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  • 1 month later...

Looks fantastic so far Red Dog, you've inspired me to get started on mine. I like the Flightpath PE and resin, I'll need to get myself some. The Heritage set is ok not real crisp, or at least mine isn't.

The rivets will take a bit of work to fill, I'm looking forward to seeing more updates from you.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm due for an update gents, I can't work on this as much as I want to. My initial plans were to have it finished before 2009 but I'm running late..

Anyway. I feel the hardest part of this build is to close the tow fuselage parts together. lots of planning has to be done to avoid future problems and the lack iof intern details needs to be though of too.

So I decided that the gear doors will remain closed on both the nose gear and the mains.

Usually the mains are closed on the ground anyway. That's not always the case for the front gear doors though, were most GR3 pictures I have seen have the nose gear doors open when the jet is cold.

Well, mine will be closed.

I'm also adding a new airbrake bay which really is too shallow in the kit and really badly done. The new one come from Heritage aviation and is very nice. That will not be easy to fit since you can't access it once you close the fuselage. Maybe a better approach would be to leave it out and insert it from outside once the 2 fuselage are glued together. Not easy, but the joints may be better distributed this way. If you glue the resin tight on one side, you may end up with a tiny gap and the other fuselage side? Anyway, it's pretty minor and nothing a few putty can't solve :thumbsup:

In the meantime, I continued working on the front part. Cockpit is now ready and glued on one side of the fuselage.

It's heavily weathered but I'm happy with the result

The sidewalls are ready too, I have some more PE parts to add under the glareshield on the walls.

The glareshield was heavily detailled but I know I will have problems making the windscreen fit with the heritage aviation resin glareshield. I'll have to find a way

I cut two missing vents on the canopy slope behind the rear seat as I plan on detailling that area once the fuselages are glued together.

Here are two quick pictures of a cockpit dryfit.

027_cockpit.jpg028_cockpit.jpg

Hope to have the fuselage closed before the end of the week end :cheers:

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Thanks gents but I am still a long way out from some of the guys having worked on the 1/24 SHAR for example :blink:

the fuselage is closed, I'm now working on the intakes and the internal nightmare of aligning the engine with the nozzle holes ...

Pictures asap

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thank you gents,

As planned I moved on to the fuselage.

It's now glued together, sanded and primed. Still a long way to have a perfect finish but I needed the first coat of primer to see the inversed rivet work :ph34r:

029_fuselage.jpg

030_fuselage.jpg

The front nose bay is not in place yet but the two nose gear doors have been shut already. The engine is not yet in place but that's for soon (right after the nose gear bay) But first I will place the resin intakes with their kit interior walls. The resin nose and the tail tip are glued on and sanded, it went very easily but care must be taken to cut the forward fuselage at the correct spot (remember mine is an original GR1 boxing)

Here's a very bad shot of the airbrake bay, that's the heritage resin part. It's very well thought of and fits quite nicely

031_brakebay.jpg

Glad i can close the main gear doors because that bay really is empty :huh:

Some more work needed on the nose, but I was wondering what would be your though about the rivet filling there on the nose? Should I fill them some more, or do you think it's enough and they need to just be visible once all the paints and weathering will be complete?

032_nose.jpg

Finally a shot of the tail, my best loving part so far ;)

033_tail.jpg

I already placed some PE plates there, I wanted the PE to be level with the fuselage and avoid having a thick plate there as it's not the case on the real bird, so extra work was needed

Same question about the rivet we still see aft of the airbrakes - Should I fill them again, or do you think it's good to still guess them on the finished model?

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Before fitting the nose gear bay inside the fuselage, I needed to make some choices for the nose gear

Flightpath wins the nose leg, Heritage wins the wheel. The kit looses all the way

Dryfit with metal rod insterted for the pivot point.

I was very close to use the heritage leg instead og the FP, as it's way easier to rotate the nose wheel a bit but the quality of the casting finally ruled that one out

034_nosegear.jpg

Some more work on the airbrake as well

035_airbrake.jpg

Built as per FP instructions

I made another pass to fill better those rivets - It was well worth it, I'm now happy with the fuselage surface.

Next are the fitting of the intakes. Theses have to be carefully fitted, with lots of sanding here and there before gluing to prevent an ugly sandjob on the very visible areas of the outer intakes

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Thanks Jman, here is some more

Here is a story of a major Sunday screwup :thumbsup:

Since the beginning I knew that engine will be trouble to align correctly in the fuselage to ensure the nozzle are properly aligned.

As I said earlier, I left the engine out while assembling the fuselage against the instructions. Of course I did try beforehand to see if the engine could be placed in a closed fuselage. it works fine, if you insert it nose first and then rotate it in.

The main problem of the engine, is that it rests on the aft support glued on the fuselage and the forward part of the fuselage rest on the internal intake parts.

So it means there's no supporting part below the forward part of the engine and that's what makes the positionning and nozzle alignement so hard IMHO

There comes the screwup :explode:

I forgot to check that the internal intake duct parts would be positionned correctly inside the fuselage for the engine to rest on. Since I used the resin intakes, that was a major screwup :ph34r:

No idea if that would have been different if I had used the kit's intakes?

The kit intake ducts were glued on the resin intakes and then those 2 were glued on the fuselage. The internal parts thus form a round duct where the front of the engine will be glued.

Well, at initial placement, the engine was 5mm to far aft and nozzle weren't aligned at all.

So I had to get on the saw and remove a few mm of that internal duct without removing the intakes (they were already sanded of course) I knew I could never saw that one right, so I cut more than required on purpose.

I then placed a small 4mm support for the lower front engine so it would be resting as well on the lower fuselage, this support was glued just aft of the nose gear hole.

I also made a engine support piece in plasticard to support the engine from above, right in front of where the wings come. That wouldn't be really necessary but I would hate to see this engine move once all is closed ... so better safe than sorry. I finally glued some plastic strip around then engine front blades to secure it to the intake ducts.

From then I could secure the engine in place assuring correct alignement of the nozzle.

036_engine.jpg

There you see the engine securing added plastic

As you can see, I didn't detail anything in there as it will be all closed.

037_engine.jpg

Checking the nozzle attachement points alignement ...

038_engine.jpg

1 are the two internal intake ducts, 2 is the front of the engine. The plastic 4mm engine support is just aft the gear hole

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WOW, that happens alot more than we really want it to happen! I think you did a great job in making sure that she doesnt move after closing up the fuselage, you did a great job, cant wait to see more!

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Nozzle step,

From reading other builds, I knew that I could sand off the alignement points inside the two parts nozzle, they don't really help to have them properly aligned.

So I started by doing this and filling the mould marks as well as the hole for the internal parts since I will replace them with PE parts from Flightpath.

Then each part is sanded, glued together and sanded again. Then the PE is added. the PE pin go straight into the putty filled hole and they bore through just by pushing them in, so it's really easy.

Here's the progression:

039_nozzle.jpg

Just have to detail the external side of the nozzles with strips and reinforcement bolts and those will be ready for alclad paint (well, at least the hot ones)

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Any RAF expert in the house?

I'd like to install a CBLS bomb dispenser on the centerline pylon, but I need to scratch that one.

Any one knows if that CBLS is based on the 1000Lbs RAF bomb ? It seems to...

Any drawings around ?

The second choice would be to make the strange ecm pod used by 4th squadron... I remember seeing a post about it a while back.

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