Airfix 1/48th scale TSR.2 'problems'

[TsrJoe]

... iv held off posting my initial thoughts on the new Airfix TSR.2, first off im happy we now have an injection moulded kit in the scale, the detail level is excellent, in particular the undercarriage bays, it feels nice and chunky and good value for its price, but ...

unfortunately a few interesting and major problems seem have to went through unnoticed ...

at first glance, the forward fuselage has an inaccurate taper from the intakes to the cockpit, this results in a very unprototype visual effect especially in plan view which should in fact be a parallel section over this area, the dorsal access panels also taper on the model emphasising the mistake, where in fact again should be parallel!

this in fact was noted on the test shots at Telford 2008 but by this time the moulds were completed and thus went through as was! (interestingly the original 1/48 scale resin prototype model shown at the release of the 1/72 model was accurate in this respect!)

i cannot see an easy 'fix' for this major inaccuracy other than a complete new forward fuselage (possibly a Dynavector hybrid?)

other suspect areas are in side elevation there is a strange 'contour' where the forward fuselage meets the wing, and again where the kit seems to bulge from the flat wing section to the rear fuselage, again not easily 'fixed'

in no way am i trying to dismiss the kit out of hand, Airfix seem to have got it right with the 1/72 kit so theres no real excuse for messing up the 1/48 example??! (as well as the fact that they do have copies of accurate drawings of the airframe with sections at various stations!)

another aspect of the 1/48 kit i found 'interesting', it seems to have been designed as an almost toy like 'push fit' model, i wonder if there a 'ready built' model in the offing in the near future?? (take a look at the fuselage and wing location points!)

cheers, Joe

[TsrJoe]

for correction of the kit and to see just how way out it is have a looksee at the Barrie Hygate drawings as published by Argus etc. in various forms, these are are ok as a general reference for modelling purposes

quite a number of years ago now not long after the drawings were published in Scale Models, when doing my stint down at Cossie' a colleague (Jens) and i decided to mark out all the stencilling found on the airframe onto the drawing enlarged up to 1/36 scale, to our amazement we at first found the panelling didnt match the drawings (ignore the asymmetry as a number of panels on 220 were replacements after its accident!)... this was found to be mainly around the middle section wherat we started to measure directly from the airframe.

Hanging a line from various parts of the airframe we established datum points (its important to note the frame datum numbers do not run from the nose tip but back a bit due to changes in the final design, inc a change of nosecone pitch to 33deg.! iv an accurate one avaliable if anyone wants to correct their kit!) it was found that the drawing was short, but not overall...the shortness seemed to stretch and shunt over the whole drawing (at first we thought this was a copying error but the ones we were using were from original generation ones to try and eliminate this as much as practicable!)

After finalising points on the airframe we compared this with the published drawing...very different indeed...the intake position was almost a scale foot out of position! (ok i know thats jmn stuff but hey!) it was further established that the original had been drawn onto a company ga. drawing, which as we all know provide only a general reference for an airframe ( i think the same drawing was in Putnam's English Electric volume, as when enlarged this matches almost exactly?) another problem with the drawing is possibly with the upper fuselage, the actual airframe being quite flat, altho admittedly this is from a second source as i havent rechecked as yet!..

at the time Jens drew up a revised set of datum lines for the aircraft (which were also passed along to Airfix when compiling information for their kit, along with fuselage sections matched to noted datums to provide sections (some of which can actually be seen in the finished moulds, oops!) altho it seems that a different set of drawings may have been utilised for the 1/48 scale kit, no excuse! as the 1/72 example scales out pretty well!

as an aside, re the rumoured destruction of all records etc...this is actually standard practice at the end of a project due to storage limitations, the same with jigs etc. a complete set of drawings was kept and still survive (unusually so as a number of other types including production ones had theirs destroyed at the completion of their production runs!)

hoping this is of some use, happy modelling, cheers, joe