Trumpeter E.E Lightning F Mk 1. Finished.

[Iain]

Have sent you a PM Eric - I'm working on canopy this morning.

 

Just look at pretty well any photos of Lightnings and compare with the Trumpeter kit.

 

And I agree with Dave - it's definitely the error that stands out the most - and was the thing that started me off on the errors in the Trumpeter kit.

 

Iain

[ericg]

Here is a fix for one of the other known issues with the kit, the undercarriage. The Trumpeter gear makes the model sit too high and looks very spindly. I will shorten it and beef it up at the same time. I removed just over 3.5mm of length from each main leg.

 

I used my lathe to do all of this work which has made it very easy to do.

 

First up is to machine part of each leg to remove a lug.

 

 

 

Once the thin part of the undercarriage leg was parted off from the upper part, I faced off and drilled a 4mm dia. hole into the upper part.

 

 

I then made a 7mm spacer from Aluminium tube.

 

 

The resulting parts

 

 

Once the assembly was glued together, I machined the new part of gear leg so that the profile of the aluminium spacer matched that of the metal leg. Here is the modified leg on the right and the kit leg on the left. The length is pretty noticeable here.

 

 

The new legs. Maybe I should learn how to cast these in Brass??

 

 

Here is the model before:

 

 

And after. It is a subtle yet noticeable change. You can also now start to see the effect of the tapered fuselage spine, the smaller belly fuel tank, lengthened tail area (including the tail moved back) and also the modified wings. Small changes added up make it a different model.

 

[ericg]

Onto the canopy fixes. It is a well known flaw of the kit that Trumpeter messed up the shape of both the windscreen and canopy. It took me a while to work out what was wrong with it but eventually I have spotted the weird shapes that they put into plastic. Part of the problem lies with the way that the fuselage sides meet up with the windscreen and the canopy, and the frames of each of the glass pieces. I will deal with these in stages. This first part of the fix is dead easy and shouldn't present too much of a problem to someone with a bit of ambition.

 

Here is the windscreen in place as Trumpeter intended.

 

 

In order to shrink the size of the windshield, I sanded the bottom frame off completely. This has the effect of removing approx. 1mm of the width of the part.

 

 

Frameless. The windscreen is now smaller.

 

 

I next added two shims of plastic card to the fuselage to build up the area around the sides of the windscreen, and then using a round file, I contoured each side to closely match photos of the real thing. You can see a small shadow under the plastic card shims that just show up the new curves. I also re-shaped the sides of the fuselage underneath the canopy to bring them much closer together, approx. 2mm of width across the outer cockpit sills has been removed in this way. It will involve a bit of re-scribing but I reckon it will be worth it in the end. There is plenty of thickness in the kit plastic to re-shape as required in this area, as long as you don't mind restoring lost detail.

 

 

Part of the plan with the windscreen was to pinch the sides of the glass together and fix it in place as such, giving the total loss of width in that region of 2mm. It looks much better.

 

 

Here is the new windscreen area. Bear in mind that I will be adding new frames to each part as needed (just like the real thing)You can see the lost detail on the fuselage sides as a result of `sucking in' that whole area. A most worthwhile mod to make the model look less airliner and more beastly fighter jet.

 

Edited January 6, 2015 by ericg

[Derek B]

Masterly work Eric and great fixes. I do wonder if pinching in the sides of the windscreen transparency will eventually lead to stress cracking of the windscreen? (I think that I may have been tempted to separate the windscreen quarter panels from the flat bullet proof front panel, then glue them together again with the required 'pinch' - it would also allow you to detail both inside and outside of the windscreen).

 

Derek

Edited April 4, 2019 by Derek B

[Loic]

That's some very fine work 

[Uncarina]

Thanks for sharing this build! It gives new hope to building the Lightning!

