Dora Wings Fairey Delta 2

[Giorgio N]

I have several kits made in Ukraine, some now pretty old and some very recent. And I keep buying them as companies in that war torn country are still putting out kits that are getting better and better in quality! The current events have also had their effect in my choices and I try to support Ukrainian manufacturers as best as I can... but let's keep politics out and focus on the plastic stuff..

I've been pretty bad with group builds recently so I decided for this one to build something I can actually finish. This meant leaving the various Amodel kits out (I love Amodel BTW.. even if they're sure not the easiest kits on the market).

Same for Modelsvit, A&A and Roden, great kits in the box but they are not shake'n bake.

Here comes Dora Wings: this company has offered some impressive stuff over the last few years and when they announced a Fairey Delta 2 I was extremely happy. As soon as this became available I bought one... and I think I'll buy another sooner or later.

I've had the itch to build this kit for a while, the start of this GB gave me one more good reason. 

 

The box shows a nice drawing of WG774, maybe during her record flight.

 

It's a small box for what is afterall a small aircraft. Some companies are today using very large boxes even for small kits, this one will take less room in a stash..

The kit may be small but there are several trees:

 

Detail is good, delicate recessed panel lines, decent cockpit and wheel wells detail. Mould quality is good, there's only some very little flash on a couple of parts, that can be easily removed in a few seconds.

The kit also includes a small PE fret with the wing fences and 4 probes to be glued on the pitot tube. These are packed together with the decal sheet:

 

Decals cover 4 options: WG774 in 3 schemes (silver before the record, silver after the record and magenta) and WG777 in overall blue.

Yes, I know, WG774 is the most famous of the two but I always loved the blue scheme so this is the one I'll build

[scautomoton]

Good choice Giorgio, I've got mine ready and waiting for a space on the bench. Will be following with interest.

[PeterB]

Hi Giorgio,

 

Looks like a nice kit - certainly better than my ancient Frog version which I refurbished a couple of years ago and finished in silver, another modeller having previously done a good looking one in the magenta scheme, so yours in blue will make the full set as it were.

 

Pete

[OutcastJoel]

Excellent choice.

I found the pilots seat fiddly so if you find a good solution please mention it as I still have another copy of this to build.

Pretty much every thing else about the kit was brilliant in my opinion, I hope you find the same!

[Giorgio N]

On 10/12/2024 at 12:23 PM, scautomoton said:

Good choice Giorgio, I've got mine ready and waiting for a space on the bench. Will be following with interest.

 

Thanks! It's a nice kit but I've already found a couple of things that are worth correcting... now I will only correct one though

 

On 10/12/2024 at 1:57 PM, PeterB said:

Hi Giorgio,

 

Looks like a nice kit - certainly better than my ancient Frog version which I refurbished a couple of years ago and finished in silver, another modeller having previously done a good looking one in the magenta scheme, so yours in blue will make the full set as it were.

 

Pete

 

I did build the Frog kit, or better a Soviet era issue in a plastic bag with an awful drawing... unfortunately it came with no windscreen and the model has been sitting on my shelves without it for many years, Of course decorated as WG774 in aluminum. If I find another Dora kit I'll build the Magenta version

 

On 10/13/2024 at 2:08 AM, OutcastJoel said:

Excellent choice.

I found the pilots seat fiddly so if you find a good solution please mention it as I still have another copy of this to build.

Pretty much every thing else about the kit was brilliant in my opinion, I hope you find the same!

 

IMHO the cockpit suffers from being too shallow. it should be much deeper. I'll show in the next few days what I mean, to summarise here it would need to be made deeper by adding a new floor closer to the bottom, so to allow an aftermarket seat to fit. The problem would then be to modify the instrument panel (the consolles can be reused easily).

I have decided to build to kit as it and not modify the cockpit as little will be visible with a closed canopy but on my next one I want to fully rebuild the cockpit

[scautomoton]

5 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

 

... unfortunately it came with no windscreen and the model has been sitting on my shelves without it for many years,

now you have the Dora kit you could take a mould of the canopy and finally finish the FROG one.... Or even just heat a piece of PETG and drape it over the canopy, it won't stick.

[Giorgio N]

I mentioned that there are a couple of things not right with this kit... one is the cockpit discussed above, the other is the thickness of the intakes.

I will not correct the cockpit but I will correct the intakes... or better, I have (somewhat) corrected the intakes.

The problem is simply that the lip of the intakes is too thick, By a good margin... a huge margin!

