A Two Seat Typhoon

[Gondor]

Nearly half past eight this morning, checking emails and not even had breakfast yet as I have been putting eye drops into my new eye so I thought I may as well just start a thread for my builds.
This was going to be just two builds but has gone up to three 
Two Meteors and a Eurofighter Typhoon.
The Meteors are from the Special Hobby/MPM Prone Meteor kits as the prone parts are going to other projects. The Typhoon was only decided on last night as the parts count is low and the colour scheme is simple as well.
More later

Gondor

[Gondor]

The two Meteors have been started, I'm almost finished on the main undercarriage bays as I have the Eduard Zoom set for both kits as well as the Montex Masks. I aim to use a rattle can to spray the finnish onto the model so masking the canopies seams to be a good idea. Cockpits next and the engine fronts so the wings will be together by the end of the day at least.

Gondor

[Gondor]

Slight change to the plans for one of the Meteor's. It's going to get an A/A 37U-15 target towing system.

Gondor

[Gondor]

One wing is glued together for one of the Meteor's. Not glueing the other one yet as most of my clamps are in use on the first wing. 
Eduard etch is going quite well although I have had to search for two parts, the throtle quadrant decided to become airborne and a dial decided to tease the carpet monster. What is helping most of the time is my new eye! I can see! I know that sounds obvious and other already know the effects of haveing a cataract removed, but honestly the quality of vision with just one good eye is a couple of orders of magnitude better than it was. Working on the etch is easy without any glasses and with my magnifiers it's wonderful! Easy to cut exactly in the correct place with the etch as I can see where to cut rather than going by feel for the final mil or two to the edge.
Decided that both Meteors will end up as target tugs, same basic back story just two different air forces doing the same thing, though saying that I may just change the operator of one of them without turning it into a target tug if I can find the decals to make it happen. 

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

Seeing is good, and pretty much essential for a modeller, even a Whiff modeller. 

[Gondor]

Almost had a disaster!

I was removeing the clamps from one of the Meteor wings only to find that it had been clamped not quite true  Either the top or the bottom had been missaligned, or rather the top and the bottom were missaligned in respect to each other, which shounds like me after a few beers 

Thankfully the parts had not bonded very well together so I was able to seperate them enough to be able to start glueing them together correctly aligned.

A delay or setback rather than a catastrophe

Gondor

[Gondor]

The Typhoon has had more paint added to the cockpit area as the decals provided with the kit are notheing at all like the detailing provided. As this kit was added very close to the start of the Grooup Build there was no time to get some etch to replace the interesting and inspired interior detail 

My improved vision as well as the magnifying glasses I have are letting me attempt to hand paint such detail. 

Gondor

[Gondor]

I have a bit of a love hate relationship with etch brass. I love the fineness that the medium can bring to componants over the ability of the kit manufacturers to replicate detail in plastic. However the fineness is also it's downfall. It's footery to use and not as flexible as you may want at times while at others it's too flexible. I have just spent the majority of a whole Genesis album, Nersery Cryme, cutting, finding, folding and attaching two seat belts. Most of the time was spent in the finding as the first belt decided it wanted to play hide and seak on my modelling bench which ended with my decanting the contents of the bench to various places around the model room so I could shuffle items around the work surface in the hope of discovering the errant length of etch! The results look promissing though 



I decided that after almost glueing the tweezers to the seat that I would call that it for the night. With the difficulties I am haveing with my eyes, close one eye to see close up and close the other to see distant while with both open I can manage around the flat without glasses and can even read subtitles on the T.V. which is something I have not been able to do for years without getting progressively closet to it over the years, so with that I am off to my bed.

Gondor

[Gondor]

Never thought I would say this but I have run out of clamps 

I specifically wanted to use two Berner clamps when glueing the wings together for the second Meteor but they happen to be in use holding the Typhoon cockpit in place and the nose of a Meteor together.

I am doing a bit now and again on the ejector seats, well one of them so far for the Meteors. Learning my lessons as I go so keeping the parts held onto the tile I am using as a cutting surface. Still managed to launch another seatbelt, however that was while I was attempting to fit it in place and thinking that I need at least three hands to hold various items such as the seat, tweezers' and something like a knife to hold the part in place as I let go of the part from the tweezers'. I am also takeing frequent brakes so I don't strain the eyes seeing that I am finding it far easier not to wear glasses

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

Clothes pegs or duct tape, that's what you need..............

[Gondor]

Clothes pegs or duct tape, that's what you need..............

What I need is to remember to hold the part down when I cut the final leg to the sheet. This is of course no help when a part simply disappears from the tweezers holding it and you simply cant find it, I have spent lots of time trying to coax the carpet monster to give back a light blue seat belt only to find it had hidden itself among the other seat belts already firmly attached to the seat 
The lap belts are the only parts left to go onto this seat and are made up of three parts each. I intend to assemble each belt onto the part which is lowest and I have prepaired by removing the leg which the strap goes over. This means that once assembled the open end of each belt has one cut needed to free it from the sheet as well as having an end to hold onto to tether it to the bench, well hopefully.
No parts missing, at the moment as any strays have been found and I hope it stays that way.

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

I had enough trouble installing 1/24 seat belts for my brother's and son-in-law's model carl, stuff doing it with 1/72 belts! 

[Gondor]

Not exactly a before and after set of pictures as there are two seats, but you get the idea



I think I need to adjust the position of the middle part or I won't be able to get the end of the seat belts over the top of it.



Better pictures will be taken later, but for now they will do.

Cutting of lead as nose weight is my next priority as well as finding out how much nose weight the Typhoon will need and where I can put it in the model.

Gondor

[Gondor]

Just ordered some more filler as what I have is starting to get low. This is in part due to the Meteor kits being limited run mouldings which are better than  "it fits where it touches" but not necessarily by a great amount depending on the pieces. Due to the problems I had with the wing misalignment for one of the kits earlier I am having to use putty on almost every joint including the trailing edges 
The second set of wings should be a lot better as I have learned from the first one what to look out for. Looking forward to the New tool Meteor F.8 by Airfix in the future which I will certainly be buying at least two of.

Gondor

[Gondor]

Another couple of mishaps with the Meteors 

With this being a limited run kit, the main wheels come in two half's due to moulding limitations. Well guess who got one wheel to have one half off center to the other, no prizes though 
As I had used Liquid Poly to weld the two parts together I was not going to separate the two parts 
Help was at hand, well in a box inside a bigger box in my storage room... an Xtrakit Meteor F.8! I actually have two of these kits, one of which is to become a real world Drone and the other to become a Reaper. The Reaper was the only one that still had it's wheels as they were on the sprue, no idea where the other pair were but I have ordered a couple of sets from Resikit which will replace the wheels for these two kits so the pair of wheels are not together and carefully aligned so there is no repeat of the previous mishap.

The second mishap was while adding nose weight to the second Meteor fuselage. As usual the weight I was adding was stuck in place using superglue. All well and good you may think, however I didn't realise that the amount of glue I was adding was a little on the excessive side  which I sound out when some ended up on my fingers and my jeans
Not a great problem as it's an old pair of jeans which are worn partially for such incidents and so I can wipe my sanding sticks or file against my trousered leg to remove the majority of the accumulated dust. I then propped the fuselage against my brush cleaning jar while the glue dried, which it did with the fuselage stuck to not only the jar but the old newspaper that covers the desk 
Fortunately there was not a great amount of contact area so that has also now been dealt with. I'm starting to think that these Meteors are more trouble than they are worth 

Gondor