Thanks for all the feedback. Ratch, I seem to recall you making a Victor which had far more interior work done, so mine in comparison is no real loss.

Anyhow, time for a lack of progress update. From this point on, we are looking at some of the mistakes you can make on this kit. we are now ready to make a mess of the wings. Firstly, I forgot to check the sprue attachments. For the upper wing, this was part of the plan (I thought it better to sand them off after the halves were joined, that way you are more likely to preserve the intended shape, rathe than oversand and get a kink in the leading edge.) The problem was that the excess sprue for the lower wing is on the inside surface, so it won't go together unless removed. Anyhow, having fixed that particular challeneg, and got everything ready to go, I started fitting the various sub-assemblies to the lower wing:



The error here is the position of the exhausts - the rear blanking  plate on the upper wing is agood 5mm further back, so I had to remove the exhausts. You could probaly get away with glueing them into the upper wings though, as they'd be in the right position.

Anyhow, having fixed that, time to move on. Wing assembly continues. It needed a fair amount of clipping...



but after it dried it was mostly OK. Oh yes, the red tape. How could I forget. You can ignore that for now unless you know the aircraft intimately. If you do, you know the question - is that where it is? If you don't know, all will become clear in the final coat of paint.

So, cracking on, I added the flaps, which didn't fit until I removed about 1mm from the ailerons on the lower wing surface - test fit this to death before glueing. Once I was happy with that, it was time to attach the wng to the fuselage. I found the only way to do this was front end first. Note also that I still haven't removed the sprue holding the bomb bay sides the correct distance apart - they are there to stop the wings snapping the lower fuselage. Anyhow, not the best fit, and I seem to have had a disaster on one engine/wing-root area. Something to work on over the next few days I guess  :( . It's the port side:



Note that it's resting in the box like that to force the upper wing sections to adhere to the fuselage.

In the meantime, assuming I get that right, and finishing the build, I'm not going to be ready to paint it yet, as I don't want my first ever airbrushing test to occur on a model this expensive, or personal. So, time to buy a guinea pig. Here's what I'll be building:



Instructions:





and sprues:





This will be the S-35E version (Basically think Spitfire Mk.1 to PR.1 conversion, it's about the same), hence being suitable for this GB, and it's cheap enough that if my airbrushing sends it Category E, I won't be too bothered.

James

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great work with the monster!

Seeing as I have to buy a new airbrush soon I'll probably end up doing what you're doing - running off a stream of cheap kits to make sure I haven't lost the hang of using it...

My old airbrush - Chaves AB300 1992 - 2011  R.I.P

Nimrod's looking great James

Good work overcoming all the problems with the Nimrod.  Can't belive you have time for another build, nice to see a Saab .

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Thanks all - on the port exhausts/wing-root - think I now have it sorted. Details and photos to follow tomorrow, including the latest mistakes.

Arpie, as for the Saab, looking forward to that - I've never done one before.

Patrick, I'm using an AS-186 compressor and two airbrushes for about £85 - they seem great so far, but having never had one before I'm not sure I'm qualified to comment. Of the two airbrushes that came with it, I've only used one so far, and I'm only just getting to grips with the idea of double action, though that seems to work nicely. On the other hand, I don't know whether I'm using the fine airbrush (in which case I might want it to do finer work), or the area airbrush (in which case I basically want it to act like a paint grenade). So, definitely some more practice to be had. I've some shopping to do as well. Now that I'm playing with these, I think a Tamiya cake-stand/turntable may be an idea.

James

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James

I used mine for priming GW figures and priming/spraying scratchbuilt wargaming buildings - never used it on aircraft because I didn't build any.

Will probably take your route and end up buying a compressor with the new airbrush and the Tamiya stand seems like an excellent thing to have too.

Seems to have worked OK.  As above, Details and photos to follow tomorrow, including the latest mistakes.

James

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I use an old (7 or 8 years now) Badger 200 airbrush with a small desktop compressor fitted with a moisture trap. I have fine and medium nozzle and needle sets and this has served me well for just about everything. Probably the best modelling investment I've ever made. I have a home built spray booth and I use lengths of threaded R/C control rod to hang models on for spraying/drying. Works very well.

Well after a qucik build, some mistakes with an airbrush, and some very interesting chemical reactions, the Draken is finished. As the chemical reactions continue, I'll be keeping an eye on what happens, and praying it doesn't go the same way as Stoobie's Lysander. In my case, there's been reaction between :

1. Clearfix and Johnson's multi-surface wax, causing the camera ports to go Hu 165. Took some time to figure this one out, as the underside is Hu 165 and I initally thought the paint was leaching into the clearfix. However, this one seems to be clearing up, and the windows are starting to look as they should, from the centre outwards.

2. Johnson's multi-surface wax and Windsor and Newton Flow Improver, when water is added (i.e. applying decals). This results in areas turning Hu 130 satin white, but with a much more solid finish than I could normally wish for. In some cases it has disappeared, in other cases it has been overpianted, and the worst case (It happened on the canopy  :think:  :shrug:   :shock:  :(  :angryfire:  :nailbite: ), I managed to scrape it off, mostly ).

Anyhow, with stoobie's build in mind I've already taken some potential gallery shots, just in case it goes Cat E overnight. I won't post the pics til tomorrow evening after work, as it is getting a little late, but Thursday night I'll post a full progress report on this and the Nimrod. the Draken will also arrive in the gallery.

As a final note, yes, speed was almost certainly a factor in all the above issues - I suspect things may have been less likely to react together if they'd been allowed to dry properly (or at all?) as per the manufacturer's instructions.

