The Folding Wings
Now for the fun part, the wings. Two major points came out here; firstly, reference pictures are essential as I don’t think the instructions are that clear and secondly lots of dry-fitting to ensure that everything fits correctly before adding the glue.
Additionally, from the reference photos, note the position of the highlighted antennas and pitot tubes that I mentioned earlier on.
The first part of fitting the folding wings is to fit the wing centre sections to the inner sections that had previously been attached to the fuselage. Before you do this though, you will notice that the centre section upper surfaces have a pin protruding on the outer upper surface. These pins are designed to fit onto the circular pads on either side of the spine. To ensure a more secure fit of the pins in these pads I drilled recesses into the centre of each pad so that the pins dropped into them. This ensured the two centre sections sat in mirror positions either side of the spine – see the photos to clarify what I’m talking about here!
The outer wing sections can then be fitted onto the centre sections and the support rods fitted. These rods support the outer wing sections and ensure they mirror one another. The instructions are again a bit vague with regards to the fitting of the rods so reference photos are very helpful. I did the best I could and they fitted reasonably well but later on I did realise that the rod should have been rotated by 90 degrees – I may try to reposition them in the future.
Also note that whip aerials need fitting if you are doing the AS.4 version. These are not shown on the instructions but stretched sprue can be used for them.
The exhaust pipes were painted up with Alclad Steel, Burnt Iron and MRP soot. They can then be slotted into the fuselage; the fit is again good with no issues. MRP Soot was again used to build up some exhaust staining.
The three canopies all have a minor seam along the top that I opted to remove with the usual process of scraping it away with a scalpel and then polishing it out with various grades of Micromesh and Tamiya polishing compound. At this point I had my token build mishap and managed to get a crack along the top of the front canopy whist polishing it – lots of very colourful language was used at this point!! Fortunately, it didn’t crack right along the seam and by having the canopy in the open position the crack isn’t too obvious on the finished model.
The final part of the build was adding the aerial wire. This isn’t shown in the instructions but the picture below shows its location. I used my standard Lycra thread for this attached in place with superglue. With this in position I’m calling this build complete.
Stuart Mackay says
Love the group photo of the mid century FAA machines, Dave!
The Gannet looks superb!
Rob Ruscoe says
Great build Dave.
I was fortunate to note the extra weight tray which Airfix fail to mention in the instructions. I can report this holds enough to prevent tail sitting.
Rob.R