 

Cheers, Tom

[ericg]

Well after finding myself with a boat load of time at home, I accidently picked up the Lightning and have pretty well finished the mods that were needed prior to priming it. When I purchased the Xtradecal decals from Hannants ages ago, little did I know that I needed to backdate the model to make it an F.1. On top of the large amount of rectification work that has gone into fixing the `Trumpeterisms' that plague this kit in a big way, much work has gone into sorting out many small differences that that distinguish the first operational lightning to its later cousins. I guess it would have been much easier to go with a later Mk that wouldn't have required as much work but I seem to end up with models that require major modifications on my workbench more often than not.

 

I managed to squeeze in the following mods in the last day of work. Some of these mods are found in later Mk No's and some are not.

 

The pitot tube fairing that is provided in the kit is a little too small and does not fair into the nose ring at all. I used some two part Tamiya epoxy putty to build it up, increasing its length and blending it into the ring. The white part of the intake ring is where the model slipped out of my hands and bit the concrete. A big chunk of the kit plastic was removed, so it needed to be rebuilt.

 

Here it the fairing with the excellent Master Pitot tube installed. I have made this removable such that it will lessen the chance of it getting damaged in transport.

 

 

Here is a small intake, which I made using plastic hollow tube, cut at an angle and thinned, as well as the small panel that sits under it. this was missing on the kit.

 

 

Another small exhaust, once again plastic card. The Trumpeter depiction of it was rather chunky.

 

 

Here is the tail, with a fair bit of rescribing. One of the side effects of lengthening the model in this section is that fact that the panel that covers the two engines needs to be shifted back as well. It needs to be rescibed anyway, as the Aires fairing that holds the two exhausts has a different set up than the kit. The old panel lines are just visible forward of the main vertical panel line in the center of the picture.

 

 

I modified the small vents either sides of the cockpit. The Trumpeter ones were very misshapen and I also wanted to have the small pipe extruding from the surface, just like my references. From what I can tell, this vent also makes this a slightly later Mk 1, as the photos I have of the first Lightnings had this vent as with 4 or so small slits instead of the central pipe. Also visible in this photo is the modified windshield frame. I taped of the new frame, and sprayed it with black paint, then built up the frame with Mr Surfacer. The frames are now much fatter than the old ones and couple that with the fact that the area around the  windshield has been massively modified, it now looks almost right.

 

 

The ventral fin on the kit needed to come off as I wanted to make it easier to sand the fuel tank as per earlier posts. I scratch built a new one, making it slightly larger, as I reckoned the Trumpeter one was a little small.

 

 

Primed. Visible in this picture is the improved stance of the kit with the shorter undercarriage legs, the smooth fuselage devoid of the long cable fairing (which is the biggest difference of the Mk 1 to its later cousins) and the brutish looks of the aeroplane! It is a big model, so I had to shift back quite a way to fit it in the screen.

 

 

I reckon both of these are a fair chance to make an appearance at the Melbourne expo. The cool thing is about both of these models is that they are being finished in the way that they would have been in 1962-63, so both were the front line fighters for their respective countries during that period.

 

[Simmo.b]

Awesome work mate, nice to see her in primer

[ericg]

Thanks mate, will be interesting to see it next to the Felixstowe when they are both finished!

 

Eric.

[Whitey]

You are the VENTMEISTER Eric. 

[Youngtiger1]

Just saw this and I don't know how I missed it. It's nice to see another English Lightning in works

[Hubert Boillot]

Thanks mate, will be interesting to see it next to the Felixstowe when they are both finished!

Eric.

The Lightning's fuselage is actually longer than the Felixstowe's one ...

 

Hubert

[Simmo.b]

The Lightning's fuselage is actually longer than the Felixstowe's one ...

Hubert

Yep, but I think the Felix just pips the Lightning for wingspan :-)

[LSP_Kevin]

Yep, but I think the Felix just pips the Lightning for wingspan :-)

 

Took the words right out of my mouth...

 

Kev

[Guest Peterpools]

Eric

I am constantly amazed at your attention to the smallest of details and your uncanny ability to add them perfectly. Brilliant and inspiring work

Keep 'em coming

Peter