have used. More photos in the gallery shortly.

 

1/144 Britannia

 

Many thanks to the hosts for an interesting GB. Apologies to everyone whose builds I haven't commented on, life has got in the way of fully engaging with things like group builds lately, your builds are all wonderful.

 

cheers

Julian

 

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