RAF Lunar Interceptor - scratchbuild

[Uncle Monty]

Hi all

As threatened, I am building another interceptor as part of the UFO universe (see Scratchbuilt USAF Lunar Interceptor in RFI). This will be the RAF's contribution to the struggle against the pesky aliens while SHADO continues to build up its forces on the Moon.

This is going to be a more complex build than the USAF interceptor as I want to detail the cockpit. I already have a 1:35 pilot figure from, I think, a De Havilland Venom kit (I don't have the box, just a pile of bits). Anyway, the model should end up around 25cm in length.

This rough sketch shows what I'm aiming for, whether it ends up looking anything like that is a sweet mystery and all part of the fun.

 

 

I have a plan as to how it will be made. It'll have a wooden spine, 22mm copper pipe engines and the cockpit will have to be built from 1mm styrene sheet. The legs will be an issue but I'm ignoring all of that for now in the hope that inspiration will descend upon me at some point.

The armament will be 4 x 30mm cannons. Not sure if it needs missiles so there's another decision I can ignore for now and think about later.

The photos show where I'm currntly at. I've made the body from 2 plastic pipes with styrene sheet wrapped around to create the oval. You can also see the MDF 'spine'.

 

 

 

 

 

I made a start on the cockpit. This is very old-skool, I'm literally making ribs for the bottom and top which will be clad in more styrene. The 'glass' will be cut from an old CD case which, very handily, is clear styrene and a decent thickness as well. Don't ask me what album was in it, probably some cheesy 80s band.

The pilot has been smothered in filler so I can sculpt a spacesuit helmet (I ended up having him looking slightly to his right which I thought would be a bit more interesting). I had to cut off his legs to straighten them out, his arms will need the same treatment probably to match his hands to the controls as it would be daft to have him waving his hands in thin air. It's all a bit Hannibal Lecturish but let's not forget he's only plastic and I'm in charge.

 

 

 

 

 

All comments welcome, I'd love to know what you think out there.
cheers
Monty

[Hunter Rose]

Great start! Like the sound of this, the cockpit is looking good so far. Will be watching with a whole lot of interest Monty

[Richard E]

Proper old school scratch building: following with interest here.

[Uncle Monty]

Thanks @Hunter Rose and @Richard E. Having fun with this. Already had to buy more glue and styrene. Luckily big bro came up trumps and pulled a large bag of old kits from his loft which he handed over, complete with dust and cobwebs, so now the spares box is full!

[TimT64]

That is looking so cool

[Uncle Monty]

Thanks @TimT64! A quick update, I've been fiddling with the clear styrene and it turns out the best way of polishing out scratches is to use a dab of toothpaste. Apologies to all those grandmas out there who already know how to suck those eggs, but it was a revelation to me, after an hour of trialling various materials, face and hand creams and other substances I won't even mention.

[Alan R]

16 hours ago, Uncle Monty said:

it turns out the best way of polishing out scratches is to use a dab of toothpaste

I discovered that one by accident.

I have a very old 1/32 scale Hasegawa F-16. The canopy (as with a number of Hasegawa aircraft kits) has a big seam right down the middle of it.

I craped off the worst bits with a sharp blade, the sanded it down with various grades of sandpaper, which still left a visible mark.

Then I thought about fine abrasives and thought "Why not try tooth-paste?" That did the trick.

 

I might even finish the F-16 some day...

 

Cheers,

Alan.

[Uncle Monty]

Hi All

Time for an update. After a busy weekend sorting out family stuff and thanking my stars I filled up with petrol several days ago so I don't need to spend three hours queueing down the main road for it, I managed to squeeze in some me time with the build.

Progress is very erratic because just about everything has to be designed, cut to shape and glued. Also, I seem to be spending most of the time sanding styrene into the right shape. The model isn't very big so tolerances are tight and a half mm gap between panels looks like the Grand Canyon in the photos, so it's sand and check it's square and then sand again.

 

But enough moaning. Time for some photos. The quality is a bit poor because I'm using my phone rather than a proper camera.

 

This is the housing that will go on top of the fuselage. I'm calling it a radar housing; it looks like an air-intake but on a spaceship, that's silly. Mid you, no one moans about Meddings' classic interceptor design which is streamlined with two air intakes, so maybe it's not such a big issue.

 

 

Here is the bottom half of the cockpit with its panels and some interior detailing. I sprayed this with primer but that may have been a mistake. Never mind, I can always scrape it off again. I started painting the cockpit. It's going to be various shades of grey. Most of it will be hidden anyway so I'll keep it simple. You can just about see the central joystick (for roll and pitch) and the left hand stick for throttle, just like a helicopter. The foot pedals, which I won't bother with, would be for yaw.

 

The second photo shows how the two sub-assemblies will go together.

