Oscar EW-5894 Fallus tactical fighter bomber

[Parrahs]

As hinted at in the chat thread I'll be jumping in with Airfix' 1/72 rendition of the greatest of aircraft, the Oscar EW-5894 Fallus tactical fighter bomber. (Box art seems to be some export version or something camouflaged for god knows where, but anyway.)

 

 

Brass pitot tubes tossed in to spice it up, and masks seemed like a good idea for a blitzbuild. I'm starting somewhat late in the day with the plan being to aim for a single 24h run, the idea is to have time to sleep in the middle. Hopefully as a varnish coat is curing rather than while waiting for filler to do the same. Starting tea (for the build, obviously not for the day at this time) is a pu'er.

 

And so on my mark, ready...

[Parrahs]

Given the whole blitz thing some thought was, occasionally, given to the build order. So the first thing was to varnish the canopy to give that plenty of time to cure before masking it.

 

 

Then some work started on the cockpit.

 

 

The ejector pin mark on the bulged bit looked like it might need some work at first, but the rear instrument panel took care of it. At this point I remembered that the inner part of the intakes were the outer walls of the rear cockpit, so the intakes needed a bit of paint before the cockpit could be put together.

 

 

Quite rough (and the camera's doing it best to show every nuance of it all), but visibility after assembly will likely be bat-in-a-black-hole levels. Now then, glue those (plus a small touch of lead, no weight being mentioned in the manual but better safe than sorry and all that) in and...

 

 

...men faen också. At leats the intake piece will cover it on the outside. I pressed the upper part down as bets as I could and glued it in place. A small touch of filler on the inside and hopefully all will be well in the end. At least if it wants to poke up making the canopy fit should just be a matter of cutting away material.

 

 

Pilot fit is a real time saver, in that nope I ain't gonna bother with that. Off to the CIC with both of them. (Also very much like the Harrier I built some years ago. Airfix might wanna start caring a bit more here.)

I then remembered that the wheel wells needed the same silver treatment as the intake,s if a bit better executed since it'll be somewhat visible, so that was taken care of before a quick bit of primer was sprayed on.

 

 

Time to go run around the place while this dries.

[Parrahs]

So then, cockpit coloured.

 

 

Washed (running Citadel acrylics here for speed).

 

 

Drybrushed and finally decals added.

 

 

Then it was time to start gluing things together. This entailed quite a few rather more sulphuric expressions on my part. The outer intake bits fit so-so. The fuselage halves preferred to have as little to do with each other as possible. The wings needed a lot of force to sit properly both in front and rear (not as bad as the harrier mentioned above which ended up needing a lot of sanding, but still). The stabilizers fit better on the wrong side. And in between the glued-in main gear wells there was a big hole where a plate was to be fitted. As I went about that...

 

 

At leats at this point gluing them back in place was easy enough, if this repeats when the main gear legs are put in it'll be a whole lot worse. The plate itself then fit quite poorly, it was probably supposed to rest on the wheel wells but that didn't really want to happen, instead the front end of it just wanted to sit too high or too low. A lot of fiddling later it finally hit a decent level in front, so I glued that end then and pushed the rear into place when the glue had set a bit. on the plus side the only real spots where immediate brute force had to be replaced with slow-curing filler were the sides of the wing pods. And so at last...

 

 

The brass pitot was a very good choice, the kit part certainly won't win any beauty contests. And I see I forgot to sand down the joint behind the wing, time to get on that now that the glue there has hopefully hardened. That done everythign will be ready for primer, and with that I'm clocking out for the night.

 

 

A big bird it ain't.

 

 

[Beggsy]

Looking great!  I built the weird export version a year ago in a Blitzbuild.  It went together pretty well in the end, despite some warnings.  The most time consuming part was the myriad of stencil decals to be applied. I think I ended up skipping some 🤫

 

 

[JeroenS]

That's a beautiful blue scheme there, and you seem to have an interesting collection of pointy things. 

[JOCKNEY]

Looking great.

Does this one need nose weight to sit on its undercarriage ?

Cheers Pat 

[Tim R-T-C]

I hope when this is all complete you go to Disneyland.

[Parrahs]

9 hours ago, Beggsy said:

The most time consuming part was the myriad of stencil decals to be applied.

A quick look at the decal sheet and the vast majority of those aren't on my side of it, so that'll be a bit quicker than it could have been. Though I do have the "rocket pod openings" to deal with.

 

 

9 hours ago, JeroenS said:

That's a beautiful blue scheme there

Kinda had to do it the moment I saw Foxbot sold masks for it.

 

 

7 hours ago, JOCKNEY said:

Does this one need nose weight to sit on its undercarriage ?

With 1g in the nose the centre of mass is a little bit ahead of the main gear, so I'd guess it'd keep of its butt even with an empty nose.

 

 

6 hours ago, Tim R-T-C said:

I hope when this is all complete you go to Disneyland.

Just have to turn in the evidence for who killed Palme on the way.

 

 

So, no starting timer here, but it was about 1330. Painting...

 

 

Make a huge mess. (Using MRP-046 since it is well behaved and I just need some kinda of lightish grey for this.) See if you can spot what I forgot until well into the next painting stage.

 

 

Then cover it up, mostly. Might be some kind of life lesson in here. Colour guide calls for FS36375, light compass grey. I have a bottle of Mr Color H307 which is supposed to match FS36320, dark compass grey. So using a highly scientific and precise method sure to produce an absolute match I took that and added a bit of white.

 

 

More size comparison. The single 24h build obviously isn't happening, but 2x12h won't be any issue. At this point the detail painting has also been done (purely freehanding the air intake red was only kinda sorta terrifying). The pitot lance has been knocked off, and will be left off until the very end so that it'll only have been knocked off once in total instead of fifteen or some such times. Landing gear has also been glued on, trying to attach the main gear legs at the end turned out to be a bad idea, follow the instructions there. But with the main attachement tabs clipped off and generous amounts of CA glue just about everywhere things seem to have worked out. Just don't expect the get a lot of close up photos of the belly...

[Jinxman]

Nice work - it's really going to look the part.

[Parrahs]

Decals, and then the whole thing glossed over.

 

 

Very few stencils for this scheme, so a pretty quick affair. You get eight "openings" for each pod, and the instructions tell you to use the lot, but I have some doubts there. I've only used seven per pod and there isn't exactly a lot of free space left between them.

 

 

Slobber.

 

 

Cleaned up and glossed... under? A bit more staining than usual left behind I think, possibly in part due to the rather lightly coloured paintjob, and possibly because being a blitzbuild I didn't leave the gloss coat to cure until the next day before slopping on the wash. Then it's just to glue on the nose transparence, pitot pike and peel off the canopy mask for it all to be

 

 

Finished.

[JeroenS]

Nice result! Aaaand he has a light saber too 🙂 

[Parrahs]

And one more size comparison from while I took the photos for the gallery, partially to get a better pic of the final result in here as well.

 

 

It can almost get the wing in under the Eagle's belly.

[JOCKNEY]

That has turned out brilliantly, congratulations 

 

 

Cheers Pat