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Construction
As with all resin products, I intially washed all the components in an ultrasonic bath of washing up liquid to remove any release agent which can stop paint from adhering properly.
The instructions recommend that you build the model up as a series of sub-assemblies, beginning with the propeller and engine assemblies and this seemed a logical way to progress.
The propeller unit has a unique aid to construction, in that it comes with a jig in order to allow the modeller to get the correct pitch on all five blades. Each blade was dry fitted in the hub using the jig before any painting or glueing was attempted.
Once I was happy with the fit each blade was painted along with the hub unit. The hub was then placed on the jig and each blade attached using superglue. Great care has to taken in order to ensure that no glue gets between the jig and propeller assembly. The hub/propeller can then be removed from the jig and the painted spinner attached.
The next stage is the Centaurus engine. Once again this is beautifully moulded and fits together with no problems. The engine was painted with a dark Steel Alclad and then washed with a thinned black enamel wash to bring out the detail.
One area to note at this stage of construction is the placement of the exhaust stack in the cowl. I had decided to paint these and then fit them later-on once the cowl had been painted and fitted to the main fuselage; I later found out this wasn’t a good idea – more on this later! One real shame about the engine assembly is that when it is fitted in the cowl very little can be seen due to the crankcase fairing.
Onto the Wings…
The trick with this part of construction is dry fit everything and then dry fit it again until you are 100% sure of the fit. The first stage is to fit the wheel well to the top wing. In order to get a good fit the inner wing was `scraped` with a scalpel blade to remove any high spots then the wells were tacked in place to ensure the lower wing fitted. This process was carried out several times until I was happy with the fit. Overall the wing needs very little filler as the general fit is very good, but a samll application of thick superglue was used here and there to fill in some minor seams.
The part I’ve been looking forward to – the Cockpit…
Click on Image to enlarge/go back.
This is a small kit in its own right and when finished is simply stunning; it’s a pity very little of it can be seen once it is placed in the fuselage. The cockpit assembly is straight forward with each stage of construction illustrated with photos in the instructions. The cockpit consists of both resin and photo etched parts.
The dash is PE with a clear film simulating the instruments. I always like this method of construction as the shiny film nicely represents the dial glass. The whole cockpit was painted black with my usual Xtracrylix and knobs picked out with dark grey, yellow and red. In order to give some depth to the whole `black` assembly it was dry brshed with humbrol silver enamel and the seat was washed with brown enamel to bring out the leather effect.
One further piece of the cockpit to construct at this point is the gunsight. Once again this is a combination of resin, PE and film. The PE parts are very small and great care has to be taken so as not to lose them to the ‘carpet monster’ – never to be seen again!!
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