TS-11 Iskra "upgrade" (1/72) FINISHED!

[frank2056]

Have you ever started a kit with the intention of fixing a few problems then slapping it together? That was my intention with this kit.

After Reading Weaver's thread on his Nicaraguan Iskra I figured that misery loves company... so I brought my "Master"kit Iskra out of the kit gulag. I'd started it years ago, but the canopy problems just killed whatever interest I had in the kit. Luckily, I'd just started the cockpit.

This time, I added some small scraps of styrene to the edges of the fuselage and just trimmed the bits to match the curve of the single seat canopy. It was relatively easy. In the process, I fixed the windscreen edge, which also had a curvature problem. Next, I taped together the fuselage and noticed that the windscreen had a height issue. The bigger problem was that the single seat canopy wasn't wide enough for the fuselage. It also wasn't very clear. So I split the canopy in half, glued it back together only slightly narrower than the fuselage, glued on the windscreen and filled both with acrylic spackle.

When that hardened, I tried to make a copy with my Mattel vac-u-form, but I wasn't getting good results. So, as a last resort, I put the canopy on a small length of styrene, held it in a vise and used an alcohol burner to soften some clear buterate. Using the "heat and smash" method, I was able to make several good copies of the canopy and windscreen:



Cool. But now I had a crystal clear view into the cockpit...and I was on the slippery slope of adding  yet more details.

Going through my stash, I found some nice, generic resin cockpit sidewalls. I thinned the backs down and glued them to the cockpit:



Now is when the madness begins...

The kit's instrument panel is a decal, and it's so badly out of register that the black circles for the instruments are fully half way outside the white circles that represent the back of the instruments. I also thought that the kit's ejection seat was a bit anemic, so I tried a resin K-36 seat. That was just a little too wide for the cockpit, so I tried a T-33 Martin Baker MB-5 seat that fit nicely.

By now I had somewhat of a backstory forming. After the fall of communism, the Poles decided to go into the low to medium price market for advanced trainer/recon/Ground Support aircraft. The TS-11 Iskra had proven to be an excellent aircraft, in both Polish and Indian service. So the Poles decided to upgrade the cockpit avionics, install a better ejection seat and expand the amount of ordinance that could be carried on the aircraft. To do this, they added a second engine, with the space behind the pilot being used as an extra fuel tank.

So out came my trusty micro saw and I cut away the engine exhaust section:



I replaced the single engine with an engine pod from a Dragon 1/200 B-52. This is still wider than the fuselage, but it just means more PSR to blend the pod into the fuselage. I'll also have to increase the size of the intakes, but the kit's intakes aren't very good, so no loss there.

About this time, I thought of doing a Google search on the TS-11 and found that there were plans on upgrading the avionics (but not the  engine) and adding a Martin Baker MB-11 seat!

But wait, there's more nuttiness. While looking for the resin seats, I found my old Hasegawa 1/72 Mig-27. It had been badly damaged in a fall and was in the parts donor box. Just for grins, I tried the canopy on the Iskra, and while it's not as deep, it is wide enough, and it looks good, to boot:



So I used the micro saw to cut out the fuselage area behind the canopy on the Mig-27 and with some extra styrene strips, I was able to make it match the windscreen. I'm not sure if I'm going with this canopy or the one I made. The advantage of the Hasegawa canopy is that it can be posed open or closed.

So that's where it is now. I still have to finish the cockpit, seal up the fuselage and start the engine PSR.

Frank

[Weaver]

Nice one Frank - why not put it in the Trainers-with Teeth GB? - still got time and the GB is very, VERY likely to get an extension.

I made the mistake of leaving my solid rear cockpit halves off until after I'd done the paint, and then found that they don't fit the contours of the fuselage, so I've had to do a load of sanding over the newly airbrushed paint.....

Best of luck! 

[sequoiaranger]

Nice one, Frank. Ain't it the way of modeling that one improvement leads to another that leads to another until you're in "over your head"?? Sounds like making a modeling version of "stone soup".

BUT....I think more than other modelers, whiffers have better powers of ENVISIONING a final result (and even realize that their "final result" may not be final, either!).

