Nicaraguan Iskra

[Weaver]

Entry #2 will be a single seat PZL TS-11 Iskra, basically the MasterCraft 1/72nd kit built OOB with mythical Nicaraguan markings.

No picture of it yet - sorry!

[Weaver]

And we're off!



The little bits hovering around the wings are the intake trunking. The only piece of prep I did for this was trying to get them to fit a few weeks ago: serious surgery required! Spent an hour tonight just trying to get other things to fit right: all the pins are either too long or surrounded by raised lips, and some of the holes are off-centre too.....

An hour is also about how long the "OOB" intention lasted too. I discovered that the gun in the nose is an old single-barrelled NR-23, which, to a lifelong GSh-23 fan, is just wholly unacceptable.... So the nose has been slotted to make space for the TWO barrels of the superior weapon. Unfortunately (but predictably) this went right through, so some filler/plastic will be required on the inside:



On the easy side, a disc of thick plasticard that I cut for something else but which didn't fit, turned out to be the perfect jet nozzle plug...

[rallymodeller]

Hey, that's pretty sweet. I didn't know they did a single-seat Iskra.

[Weaver]

Ghah! NOTHING fits anything on this thing! 

Even putting the dash (half of whose crappy transfer fell off in the process) in place has required modification and micro-engineering. Then I test-fitted the windscreen -  Going to have to shim the whole sill.....

Last night I drilled out the little T-shaped tubes under the fuselage as a rest-break since it didn't involve gueing one thing to another......

[Weaver]

Okay, some progress......

Fuselage together (in places):




Cockpit: not one of my better efforts, but it'll do:

[Ed S]

Looking good so far.  I built that kit a couple years ago.  It was not the easiest build and took some putty to get it right.  But it does make an interesting model on the display shelf.

Ed

[Weaver]

Cheers Ed!

I've now realised that even the single canopy reveals the area behind the front seat to a distressing degree, so I've made a fuel tank to fill the space. Also, the blob of putty I put in the nose to give me something to carve the enlarged cannon-barrel trough into, has distorted the outside of the plastic with it's fumes....  However, there's a Whifjitsu solution to this: the GSh-23 has shorter barrels than the NR-23 and a much higher firing rate, so the story will be that muzzle blast and/or vibration distorts the nose skins - 

[Weaver]

Back seat fuel tank under construction......:




....and in place:




Serious contenders for the Worst Fitting Canopy and Windscreen award :




Windscreen fit seriously improved by the Three "S"s (Sanding, Shimming and Swearing):




But nothing will ever give the canopy it's corners back, which is why it will mostly be displayed thus  :



The silver patch on the nose is there to show through where paint will have flaked off the "vibration rippled" panel.....

[pyro-manic]

Cool!

For the canopy, could you just file the bottom edges flat, and then raise the sill to fit?

[sotoolslinger]

Dang bubba , you are worser at picking bad kits than me. Slick looking little ac though. I'm sure you'll make her look coooool too

[Weaver]

Cool!

For the canopy, could you just file the bottom edges flat, and then raise the sill to fit?

Think it's too deep for that. However, the real aircraft has a rounded canopy corner and "curved-triangle" frame-fillet at the front at least, so if I'm in the mood for micro-surgery, I could put one in......

[Weaver]

STS: no "choice" in it if you want an Iskra: this is the only kit AFAIK. Incredibly, there's a Polish company who do a PE brass set for it!

Tried various solutions to the canopy fit and other than building up the sill, they were all beyond me.... Probably just going to leave it open......

Anyway, here's some air intakes. Simple enough, you'd think, until you try to stop light shining through them, not only from the wheel wells, but also from the wing root! Real Iskras have a complicated "chip-cutter" grill in the intake, but I'm not even going there.....:



Wings on, without too much hassle:



Not that there isn't mucho PSR to be done on the underside . The wing root fairings on the fuselage bear absolutely NO relationship to the profile of ANY of the bits that fit to them. The upper parts needed about 2mm carved out of them in the middle and then the compound curvature restoring with careful filing/sanding:

[Weaver]

Okay, major bits together. The fin isn't perfectly straight to the fuselage due to the mouldings being warped, but after patient gentle heating and bending, I realised that the tailplane fit was perpendicular to the fuse, not the fin, so fixing the latter too well would make the tailplanes look bent, and the design of their interlocking tabs is not condusive to modification...



I'm still not happy about the fit of the canopy and the faring behind it, but it's a bit of a pain to test fit since it falls apart without tape.



When I came to drill the holes for the cannon barrels, the outer one nearly came through the back of the cannon barrel fairing which means the the latter isn't the right shape. I've tried to fix this by putting a lenght of Evergreen on that links it to the "receiver-bulge", but I'm still tickling the PSR to get it to look just right.

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

Coming togrther very nicely 

Ian

[Brian da Basher]

I'd try filling in those canopy gaps with white glue. It'll dry clear and take acrylic paint.

Brian da Basher