The intake lips on the FD2 is very sharp, almost like a blade. The kit ones are over 1 mm thick and look like bricks. IMHO something has to be done as this small detail ruins the look of the model. Unfortunately the way the intakes are moulded means that solving the matter is not easy... not because it involves special skills or tools, it's just a matter of scraping material from the inner surfaces. The problem is that having the intakes moulded with the fuselage means that the room avialable is small. I used a modelling knife to remove most of the material, followed by a file and sanding paper. See the difference between the original intake on the left and the corrected one on the right

 

Unfortunately the lack of room meant that I couldn't properly thin the whole length of the walls. I may try with a rotary tool but there are quite small angles inside- Guess that what I did is the best I can do without risking damaging the parts. Not ideal but will do

 

 

[scautomoton]

you are right regarding the thickness, however, the realities associated with the moulding process means a feature so sharp cannot be robustly manufactured. In these instances I use a no.11 scalpel blade to scrape the surface. That fine point is ideal.

 

Plus, look on the bright side, you wouldn't want it to just fall together with no effort. Think how much better it is once you've beaten a kit into submission by force of will..... 😋

[Giorgio N]

3 hours ago, scautomoton said:

you are right regarding the thickness, however, the realities associated with the moulding process means a feature so sharp cannot be robustly manufactured. In these instances I use a no.11 scalpel blade to scrape the surface. That fine point is ideal.

 

Plus, look on the bright side, you wouldn't want it to just fall together with no effort. Think how much better it is once you've beaten a kit into submission by force of will..... 😋

 

Of course there are limits due to the injection process, however I feel that it would have been possible to offer properly sharp intakes with a different design choice.

Using a scalpel blade in this case is the easiest and maybe the only way to proceed. I have now sorted both intakes, the one shown in the picture has also been refined. the problem when doing this kind of works is getting two identical parts... hopefully I did it... hopefully...

[Giorgio N]

Ok, let's show some progress...

With the intakes kind of sorted, I glued the inner part of the intakes in the fuselage halves and sprayed some metallics. Judging from pictures, the intakes seem to be in a metallic colour, not as light as aluminum but not as dark as gun metal. For these I used Vallejo's Metal Color Dark Aluminum. The exhaust area, the nozzle and the turbine disc were sprayed in Steel from the same range, with the turbine benefitting from a black was to highlight the details. That is something I could have avoided, a quick dry-fit showed that very little will be visible...

 

 

With the paint dry I then assembled the rear fuselage with all the parts that have to go inside (intake ramps, nose wheel well, nozzle and turbine). I also assembled the wings, that are in two halves each

 

 

Now this is a good time to talk about the fit of the kit... This is generally good, however I have noticed that the alignment pins don't always help. Actually some not only do not help, they cause more fit problems than they solve.

The pins are quite small however the recesses where they should fit are sometimes even smaller, resulting in the surfaces not touching properly. Of course the recesses can be drilled to make them wider and deeper and I've done this on a couple, however in some cases I realized that it was better to just cut off the pins to have a good fit.

Overall the fit is indeed quite good, however there are areas where it could have been better, The tail and ventral fin for example should be sanded a bit where they touch the opposite fuselage half. I didn't notice this before assembly so I ended up with the fuselage halves not perfectly aligned there. At the front the fit was much better but then here I had decided to remove the alignment pins. Same at the fairing over the nozzle, the alignment pin there would have thrown the fit totally off.

In any case I'm now quite happy, I will need some filler in a couple of spots but should be very little. I also have to restore a couple of panel lines I lost while sorting the joints, hopefully it will be quick

 

Also visible in the picture above is the spar that is included to help align wings and fuselage. It's a nice touch and I feel that more companies should add something like this. I've read in a review somewhere that this spar wouldn't fit, on my kit however it fits nicely as long as the inserts in the fuselage are cleaned from any flash. Here's how the spar is supposed to work:

 

 

Next will be sorting the front fuselage, starting from the cockpit. I have painted this already but forgot to take pictures... will add them in the next post.

One thing is making me nervous: one half of the front fuselage includes the long probe, it will be difficult to make this survive during the build... maybe I should fit as many parts as possible to the rear fuselage before starting the front section

[scautomoton]

Interestingly, the comment about the pitot has been raised many times that I've seen so far. And beyond that, someone has gone to the trouble of providing a free .stl file online for people to download so they can reprint their own when they inevitable break the kit item! (I have it downloaded in preparation!)

[OutcastJoel]

3 hours ago, scautomoton said:

Interestingly, the comment about the pitot has been raised many times that I've seen so far. And beyond that, someone has gone to the trouble of providing a free .stl file online for people to download so they can reprint their own when they inevitable break the kit item! (I have it downloaded in preparation!)

That would be me 😁

 

I snapped the pitot tube on my second model so had no other option.

You can find the file here for free:

 

https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/1-72-fairey-delta-fd-2-replacement-nose-pitot-tube

 

If anyone in the UK has trouble accessing a printer I can try to post you one.

