Sado-masochism, or building MPM's ALbacore.

[Wolfpack]

Having arm-wrestled the Pegasus kit a long time ago in a galaxy...........etc. etc, when I saw the announcement, I had to have one. Just right for the planned Battle of Britain display!

So, off we go.

Annoying ejector pin marks that interfere with the floor (1).

I used some card triangles to ensure the joins were vertical. There’s not much for the main floor piece to grip to or to align.

The photo etch is too wide for the fuselage. I cut a slot for it to fit into with the trusty P Cutter.

The pilot’s office basic, belts, instruments etch to add. Etched belts are supplied for the crew seats, but these will need painting. Still, it saves on the aftermarket purchases.

Additions to the interior, instruments, radios, seat frames, locker, accumulators, flare chute etc etc. Detailing the pilot's office involved some really small etched parts, never my favourite. I replaced these with stretched sprue as the tweezers would more readily grip a three dimensional piece and if one went sproing, I had an endless supply of replacements. The kit is disappointing in the amount of detail it leaves out, especially when a great deal can be seen under the canopy. The Observers seat and the TAG's seat are mounted on swing arms and fold away when not in use. I added some legs from sprue and the swing arms from card stock. Each seat base has a 'U' shaped bracket added to it to attach to the swing arms.

Looking aft.

I got down to a touch of the interior green et al.. Having checked the fit of all the interior parts, making sure the fuselages joined, what happens? You find a piece or two you haven't checked. In this case, the instrument panel and the ribs under to cockpit coaming.

A flare chute was added, cut from plastic tube. The radios have been added cut from square rod and detailed with dials as previously mentioned. The whole was rounded off with additional framework.

Thankfully, the panel was OK, but the ribs, sheesh. I ended up only using one side having cut the part into three as the stbd side I had already replicated in card and anyway the shelf interfered. Seat belts are supplied on the etch fret so a couple of hours saw it to this stage.

Having left the kit alone until my F14 was finished, it's now time for an update.

The wings are attached, with added steel pins for support as they are butt-jointed only. A fair amount of filler needed here. The tailplanes have locating lugs, and after a swipe or two with some wet and dry, only needed some Mr Surfacer 1200 to eliminate the joins.

The Hook recess needed some 500 grade to fill that as did the u/c legs.

It doesn't pay to get big ideas in this hobby. My thought was to open the cockpit so the pilot’s office could be seen. Special Hobby now provides plastic canopies, not vac forms. So, out came the trusty micro saw and off I went.

Half way down one side, the greenhouse cracked. Halfway down the other side, the windscreen cracked. Bear in mind that the greenhouse section will support the top wing later, so this had to stay.

I now had to have a new windscreen, so I glued the two parts together, filled it with Milliput and when this dried, took off the plastic. A little clean up with W&D and I had a mould. So, out came the clear plastic card, my bits of balsa wood and four bulldog clips. Using these to make a frame round a square of clear plastic, the old push mould method was used to make a new windscreen.

I carefully glued the greenhouse crack together and Micro polished it before dipping in clear. I also cemented some plastic strip on the canopy base to assist with fixing later on.

The crack is not too bad now and will be covered in the most part by framing. Once the new windscreen was trimmed it was fitted, assisted by small strips of card along the coaming and just needs a touch more blending in to finish. Once framed and painted, I hope it passes muster.

Some drawings to show the pilots side opening windows:-

The new side windows and sliding hood were cut from clear plastic ready for fitting in the open position later. I have also added some strip for the side windows to mount to. The arrows show this and the windscreen blending, again using 1200 Mr Surfacer.

Oh, by the way, does anyone have a front view photo of a Taurus engine in situ. There's a few exhaust supports in there and I would like to know where they are meant to go

The engine's assembled, though not without some confusion. There are stubs on the top of each cylinder, which shouldn’t be there, and my initial though was aha, these are what the cowling attaches to.

Wrong. They are too short to be any use to man or beast so all were removed. This of course leaves the cowling suspended by the carburettor intake only, not a satisfactory state of affairs by any means. I drilled a hole on three of the cylinders and fixed some sprue in these to attach the cowling to. Unlike the Skua kit, there are no exhaust pipes to fix to the collector ring, which is also missing. There are pipes protruding from the front of the cylinders to mount such on, but that's all.

The actual Taurus:-

What you get in the kit:-

The sprue mounts for the cowling:-

Having got that far, I turned to the top wing. It goes together OK, and fits on the top of the cockpit very well indeed. The problem comes with the struts. They all need the dimple removing and replacing with a proper mounting spigot. I used sprue again to give them some flexibility when attaching the wing.

Even after this, they are, apart from the two inner ones, too short. The plan to paint the model and then add the upper wing went out of the window.

