1/48 Kinetic Hornet Nose Fix

[serendip]

7 hours ago, Collin said:

 

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/hyperscale/kinetic-hornet-nose-job-t530724.html
 

 

Go for it Collin!

 

I'll be following,

 

Marc,

 

 

[Gary F]

I was on the verge of disposing of my Kinetic Hornets when I saw this article recently. So decided to try it and see what happened.  
I did the nose halves together and added the bottom panel to finish the nose section. 
Then put the fwd nose gear bay bulkhead onto the lower main fuselage piece, very tight press fit and then glued it. 
At this point I realized I hadn’t installed the refuel probe bay and I couldn’t get it fitted to the nose section so glued it to the main upper fuselage piece.  
Having just deviated from Collin’s guide at the refuel bay, I figured I should check how the nose fitted to the upper fuselage. I had to play with it a bit but finally got it on. I had to do a little sanding to the bay edges but it finally allowed the the nose area to fit well against the upper fuselage join lines. I had to run a knife blade along the join line under the gun muzzle area but got a good fit there also.  So I started applying Tamiya extra fine liquid glue. I did the left side join line and under the gun muzzle area and let that dry.  Next night I did the right side join line and let it dry.  Next night I did the small vertical join line under the front edge of the LERX making sure there was no step. Next night I did the other side.  At the end of this I checked all those seam lines and all were smooth, no steps, no gaps except a small place in front of the gun muzzle I scraped a bit too much off.  Once this was all dry I fitted the lower fuselage to the upper. The nose section snapped into place with a click and the remaining vertical seams on each side of the fuselage-nose join were lined up perfectly … no gap, no steps. I didn’t glue the lower fuselage as I haven’t done the main gear bays or intakes yet … this was just to see if the nose fix plan worked and it worked great for me. 
Thanks for posting it Collin. 

[seawinder]

FWIW, I pretty much followed Gary's route on the CF-188 build currently underway. Like him, I forgot about the refuel bay and cover until too late. I decided not to bother with the bay piece and was able to secure the cover piece into the opening with little difficulty and pretty good fit. I also thinned the forward surface of the front nose gear bay bulkhead (probably not necessary) and filed some plastic off around its edges to mitigate against any possible step. It all worked out pretty well and only required a few small bits of filler in a couple of small gaps.

 

[serendip]

3 minutes ago, seawinder said:

FWIW, I pretty much followed Gary's route on the CF-188 build currently underway. Like him, I forgot about the refuel bay and cover until too late. I decided not to bother with the bay piece and was able to secure the cover piece into the opening with little difficulty and pretty good fit. I also thinned the forward surface of the front nose gear bay bulkhead (probably not necessary) and filed some plastic off around its edges to mitigate against any possible step. It all worked out pretty well and only required a few small bits of filler in a couple of small gaps.

 

That does really all look really good.