 

 

 

The astronaut pilot is recovering well after his major surgery to get his hands and legs into the right position to match the cockpit. The straps are styrene and the buckle is part of a wheel from a tank, I think.

 

 

Now the pilot has all his limbs again and has been undercoated. It's always encouraging to see a pile of random bits suddenly come together after a coat of paint.

 

 

Here he is painted red. I wanted to make his suit look like the David Bowman suit in 2001. Working with this detail on something so small gave me a migraine so I have to tackle it bit by bit.

 

 

These last shots show some detailing on the fuselage and engines. The engine exhausts were made from 1:35 jeep tyres and steering wheels, with modified oil barrels as cowls. It took a while to rummage through a lot of spares to work out this arrangement.

 

 

 

 

Well that's enough rambling, thanks everyone for looking and please let me know what you think.

cheers
Monty

[Tzulscha]

That looks believable.

Better than the stuff Gerry Anderson did.

Looking forward to seeing this one done!

[Uncle Monty]

Hi @Tzulscha, thanks for your nice comments. I grew up with Anderson and his shows and I have fond memories of watching all those explosions and disasters as a kid. I recently bought Martin Bower's book from Amazon (he worked on Space 1999 amongst many other things) and I'm always inspired by pictures of the amazing spaceships and other vehicles he's built over the years.

[Stickframe]

I think it's nice to see such an array of materials used on the build all tied together to look like they all belong together - nice work!  - And your sketch up front  - wow!  Looking forward to seeing your next update 

 

Cheers

Nick 

[Uncle Monty]

Hi @Stickframe thanks for the comment. I'll post more pics in a day or two. I'm slotting in some me time in between gardening chores at the moment, sort of battening down the hatches before the last of the sunshine disappears. I'm glad you like the sketch, doodling away and letting my imagination go wild is all part of the fun for me. Back in the day I wrote a lot of technical reference material complete with illustrations and the habit is hard to shake off.

[voozet]

On 23/09/2021 at 09:25, Uncle Monty said:

The 'glass' will be cut from an old CD case which, very handily, is clear styrene and a decent thickness as well.

 

I use clear polystyrene from disposable food blisters, e.g. for take-away cookies. They are thinner than a CD case and much more flexible.

I have made a habit of always checking the packaging material when shopping. 

PET, PP, PE are of little value because they are difficult to glue and paint. But PS is a treasure 

[Uncle Monty]

Thanks @voozet, that's a good tip.

[Uncle Monty]

Hi all

Time for another update from the workshop. I spent a couple of evenings on the build, stopping only for tea and biscuits, and managed to make some progress.

I spent most of the time on the cockpit, which looked worryingly like a bathtub until I put the roof on. Here it is, in what will be its final resting place. The radar housing on top is also not glued down at the moment, it needs a few hours of sanding and filling first, but you can see the rough shape of it. I use Humbrol model filler and it's always given me good results.

 

 

Here's a closeup of Dave Bowman. The side rectangle holes were going to be glazed, but now I don't think that'll look right so I'll cover them up.

 

 

The roof is going on. You can see the three supporting ribs. It took a while to cut the styrene 'glass', it's horrible stuff to work with. The ribs will need thickening with extra layers to give the glass something to rest on.

 

 

Still not glued together but it gives an idea of where it's heading.

 

 

The cockpit is now glazed, the side panels have been covered up, but still a lot of work to do on those ribs/window frames.

 

 

Finally a quick view of the rear where a few more greeblies have been added to the engines. The silver rectangle underneath the copper is a strip of staples from the 'man drawer'. I thought they looked a bit like radiator fins, for cooling purposes,which would make sense on rocket engines. The white box was made from styrene panels.

 

 

 

Overall it seems to be going where I wanted it to go. Thanks everyone for the comments and likes. Happy modelling!

cheers
Monty

[Hunter Rose]

Looking great! Really like the engines and the cockpit is coming together nicely, the tea and biscuits were well deserved

[Uncle Monty]

Thanks @Hunter Rose, a man needs fuel to keep the brain cells ticking over 😀

I treated myself to a new tool for the workshop - a modelling rivet maker. When it arrives I'll have a play and see what it can do. Never used one before so unknown territory for me. I'm thinking that the sides of the fuselage might benefit from a few rivets.

[TallBlondJohn]

On 01/10/2021 at 15:12, Uncle Monty said:

I recently bought Martin Bower's book from Amazon (he worked on Space 1999 amongst many other things) and I'm always inspired by pictures of the amazing spaceships and other vehicles he's built over the years.

Sorry about the hijack but what did you think of the book? It looks fascinating but quite pricey when its printed on demand and, according to reviews, not very well.

 

Great build so far BTW - I like the way you can see the genesis of the Eagle in the design. Maybe make the landing pads square to provide another hint?

