RF-4M

[PR19_Kit]

Yet another posting today, got to keep Kit busy seeing he has nothing to do other than get well.....

Hehehe, thanks for your concern Alastair. 

I'm avidly following every move you're making with this. Whilst I've heard of the technique before, I've never used it and never seen anyone else use it either, so it's an educational posting, thanks so much.

[Gondor]

Hehehe, thanks for your concern Alastair.  Grin

Your most welcome Kit.

Just realised that I will need to build another bulkhead to put some nose weight behind although I don't think it will be enough to keep the nose down which makes me wonder if the Phantom is a tail sitter or not. Perhaps someone can let me know one way or another, although adding weight to the nose of this kit will not do any harm.

Gondor

[Gondor]

As I said in the posting above, a new bulkhead is required to hide weight behind and seeing that even the RF-4 Phantoms had a small radar in the nose the bulkhead which is behind the radar will suffice to hide the weight.

Here is a picture I took of my measuring the internal diameter of the conical nose behind which on the real aircraft the radar would be.



And here is a picture of the tripod and my modelling bench which I used to take the picture and was a great help in eliminating shake from the image.



More to follow after the Singaporean Grand Prix.

Gondor

[Gondor]

True to my word another post after the Singapore Grand Prix......  o.k. its quite a while after the Grand Prix but life does cause distractions, however I did manage to make the bulkhead behind the radar!    eventually



It took me three attempts to get the shape right. The first was an assumption which was a BIG mistake as the bulkhead behind the radar is not circular and that was the shape that I attempted to use. The second shape was no where near on one side but quite close on the other so a new piece of plastic card was prepared with its centre line marked out by scribing then rubbing a pencil across the scribed line as opposed to along the line as that could cause the line to close where as rubbing the pencil across the line will leave graphite in the line.

Weights, paint and odds and ends tomorrow.... or maybe work on the Typhoon....

Gondor

[Gondor]

Even more progress, several days in a row!!! Who knows, this may even get finished in time for Glasgow! 

First the transparencies have been given a lick of paint.



Not exactly the best ever photograph but you get the idea. Camouflage will be painted on top of the black which I just realised is the wrong colour for the canopy.

Below is a picture of the camera area with the nose weights in place thanks to Gator Grip, and yes I have checked and they all stay in place and let the other half close over them.



Later this evening I plan to finish cockpit assembly minus the seats and I should look at the joint area between the rear of the cockpit and the wing assembly as I identified a problem as this is where the two different kits come together in a less easily hidden place. The fuselage parts were cut at a panel line, unfortunately the rest of the assembly does not exactly match up as easily.

Onwards and upwards as they say.

Gondor

[Gondor]

I decided to leave the paintwork along until I add the camouflage colours on top of the black. I have only managed to put the side windows into the nose sections and the control columns into the cockpit. Also added some detail to the wings as well, but nothing else as its been a slow day.

Gondor

[TsrJoe]

im soo looking forward to seeing this one, what scheme are you thinking, No.2 Sqn in std camouflage ? standard greys ? (either would confuse the jmn's) , desert pink ?

cheers, Joe

[Gondor]

im soo looking forward to seeing this one, what scheme are you thinking, No.2 Sqn in std camouflage ? standard greys ? (either would confuse the jmn's) , desert pink ?

cheers, Joe

Check my first post on this thread Jo as I say what the scheme will be and the selection of Squadrons I will chose from although I am fairly certain that it will be 17 Sqn

Gondor

[Gondor]

I managed to put some glue to plastic this evening, but not much, only glues the radome and part of the upper cockpit together. Plan to get the cockpit interior installed tomorrow swiftly followed by the rear of the fuselage

Gondor

[Gondor]

Found a slight problem 



As you can see from the above picture, the is a slight but distinctive "step" at the front of the lower cockpit area, and I have finally worked out what the cause is.

The old adage, Measure Twice and Cut Once is certainly true in this case as is Don't Assume, Check! along with my intention to get this build finished for Glasgow.

The problem is here.....



where I have made the assumption that the arm from the side of the fuselage, which in the above photograph and in front of the white bulkhead, was to touch the similar arm protruding from the other side of the fuselage. Oh how wrong a person can be!!! 

