Hawker Siddeley P.1121

[kitnut617]

Yep! watching this closely Alastair   

[Gondor]

Today I intend, if the weather holds, to prime most of the resin parts, cockpit, nose undercarriage bay, main undercarriage bay, intake and the exhaust. There are only three other resin parts, all formers that are supposed to keep the shape of the fuselage except they don't fit that well  

Main undercarriage bays don't have very clear cut outs so I am a little worried about getting them right but I am sure it will all work out in the end.

Gondor

[loupgarou]

You're an hard worker. And from what I saw and read at the beginning, it's an hellish job!

[Gondor]

You're an hard worker. And from what I saw and read at the beginning, it's an hellish job!

That's going to come later. I am simply put off vac-form kits due to bad experiences in the past, this is going rather well considering that I usually use a 5lb sledge hammer where a ball pein one would do 

Gondor

[Gondor]

Several hours after priming most of the resin in the kit, I realise that I should clean up and prime the white metal as well 

Gondor

[Gondor]

Hardly touched the white metal, looked at the main wheels and thought they looked a little "chubby" as well as neither side of the hub sharing the same axis due to the half's of the mould being off centre so an alternative source of wheels has been looked at.

I think I may be getting into this vac-formed lark, managed to get the trailing edges of the one wing I have worked on so far to a reasonably fine edge, better than some injection moulded kits, at least that's what it looks like so far. Glue has still to be committed to plastic yet so it could go horribly wrong.

The cockpit has fit issues, its too chubby and I cant add strips of plastic to widen the fuselage or it will loose the shape it has which looks correct.

Gondor

[Gondor]

Progress, or rather what passes for that around here. 

After much scraping away of resin I think I have managed to get the cockpit to fit inside the fuselage half's where I want it to go so I used PVA to hold the resin inside one side of the fuselage while I test fitted the other half.





I was pleased with the results and have removed the cockpit as it will be easier to paint it and the fuselage sides if they are separate.

Work on the one wing has got to the "spider" stage. I started by making masking tape handles to hold the parts by so my fingers would not spread glue around the parts.



Spider



I am a little disappointed as now that I have removed the Spider legs the training edge is far thicker than I expected it to be after sanding the trailing edges to a micron of their lives last night.

Gondor

[Captain Canada]

Sounds like a Pink Floyd tune lol "within microns of their lives ! "

Funny how that could even happen tho ? I like the tape handle idea....defo going to use that one !

[Gondor]

Captain, the tape idea came from articles I have read in magazines for small Vac-Formed parts when they are sanded on a sheet of sanding paper stuck to something very flat, such as a sheet of glass. I just typically used it in a different way.

As for the phrase "within a micron of their lives" which was no on Atom Heart Mother again I chose to do things differently by not using the phrase "within an inch of their lives" without changing it to something more in scale with the model.

Talking of which! The second wing is just about ready to have its upper and lower surfaces glued together. I have been using sand paper, which should probably be called glass paper for accuracies sake, to key various parts of the inside of the fuselage half's because the inside surface is a gloss and very smooth surface, probably from the heat and deformation of the manufacturing process. I have also decided how I will attach the tail fins, I will use a metal rod. Sounds simple, however the tail surfaces are angled upwards at angle (which I have yet to determine) and the engine exhaust is directly between both pivot points. My solution is to curve the wire so that inside one fuselage half the wire will angle towards the rear while in the other it will angle towards the front with a connecting section of wire between both where it crosses the fuselage centre line. This will be a very complex shape to determine before hand but I will just use good old trial and error with a touch of suck it and see thrown in for good measure as well as lots of trial fitting. The shape mentioned will allow the wire to simply sit and not require to be glued into position, its shape will not only follow the inside of the lower fuselage from one side to the other, it will also conform to the inner surface front to back thus with the forward and rearward sections of the wire firmly placed against the fuselage insides there will not be any tendency for the tire to twist under normal use. At least that's the plan.  

More sanding and glueing tomorrow and even a little painting as well if the weather is good enough for me to do some more priming outside.

Gondor

[Captain Canada]

Sounds like a good solution but a wee bit difficult and fiddly ! We expect some photos in the report as well.

[Gondor]

I managed to do a little work today. Glued the other wing half's together so that's both wings assembled which leaves the tail surfaces to be worked on.

The angle of the tail surfaces has been found using a method invented by the famous Welsh aviation pioneers Di and Anne Hedral! 

The angle was found to be 9^o using Di's methodology or 81^o from the vertical

Gondor

[Gondor]

The progress before today's Grand Prix and Tour de France finish.

As previously posted, both wings are constructed although one of them needs some tidying up as it doesn't go together as well as the other one did so a little PSR will be required.



Managed to prime the interior so I can now paint the exhaust and cockpit areas ready for me to glue the fuselage together later this month.



Gondor

[DogfighterZen]

Can't wait to see this beauty together.

[Gondor]

Can't wait to see this beauty together.

I started this build at the beginning of this month so the progress I have made so far makes this a speed build for me!

Normally you can count my progress in lunar months rather than days or weeks so no holding your breath!

Talking about progress, here are some more pictures from tonight



The above picture shows the two fin parts separated and sanded down, unfortunately when looking at the parts I realised that the edges shown by the tools in the picture below could easily be removed to save them getting in the way when the fin is mated to the fuselage.



Again I found more work needed when I held both parts together as most of the edges which do join together require a bit more work, principally the top of the fin and the trailing edge of the fin. So progress yet again but not finished yet!

Gondor 

[Thorvic]

The prep work is coming along quite well and rapidly too. BTW the defects in the Maintrack kit are replicated in the S&M resin kit as its pretty obvious the resin version is moulded from the vacform

Looks like you'll be ready for assembly soon at the rate your going, the tricky bit will probably getting the chin intake fitted but plenty of test fitting and tweaking should get you there - eventually  , other than that the build is generally pretty straight forward and its certainly a nice meaty model once the airframe is assembled.