Cockpit
An aftermarket cockpit for this kit is necessary because the Kitty Hawk cockpit has no details as they relied entirely on their photo-etch sheet to provide the details. On 1:48 scale, photo-etch does not do a proper job of providing the depth on details for a cockpit, and not to mention it is very difficult to paint. Hence, I am using the Aires Jaguar GR.1 Cockpit Set #4619. It comes with a beautiful and accurate Martin Baker Type 9B Mk.2 seat which is used in all Jaguars up to 1986. It is too bad that some of the thin resin pieces were broken in my set and I’d have to make some new ones to replace them.
(Photos Above: The cockpit of a Jaguar is painted black throughout. I painted the resin cockpit with Tamiya XF-63 German Grey and highlighted the details with a dry brushing of light grey paint to bring out the details).
The instrument panel is made up of a photo-etch top surface with a printed clear film beneath it. The print of the dials is so fine such that on a 48th scale, it is difficult to see the dials. Aires should provide decal dials instead. The text on the checklist pad on the HUD frame is from my spare decals. The text is so small that I didn’t realise I set it upside down until I see it on my photo. LOL. It’s OK. On the real model, you cannot read it anyway.
To my surprise, the Aires resin tub is too wide and will not fit into the front fuselage.
The reason why the resin tub cannot fit into the kit is obvious. The Aires tub is wider than the kit’s cockpit tub as can be seen in this photo comparison.
I removed material from both sides of the kit’s fuselage by scraping away with a blade until it fits. Also, I sanded the Aires resin tub’s sides as much as is practicable without removing any details.
Just when I thought it was safe to glue the cockpit into place, I found more problems with the Aires set. The tilt angle of the tub is wrong. If you install the tub at an angle that Aires have you believe then the top of the instrument panel will protrude so far up such that instrument panel shade will not sit flush and there will be no room at all between the windshield and HUD for the HUD glass holder frame.
The Aires’ sidewalls are set too far forward. The only way the side walls can be properly installed is to notch the cockpit tub back wall so that the sidewalls can sit butt up with the rear bulkhead. See photo below. How could Aires mess this up so bad????
I struggled for four hours installing this resin tub and I finally figured out how to do it. It is a very long and laborious process and I don’t want to use up my whole build just to describe it. In summary, I did it and I don’t want to do it again!!!!! The folks at Aires did a terrible job of making this set. It seems they never bothered to try to install this set themselves before they mass produce and sell it. People complain about the poor instruction sheet in the Kitty Hawk kits, well they obviously never tried to use this resin set while using the poor Aires instruction sheet.
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