Not only is there a step with the fuselage section bellow the cockpit but the under nose window section doesn't want to fit properly either.  (perhaps we need a Homer Simpson Doh icon?)




I now have two options for rectifying the problems.

1) Remove the lower fuselage from beneath the cockpit followed by parting the arm from the fuselage inside as well as removing the bulkhead from the same side followed by glueing the under nose glazing into place before refitting the cockpit with its associated lower fuselage section.

2) Use a file and sand paper to remove the step and reduce slightly the nose glazing to fit then re-polish the join where the step was back to something like its original state.

I think I like option two better as thee is less chance of making the whole situation worse when I should have taken a hell of a lot of better care over what I was doing and test fitted the under nose glazing prior to committing glue to plastic.

Let this be a salutary lesson to one and all, especially me 

Gondor

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

Concur, PSR is the way to go. Hard work, but you have more 'control' over the outcome.

Ian

[Gondor]

Started to rectify the problems I had with the nose by carefully sanding the edges of the glazing for under the nose and with umpteen trial fits achieved this....



I then proceeded to make a backing plate for the gap I know exists between the wings and underside of the forward fuselage.



I only had one side of the fuselage fitted to the nose but needed to find the full width, so with a little mathematical jiggery pokery I found the correct size which fitted like a dream. The distance I had was A which was from the inside of the fuselage half to the outside edge on the other side the the under cockpit fuselage part. B is the width of the under cockpit fuselage part and C is the remainder which was added to the other side of A. It sounds complicated but really isn't that hard to work out.

The result was this.....



So I thought great, I can add the other fuselage half then the wings. First up was a test fit of the parts. Remember how easy I said the build would be at the start of this thread, and how I followed that by saying that those would be famous last words..... well that has come back to haunt me. Not only did I earlier find that I had the width of the nose slightly wrong ending up in a step being produced between some parts, well when I offered up the wings to the fuselage to see how big a gap there was going to be between the front end of the wings and the nose I found that there was an even bigger step!  This step looks as if it is a scale three inches at least which is huge 
The result of this is that I have removed the nose/cockpit section from the fuselage which I am going to assemble them attempt to match up with the completed nose section. Hope fully I can bodge something together, probably with copious amounts of plastic card and filler 

More later, if I don't decide to leave it alone or throw it in the bin

Gondor

[Hobbes]

That's a neat trick with the solder wire, I'll have to remember that. I've been using a contour gauge, but that give too coarse an approximation so you spend lots of time cleaning up. 

[Gondor]

That's a neat trick with the solder wire, I'll have to remember that. I've been using a contour gauge, but that give too coarse an approximation so you spend lots of time cleaning up.  

I have a contour gauge somewhere, only tried using it a couple of time before I realised the limitations of the device and that they could not be worked around satisfactorily.

Anyhow, the build goes on as it hasn't ended up in the bin just yet.....

Lots of test fitting resulted in a shim being placed between the sides and bottom of the cockpit parts which should, if I am right, eliminate the gap hight wise that exists between the front and rear parts.



Tabs have been placed in the rear fuselage half's for the nose section to fit onto. I used the L section that I am fond of and fitted it exactly where I had been planing to all along and had used for the starboard/right fuselage side where I had started the build.



To help with the horizontal gap between the front and rear fuselage half's I decided to use the same L section with one side cut down so that I could mount it on the inside of the lower front fuselage part.



The above picture shows the part upside down prior to fitting while the picture below shows the part installed.



With all the parts fairly dry, test fitting to make sure that everything was roughly in the right place led to a little fettling here and there before glue was applied. It looks as if I have everything lined up correctly.



And from the side...



The gap on the underside between the parts, otherwise known as the Grand Canyon



The picture shows why I went to the trouble to place some plastic across the gap, I don't want to fill the interior with pieces of plastic that fall through that hole when trying to fill it in.



This shows that there is not as much of a step as there was and considering the size of the gap which is a scale six inches with similar gaps around the sides, I should be able to flair the components together.

Gondor

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

All good work here - let me know if you need decals (squadron markings and the like), got a shed load and happy to share !!

Ian