Thunnus

Painting? I wish I was closer to that step but still got quite a ways to get there! I've cobbled together more of the central MG151 area using some of the resin gun bay parts and sheet styrene. This is purely fiction as I just want to fill up some space caused by the removal of the cowling gun cannisters/chutes. The straight section of sheet styrene is stand-in as well as a form for the ammo chute. I'll fold some brass sheeting around the form for the actual chute.

Thanks Chuck! I think the sheer effort of the part clean-up process is getting to me. I need to either slow down or take a short break from this one. Here is the Barracuda nose piece. Because of the lack of contrast caused by the cream-colored resin, you can't see the detail but there are panel lines and rivets. The details are pretty shallow though and it will need to be re-scribed and re-riveted to match the rest of the components. You aren't given a set of instructions and the packaging directs you to download them from the Barracuda website. That little omission irritated me for some reason and I attacked the casting blocks a little more quickly than I should have. Not to worry... the cutting went fine but I think I should've waited until my head was in a better space. Anyways... per the instructions, I sawed the casting block in half and removed the chin block first. And then I removed the nose block. Notice the indentations near the spinner hole where the saw just started to cut into the part itself. Speaking of the hole, there was an indentation for what looked to be the spinner hole on the inside of the resin part. It looked centered but without taking any measurements, I just drilled it open to the other side. Haven't cut the spinner backplate out yet to check but it looks reasonably centered... hope I didn't goof! Like the kit plastic parts, I marked the cut at the rivet line just above the target panel line. A few minutes of concentrated sawing separated the top half from the bottom. I cut the excess flash within the exhaust openings and block-sanded the edges to the almost-but-not-quite final level. I think I flirted with danger with the rapidity of my cutting but luckily, I escaped with just a few stray saw marks. The mouth of the intake is noticeably smaller on the Barracuda part. There will be some removal/thinning of the resin interior that will need to be performed if I want to get the resin engine to fit. I think it is do-able but I'm not really excited about starting that excavation.

Very true! This isn't exciting stuff but its necessary for a good result. I managed to cut the excess resin from the interior of the grip without a mishap. But one of the four very delicate mounts for the control rods was broken. I had no choice but to cut off the bottom two mounts and replace them with simple holes at the base. Here is the completed control stick. I used 0.3mm brass tubing for the control rods. There were also a few small PE bits added to stick. Look what came in the mail!

Come back anytime Troy! I'm always fishing for compliments! Have I ever shown you this custom painted crawfish lure I did? Go for it! I said the same thing about my Tamiya Corsair kit sitting on the shelf when I was following Wolf Buddee's build.

Inching along here on this build. My two daughters are on visit so I've been trying to spend as much free time with them. Like I said, the Special Hobby plastic, which is a bit on the soft side, takes REALLY well to Tamiya Extra Thin cement. Hard to tell which is the repaired rail (bottom) and the unbroken one. Strong bond too. I think these will actually facilitate the sliding of the canopy open and closed so they will have to be glued in very securely. The instrument panel is crisply molded but the detail is a bit simplistic. The bar on the left of the instrument panel middle section was broken too and repaired with the magic welding glue. I don't have my RAF paints yet so I've had to hold off on any painting. Which works out because the cockpit parts need a ton of clean up. Here are the right and left tubular cockpit frames. Another view reveals the very defined molding ridges along every surface. And giant sprue gates, which are a pain to trim when they are on curved surface. Clean up was slow and tedious, first scraping an x-acto blade along the molding ridges and then finishing off the upper surfaces with sandpaper. The lower surfaces were just treated with the knife since they will be hidden from view looking down into the cockpit. Resin clean up can also be similarly tedious. The flash on the inside of the spade grip is quite thick and cannot simply be snapped out. It requires very careful cutting. The work on the cockpit frames puttered me out and I was not able to finish the control stick.

What a great idea! Maybe I'll try to use my airbrush loaded with water as a power blaster.

It should show up now as Postimage is back online.

I think Postimage (the photo host I'm using) is down.

If you need more stiffness, you can trim the bristles. I always have a few stipple brushes around to clean up sanding/trimming excess. They also work well for the hairspray chipping technique.