The struts and sprue attachment points:-

Having done this, I attached the upper wing with masking tape to align the leading edge and then cemented the cockpit / wing join and the struts. This really was fun...............

Wings attached:-

Getting the wings on has proved to be fairly easy. Sorting out the struts caused a couple of headaches.

After adding the upper wing, I was left with an excellent wing / canopy join and six p*ss poor strut joins. Initially, I strengthened the join with thick superglue so the struts were fairly locked in position. After a day or so letting the glue dry, I used milliput to fair in the wing / strut join.

My selection of sanding sticks from Little Cars were too large and unwieldy for the sanding job here, so, using the wooden coffee stirrer provided by McDonuts, I glued then to various grades of wet and dry and trimmed them when set. These worked a treat.

The u/c struts were too short and were replaced by Contrail strut cut to size.

Having run out of gold old Halfords, Tamiya sky grey was used for the primer.

A few rub downs and off we went with the colours. Xtracrylic was used for the EDSG and Poly S for the DSG. For the lower wings, which I assume were shadow shaded at this period of time, I mixed some white with the above colours and it hasn’t turned out too bad.

The model is now at the pre-weathering stage, having had to source the serial and codes from the spares box. A couple of dark washes to pick out certain panel lines and then it’s back to the booth for some more gloss lacquer.

[Mentalguru]

A Brit modeller "Medal of honour" is winging its way to you as I type!

I used to muck around with kits like that- I learnt a lot- unfortunately not the things I wanted to learn...

Edited August 13, 2007 by Mentalguru

[PHREAK]

Nice work, great read!

Tell me, is there a kind of artisitic license useed on scratch copckpit interiors such as this? It certainly looks pucka.

Cheers

Rich

[Richard M]

Very nice build and a good clear narrative. I had to double check it was 1/48 so I wouldn't get too depressed if it was 1/72!

Best

Rich

[Wolfpack]

Finally and at last. It's finished. Looks a bit bare without any ordnance but the spares I have don't fit.

So where did I get to? Ah yes. The cowling, previously painted in camouflage colours had the ring masked and painted a metallic bronze colour. Some Rub’N Buff was applied to the front section to lighten this. I then applied a small quantity of graphite powder to enhance the metallic look of the cowling ring.The engine area has had three exhaust collector ring supports added. I've no idea if their in the right place, none of my photos gave me a clue.

In order to complete this model for a planned Battle of Britain display, I had to find a suitable aircraft to replicate. One such was L7097 /4C of 826 NAS. This aircraft was damaged over Dunkirk whilst attacking invasion barges on 11 September 1940

The serials had to be scrounged out of the spares box. but the national markings were from the kit. These were of excellent quality and went on with no adverse reaction to Kleer.

Once applied, some of the panel lines were inked out to bring out the detail and the whole model given five coats of Xtracrylic matt varnish.

Why five coats you may ask? Simple really, Xtracrylics’ matt varnish has poor covering properties and requires a few coats to matt any model down.

The aerial wire and rigging was added using Aeroclub’s lycra thread and then painted gunmetal to finish. I have seen a couple of completed models and one ommision is the double rigging wires from the top of the inner strut to the bottom of the outer leading strut. I only noticed this feature, looking at the photos with a magnifier. There are no rigging diagrams provided on the instructions and so each modeller has to apply his or her knowledge as best they can. However, it is clearly shown on the box art! Also, the leading edge lower wires have some sort of streamlines cover. I tried to reproduce this with PVA.

The torpedo crutches were added, even though the Applecore did not do much torpedo dropping at this time, they always seem to be fitted.

The large step was added to the fuselage and then the underwing bomb racks.

The leading edge landing light was added, using an auto modellers headlight available from Little Cars. The plastic cover needs some sanding to fit.

The superb resin Vickers K was assembled and painted and given a rub with graphite powder to enhance the detail. Side windows for the cockpit fitted well, or at least did after trimming and the rear opening section slotted in a treat. The side windows are simply push fitted and seem secure enough.

Final weathering with a touch of silver on the cowl panels. They were opened a lot due to the tempremental nature of the early Taurus engine and finished with pastels.

I think the main let-down with this kit is the canopy. As well as making a complete hash of cutting it, it would be really nice if it was in segments originally to show off all the interior detail. Some extra parts like torpedoes, bombs and or flares would have been much appreciated as well.

A challenge certainly, but I don't think anyone else will be releasing a kit of the Applecore any time soon.

More photos in the WWII forum.

W

[Richard M]

Very nice, got any more photos from different angles?

Best

Rich

[Greg B]

Fantastic looking build!!!! More pics please!!!!!

[Andy K]

Lovely model indeed. Great job!