Hobby Boss 1/48 EMB-314 Super Tucano

[Par429]

Hey-

I'm currently building the Hobby Boss 1/48 scale EMB-314 Super Tucano, and I thought I would post some pics. I think the Tucanos are great looking aircraft, and it's really nice to finally have a 1/48 kit of it. I'm going to try to build it as the Imminent Fury A-29. I had some involvement with the program while it was at Pax River, so I thought it would make a cool desk model. So I'm going to use this:

to make this:

I know there has been some criticism with the accuracy of this kit, and I'm going to try to fix a few things that I know about without going too crazy with it. So I started with the cockpit. Pretty straightforward, nice decals for the instrument panels. I picked colors just based on pics from the web, no sure how close i got.

More to follow. Comments always welcome.

Phil

[kike]

Looks like a nice kit! and good start with the pit!

Can you please tell what colors are proposed for the brazilian camo? I've been looking for them for quite a while! thanks

[Par429]

Hey-

Thanks, but not too sure about Brazilian camo colors.

So a little more progress. I have the cockpit installed along with some fishing weights. There's plenty of room.

I glued the fuselage halves together, fit is pretty good, no issues except there is a recessed vent on top of the nose which is a little bit of a pain to get the seam cleaned up.

With the fuselage together I added the wings and tails, again no real fit problems. The lower nose cowling is a separate part, so you get the chance to add a little more weight in the nose once you have all the parts together to get a feel for how much is needed. It's a lot! Before I attached the nose cowling I painted the weights black since you can see in the intakes. I left the seats out for now so as not to mess them up while I finished sanding seams.

Thanks for looking,

Phil

[titan8251]

Hey Phil,

Are you still at Pax River? I am over in triton.

Andy

[Par429]

Hey Andy-

Yes, still at Pax River. I'm in the Airworthiness Office.

Phil

[Par429]

Hey-

Some more progress. I said I was going to fix a few issues with this kit. One of the big areas that HB missed is the shape of the belly under the wings. i'm going to try and fix that area. I have a pretty good 3-view drawing and from that I cut a new belly plate from some sheet plastic. I used some strip for the angled sides. At little trimming and it seems to fit pretty well at the front.

I used some polyester glazing putty to smooth out the forward end since pictures show this area as pretty smooth. I attempted to fair it in to the existing wing root fairings. The aft end is a little tricky since it's tough to find good pics of this area with just the right lighting to see the shape. I took a shot and roughed it in with some epoxy putty.

With a little sanding and glazing putty it's looking better.

Needs a little more sanding to shape and then primer.

Thanks for looking,

Phil

[Pep]

Great work! i will be following his one!

[Par429]

Hi-

Thanks. I did some more sanding and smoothing on the belly plate. Then a coat of primer to see how it looks. It needs a little more shaping, but I think it looks good.

Wile waiting for the paint and putty to dry, I also worked on the seats. The kit come with PE seat belts, which look pretty good. I added a couple small details and some decals from the spares box since there's so much canopy on this aircraft. There's alo a PE HUD. be careful with the upper glass on the HUD, there's not much clearance between it and the windscreen.

Thanks for looking.

Phil

[Par429]

Hi-

Small update today. I put some paint on it. I'm not really sure what color it's supposed to be, so I mixed my own based on photos. It's mostly MM Flat Gull Gray lightened a little. I think it looks pretty close.

IAs can be seen on the bottom, since the Imminent Fury A29 didn't carry the outer pylons I was able to cut one down to use as a centerline pylon since the kit does not include one. I also built a mount for the FLIR.

Thanks for looking.

Phil

[ST0RM]

Cool project. Can't wait to see how the FLIR ballet turns out.

Looking forward to more progress.

Jeff

[Par429]

Hi-

So a small update today, although progress involved a lot of masking. But here is the result:

I'll put a coat of gloss on next.

Thanks for looking,

Phil

[jgrease]

Looks great!

[Joel_W]

Phil,

Excellent work on correcting the belly pan shape. Hobby Boss really missed it by a country mile. It kind of looks like they didn't even bother to try and get the correct shape. Looking forward to your next up date.

Joel

[Par429]

He

Thanks. No, HB didn't really try to get the belly right.

I put a coat of gloss on it, and while waiting for that to dry I worked on the propeller.