Wonderfully done! Same question as ade rowlands: "How was the build?" I've heard mixed things about the Meng 163 kit.

Circling back to this issue... I've checked my references and would have to disagree. Although I cannot make out the flare port on photos of the most recently restored D-13 or the captured photos at Gilze-Rijen Airfield in Holland, the flare port is clearly visible when the unrestored Yellow 10 was languishing in an Atlanta vacant lot as discovered by Jerry Crandall. Below is a crop of one of these photos that appears in Volume Two of Mr. Crandall's Dora books.

Thanks Kevin! Probably because I has so much practice on these Hasegawa D-9 kits. This is my fourth! Ha! Maybe I am more prone to succumb to the lure of AM than others! It's hard to resist these resin and brass goodies! Yes, this will be Yellow 10 but I will be deviating a bit from camo description/analysis found in Mr. Crandall's Dora Volume 2. Don't have a definitive game plan but I'm thinking a hybrid of Crandall's and JaPo's analysis. I wish! I'm just a good photographer... everything looks nicer with good lighting! Yeah, it's a bummer but something that I've had to accept since I like the look of canopies closed. And another reason why I try to take decent photos during the build. Are you sure? In Squadron's Walk Around book that port or at least the outline of it is visible on Yellow 10. This was before the most recent restoration when Yellow still had the D-9 wings on it. Yes, Galaxy Tools riveter is what I used to rivet this model. It's a nice tool with one advantage over the RB Productions version... the dot pitch of the 1.00mm large wheel matches the small wheel and corner tool exactly. Not an exact match with the RB Productions Rivet-R sets, which can be frustrating if you don't pay attention. I bought the Galaxy riveters on Ebay from a seller called usdreamer-0. Shipped from China.

Thanks guys! Thank you Larry for that insight into incorporating the resin half engine with the Barracuda nose section. Your construction notes/observations will be logged! Thanks Chuck for following along! Yes, I think cleaning up the panel lines and rivets will be worth the effort. I'm leaving the seam area as is until after the fuselage is glued together. Tonight was spent cleaning up the starboard fuselage side. I just trudged along, section after section, pushing my needle into all of rivet locations. Fuselage clean-up is finished! I can now take a break from the painstaking rivet process to explore other parts of the kit. Did I mention that I bought this kit second-hand? There was one broken piece that was politely taped to a post-it for my attention as an unidentified fragment. I tracked that down tonight to one of the two canopy rails (Part 38). It actually managed to snap into three separate pieces. One thing I noticed when I started gluing the broken canopy rail back to together is that the kit plastic reacts VERY well to Tamiya Extra Thin cement. I'm going to let the first join dry before completing the repair tomorrow.

Yes to all of the above but I also use a stiff bristle paint brush (i.e. stipple brush) dipped in water. This is sometimes more handy for working smaller areas.

Right on Dennis! Good to see a PCM Tempest kit being built up! I hear you about following Chuck's epic Tempest log... hard to top that but I'm sure we'll each bring something different to the table.

I'm glad to be of help!

Thanks Anthony! The Barracuda nose set has been ordered! To clean up the fuselage, I decided to re-scribe the panel lines and then give the model a dark pastel wash. The rivets (and panel lines) that need to be deepened will be highlighted by their inability to hold the wash. That's the plan anyway but it ended up being lots tedious rivet poking, one by one with a needle chucked into a vice. Here is the unwashed port fuselage side. After re-riveting, sanding and another pastel wash. You can see how the starboard side has lots of rivets that didn't hold the wash and will need attention. The one side took me pretty much the entire evening. So it'll be slow going. The wings are huge and feature a whole lot more riveting than the fuselage! :headbang:

Great idea to decompress with another build running parallel to the Tigercat. That's what I do so that I can jump from one to the other when the mojo starts waning.

Thanks Brian! Appreciate it! You're welcome Ernest! I'm glad that I was able to get the drop tanks a little closer to what I was seeing in the photos. Not going for an exact representation but I hoped to capture a number of the little details that can be discerned on the real Red 10. Thank you Michael! I hope my build process helps you out when you decide to tackle this kit! Thank you so much Wolf! Hopefully we'll see more of your lovely Corsair soon??? Thanks Jan! Thanks Kirk! I appreciate the kind words!

