Wednesday and Thursday were wing, tail and landing gear day and all proceeded without fuss, I had elected to go with the distinctive wing fold option and discovered that the wing joiner ribs could be installed after the model was painted. I highly recommend that you follow this route as sanding, painting and decaling is so much easier and less damage prone following this method!
I particularly liked the transparent wing tips and position lights and a small hole drilled to represent the bulb and a drop clear red and green Tamiya paint added backed by Molotow chrome paint to represent these lights before adding. Do check the fit of stiffening boxes before closing the wing panels and a quick rub over with a sanding stick will get rid of the sprue attachment points here.
Airfix are to be congratulated for their extensive use of offset sprue runners to all the critical panels therefore minimising localised damage when removing the fuselage and wing panels from their sprues. Makes clean up so easy and minimises edge damage and subsequent filling when joined!
The main gear needs a bit of care to ensure that left and right hand legs are made accurately and I used the wheel wells to assist with the positioning of the retracting rams and struts fit, it is worthy of note that the leg scissors need to pointing forward. These were painted Hannants Xtracolor Gloss Sky and when dry, the data plate decals were added and some wire was added to represent the flexible brake lines which run forward around the scissors and painted Tamiya NATO Black.
For those who choose to do the wing spread option, there is the possibility of deploying the flaps, which is not possible with the wing folded option that need to be fitted in the closed position.
The wings slide onto the main spars protruding from the fuselage and only the slightest sanding of the top and bottom of the spars was required close to the fuselage to achieve a perfect glove-like fit into the moulded fuselage wing recess. No filler required here and another well done to the engineering team at Airfix!
Due to the perfect slide on fit of the panels, a feature that might be considered is to have interchangeable spread and folded wings?!? The kit contains both wing panel options and would only need the D, E and clear part sprues to be obtained to enable this to happen!
Tail surfaces present absolutely no issues and the stab fits perfectly into the recess in the fuselage, again no filler is needed and should not be applied as it is an all-flying stab for flap trim compensation and needs to be seen as a separate part from the fuselage, so don’t get tempted to hide the gap!
Friday and Saturday were main airframe paint days, I was happy with the fuselage surface finish and was conscious that I did not want to obscure the exquisite surface detail that might be caused by sanding buffing before priming and sanding, so decided to give the primer a miss and go for a paint that has a bit of bite. This may seem a little old school compared to acrylics, but I had had some good experience of using Hannants Xtracolor on a previous Classic Airframes Westland Wyvern (featured in SMN) and had stocks of the required Extra Dark Sea Grey and Sky that are the predominant colours. So, adding some foam and Tamiya tape masking to the exposed areas of the cockpits, a deep breath, a degrease of the airframe using alcohol and a couple of light coats of Xtracolor X7 BS210 RAF Sky thinned with cellulose thinners and put aside to dry.
Nik Frost says
Absolutely fantastic, well done!