1/72 Fairey Firefly Mk II NF - based on the special hobby kit - and I suspect inaccurate by me, but it's my 1st finished build since I was a kid

[Ginger Knight]

 

 

Hello reader, I have a collection of kits which I would like to construct and paint. I’d like to finish them to a good standard. But although I have constructed and painted to a war-gaming standard my armour, trucks and miniatures, I nevertheless would like to complete my aeroplane kits to a better standard, one that compares favourably with Britmodellers.

 

I know I need more experience so here is my journey on the first junk kit, my thinking is that if I can finish this and it looks convincingly realistic then I’m improving. It’s your comments I’m interested in, about where I’m going wrong and therefore what to watch out for and improve.

 

I have a process. I don’t/can’t use an airbrush very effectively, so I brush paint and use rattle cans.

 

The subject is the Fairey Firefly MKII Nightfighter. There is no kit, but I obtained a damaged Special Hobby kit from someone on Ebay, called the Happy Froglette, or something like that, and I also had a damaged Frog Firefly in the attic.

 

At this point I should show you the pictures: I found the instructions on scalemates.

 

The old frog kit fuselage is at the top, the Special Hobby damaged right wingtip can clearly be seen.

The replacement wingtip is just above. All parts are primed and have a pre-base coat.

 

The MKII had an extension to the fuselage between the engine compartment and the pilot’s cockpit, you can see my intention was to use the old Frog kit to extend the fuselage of the Special Hobby one.

There were also numerous problems with the other parts. Happy Froglette supplied photo-etched parts and most of the resin – but not all, and so the cockpit etc would be a bit of a mash up.

 

Here’s the broken canopy I tried to repair with Frog bits, and the rest were painted before construction.

I made a mould out of putty and glued the Navigators canopy together after masking. The wing tip at bottom right was repaired with a piece from the Frog kit.

 

In retrospect here are all the pieces assembled for the build.

 

 

Now for the subassemblies, I consulted the instructions for working out which parts went into which sequence in the construction.

 And then I had to take the painted resin parts from the pour blocks.

 

 

I kept my iron file and components wet with water, in the belief that in that way the resin coming off would remain in a sludge mix on the sanding paper that could be folded up and thrown away. I wore surgical gloves and a mask, too, just to encourage good practise.

 

My instructions with my loops drawn on them to figure out what parts go into which assembly.

The first thing to do was to extend the fuselage and get the cockpit components into it. To this end I brought the warped frog kit fuselage together and cut the bit out I would need to extend the Special Hobby fuselage (from some point after the engine).

 

So I glued, and the next day used my saw.

You can see how warped the fuselage is (I guess from effects of the sun) but luckily the front fuselage is not effected, so I was able to glue it. Then…

 

 

 

As you can see I was able to saw the bit I needed off, and discard the rest.

 

Next I brought the Special Hobby fuselage together.

 

I added the Photo-etched parts (that in theory replaced the resin missing from the kit.

 

I prepared the propeller blades, spinner, and shaft, painting and gluing together.

Adding the resin parts with superglue was quite difficult, as some parts needed to be adapted.

But after it was dry I was able to mate the two halves together, with exhaust stacks, coolers etc.

Clamps held it together overnight to set rock solid.

 

The next step was tricky, but by a brilliant stroke of luck, no internal parts were in the way of cutting the engine front end from the model to insert the frog bit, and extend the fuselage by 4mm.

 

As you can see I built the wings, too. The resin under carriage housing glued in place with superglue.

Here’s some quick pics of this.

 

Mating the fuselage.

I left it for 24 hours, then attached the wings and tail-plane, all a bit of a tight fit that needed filler.

So far so good.

I added a bit of pink pre-base coat, as I’d read in some magazine that it would improve the rattle can paint job.

Now I need to add the masked canopies.

More filler. I think I’m going to have to attempt to make this look like a fighter that’s been through a lot of air fighting and battles, so that where there is an issue I can fudge it as though it’s ground crew repair.

 

Cockpit green was brushed on the outer canopy parts, and next job was the rattle cans.

I tried spraying lightly (from a distance) and developing a base coat, which hopefully would allow through some of the pre-base detail.  Here’s what I ended up with after several colours.

 

Some of the pre-base has just about come through, but it’s on too thick in places and the colours seem too light and ill defined. Therefore I started using a post base technique to add greater definition to the shape of the camouflage by adding successive washes of acrylic colour. I was getting worried, so I decided on post base brushing. I started with TAMIYA GREEN (above).

And then went on to try more post base washes of tan brown.  Oh dear.

 

As it looked to me just too light for a night fighter I decided to darken it by using HUMBROL dark brown and dark green washes. It became a bit glossy, and I thought I’d ruined it.

 

After I grew used to it, I applied HUMBROL gloss varnish and prepared to decal.

 

I’m afraid Happy Froglette sent decals that looked like they’d been chewed up by a small dog, but I did have spares and decided on aircraft codes for an S.O.E night assassin.

 

I got right back into mojo mode.

I decided on using some of the damaged decals and treating them with metallic paint to look like where the gaps were they’d worn away through battle use and stress.

So far so good, then decal the upper surfaces, add very thin layers of black oil wash into panel lines (I don’t think they should be very obvious), add the undercarriage resin parts, age with soot from the exhaust stack, add the photo-etched parts for the early radar set, with a transmitter on the right and receiver aerials on the left wing.

 

Smudge up with another dirty thinners wash and see what you get.

I thought it looked better. You’ll have to tell me yourselves if you think I’ve gone mad. Here are the photos.

 

As you can see, I removed the canopy masks, added repairs where the canopy had fogged up or remained cracked, added the exhaust baffles (those thin photo-etched parts above the exhaust outlets, and there’s the 20mm cannon. The patina is now looking very good.

 

Happy, you might just be able to see the spider-web thin elastic line I added to the aerial masts – what a nightmare for someone like me with shaky hands.

 

So I thought to seal with Satin varnish, which went on too thick, so I washed the kit down when I came to it the following day with turps and enamel thinners. After several applications with the brush it thinned it and it went kinda glossy.

 

So I added 1 part turps and 4 parts acrylic matt varnish and covered the model. See what you think.

Is it any good?

The patina of the painted camouflage looks good to me. Dark, not too glossy, reflective surfaces look real. I’m pleased, but what do I know? After so many mistakes I definitely need more experience, so my next scrap build will be the Soviet Cooperativa Swordfish. It’s ex FROG. Updated with photo-etched parts etc.

 

If you got this far, thanks for reading.

[TheyJammedKenny!]

This is a bold effort after such a long hiatus!  For scale effect, you might want to let it dry thoroughly (next 48 hours or so) and then apply more flat varnish.

[Pete Robin]

My word, them's good skills for what amounts to a first effort. Looks good to me.

Regards

Pete

[stevehnz]

An interesting take on this machine, came out good though & looks convincing. Nicely done. 👍

Steve.

[Ginger Knight]

Thank you all for your kind input. Yes, maybe an additional coat of matt varnish mixed with turps to slightly lessen that shine.

 

I bought the AIRFIX Model World magazine and ironically enough there is an article in there called, 'The Next Step, Dispelling Enamel myths'. This describes the flatting process (depth of varnishing and wet sanding in layers) but takes a great deal of experience. However, the results looked outstanding.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Ginger Knight