Poor "Real World" modelers: What they see in their references is ALL THERE IS!!!   

[frank2056]

One odd thing about this kit is that it looks so nice in the box and it looks nicely engineered... until you try to put it together. You can get an excellent joint on one side of a part and a huge gap on the other. The wing airfoil is too thick (or the wing root too short, so I had to scrape away at the wing top to get the airfoils to match. The worst part of the kit, by far is that canopy and the rear solid canopy bits. They just don't fit at all. The longer canopy has a slightly better fit (but still had an issue with being too rounded at the corners) - it just isn't very clear. One positive - I thought that the T antennas under the fuselage were grossly out of scale, but they're just right, compared to pictures of the real thing.

I think that this kit can only be whiffed. I pity the "real World" modeler who tries to build this as a copy of the real thing. You have to fix so many parts that it's a shame to not throw in some creativity and make it a completely new beast.

[Weaver]

Took the words right out of my mouth - somewhere in the archives is me gushing about what a lovely little kit it looks in the box, 10 mins after I got it: so much for In-Box Reviews.......

I drilled out the ends of the little T-shaped thingies and the assumption that they were some kind of pressure sensor: then I found a close-up pic and they're actually square section and closed off (the kit ones actually look nicer than the real ones!). There's a Polish company that does a PE set for this kit, and their folded PE T-bits are actually MORE accurate.

[frank2056]

Weaver - do you know the name of the company that makes the Iskra PE set? In for a penny, in for a pound...

Some progress this week, mostly in the cockpit. I spent a ridiculous amount of time on the instrument panel. The kit panel was out because of the bad decals and I had a PE instrument panel from an old Airwaves ME-262 PE set (which has been a "parts donor" for about 5 builds - not one an Me-262). The Me-262 looked small, so I tried printing my own, but my printer tended to pixelate everything. So instead, I scanned in the Me-262 instrument panel, then copy and pasted real Iskara and other aircraft instruments into place behind the Me-262 instrument panel holes. I also drew a simple flat panel display and traced the HUD support from an F-117 PE set onto thin plastic and cut it out. Here's the result:



I still need to do some dry brushing and add some HUD buttons. It looks better in real life than in this roughly x10 blowup.

Just in case the HUD was too tall for the windscreen, I mocked everything up. It looks like it'll fit:



The ejection seat is from a T-33. It looks higher than it'll eventually be because it's resting on a blob of Blu-tac.

Here's a view of the cockpit - nothing is glued in place. The control stick is a thin piece of round rod, with a PE bit from the Me-262 set at the top, for the trigger and handle (too blurry to see in the photo). The rudder pedals are also from the Me-262.



The two throttles (again, modified from the Me 262 PE set) are easier to see here:



I'll take the instrument panel and ejection seat out - they'll go back in at the end. Next, I'll add weights to the nose and hopefully close up the fuselage so that I can work on the engines, There's going to be a lot of PSR back there.

Frank

[Weaver]

Weaver - do you know the name of the company that makes the Iskra PE set? In for a penny, in for a pound...

Here you go, courtesy of Nick:

http://www.jadar.com.pl/part/part-aircraft72a.htm

There are two sets, about halfway down the list.

You have infinitely more patience than I do: I'm so hacked off with mine that I've just thrown it together for better or worse and covered the huge flaws with "weathering".....

[frank2056]

You have infinitely more patience than I do: I'm so hacked off with mine that I've just thrown it together for better or worse and covered the huge flaws with "weathering"..... :

Thanks for the link! That's way too much PE for a cockpit that'll be next to invisible through the kit "canopy".

Actually, it's not patience. I'm not letting this kit "win"! It almost won the first time. I took the fuselage clamps off last night and now the cockpit section is too narrow, so I split the Mig canopy spine and sanded it down to fit. The engines are on now and I started the PSR on the rear.

Frank

[frank2056]

The PSR on the new engines went surprisingly well:



The shiny paint is from a Gundam chrome marker. Not only does it provide a mirror-like finish, it's very handy for a quick check of areas that might need more filing or putting. It's a lot faster than getting the airbrush ready.

