Armstrong Whitworth Elswick - DONE!

[Old Wombat]

This plane is TINY. Where's the Scale Reference Cat when you need him?

Probably asleep under a bush somewhere.

With this, though, you're probably better off using a scale paint/glue tinlet/jar.

[buzzbomb]

Great follow up to a great idea 

[jcf]

The reason for the vacform as well as the injected moulded one is because a lot of modellers prefer a vac canopy due to the better optical clarity. As witnessed by the continued success of the Falcon vac canopies and the ones he made for Squadron shop. Many of the lines of both are still available through Jay's in Australia. They're also very cheap to produce.

[PR19_Kit]

Hope that it will get spats? 

Oddly it seems the prototype IK.2 really DID have spats, as can be seen in this pic, along with a MIND-BOGGLING array of struts!

I had to find a pic like this as the kit's instructions don't tell you exactly where all the struts go!



I think I'll scratchbuild some spats for the Elswick, that'll be Mk 1a then of course. 

[PR19_Kit]

After struggling for some time trying to get the myriad of struts sorted out, both styrene and PE ones, I paused for some refreshment while thinking 'I wish the blasted thing didn't need all those damn struts!'

Then I checked Spinner's pics to see how obvious they were on the Elswick itself, and found to my utter amazement that t DIDN'T have them all!   

Not only  that, the ones it DOESN'T have are the ones that were driving me nuts, so I don't even have to apply Kit's 2nd Rule, Armstrong Whitworth did it already when they adapted the IK-2 design to make the Elswick by strengthening the larger struts so they didn't require the smaller ones. RESULT!

You don't believe me? Compare the IK-2 pic above with this one of the production Elswick.

[PR19_Kit]

Strutomania rules, plus a bit of PSR as well.



You might notice the tailwheel has vanished too, I've no idea where it went, but there's plenty of spare ones knocking about in The Loft I'm sure. Ones with stronger legs hopefully.......

The Elswick's almost ready for primer and paint now, which pretty pleasing, and the decals are all designed and ready for printing too.

[buzzbomb]

More struts is more in era to my eye. Nice work so far

[Gondor]

You could always add a skid rather than a tail wheel, then you could make it out of something metal.

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

I'm fresh out of unobtanium strip at the moment, and you KNOW how tough it is to machine those blocks of it you get from B&Q.

[PR19_Kit]

Hope that it will get spats? 

You wanted spats Thomas? How about this then?   



5 layers of 20 thou and a bit of filing. I'm just working on the other side now too.

[PR19_Kit]

Got the Elswick build finished now. Time for masking, priming and painting.

The spats seem to suit it pretty well, I'm surprised they didn't use them in service.



I scrounged a tailwheel from one of the Academy Spitfire XIVs I'm using for the Dalgety build.

[Dizzyfugu]

Elegant! Even though the spats look a bit long, esp. when mounted?

[PR19_Kit]

They can be trimmed once I've had a proper look at it on a decent surface.

It's fully primed now and hopefully will get it's first coat of NMF later today, as there seems to be no PSR required! 

[Old Wombat]

She's looking good, Kit!

[PR19_Kit]

I'm quite pleased with the overall look of the aircraft, one I'd not come across before Spinners 'Angcliised' the Ikarus IK-2. 

It's got the first NMF coat on now and that's showed up just a touch of PSR is needed aft of the canopy, but that shouldn't be to much of a problem.