The Supermarine Defender F3

[kitnut617]

 
And interestingly, the Summer 2022 issue of Air-Britain's Aviation World (which was in our mail box this morning), just happens to have a couple of articles on the Attacker and Swift including the Type 510.
I've also got a vacuform kit of the 510 too, which is the Project X kit.

[Gondor]

The backstory will tell why it's called the Defender...............

Most of it's already written in my head. 

Anything to do with a very loud engine?

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

Anything to do with a very loud engine?

It will have a louder engine than the one Supermarine put in the Attacker, but maybe not one that people would think of right away. 

[Gondor]

Anything to do with a very loud engine?

It will have a louder engine than the one Supermarine put in the Attacker, but maybe not one that people would think of right away. 

I was thinking Deaf ender

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

I'd forgotten how bad a reputation the Xtrakit Swift had, the tailpipe has four parts, and NONE of them fit each other! 

Nothing that a bit of sawing, filing and chopping won't fix, but a pain nevertheless. The rest of it goes together quite well, but when I'm working on two fuselages at once, both by the same original manufacturer (and I suspect the kits are from the same source too...) I can easily get confused. I was just trying to fit he Attacker cockpit into the Swift, duh...........

Progress is being made, though kitbashing the wings is NOT going to be easy.

[PR19_Kit]

Much sawing and filing has taken place, and the Swift fuselage no longer looks much like a Swift. Quite how I'm going to graft the Attacker nose and cockpit onto it remains to be seen, but I'm getting there.

[Gondor]

So is progress rapid or swift? 

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

Where's the 'groan' emoticon when you need one? 

The AZ Attacker has a nicely moulded resin cockpit-cum-ejector seat, but sadly it's too wide to fit inside the fuselage. 

My large flat file is earning its keep this week for sure!

I allied the Attacker cockpit with the Swift panel, and you may ask 'Why?' Because when I cut the Attacker's wings from the sprue, as I need to chop  out the wheel wells to graft into the Defender's lower wings, I threw away what was left of the sprue......................including the Attacker's panel.

[PR19_Kit]

As all Defenders had tail wheel undercarriages, the Swift wing needed some serious modifications. I cut the wheel well openings from the Attacker wings, and trimmed them down as small as possible so that they covered more area than the larger Swift openings. Then I cut out a corresponding sized hole in the Swift's wing.

I'd already chopped off the saw tooth leading edge from the Swift's wing as that hadn't been invented yet.....



For the  first one I used the tried and tested 'multiple cut with a Swann Morton blade' technique, but it took for ever as the Swift's styrene is very thick indeed! For the starboard side I think I'll chain-drill it all first.

Now I've got to meld the Attacker wheel well into the swift wing, should only take 5-6 PSR sessions....

[PR19_Kit]

After painting the cockpit tub and the panel the ex-Attacker nose was ready to be fitted into its prepared slot in ex-Swift's fuselage.




Within experimental limits, it fitted OK. Nothing that a few chunks of styrene and some PSR won't put right anyway.




What's not there is the lovely little (and I DO mean little....) reflector gunsight that's included in the Swift kit. Within seconds of me cutting it from the sprue it was gobbled up by the Carpet Monster, never to be seen again.   

I think the Defender has just become the UK's first fighter with a radar ranging gunsight........

(remember Kit's 2nd law......)

[Gondor]

That fit looks close enough for government work, or PSR 

Gondor

[kitnut617]

Ah! yes! my type of kit bashing   

[PR19_Kit]

That fit looks close enough for government work, or PSR 

Only to be expected really, despite both model and RW aircraft coming from the same manufacturer. 

Accordingly I've used a substantial amount of my Presto stock filling in the gaps on the wings and the fuselage. And you never even saw the MONSTER step in the underside where the quite deep Attacker nose met the rather pointy Swift fuselage. It was about 4-5 mm deep, and needed copious amounts of of sawn off Attacker fuselage to bridge the gap.

And then the PSR of course.



There'll be a delay now while the Presto goes off of course, and no doubt it'll need at least a couple more PSR sessions.

During a test fitting of the canopy I found that the top of the ejector seat fouled the Attacker canopy by maybe 2mm, and the only way to make it fit would be to lower the seat so much as to look ridiculous. Oddly the Swift canopy is an almost perfect fit.

Go figure? 

Oh yes, I've almost finished writing the backstory. 

[Gondor]

Delays such as filler drying is why I have gone for multiple builds this year. I can work on one while the other drys, same for paint as for filler too.

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

I'm still working on the KMD-11 of course.