Am I the only in who can see that one reason to justify this aircraft is...






...PIRATES!



Arrrrrrrrrrrr.  Shiver me timbers.

Quote

QuoteA jet powered float plane fighter is a cool idea and in wiffy world everything is possible.
Shame in the RW the idea is there but the problem list is quite long that's why wiffy world is my first choice now .

It actually worked pretty decently, the problem was that almost nobody had a requirement for it, and those who did also had aircraft carriers.

Yep that's one problem for sure ..it's like when they tried to relive thr grand ol days of flying boats..to late when land based was the only real way to go .
That figther would have quite a few other issues to deal with that land based figthers had already fixed..weather..range..weapons load .
Bases were a OK thing for the SRA1 as long as it was a safe harbour and there's weather protection.
One thing I've been thinking about is the cockpit colour for the Mediterranean based aircraft..unless covered pretty much all the time black would turn the cockpit into a oven and man I wouldn't want to touch anything in there ..the canopy would be like a glass house and I have had the displeasure of being inside a glass house in summer..damn it was hot .
Just imagine getting into a car with a black interior in summer..you can't even touch the steering wheel and the seat burns your arse 😄

All our British aircraft in the RAN FAA Museum had/have black interiors & that's in Aus, so I can't see the Med being any different.

Quote from: zenrat on April 01, 2023, 04:12:36 AMAm I the only in who can see that one reason to justify this aircraft is...

...PIRATES!

Arrrrrrrrrrrr.  Shiver me timbers.

Now that gives me an idea: an update on the Catapult Armed Merchantman concept. After WWII, air pirates, with high-performance surplus prop-job fighters, become the scourge of <someplace>, a bit like in Porco Rosso, but faster. Since post-war defence budgets are tight and there aren't enough aircraft carriers to go around, the idea is put forward to mount a jet fighter that can out-perform the pirate aircraft, on a catapult on a merchant ship. However jet fighters are too expensive to ditch after one mission, so the SRA.1 is chosen instead. It uses the new-fangled RATO bottles to take off from a simple ramp (rather than an elaborate catapult), then lands in the sea and is recovered by crane afterwards, much in the manner of pre war battleships and cruisers.

If the SRA.1 was paid for by the shipping companies to lower their insurance premiums, you could put it in P&O colours... 

That is similar to my backstory for Sky Pirates of the Nullarbor Coast.
Captain Fat Hamster and his crew preyed on shipping plying the Great Australian Bight over a number of years.  After WW2 they used float equipped war surplus piston engined fighters.  Obviously these will become jet powered as and when I get to building them.   
They are pursued by the Southern Air Patrol a multi-nation force who's PDRV representatives are contracted to zenrat industries.

Well I now have an airframe and she's a big, ugly brute.

As for the build ? Surprisingly good. There's a lot of ejection pins, pour stubs etc, and mine had some mould miss-alignment, but once you spend some time cleaning these up then she goes together very well and easily    The instructions let the kit down though and are quite poor IMHO.

The interior detail as thought is completely hidden in the tiny cockpit, apart from the seat belts. So I wouldn't waste time with the rest of the 3D decals apart perhaps from the instrument panel ? The interior is fiddly, but does fit and doesn't impede the fit of the fuselage halves which is far more than I can say for some other limited run kits.

When you photo this for our edification Chris could you please include some thing like a Hurricane  to give us an idea of scale.

Quote from: zenrat on April 02, 2023, 05:00:34 AMWhen you photo this for our edification Chris could you please include some thing like a Hurricane  to give us an idea of scale.

Exactly my thoughts. The wing span isn't that great, no bigger then a DH Hornet's, but its a lot longer and very tall/deep.

Doubt if any photo's will be this week though. I've come to the parts I thought would be a pain, the jet exhaust , and it looks as though I'll be proved right    Still if I look at them later in the week when I'm more relaxed you never know 

Found 45 minutes or so this morning and got a smidgen done.

Quote from: NARSES2 on March 15, 2023, 02:56:28 AMThere's one part whose fit I'm a little concerned with, but I'll leave any comment until I actually get around to fitting it rather than now when really I've not done much more then wave it in the general direction of things.

Well in all fairness to the kit, once I'd cleaned this part up, in particular a tab which helps you align it, then it fitted reasonably well. Will need psr, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Well to the well known tune of "'ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go"  the first round of p.s.r. has been completed. Wasn't as onerous as I thought    Model's been washed and hopefully I'll get second and third rounds done over the weekend.

Once I've got the outrigger floats on I'm seriously tempted to see if she actually floats. The fuselage is massive and hollow, so maybe she will ? 

Quote from: NARSES2 on April 07, 2023, 07:43:02 AMWell to the well known tune of "'ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go"  the first round of p.s.r. has been completed. Wasn't as onerous as I thought    Model's been washed and hopefully I'll get second and third rounds done over the weekend.

Once I've got the outrigger floats on I'm seriously tempted to see if she actually floats. The fuselage is massive and hollow, so maybe she will ? 

Oh I can see fun in the tub I can 
I know my DUKW floated and a old Tamiya LVPT7 didn't 

Quote from: NARSES2 on April 07, 2023, 07:43:02 AMOnce I've got the outrigger floats on I'm seriously tempted to see if she actually floats. The fuselage is massive and hollow, so maybe she will ? 

As I was washing her down I couldn't resist temptation, and she does 

Progress 

Second round of psr complete this morning and she's been given a good wash to remove all the muck. So all being well I can spot prime her tomorrow and providing that shows up no howlers I'll take a couple of photographs so you can see my progress as well as how big a beast she is.

A couple of points for those of you planning on getting one of these. Firstly the rudder attachment to the tailfin. It's meant to slip over the previously fitted tail plane, however that means you have a very narrow piece of plastic attaching to said tail plane in the middle which is very bendable and prone to break. Simplest way around this I found was to cut it in half and attach top and bottom separately. I've only dry fitted this at the moment, but it's way easier. Also you will need to re-shape the top of the tailfin so that it matches the profile of the rudder. It's very odd, but nothing a minutes work with some coarse sandpaper won't fix.

Secondly is the makeup of the outrigger floats which I got around to this morning. The struts fit onto a plate which then sits inside one of the float halves before fitting the other half. The plates suffer from another case of incorrectly numbered sprue diagrams. Once you remove them from the sprue it's obvious, but none the less annoying. Once you fit them to the correct float however they fit like a glove    I've glued them into the float half and I'll let that cure before drilling out the dimples in which the attachment points of the struts fit and fitting them. Then attach the other float half. Should be a slightly more robust way of fitting the struts that that suggested.

The text teasers have been excellent.. really now waiting to actually see the product.

Quote from: buzzbomb on April 08, 2023, 03:40:18 PMThe text teasers have been excellent.. really now waiting to actually see the product.

Yup same here