Very nice presentation and cool contrast with the Ohka. I've got the pilot-less version and plan on building it as a companion to the Tempest.

Thanks Tom! I'm most likely sticking to the marking options included with the kit but haven't made any decisions yet except it won't be a Clostermann Tempest. After the Super Bowl, I replaced the molded ignition lines on the resin engine with lead wiring.

Thanks guys! Appreciate the feedback! Thank you Chuck! Very encouraging to see that others have used the Barracuda nose and the Special Hobby engine. Most of my build research was confined to Works in Progress and I forgot to check the RFI board! I'm not going to get much deeper into this build until I figure out what I want to do with the surface details. My options range from (a) do-nothing all the way to (b) sand everything away and rescribe-rivet it all over. I want to make improvements but I don't have the desire or resolve to do (b). I've tested the rivet dot pitch pattern against my riveting tools (RB Productions, Galaxy Tools, Trumpeter) and they don't match so fixing the kit rivets will have to be one at a time. I am toying with the idea of filling all of the rivets with black CA glue and punching new rivets with one of my tools. The black CA would give me the visual pattern of the rivet lines without having to re-draw them. But I don't know how the filled rivets would respond to having a rivet tool run directly over them and I'm afraid of creating a mess. And there are a TON of rivets... lots of filling and sanding. I did some preliminary dry-fitting with the major fuselage and wing components. Fit is not especially great but not horrible either. Checking the wing geometry to make sure that center section is flat. Will have to pay attention to this area as internal components are added to make sure that the fuselage doesn't push the wings out, causing an anhedral condition. Got a new tool in the mail today to deal with the big casting block. Tamiya Thin Blade Craft Saw #74024 About the size as a big kitchen knife! Plenty of blade clearance to cut through this piece. Life is so much easier with the right tools. Thank you Damian for this excellent recommendation. Make sure you wear a mask when cutting resin! One of the things I noticed after taking my first photos of the resin block (meaning it wasn't caused by the sawing process), was a broken ignition wire. That got me to thinking... what if I replaced all of the ignition wires? Very do-able!

Thanks Antonio! That Dora has seen better days! Is that the wreck from Lake Schwerin? Here's the seat with the HGW harnesses attached to it. The seat is then slid into place along the seat rails. I added an oxygen tube per the Eagle Editions instructions. Here we go with the cockpit disappearing act. The starboard sidewall, the forward roof and the rear deck are attached the box-like cockpit is complete. We dry-fit the cockpit tub into the fuselage to make sure that it sits properly. As you can see, the view into cockpit is VERY limited and the addition of the canopy parts will make it even more so. With the cockpit complete, we can now focus some more attention on the rear engine area.

Thanks Brian! Some work on the cockpit before I start putting the components together. Here is the Revi 16B gun sight that came with the Eagle Editions resin set. I highlighted one of the glass pieces with clear blue/green around the edges and tinted the other one with Tamiya Smoke. The port sidewall has been glued onto the cockpit tub. After this, the throttle and the and lower instrument panel were glued into place. The foot pedals have been painted and mounted. The roof piece that the foot pedals hang down from has not been painted at all since it will be completely obscured. The seat will receive its harnesses after I've completed assembling them.

Thanks guys! Appreciate the encouragement on a new build, especially since this is my first 1/32 RAF effort. Much like my F4U-1a build, I am going into this one without much knowledge of the Tempest except that it's a cool looking aircraft! Thanks for that link Mike! Good reference for using the Barracuda nose parts whole but am I missing the part where he uses the CMK resin engine top with it? RB Productions. Check it out... https://www.largescaleplanes.com/reviews/review.php?rid=888 My first inclination was NO. Most resin improvements that are incorporated within the fuselage halves commonly require considerable thinning of the fuselage sides to accommodate the resin. And the Special Hobby instructions do indicate some sort of thinning after cutting the top off. But the CMK engine plug seems to fit between the kit fuselage halves without much thinning at all. So there may enough wriggle room in the Barracuda nose, with its narrower width at the spinner, to fit the CMK engine plug without too much issue. Possibly. Heck, if the man that designed the Barracuda nose says go for it, how can I NOT at least give it a try? Ok... I'm game. I'll give it a shot.