[Uncle Monty]

Hi @TallBlondJohn, re the book yes it's not cheap but IMO worth every penny. It has more than 300 pages with colour photos on almost every page and I can't see any problems with the print quality. Most of the photos are new to me and many are of aircraft, trucks and dioramas that he designed and built I guess just for fun. It's mostly about scratch building, so if that's your thing then it's worth taking a look.

[Uncle Monty]

Hi all

Another update from the interceptor production line. Progress has been slow because all the big bits have been made and now I'm into the details, so everything takes ages to do and quite often the end result doesn't look much different to when I started. However, thanks to strong tea and the occasional Mars Bar, work continues.

 

Firstly, I decided to change the background story slightly; this is now a Royal Navy interceptor. I came across some photos of RN S2B Buccaneers in dark blue-grey, and I decided that this is the look I want for the model. In some ways it sort of resembles a Buccaneer anyway. I think Tamiya Gunship Grey would look pretty good and it would make a nice change from the usual off-white finish. I'll have to make my own decals using the laser printer and the water slide paper as I don't have anything even remotely close.

 

Here's where I am at the moment. The cockpit has been detailed, with some extra curves around the 'glass' which hopefully suggest strengthening as per armoured glass. I've added some greeblies but not a lot, I think too much detailing would spoil the lines, it is quite a small ship.

 

 

 

 

Here are the legs being assembled and glued onto the fuselage.
Each leg is made of two styrene sheets (for strength) glued and then drilled with holes for extra decoration. The legs fit into U section channels made of styrene which will be glued onto the underside of the fuselage, at an angle (because of the fuselage curve) which will ensure the legs are splayed out away from the centre line.

This was a nightmare, it took a long time with a lot of checking and tweaking as the glue dried to ensure that the legs are symmetrical in every way. This is where the modelling mat saved my bacon yet again. Keeping the legs square to the mat markings made everything much easier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can also see the 4 cannons. These were made from thick sprue, cut and squared off. This was pushed into 4 x 1:35 bombs from an old aircraft kit. Each bomb was assembled, sanded smooth and then drilled out to make a big hole for the sprue to slide into. The result is a nice imitation of cannon fairings.

 

These other assemblies are the attitude jets. Two jets point up, two down and one forward. These were made from suspension parts from a tank kit, no idea what tank it was. The model will have one assembly on each side of the fuselage and this will give the ship the ability to move pretty much any way it wants to.

 

 

Well, that's it for now. Thanks for all the nice comments and likes, it means a lot!

cheers
Monty

 

[Thom216]

May have been said already, but that would look good for Space 1999 and 2001 as well! Very nice!

[Hunter Rose]

Really loving the cockpit with the pilot in! 

[Uncle Monty]

Many thanks @Thom216 @Hunter Rose, much appreciated! Any comparison with 2001 is a compliment and a half 😀. If only I had Kubrick's budget...

[Uncle Monty]

Hi fellow modellers

Here are a few pics to show where the interceptor build has got to.
Up to now I've been mostly following the drawing, which is relatively simple, but soon I'll have to start thinking about painting and weathering which is anything but simple, plus the decals which I will have to create as don't have anything that would suit. I find decals tricky; they slide when they're supposed to stick, stick when I want them to slide.

 

Before all of that, I still have a lot to do with the build. Here you can see the legs in position, having been left for a few days to dry fully. Finally the skids go on and the legs are done (for now).

 

 

 

 

Next, I decided it was time to glue the cabin to the fuselage which was easy as both faces are flat and made of styrene so all it took was a generous blob of glue and two days to let it all dry. Now she's properly up on her legs and looking a bit more like a spacecraft than a random collection of bits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally I glued the four cannons into place on the front of the fuselage. This took a while. First the base of each cannon had to be absolutely flat and square to the side. Next, I had to work out and mark where each cannon needed to go. Finally, I glued them into place and then spent twenty minutes or so gently tweaking them to make sure they were upright and looked right from every angle.

 

Sorry about the strange orientation here, blame imgbox. She's supposed to be vertical.

 

 

I am pleased with how she looks so far. I'm still more or less as per the drawing which is nice. The cannons seem to look pretty good. I won't bother adding missiles, I think the cannons will be enough and I don't think the defence budget would have stretched to cover the cost.

This means that all the major building work is done. I'll add a few more greeblies here and there. I need to add a small radar array to the front of the radar housing, for instance. Once all that is complete then I can put on a coat of primer and we'll see how she looks then. Very different, I expect.

Thanks for tuning in and a big thanks to all who commented or liked, it means a lot.

cheers
Monty

 

[shortCummins]

masking the glass will be an interesting exercise, looking really good so far

 

rgds

John(shortCummins)