The reflection from the flash makes the transition from the fuselage to the engines less smooth than it really is, although I may have to do some PSR to the very end of the engines to match the curve of the lower fuselage. About half of the material under the marker is cyanoacrylate + talc. It sands beautifully, since it's about as soft as the surrounding plastic.



The jet exhausts need some work. What's interesting is that the even though the new engines + CA putty have only been sanded down to 400 grit, it's already smootherthan the kit plastic, which has an odd, grainy finish to it. I may just fix some blemishes with Mr. Dissolved putty and move along to priming the fuselage.


Frank

[Ed S]

One odd thing about this kit is that it looks so nice in the box and it looks nicely engineered... until you try to put it together. You can get an excellent joint on one side of a part and a huge gap on the other. The wing airfoil is too thick (or the wing root too short, so I had to scrape away at the wing top to get the airfoils to match. The worst part of the kit, by far is that canopy and the rear solid canopy bits. They just don't fit at all. The longer canopy has a slightly better fit (but still had an issue with being too rounded at the corners) - it just isn't very clear. One positive - I thought that the T antennas under the fuselage were grossly out of scale, but they're just right, compared to pictures of the real thing.

I think that this kit can only be whiffed. I pity the "real World" modeler who tries to build this as a copy of the real thing. You have to fix so many parts that it's a shame to not throw in some creativity and make it a completely new beast.

I agree that this kit needs a lot of work.  But it can be made into a respectable RW model.  Here's one I built not too long ago.  Not a contest winner, but it looks good on the display shelf.



But let's get back to Frank's model.  I don't want to hijack his thread.

Ed

[frank2056]

I agree that this kit needs a lot of work.  But it can be made into a respectable RW model.  Here's one I built not too long ago.  Not a contest winner, but it looks good on the display shelf.
Ed

Ed - that looks great! I'll probably use a similar camo pattern, except I'll use RLM 65 undersides - mainly because I have a lot of RLM 65.
I didn't have time to take pictures of my progress, but as of last night, the wings are on and I corrected that annoying lean of the tail fin/elevators by just cutting off the tail at a panel line and rotating it until everything was square and parallel with the main wings.

I'm not working on fixing up the landing gear. I would say that 90% of this kit has been modified in some way.

[Brian da Basher]

I really like your work on the exhaust, Frank! You could always leave it "as is" and tell people it got dinged up from being stationed on a "rough field" forward base.

Brian da Basher

[frank2056]

I really like your work on the exhaust, Frank! You could always leave it "as is" and tell people it got dinged up from being stationed on a "rough field" forward base.

I used a couple of round doodads from Wave (used to add details to robot kits) that look like nice jet exhausts.

[frank2056]

Here's an annotated picture with what I've done so far:



I decided to cut one of the vac canopies I made to match the Mig-23/-27 canopy that I was going to use. I then masked off both the windshield and canopy and shot everything with some Mr. Surfacer 1000. I did some PSR on the windshield to fuselage joint; the bumpy area is tape covering the clear parts. You can't see the transition between fuselage and vac windshield anymore. The canopy doesn't quite fit without coaxing, but I'll probably pose it open, anyway. It's raised in this picture because it's resting on Tamiya tape.

Here's a detail of the engine exhausts:



The Wave parts look good, I think. I'll add the shock cones from the original B-52 engines when I'm done.

I still need to do a lot of PSR - remove the plastic that's oozed out from the wing root connection, fix some divots and other issues in the engine section, clean up the landing gear area and the new intakes, shoot some primer on all the white areas and fix any problems that crop up after that.
Then finish the landing gear and add the doors.

Frank

[Weaver]

Some advance warnings from the Screaming at Plastic Dept:

1. Do NOT cut down the "overlength" main wheel axles: you need them to locate the undercarriage doors on....

2. The tabs on the nosewheel doors are thick enough to interfere with the nosewheel leg once it's in place. This isn't helped by the latter's mounting hole being off-centre (of course.... ), but even if you centred it, they'd still clash. Fortunately, I fitted my doors before the nose leg, so it was easy to pull them off again and thin them down.

Your twin-engine conversion looks really good Frank!