MrT's build will be shown here  :D

Andy

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You'll not see nothing like the mighty Fin !!
111 Sqn "The Last Of The F3W"
Airfix Club Member 501279
IPMS Cleveland and UK Member
Tornado SIG Leader

I'll be making a 1/72 MRCA kit I got from ebay a few months ago, the bag's still sealed so I'm hoping all the parts will be fine inside.

I'll do either XX946 (boxart tri-nations scheme) or XX950 (RAF camo) OOB, though I've had to sit the decals on the window for the past month as they were somewhat yellowed (hope that doesn't count as starting early!!).  I may just print some replacements in the end though, the white has more or less recovered, but some areas of carrier film are still yellowed, and the roundels for XX946 are out of register.

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Tom's Portfolio
2012 Stats - Started: 4, Finished: 5, Bought: 23

Box & sprue shots, all appears fine, apart from decals as mentioned above (decal paper has curled from the recent sun exposure, but still doesn't look useable), only one crew member has fallen off the sprues.



I'll get a bit of progress in over the next few days while waiting for primer/paint to cure on my Canberra, if I can print decals to colour match the red paint (thus having red outside the white border of the markings), then I'll be going with XX946, precise cutting of a white border for decals on white decal paper doesn't take my fancy!

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Tom's Portfolio
2012 Stats - Started: 4, Finished: 5, Bought: 23

Today's progress, painted the cockpit black (Revell 09 Anthracite Grey), along with the fuselage interior, this is to make the plastic as opaque as possible.  I learnt from my Concorde that small areas of dark paint (wheel wells) will show straight through white painted white plastic, so having the whole interior black should give a consistent finish and hide both different thicknesses of plastic and the interior pieces (cockpit floor/ends etc) from showing through when backlit.  It's also easy to check for a consistent finish when brush painting by holding the part up to a light, then painting out the bits that light up.



There's several inconvenient ejector pin marks in various places, like the cockpit floor, so those have been filed down.  The instrument consoles besides the seats all had sink marks on both sides, while possibly these wouldn't have been noticeable, I filled them in anyway.

Next steps, pilots & seat painting, and placing the instrument panels into the top half of the fuselage.

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Tom's Portfolio
2012 Stats - Started: 4, Finished: 5, Bought: 23

Good start  :thumb:

Coming along very nicely  :D

Andy

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You'll not see nothing like the mighty Fin !!
111 Sqn "The Last Of The F3W"
Airfix Club Member 501279
IPMS Cleveland and UK Member
Tornado SIG Leader

Just a quick update, photos will be forthcoming when I've done a bit more...

Dry fitted the wings and fuselage, and noticed that with the wings in the forward position, you can see straight through the fuselage from one side to the other!  So I've fashioned a bit of plasticard to fit along the centreline of the fuselage to block as much light as practical from reaching either side, without fouling the wing sweep mechanism.

Also I forgot to put the noseweight as I'd planned under the cockpit floor, so the pilot had his feet removed in order to accomodate the weight in his footwell (the piece of lead is too big to shove forward of the bulkhead at the front of the cockpit). While painting him I noticed he was practically pregnant with an injection pin mark, not sure if I'll be able to reduce that without diminishing the detail in his arms/legs/upper chest, I may just leave it.

Does Hu40 have a close Matt/Satin equivalent?  The callout for the wing root gives Airfix G14, which is supposed to be the same as Hu40, I don't have that at present, but I do have a handful of other greys.

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Tom's Portfolio
2012 Stats - Started: 4, Finished: 5, Bought: 23

Hi there MrT ..

Hu 64 Matt Light Gray is a close match for Hu40.

Andy

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You'll not see nothing like the mighty Fin !!
111 Sqn "The Last Of The F3W"
Airfix Club Member 501279
IPMS Cleveland and UK Member
Tornado SIG Leader

Cheers, got a pot of that I'll use.

Instrument panel painted and showing the plasticard 'block' in the middle of the rear fuselage (later painted black):


Cockpit side instruments also painted and wing halves glued up, with nose weight added:


Pilots painted and added, made a mix of approx equal parts Revell 17 (desert sand), 35 (flesh) and Hu34 which looks better imo than regular flesh:


Tail planes added and fuselage halves glued together, movement on the control surfaces still seems good with the glue dried. Only a space that may be hidden by the intakes anyway looks to be in need of notable filler, where the join goes vertical:

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Tom's Portfolio
2012 Stats - Started: 4, Finished: 5, Bought: 23

Excellent work on the pilots and cockpit interior.

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If I can build a Spitfire in 2 1/2 hours why can't I finish a Group Build on time?

Super work on the cockpit and you are spot on with the skin tone on the pilots  :thumb:

Andy

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You'll not see nothing like the mighty Fin !!
111 Sqn "The Last Of The F3W"
Airfix Club Member 501279
IPMS Cleveland and UK Member
Tornado SIG Leader

Same from me too.
Keep at it

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"Though I Fly Through the Valley of Death, I Shall Fear No Evil. For I am at 80,000 Feet and Climbing"

"You could teach monkeys to fly better than that"

My Portfolio

Super work on the build so far, the cockpit looks great
regards;kevin

Nice bit of work so far  :D

Not got too much done lately, just sanded and filled in the join of the fuselage, been looking at my options with the canopy, as there is an unfortunate pin mark extending partway up the side of the forward section:



Alternative canopies (for kits of production versions) seem to be both slightly broader and taller than will fit the MRCA kit, so my only option now seems to be removing that pin mark, smoothing it out as best as possible, followed by a dip in Klear. (I'd rather not experiment with crash moulding)

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Tom's Portfolio
2012 Stats - Started: 4, Finished: 5, Bought: 23

Hey MrT

My 90s boxing of the GR.1 has the same problem but it has 4 on on each side on both half there isn't a lot you can do other then careful sanding I'm afraid.

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This Sceptered Isle
Tonkarite, I will make it a word oneday... maybe.
2012 Bought:Built 8:23

You could give Clearfix a try  :shrug:

Andy

_________________
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Fin !!
111 Sqn "The Last Of The F3W"
Airfix Club Member 501279
IPMS Cleveland and UK Member
Tornado SIG Leader

Well, I managed to sand & polish the pin mark in the canopy ok, though there's still an optical distortion, you have to look closely to notice it.  I've added the tail (filled in the upper part of the join above the rudder), most of the aerials, then masked up the canopy.  Decided to hand paint the framework canopy later, as it isn't pronounced enough to easily use for cutting a mask.  The right hand intake isn't quite square, but it's too late to correct that now, and from lower angles rather than these overhead photos it's not noticeable.  The engines and thrust reversers will be added after the main paint job, to save on masking inside the compound corner under the tail:



And after priming with Halfords white plastic primer and sanding smooth:



I've airbrushed the underside gloss white today, and it's currently curing, I'd take a photo, but you wouldn't be able to tell any difference, such is the similarity in colour between the white plastic, white primer and white paint!  I'm also partway through creating replacement decals based on a scan of the original set, planning to use appropriate colour borders (mostly red) in order to minimise the issues of printing onto white decal paper, just need to get a close match to the paint.

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Tom's Portfolio
2012 Stats - Started: 4, Finished: 5, Bought: 23

Looks nice just as it is  8-)

Nice work MrT  :thumb:

Andy

_________________
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Fin !!
111 Sqn "The Last Of The F3W"
Airfix Club Member 501279
IPMS Cleveland and UK Member
Tornado SIG Leader

Looking good.

_________________
If I can build a Spitfire in 2 1/2 hours why can't I finish a Group Build on time?