So glad that this isn't the Nimrod  :clap:

James

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Hi James,

I hope it all clears up okay, doesn't sound so good but with the water-based stuff (the Clearfix and multi-surface wax) that should hopefully settle out as it dries.

I've had a slight milkiness occur when applying decals over Kleared paintwork before, this didn't go away but disappeared under another coat of Klear - I've never got a full-on satin white effect, so the best of luck with that.

I think you are probably right about the drying times too; in my case the hurry to the finishing line was certainly a factor, otherwise I would have used Xtraflat varnish not spray-can acrylic varnish.

I look forward to hearing (and seeing) that it all turned out okay, but if not, as you said, at least it was on your 'test subject' and not on the Nimrod.

Cheers,

Stew

Thanks Stew.

As promised, Here's the update and photos. Starting with the Nimrod, i've corrected thelarge gaps around the wings. I did this by removing the engine exhausts and cutting them down a bit, so that they wouldn't wedge the wings apart. Unfortunately I got carried away and cut off a little too much:



Then I added some filler around the wing roots, but I'll post more photos when I've done something that changes the appearance a bit more.
So, on to the Draken.  First of all I made a basic tub and instrument panel for the cockpit, and drilled out the underwing  camera ports, as well as the sideways  looking ones in the nose.



The number of windows in the nose area was going to cause a problem with putting the weight in. I had also decided that I wanted the intakes blanked off so that you couldn't see into the kit. I solved this by adding the plasticine (about 5g) into the intakes, using square lumps and letting the kit compress it to  shape. Then I painted  it all black.



Next stage was to put it together. It went together very nicely,  apart from some slight warping which required the use of 4 bulldog clips while the fuselage halves were glueing  together.  There's also a slight gap at the wing joins. I left the nose unglued at this point, in case I needed to add more nose weight.



And the underside.



Now it was time to start the main modifications. First I  filled the gaps, plus the cannon in the wings and the recesses where the intakes above the fuselage would have gone on the fighter. I also filed the lower edge of the air intakes back, as the are supposed to be raked at about 60% when seen from the side.  By this stage I'd established that the aircraft weight was almost right, but might get too heavy and tip over once it was painted, as most of the surface area is aft of the wheels. So, I added a small screw into the nose.



Next I made the camera faring on the nose, using plastic card, and added the remaining camera ports. One of these would cause a problem, so I decided that one could be painted on at the end.



So, then we come to spray painting.  I masked the canopy with Blu-tack, then tried spraying the two greys, the  green and the silver. It wasn't a great success, as I had to wipe off all the paint at one point on the upper port side (too much flow improver), but it was interesting to see how different consistencies caused different outputs, and in some cases errors. It came out a little uneven, but otherwise OK. So, I did some touching up, and then brush painted the detail areas such as the exhaust, undercarriage etc, and added clearfix to the camera ports. I noticed that the paint was very thin, so  it would come  away easily. I think this was partly because I only added flow improverto the paint for thinning, rather than water or something. This also meant that the paint stayed sticky, and has not dried yet. To try and sort this out, I covered it in a coat of Johnson's multi surface wax, and it was ready for decals. The decals all came from the kit, shuffling the number s about to get an F11 Wing aircraft





The decals all came from the kit, shuffling the number s about to get an F11 Wing aircraft. The fuselage roundel is al ttle large, but that's because Airfix intended it for the fighter variant, so I think it's about right for those versions. I've explained what happened next  in last night's post. This is after some of the touching up/recovery effort. Take note of the white line at the base of the fin, and the just visible grey camera port.



Fortunately as Stoobie suggested, it has now cleared up. Final Pics in the Gallery. It's been useful as it's taught me a lot of the potential mistakes in airbrushing, and I do really like the Draken kit. It's a good fit, and an impressive little aircraft as well. So now I'll be going back to the Nimrod.

James

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Phew!  Good save James, it turned out very nice

Did you spray the camo straight on or did you use a primer first?

Cheers,

Stew

Thanks Stew

Sprayed straight on without primer, mainly to save time. As you know, this one was a rapid throw together so that I could start using the airbrush. For that reason I also didn't bother to mask.

I think the flow improver probably had something to do with the problems, as other people seem to only use a drop, and then thin the paint with something else.

James

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Some more progress. For the R.1, don't use parts 11 and 12 (either side of the bombay). For the other versions, part 12 goes in the mirror position the otherside of the bombay compared to part 11 - they don't mention it in the instructions. while in that area, I filed the intake just behind the bay doors, as well as the chaff dispenser uner the tail. When dry these will be sanded to remove any evidence that they were there, as R.1's don't have them either.



The wing fit was certainly interesting. I never truely got rid of the gap, but the mismatch for the light in the wing root is surprising. I've tried to fix this with a circular profiled file.



And heres the other end, where I have mostly fixed the gap and the wing root.



And finally for today, here she is. There may be a number of problems and corrections, but at least she's starting to look like an R.1



James

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fantastic Nimrod!

great work with the airbrush too.

Nice work on the Draken it amazes me how quickly yo can get paint to dry.  A great little kit to do some spray paint experimenting.

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2012 Bought:Built 8:23

Great job on the Draken and the Nimrod's coming along well too.

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Nice work

Good stuff. That Draken seems to have turned out very nicely, even if it was done as a quick 'test' build. And the Nimrod also looks like it's coming together well.

Lol.

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Great work, nice Draken, might take a few ideas for doing a Danish one.

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