Israeli Westland Lysander, Suez Crisis ***FINISHED***

[NARSES2]

Looking good

[Dizzyfugu]

That's looking good! 

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks!! Three paint schemes in one!! So weird! I mean.. it's a weird airplane so it's got to have a weird paint job. 

[TheChronicOne]

In typical fashion the last day was the worse day and literally every single aspect of this that I worked on turned to arse. 

First off..... all the clear pieces... ALL OF THEM.... are ... I don't know... was the fuselage and stuff done in metric and the clear parts in English?! Good God... I think ONE piece fit correctly and it was the one clear piece that glued to another clear piece. As far as clear pieces to "grey" pieces every one straight up didn't fit and were all the wrong size by quite a margin. I did all I could with the main glass but the stupid little windows in the back and the glass domes for the landing lights where omitted and just used PVA. Life is too short for this #%&#$@#%! Not even down to dry fitting, either.... everything was too damn big for the places they were supposed to go. All the canopies are wider than the fuselage, the side windows were wider, thicker, taller, EVERY DIMENSION was too large. Landing lights WAY TOO LARGE to fit into the holes provided, etc. Some of this can be fixed but it's not like I can shrink the canopies and magically make them the correct width. I suppose I could have sanded them down the point they were paper thin or something but It's rough taking 1-2 mm of thickness off of canopy glass. Like I said, I managed to get it all in a pretty decent condition and it all looks pretty nice now but man it was rough. 

Then.... the wings... I knew it was going to be an ordeal and sure enough if was like trying to bear hug a jellyfish.

Then I tried to do the aerial antenna and... well... I've done these many times in the past in 5 minutes or less flat but this time it took over 30 minutes to get the stupid stuff to work right.

Then right at the VERY end the stupid spinner didn't fit worth a damn.

I had about 30 minutes of work "left" on this and it wound up taking 4 hours to get it finished. !@$!#%$^#%@!#


Can you tell I'm frustrated??! 

::::BREATHES::::::: 


Well... I mean, this thing may have been a factory reject. A lot of the parts were severely warped and maybe even a lot of the parts that LOOKED ok were off a bit. There were other issues here and there that had me scratching my head in disbelief. The struts and wheels were weird, too.... something just off about them so I had to go to lengths to get them to look halfway straight. As they "were" they were NOT at a 90 degree angle with the fuselage as they should have been. More like 85 degrees on one side and 95 on the other so instead of a cross it was more like a line with a another diagonal line through it.... just a mess.

I guess it helps to remember that this was an effort to keep this kit from meeting the trash can or in the least being distributed into the spare parts stash. In the regard, it was a smashing success instead of a smashed up mess!


OK....  ... well... it was an ultra pain to FINISH but.........   MAN I'm so happy with it!! It turned out pretty neat! 



**********

Check this out..... you have to remember that this thing is a captured Egyptian aircraft where they simply painted over the brown portions of the camo so I'm fully aware that the colors "aren't right." Well, yes they are; you just have to bear in mind the back story. 

Also, the tailplanes are different... per the story, the plain was damaged so the IAF put new tailplanes on (in reality I only had 3/4 of the pieces I needed so I had to improvise). That's why, of all the paint scheme, only the tail plane (uppers) are the "correct" IAF camo of the day. 

Other feature are the little winglets that stayed in the original Egyptian paint. Supposedly they were stored in the back of the aircraft and didn't get painted when the blue/green was applied.

So, we have a mix of Egyptian paint scheme, IAF paint scheme, and a hybrid of the two.



ANYWAY... with all my whining and bitching out of the way  and the explanation for the strange paint job out of the way...... I present the Israeli Lysander, Suez 1956!


















Final conclusion?  Yay!!! I'm happy with it.      I do believe this is my first ever Jew-Mobile, too! I've really like the IAF stuff and it's such neat stuff so it's about time. The Lysander is rather unusual, too, so that's nice. Also, the way this had to be built was a first. Wings had to go on nearly dead last (and could very well have, I just decided to do the prop last out of tradition) so that's novel......    Just...neat stuff all around. 

I'd like to try to get outside pictures soon, before I post in the finished builds section anyway...

[PR19_Kit]

That looks very exotic Brad, nice job. 

I like the way the 'Suez Stripes' overly the 'Starial'. 

[TheChronicOne]

Cheers, hoss! Got my shekels worth out of this'n for sure!      Can't wait to plop this thing down in the general modelling community on FB and see what type of response I get. 

[Dizzyfugu]

That turned out nicely, very blelievable. I esp. like the ID stripes across the fuselage roundels.

[Old Wombat]

Why is it always the cruisin' builds that turn into last-minute nightmares?

Good job overcoming the problems, Brad! She looks good!

[zenrat]

Was it sealed when you got it?  Could it be a mixture of parts from a number of different makes of kit?

Good job anyway.

[NARSES2]

That works, well done mate 

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks, y'all!! I'm really happy with this one. It's such a neat thing.....  looks so cool sitting there finished. Sure enough, it was sealed! Factory staples, rusted up as they should. (well, no, I don't think they were rusted but you could tell they were really old)





It was weird... it was if they were set in a window seal and some glass globe ornament turned into a laser beam at certain times of day and hit on the pieces and warped them BUT..... I don't think that's what happened, it's just "as if" that happened. Cuz... how could one piece be warped all to hell when the piece it's with is just fine, etc.  Prop was also screwed up like that...   Who knows... my theory is that perhaps the stuff hadn't cooled properly when removed from the mould and maybe there wasn't enough mould release at the same time or something so parts of it kind of stuck and went wonky or..... something...... who the hell knows.





WARP SPEED, CAPTAIN! 


Replacemenet wings courtesy of: Rick Lowe

Replacement tailplanes courtesy of the second set provided in the Xp-55 kit by Valom

Replacement props provided by old Hasegawa Spitfire Mk. 1 kit that had both the 2 and 3 blade option. Upon inspection, it was exactly like the Lysander one.


I suppose I could mention the decals as well; they came from Micro Scale set for international Texans (AT-6, etc) that had Syrian, Egyptian, RAF, Israeli, and one or two other markings.

[Old Wombat]

I had a built & painted Helldiver that I, unthinkingly, put in the back of my car when bringing it home from Nowra during my Navy time & it warped badly. Perfect for a crash-landed version but not for display, otherwise.

All it needs is enough heat, so my guess is it was left in a window display on a hot, sunny day & BAM!, warped bits.

[Weaver]

That looks cool - well done! 

[TheChronicOne]

Yeah buddy. You pretty much left your kit in a solar oven.     

Similarly but on a more "focused" scale;  lots of people might not realize that the neat glass/crystal ornament they placed in the window could burn their house down and I've even seen those water retaining globe things people put in their gardens scorch lawns. Water bottles full of water can light things on fire.... one time I had one sitting on the counter and I was sitting there doing something and the damn thing was burning my arm just like a magnifying glass in the sun. VERY HOT. People don't recognize it because the danger may only exist for a few minutes every day when the sun is aligned with it. Kind of like those buildings with the shiney facades that melt plastic portions of automobiles parked below. Certain time of day = certain type of death ray. 

[TheChronicOne]

That looks cool - well done! 

Thank you!! I'm stoked with it... a lot of firsts for me and I've been itching to do an IAF build.     I got to save an old kit, too, which is the icing on the cake.