Windscreen and Canopy

[Mirage IV]

I understand the windscreen and canopy(ies) don't fit well on the new Airfix kit. (Shame on Airfix) How have people solved this problem?  I ordered the Pavla vac set, and expect to receive it soon....

[Captain Canada]

I think they've been posing them open.....or just building an F-4 instead.

 

[SimonR]

I understand the windscreen and canopy(ies) don't fit well on the new Airfix kit. (Shame on Airfix) How have people solved this problem?  I ordered the Pavla vac set, and expect to receive it soon....

I don't recall that it was significantly worse than the many other parts of the kit that don't fit together!

[Archibald]

I had a problem with the wing and lower airbrakes... Is it just me, or is the undercarriage a bit weak ?  
And yes, the NOSA canopy doesn't fit particularly well...  

[nev]

I understand the windscreen and canopy(ies) don't fit well on the new Airfix kit. (Shame on Airfix) How have people solved this problem?  I ordered the Pavla vac set, and expect to receive it soon....

What Simon said!  Very little on this kit actually fits.

The solution?  Lots and lots of filler

[Captain Canada]

Or build an F-4........

 

[Geoff_B]

Yeap its a bit on the thick side, but can be sanded down and repolished to get a tighter fit. Think the engineering design was rather ingenious but let down by the inexperience of the moulding company, as a result the fit is not quite what we expected.

G

[Lazlo Woodbine]

That's funny, on the one i'm building the canopies fit perfectly and I haven't used much filler.  Must be a duff kit.

[Leigh]

Kinda Hijack here, weren't they tinted gold on the original? Anyone got a good method for a gold tint? I was thinking of diluting acrylic paint with future?

[elmayerle]

Kinda Hijack here, weren't they tinted gold on the original? Anyone got a good method for a gold tint? I was thinking of diluting acrylic paint with future?

Aren't there some clear tint colors that are used on the windows of auto models?  I could swear I've seen them.

[Brian da Basher]

A handbrushed coat of Liquitex Artist's Acrylics Iridescent Gold would probably work for tinting a canopy. It usually takes at least three coats of their iridescent paints to achieve complete opacity.

Brian da Basher

[Mirage IV]

Add a drop of yellow food coloring (also add maybe a "micro drop" of red) to some Future. That's what I was planning to do.

I use this technique also to paint navigation lights. Red, of course, for port. But BLUE rather than green for starboard. The blue looks more like the actuall tint found on aircraft. Paint the mixture over silver and the nav. lights look quite bright.

[nev]

I've been using Tamiya clear smoke, close enough for me.

The real question is "what is the gold tint for?", and I've heard 3 explanations (other a/c have gold tinted canopies as well)

1)  Its a stealth feature, RAM in the canopy - seen on a really bad airshow program many years ago, and therefore probably not true  

2)  To protect the crew from the radiation of a nuclear blast

3)  Its a thin layer of gold used to de-mist the canopy.  My dad told me this is what the gold tint is on the Lightnings windshield.  Gold is one of the most malleable metals there is and you can hammer it so thin you can actually see through it.  This thin sheet is then placed between 2 sheets of glass, and when an electical current is passed through it, the resistance causes it to heat up, thus de-misting the canopy (most likely explanation IMO).

[rallymodeller]

I've been using Tamiya clear smoke, close enough for me.

The real question is "what is the gold tint for?", and I've heard 3 explanations (other a/c have gold tinted canopies as well)

1)  Its a stealth feature, RAM in the canopy - seen on a really bad airshow program many years ago, and therefore probably not true  

2)  To protect the crew from the radiation of a nuclear blast

3)  Its a thin layer of gold used to de-mist the canopy.  My dad told me this is what the gold tint is on the Lightnings windshield.  Gold is one of the most malleable metals there is and you can hammer it so thin you can actually see through it.  This thin sheet is then placed between 2 sheets of glass, and when an electical current is passed through it, the resistance causes it to heat up, thus de-misting the canopy (most likely explanation IMO).

#'s 2 and 3 are probably most likely. The EA-6B has gold on the canopies (giving it the nickname "Queer") to shield the cockpits from the aircraft's own ECM transmissions. And Ford (!) also used a form of electrical windshield demisting on some of it's full-size cars that resulted in the windshields having a gold tint (and being insanely expensive to replace).