Last flight of the Eurofighter

It's been a while. Not because I've not been building, but the last few completions have been for a magazine which prefers its article subjects to be not posted publicly until the magazine has been published.

The 1/32 Eurofighter was finally finished, or at least to a stage where it could be shipped to the customer in the UK. Fragile sub-assemblies such as the undercarriage and weapons were left off for the client to attach himself. FedEx did its job and delivered the model safely and I was relieved to hear that my customer was extremely happy with the outcome – I'm just waiting for him to e-mail me some photos of the fully-assembled model.

Euro 2012 Part two

Work continues on the Revell 1/32 Eurofrighter. For a modern-tool kit released in the last 4 years it's a shockingly poor fit.

The wing-root on top; it's even worse on the underside.

The wing root trailing edge – not just a gap but a step as well.

Lots of filling and sanding required to achieve a smooth tail transition.

Besides the sloppy fit there are numerous sink marks all over the airframe, the slats and airbrake seem to be the worst affected:

The fit problems are further compounded by Revell offering a multitude of options: open/closed airbrake, extended/retracted step, extended/retracted refuelling probe, exposed/closed engine bay etc. The kit has clearly been designed to show these options 'open', but closing them leaves large gaps and steps. Because my client wants the model to represent an aircraft on the flightline, none of the exposed options are applicable (except for an open canopy). Progress is being made, but it's slow and tedious...

Euro 2012

Some years ago I built a 1/48 F-18 for a pilot, and at the beginning of May he contacted me again to request a build of the Revell 1/32 Eurofighter. Although it's neither a scale nor subject that I'd normally work in he offered me a fair price and I agreed. Along with the kit the client sent Aires resin sets for the cockpit, engines and wheel bays (with the stipulation that I was to use them only if it didn't create huge amounts of extra work). The aftermarket cockpit is so much nicer than the kit's that I felt obliged to use it, and it did fit without too much surgery.

Yet to be added are the joystick and HUD. The canopy/windscreen have a prominent seam line running their full length which was removed with sanding and polishing, followed by a dip in Pledge.

Ring them Bells

This is another kit from my Feb 1st posting, in which I listed some of the stalled/abandoned kits that had lay untouched for years, in some cases. The Special Hobby 1/72 Bell X-1A was a fairly straightforward build, though like most kits from this stable it pays to do lots of dry-fitting before applying glue, because some of the locations are quite vague in the instructions. The biggest issue I had with it was the canopy, which was slightly too wide for the fuselage. In attempting to glue and clamp it in position stress-marks appeared on the top which aren't quite as visible to the naked eye as they are here, highlighted under the photo spotlights. So, not altogether successful but it's nice to be able to (finally) cross it off the list.

As a comparison, here's the Tamiya 1/72 Bell X-1 built some 8 years ago:

Japanese Midget

No, I'm not being politically incorrect, I'm referring to that classic of the Japanese auto industry, the 1957 Daihatsu Midget, kitted by ARII in their 1/32 'Owners' Series'. It's almost 40 years since I last built a car. The kit's quite basic and moulded in a bilious green plastic that's really brittle, but other than a lot of clean-up the build was quite straightforward.

Main paints are Gunze lacquers followed by several coats of Future, then polished with Tamiya's compounds. Bright shiny bits are done with Alclad chrome. ARII supply a canopy to go over the truck-bed but it's much too thick and slightly oversize so it was left off; besides I like the look of it 'open'. Overall it was a nice change of pace from aircraft and since I have a couple more kits from the same series I'll be doing more in the future.

1/144 Butcher Bird

I always thought 1/144 models were half the size of their 72nd counterparts, but of course that's not true: they're actually 1/8 the size in 3-dimensional terms. Which explains why Eduard's 1/144 Fw190F-8 is dwarfed by the Airfix version I built last year.

Anyway, I built this to jump-start my modelling again. Somewhat burned out after finishing the article series, and without a deadline to motivate me, I've spent the last few weeks watching inane TV re-runs instead of being productive at the bench. I thought a quick completion would help, and as there was a 1/144 Group Build going on over at the Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum I jumped in.

The subject is a captured 190 and the camo scheme is completely spurious, applied by the Americans to make it look more Teutonic. The kit was really basic but the shape looked OK, however I've come to the conclusion that 144 scale stuff takes just as long as bigger scales because you have to be that much more detail-oriented; choosing a squiggle-pattern probably didn't help either.

Circuits and Bumps

The Saab Draken in the previous post was the last build for Scale Aviation Modeller International magazine's 'Circuits and Bumps' series, which I've been writing for the last 2 years. Here's a link to pics of all the models in the series.