[JOCKNEY]

On 14/10/2024 at 11:40, scautomoton said:

Look on the bright side, you wouldn't want it to just fall together with no effort. Think how much better it is once you've beaten a kit into submission by force of will..... 😋

 

That sums up my view of our hobby to perfection 

 

Cheers Pat

[JOCKNEY]

Really enjoying this one @Giorgio N, it's a bit too modern, detailed and accurate for me, I'll fill the swearbox to overflowing while wrestling with a Frog one at some point in the future 

 

Best of luck mate 

 

Cheers Pat 

[JamesP]

I kept the section of sprue attached to the probe and nose until I got to the painting phase. And of course it got knocked off shortly afterwards 

[Giorgio N]

19 hours ago, JamesP said:

I kept the section of sprue attached to the probe and nose until I got to the painting phase. And of course it got knocked off shortly afterwards 

 

Good to know ! I'm now actually thinking of removing the probe and add this at a later time... if I manage to remove it neatly maybe it will fit well when I reattach the part. I may drill a hole for a steel rod to keep everything lined up properly and make the assembly more robust

[Giorgio N]

19 hours ago, JOCKNEY said:

Really enjoying this one @Giorgio N, it's a bit too modern, detailed and accurate for me, I'll fill the swearbox to overflowing while wrestling with a Frog one at some point in the future 

 

Best of luck mate 

 

Cheers Pat 

 

Well, it's modern and detailed, don't know if accurate (the cockpit sure isn't). At the same time there are more detailed kits around but unfortunately none represent a Fairey Delta 2.

I'd have no problem in building another Frog kit of the type, I remember it as a decent representation and a good kit for its times, even if my kit was actually a Soviet made kit in a bag with a horrible drawing on the cardboard header.

However I would have a problem in spending for the Frog kit the kind of money that would buy me the Dora Wings one ! Frog's FD2s seem to go for wilde prices, even the Soviet knockoffs aren't the cheapest ones.

[zebra]

This is coming together nicely @Giorgio N. Your work on the intakes looks like it was worth doing - a helpful tip for when I eventually get round to building mine (I've been wondering how much work would be involved in turning it into a BAC-221 - I think there'd be very little of the original kit left in the finished model!)

[scautomoton]

33 minutes ago, zebra said:

This is coming together nicely @Giorgio N. Your work on the intakes looks like it was worth doing - a helpful tip for when I eventually get round to building mine (I've been wondering how much work would be involved in turning it into a BAC-221 - I think there'd be very little of the original kit left in the finished model!)

Olimp make a BAC221 kit if you can find it. I plan to build mine in parallel with the Dora Wings kit so I have both forms of WG774 side by side in violet and blue.

[Giorgio N]

46 minutes ago, zebra said:

This is coming together nicely @Giorgio N. Your work on the intakes looks like it was worth doing - a helpful tip for when I eventually get round to building mine (I've been wondering how much work would be involved in turning it into a BAC-221 - I think there'd be very little of the original kit left in the finished model!)

 

Yes, I feel that the work on the intakes is a must for anyone building this kit. As they are they really look bad, more so on such a sleek looking aircraft.

I hope that Dora will follow the FD2 at some point with the 221, I'd love to build one. From certain aspects it looks even better than the original FD2! And would sit nicely beside a MiG Analog, that was afterall the Soviet counterpart built for the very same reason.

 

13 minutes ago, scautomoton said:

Olimp make a BAC221 kit if you can find it. I plan to build mine in parallel with the Dora Wings kit so I have both forms of WG774 side by side in violet and blue.

 

What's the quality of the Olimp kit like ? I have their XF-92 and I like some things while others don't convince me... guess it would be a pretty expensive kit to buy if I can find one so I'd really spend the money only if it's a good quality thing

[scautomoton]

So I just pulled it out to have a closer look. If I could sum it up I'd say the manufacturers intentions exceed their casting quality, but not by too much. The usual resin clean-up to edges is required and there are some very fine bubbles evident on some parts. which Mr Surfacer would fill. Lots of very fine detail. Rivet lines everywhere, but so fine they may be lost during painting. Bays are well detailed, but in the case of mine I'd say they took some parts out of the moulds too soon. See images below. Overall I'm OK with what I received. I have worse on hand to build, much worse.

 

[JOCKNEY]

Hi Giorgio 

 

Have you had a chance to make any more progress on this one  ?

 

Cheers Pat 

[David H]

I agree about the Mick Jagger-like intake lips. Too late for me i'm afraid.

 

I agree about the cockpit being too small and the ejection seat is definitely foreshortened, but aside from milling down the wall thicknesses considerably, i don't know how you can work around the problem.

At any rate i too am a member of the "Busted Pitot Boom Club" and that's really the only reason why mine isn't in the painting stage right now.

 

-d-

 

[Retired Bob]

I too bought a couple of these Dora-Wings FD.2 when they came out, while it looks a much nicer kit than the old FROG kit, I haven't got round to building one yet but I wondered if any 3D printed enhancements might have come along.  The intakes certainly need thinning down to get the intakes look more accurate.  The dark blue is painted into the first part of the intakes.

 

[Robin-42]

I did make a suggestion to Aerocraft that a brass pitot tube would be ideal for this kit. Maybe if enough of us prod him the economics would make worth doing? I for one, would happily pre-order.🙂