LSP_Kevin Posted February 2, 2014 Author Share Posted February 2, 2014 Thanks for your interest fellas. I started working on the cockpit last night, but haven't had time for photos unfortunately. The plastic is actually unnervingly soft, and I've had to resort in some cases to using my JLC razor saw to remove parts from the sprue. Assembly appears to be a bit fiddly as shown in the instructions, but I'm hoping it all goes together as advertised. More soon! Kev Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted February 3, 2014 Author Share Posted February 3, 2014 Well, first progress photos are at hand. The cockpit is actually quite a complicated assembly, with lots of parts and a fiddly approach to bringing it all together. Lots of margin for error unfortunately. Here's a photo of where the main assembly is at: I've installed the front seat into position so I could ensure (or attempt to) the proper location and fit of the 't-bar' at its rear. This simply butt-joins onto the back of the seat, with a small, upside-down 'U-shaped' bracket above it. While this helps locate it on the back of the seat, it offers no meaningful support, and since each end of the horizontal section is meant to mate with its corresponding framework piece, getting the angle right is critical - and fraught! Once the cement on the piece had worked enough for the part to hold its own weight, I fitted the framework parts and finagled things into position. That's when I realised that the hole in the port framework that the 't' part fits into was actually on the outside (rear) of the part, not the inside! With the glue still drying I quickly drilled it out and refitted the components together. Luckily the seat frame is quite thin and flexible, and allows enough bending in the fore and aft directions to aid positioning. There's a lot more like this to come! Here's the start of the rear bulkhead assembly: Here again we see 3 parts, one of which has an extremely flimsy attachment point that makes correct orientation difficult. And it needs to be correct, because it needs to mate exactly with rest of the cockpit assembly when the time comes. It's hard to tell in the photo, but the upper semi-circular piece is actually only attached to the rest by that small lug in its centre; the rest floats freely, and the side pieces have to be at the correct angle to engage with the rear portions of the two side framework pieces! I think the approach here is both overly-complicated and highly uncertain, and very easy to mess up. I'm tempted to glue all the cockpit components together and paint it at the end, just to ensure fit and alignment are OK. But that would make painting much more difficult - especially all the fiddly bits that need to be attached to the side pieces. I guess I'll take the traditional route and hope for the best... Kev Smokey, jgrease, Uilleann and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smokey Posted February 3, 2014 Share Posted February 3, 2014 Kevin following with great interest in this build. Mine just showed up and looked thru it and like you mine will be almost out of the box to. The only thing I could see changing is maybe finding some better seatbelts. Dan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loic Posted February 3, 2014 Share Posted February 3, 2014 OK Kev, this might not be the easiest kit to assemble... but you are doing great ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iain Posted February 3, 2014 Share Posted February 3, 2014 Great start Kevin - will be following closely!! Iain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alburymodeler Posted February 3, 2014 Share Posted February 3, 2014 Thanks for your interest fella. Here's the link to the review so you can check out the contents, if you haven't seen them already: http://www.largescaleplanes.com/reviews/review.php?rid=1241 I might be a little while actually cutting plastic on this one, as I don't have anywhere to put the Meteor, so it's still sitting on my workbench, preventing me from starting anything else. No idea where to put it yet either! Kev You have a piece of string, and a ceiling no doubt.........? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted February 3, 2014 Author Share Posted February 3, 2014 I'm surprised there was no mention in the instructions on how to mount the T bar [...] Just to clarify, the instructions do in fact show you where it goes, but the kit's engineering offers you no real help in putting it there with any confidence about its orientation. And you won't know until you offer up the side framework pieces and hope the horizontal parts of that piece line up with where they're meant to go. The moulded-over hole just confuses things even more. This is one area where the soft, slightly pliable plastic is actually an asset, as things can bent and twisted a little to suit. Obviously if it requires too much of that then you'll throw out the alignment elsewhere, but it's nice to have a small fudge factor in a case like this. Kev Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Ron Posted February 3, 2014 Share Posted February 3, 2014 Certainly watching with interest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennismcc Posted February 4, 2014 Share Posted February 4, 2014 That does look very fiddly, you can only hope that with careful assembly that the individual parts will strengthen each other and you will end up with a fairly robust assembly, if that makes any sense ! Cheers Dennis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whitey Posted February 4, 2014 Share Posted February 4, 2014 Great stuff Kev. Looking forward to seeing it grow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted February 4, 2014 Author Share Posted February 4, 2014 Thanks fellas. I'm just plodding along with this one, and I've spent my time preparing and assembling all the myriad cockpit parts, trying to get them into as few sub-assemblies as possible before painting. Something was odd though when I went to install the two small lever housings on the port framework piece: I could only find one, the other being missing off the sprue. I looked everywhere for it, and feared that it might have been in the plastic bag for this sprue when I threw it away. But then I noticed that the attachment points didn't even appear to have been cut - and there's no way the part could simply have fallen off. So, I went back to my original hi-res sprue shots from the review, and realised that it was actually never there: It seems it was never moulded in the first place! Ah well, no one's really going to notice, but you'll need to check Sprue F for part 40 on your own kits. I should be able to start painting in the next session. Kev Uilleann 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brahman104 Posted February 4, 2014 Share Posted February 4, 2014 Looking good Kev! Thank you for taking the time to write a good review and highlight things to watch out for. I'm enjoying watching this kit come together, with some good old fashioned kit building Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Ray Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Great information, Kev! Looks like this will be an interesting build. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Ron Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Following closely, Ron Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zerosystem Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Thanks fellas. I'm just plodding along with this one, and I've spent my time preparing and assembling all the myriad cockpit parts, trying to get them into as few sub-assemblies as possible before painting. Something was odd though when I went to install the two small lever housings on the port framework piece: I could only find one, the other being missing off the sprue. I looked everywhere for it, and feared that it might have been in the plastic bag for this sprue when I threw it away. But then I noticed that the attachment points didn't even appear to have been cut - and there's no way the part could simply have fallen off. So, I went back to my original hi-res sprue shots from the review, and realised that it was actually never there: It seems it was never moulded in the first place! Ah well, no one's really going to notice, but you'll need to check Sprue F for part 40 on your own kits. I should be able to start painting in the next session. Kev I've run into that same sort of thing with their 1/48 Seasprite kit...its odd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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