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Aeroclub Lightning T.5 - 1/72


Skii

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Hello all :)

I've had this knackered old vacform set for a few years now and feeling a little bored I've decided to have a tinker with it. I've built an IP from plastic card which should fit snugly between the fuselage halves, The white metal shock cone was blunt and pitted and I re-pointed it with some milliput - all that remains is to build the front gear well and intake tunnel and I can start splashing some paint on. The vacform canopy was missing from this set so I have the Matchbox T55 kit and the canopy from that to use possibly - we'll see how it looks :)

T5.1.jpg

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T5.3.jpg

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Nice start John,I have a few of these (and a P1A) knocking about somewhere in the stash. Who's wings etc., are you going to use? I have an unfinished Trumpeter F1a that I'll be ripping the wings off of...

And watch out for the canopy - the real thing had a "double bubble" , which was totally missed by Matchbox, and to a lesser extent, Aeroclub.....

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Nice start John,I have a few of these (and a P1A) knocking about somewhere in the stash. Who's wings etc., are you going to use? I have an unfinished Trumpeter F1a that I'll be ripping the wings off of...

And watch out for the canopy - the real thing had a "double bubble" , which was totally missed by Matchbox, and to a lesser extent, Aeroclub.....

Hiya Bill, I have some wings from an Airfix kit, which I think are the right ones for a T5 :)

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Hiya Bill, I have some wings from an Airfix kit, which I think are the right ones for a T5 :)

Yep - though a lot will depend on how old they are - in more recent years the mouldings seem to have gone..erm mouldy! When Lenny Thomson built his F3 a decade or so ago(probably still on ARC's gallery!) he removed the wing tips and replaced them with plastic card and re-profiled them. Good news is the plastic is quite thick - bad news is you can't get any depth into the wheel wells - not without resorting to the dremel... Still , this build''s in good hands - look forward to seeing progress.....

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Yes that is quite an impressive cockpit interior, is it scratch built ? If it is would you have some sketches of it with some dimensions as I've got a couple of these Aeroclub conversions too and would like to liven up the cockpit area.

Edited by kitnut617
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And watch out for the canopy - the real thing had a "double bubble" , which was totally missed by Matchbox, and to a lesser extent, Aeroclub.....

Hi, could I know what you mean by "double bubble"? I also have the Aeroclub set in my stash & would like to learn from Skii's build. Thanks in advance :)

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Yes that is quite an impressive cockpit interior, is it scratch built ? If it is would you have some sketches of it with some dimensions as I've got a couple of these Aeroclub conversions too and would like to liven up the cockpit area.

It is indeed scratchbuilt, not entirely accurate as after building most of it I found some very good reference pics of a T4/5 cockpit and I'm currently working on correcting it, some good pics on Damien Burke's Thunder and Lightning site , and this found via Google images http://media.photobucket.com/image/lightni...40/07230017.jpg

Nice start and a nice pit!

How will you finish this 'baby'?

Hopefully in NMF and a Sqdn mount?

My Bias would be 11 Sqdn XS416 (my 1st RAF Sqdn) or LTF XS457 (my last RAF unit)

Adrian

Thanks Adrian - this is indeed going to be all over NMF - it will be Thunder City's ZU-BEX XS451 which was tragically lost last month along with its pilot, Dave Stock .

IMG_4184s.jpg

I have an appropriately sized Shell logo decal, I'm currently sifting through the rest of the decal stash for the low viz markings and serial numbers.

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Thanks Adrian - this is indeed going to be all over NMF - it will be Thunder City's ZU-BEX XS451 which was tragically lost last month along with its pilot, Dave Stock .

That's a great tribute.

David

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Here is the fuselage sealed up with the white metal nose and exhausts installed, the fuselage needed some profiling to fit the nose, however the burner cans slotted into the rear fuselage nicely. Some preliminary re-scribing done on the fuselage. The vertical stabiliser needed a lot of work as I found it to be too chunky and thick, so I dremelled the edge out all around it and glued the two halves closer together, also this required replacing the rudder area with some styrene card - as a result after a LOT of sanding and reprofiling is a tail I'm happy with.

The vent on the port side is the shaft of a cotton bud glued in at an angle and cut to to resemble the real thing (I hope) also the front gear bay has been cut out to accept a scratchbulilt wheel well.

T5-4.jpg

T5-5.jpg

T5-6.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Certainly were Bill ;)

So here is the full fuselage assembled , all wings and whatnot in place, some areas to tidy up but not far from painty time :)

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Very nicely detailed, looking every inch a Lightning :worthy:

Regards,

JB.

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Hi Ski

Damn - NMF finish does look good so far.

Forgot to note earlier that for a static model the 2 letterbox intakes need to be flush!

Like Airfix and their Jag intakes the aux/letter box are only open when engines are running.

See your pic of 451.

Adrian

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