The prop on this kit is actually very nice. It has very thin, individual blades that are keyed to the correct orientation on the ground (feathered). Unfortunately this will leave a seam at the base of the spinner to fix with all the blades in the way. So I reluctantly cut off the keys so I could assemble the spinner first. The kit includes decals for the blade tips, but I decided to paint them on. So white the the tips:

The backs of the blades are all black, and there's some black on the front. So I masked the white and painted on the black:

Then I masked off the backs and the stripes:

I mixed some gray and silver to get a metallic gray look:

I removed the masking and was pleased with the results:

The kit provides decals for the manufacturers logos. But I have one pic of the aircraft where the visible blade does not show the logo. And I have another pic where the visible blade does show the logo. So I guess some had them and some didn't? That would seem awkward on a model? Not sure which way to go.

Thanks for looking.

Phil

[Joel_W]

Phil,

Coming along quite nicely. Excellent job on the prop. It looks great.

Joel

[TaiidanTomcat]

Your build is convincing me I need a few of these kits! Great work on that prop, the masking really paid off

[falcon20driver]

Those props look perfect. Great job so far.

[Par429]

Hey-

Next up to do on this project were the decals. Since I didn't have the patience to wait for a decal company to make a set for this aircraft I was left gather together decals from a number of sources. I think I got pretty close, but it's not exactly right. I used decals from the very nice FCM Super Tucano Part 1 for stencils, warning marking, etc. I used Fireball Modelworks excellent Black Ponies set for the ponies. And I made my own decals for the BuNo and the FURY painted on the strakes. Here are the declas sets:

Here's how they look:

I still need put a coat of gloss over it, but so far so good.

Thanks for looking.

Phil

[Par429]

FCM will release soon the "BlackWater" decal version.

Hey-

Right, I knew that. But I'm just impatient.

And sometimes the challenge of doing it yourself is worthwhile. It makes you try new things and develop new skills.

Phil

Edited October 13, 2014 by Par429

[Joel_W]

Phil

Your decaling really looks quite good. I'd say you succeeded and don't need to apologize for decal bashing. It's the end results that count.

Joel

[Pep]

Looking good!!

Makes me want to start a second one!

[Motta]

Looking damn good!!!

[Par429]

Hey-

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated. So I'm continuing to work the detail bits. This thing has a huge number of antennas on it, which changed quite a bit during testing. So I picked a configuration from some photos taken during weapons testing at Pax River. Here's my antenna farm:

Some are antennas included in the kit, some modified kit parts and some scratchbuilt. The FLIR turret is from Cobra Company. And here they are installed:

Next up, weapons!

Thanks for looking.

Phil

[Joel_W]

Looks like the sure maxed out the belly for Antennas.

Joel

[Par429]

Hey-

Thanks. So next up is weapons. Of course nothing is easy. While this aircraft was at Pax River it flew with GBU-58's (250 lb LGB) and 2.75 rockets in a LAU-68. So to make a GBU-58 I used a Brassin set for GBU-12 combined with a MK-81 bomb body helpfully supplied free from a fellow forum member (Thanks Dean!).

I cut the seeker unit from the Brassin GBU-12 and attached it to the MK-81 bomb body. I think there is an adapter ring required to mate the tailfins to the smaller MK-81, so I made that from a slice of brass tubing covered with foil. Here is a comparison between the GBU-12 parts and my assembled GBU-58.

The HB kit provides very nice sway braces for the bombracks which of course don't mate up to the smaller diameter of the GBU-58. I think the swaybraces are a little overscale which doesn't help. Many bombracks have an additional set of sway brace holes to accommodate smaller diameter ordnance, so I cut off the existing pads and drilled new holes inboard. I made new swaybraces using stretched sprue. If you hold the end up to a candle, it makes a very nice mushroom head that with a little sanding on the end to flatten out the mating surface looks like a swaybrace. Here's what I ended up with and it look a lot better when the swaybraces sit flat on the store.

The LAU-68 I made from a CMK M260 rocket pod. For all the aircraft that can use the LAU-68, I find it a bit strange that there doesn't seem to be an accurate LAU-68 out there. Someone correct me if there is one. I used two pods to lengthen the M260 to the correct length for a LAU-68. I wrapped the entire pod with some 0.01" sheet plastic to create the characteristic stepped ends on the LAU-68 where the fairings mate that no one ever uses.

So here is what I ended up with.

Next time I'll have them installed and start working the final details. Thanks for looking.

Phil