Another Project to sit on the shelf

[TheChronicOne]

Cool project, bro!  Nice write up as well and I hope the mojo sticks around for a good while to help you along.   

[Gondor]

I decided hat the front profile in the drawing was wrong and went with the side view so now all the four central components are in place ready for me to fix the central shaft for the propellers and the front disc as well. So unfortunately not much done over the weekend but I am hoping to get far more done during the week.

Gondor

[Gondor]

To prove that what I wrote in my previous post was correct, here are some pictures of the small amount of progress made today. The rest of today was spent clearing out some old computer parts including at least two keyboards with PS2 connectors, the round purple ones, and then reorganising the stash to make use of the newly available space 

Remember I said that the front and side views differed in the plans....



Well its not only those that disagree, the length of the nose is different between the plan and side elevations as well 

I know I only got an 'O' level in Technical Drawing, way back in 1977, but I do remember that distances between the same two points in different elevations are supposed to be the same, and I cut both the side and top elevations along the same panel line 



You can see the gap in the above picture very well. It starts to make me wonder what else in the drawings is wrong 



It looks quite nice from the front. I have deliberately left the tube too long as I would rather trim back the tube than try to extend it. While talking about the front end of the engine, I have changed my mind about how I am going to model the propellers, or rather the housing around the rear most set of propellers. Rather than fitting the Shackleton part inside a Wyvern part and then sanding back, I now intend to make a rear plate out of plastic card and then build up the shape with scrap and filler as the front of the part matches the rear of the front propellers housing already so its just the rear that needs built up. In this instance its far easier to add than the remove material 

Gondor

[Gondor]

I managed to get half an hour or so on this build earlier today and consequently more plastic mayhem ensued! 

The result was the rear of the fuselage in one piece by itself. I had previously glued the cut half to the un cut side to aid in the alignment of the two cuts.



The centre fuselage/cockpit area by itself which not only needing painted correctly as it was painted years ago when I thought all British fighters had green cockpits, it will need the outside filled as there are some sink marks from plastic shrinkage when it came out of the mould.



And the engine sections by themselves too. Although I forgot to take a picture of them as is 

However, I have been thinking that I can reuse the engine covers if suitably modified. First I had to take another copy of the side elevation and draw a line through the centre of the propellers and through the engine area as that is where I have the horizontal former fitted.

This is roughly what I want it to look like



If I position it far enough back from the nose I can use the opening for the kits exhausts for what I intend to build for this aircraft







I do realise the openings are deeper, but a strip of plastic card will soon sort that out!

I also plan to use the radiator cowling, initially I was thinking that I would use the one from the kit to form the basis of the opening for the under fuselage radiator and I still might. but the picture below made me think that I could use it for the under nose intake instead.



Having just checked, the nose radiator that I have left over from converting a Heller Tempest V to a Mk I will form the basis on the forward under fuselage opening and the Academy kit parts will form the basis for the more rear intake.

It's also possible that I may use the rear of the Old Airfix Lancaster rear turret as a basis for the under nose intake as the curvature looks to be similar.

Gondor

[Gondor]

A little more work completed so far today. The former nose intake has been reduced in its length so that I can pack the inside of what was the sides/cheeks as well as the inside top of the intake to reduce the size in the height of the intake and to form a basis to slim it down on the outside as well. Probably the harder way of doing this but with the tools I have there is not much option.

As per my previous post, I have the forward and upper parts of the former engine covers glued in place and I am working on finding parts of a fuel tank to form the basis of the under nose fairing.

I have also laminated some plastic card for the fuselage extension which will really have to wait until I get the cockpit painted and put together. Why do I always hate cockpits and the possibility of fiddly painting that goes with them?

Gondor

[Gondor]

Well I thought I had found the perfect fuel tanks, from a 1/48 Hunter, however it was too thin but it did remind me that I had a fuel tank from a Hercules which was duly dug out of its location and checked for size. Width and depth looked really good and the taper of the tanks nose was a really good fit for the curvature towards the nose of the aircraft so a rough note was taken of where to cut it into parts and the rest they say is history as was the tank for its original purpose 







The only problem now that this part has been fitted is that the work I have performed on the upper half of the engine area looks very poor in comparison 



There is enough Hercules fuel tank left to make a cover for the upper part of the engine and I could cut out sections to fit the exhaust area from the original kit but I will have to check the curvature against the drawings to see if there will be any material added to or removed from the proposed replacement upper part for the engine. I could end up rebuilding most of this nose utilizing the fuel tank as the basis and only using the drawings as a guide for the profile on the upper surface and the positioning of the under fuselage intakes. In fact the more I think about it the more likely that is what I will do!

Now if I can find another fuel tank from a Hercules I can consider this method for building a P. 1030

Gondor

[NARSES2]

Fascinating watching this come together 

[zenrat]

Fascinating watching this come together 

It is isn't it.  It's not a technique i've seen before.

[Gondor]

So a few minutes work this afternoon which is going to end up with several hours of work during the coming week 

It all started so innocently 

Quite rightly thinking that I should fit the cockpit parts to the wings would allow me to paint the interior while giving me a surface to work from for the engine.



The next thing was to fit the cockpit floor and rear bulkhead which I had glued together years ago as a single item. Only problem was possibly a slight taper which didn't allow the floor to fit in from the rear of the cockpit. The result was the bulkhead bring broken away from the floor and said floor attached into the cockpit from the front!





So far so good 

I thought I would check the fitment of part of the Hercules fuel tank against the front end of the cockpit. Not good 



As this picture shows as well as the last one in my previous post, the fuel tank is too wide, not by a huge amount, but too wide none the less.

So this means that the work I have done so far on the engine needs to be pulled apart and started again, this time as well as using a similar build process to what I have done so far, this time I will make my own drawings based on the kit with the drawings I have been using as a guide.

Gondor

[Gondor]

After some searching through various storage box's for spare parts and checking various fuel tank diameters, the F-15 and F-111 and even a Shackleton MR3 wing rip tank are not the right size 

However the radar nose from a Matchbox Meteor is a little on the small size which will do well 

A nose from an NF.14 would have been ideal but as I have been using mine for things such as the front dorsal turret in B-29's, B-50's and Tu-4's I don't have any left so a few NF.12 noses will have to do along with more of the original engine cover than I was intending. Probably going to need to use more filler than I was hoping to use as well 

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

How many NF14 noses do you need Alastair, I'm up to my NECK in them?

[The Wooksta!]

Filler - P38 is your friend...

[Gondor]

How many NF14 noses do you need Alastair, I'm up to my NECK in them?

Kit, I can manage with what I have at the moment, however I do find them very useful for lots of things so if you want to send me a few please do 

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

I'll dig into my stock then.

[buzzbomb]

Well certainly a nice start, with lots of nice ideas already