The Engines
Next, I tackled the engines. The first thing to note is the engine shroud is too long for a later model – the fix is very easy as shown in the photos. Some careful painting is also required on the intake inner surfaces to match the reference photos. I tried to use the spiral decals on the centre hub but I couldn’t get them to work so I ended up carefully painting them by hand.
I opted to add the wing pylons even though they are not currently fitted to RAF Poseidons as the aircraft just looks ‘cooler’ with the pylons and Harpoons. Rather than use the kit parts for this I used RESKIT pylons and Harpoons as the detail was so much better. Rather than permanently fix the pylons in position I used micro magnets to hold them in place so I could remove them if required.
It’s now onto the painting the whole aircraft and it’s an overall grey and in this case, I used MRP -363 Boeing Grey with a gloss varnish. The leading edges of the wings, tail and horizontal surface all have an aluminium finish. The supplied RAF decals work well on the gloss finish. I also used brass tube to reinforce the horizontal tail surface join to the fuselage. Also note that the real aircraft has a matt finish on the area above the cockpit around the AAR receptacle to minimize glare to the probe operator when air to air refuelling.
The engine nacelles were painted and decaled in a similar fashion.
The kit is missing the lower beacon lights but I managed to find some appropriate clear parts in the spares box that did the job.
As I had gone to a lot of work installing the weapons bay I really needed to fill it with something. I managed to purchase four Mk54 torpedoes (Airgraphics and RESKIT do them) and scratch built a UNIPAC III SAR canister for the central BRU. For the wing pylons I used REKIT Harpoons which were far better detailed than the kit ones. I also added the EO turret at this stage. A tip for the turret – if you have a new Airfix 1:48 Sea King and you are not doing a version with the EO turret use this as it is the perfect size and has a lot more detail than the kit one.
Howard Kilburn says
Superb…simply superb Dave
Ron Anstis says
My webpage says “English”. The spelling and expression in so much of the text suggest that this is more hypothesis than fact. Howard says “Superb…” and the finished model shows this to be more fact than hypothesis. Very nicely done!