SH Tempest Mk V "Kicked Up A Notch". January 14/21 New eBook!

[dennismcc]

That really does make the detail pop up.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[zaxos345]

Great work Chuck!!

 

John

[JayW]

As a wheel well enthusiast with lotsa experience doing wheel wells - I love to see a result like you have here.  As Peter (Airscale) told me once, makes you do a double take to make sure it isn't a real aircraft you are looking at.  That's how good it is. 

[spyrosjzmichos]

All that detailed work just popped up under a coat of painting! Looking excellent as usual! 

Wishing you all the best with your surgery and hoping for a speedy recovery Chuck!

[Rocat]

Great work! Bravo. It's nice to know that all went well with you surgery.

[chuck540z3]

October 1/20

 

Well, my left hand surgery recovery has been much better than expected, mostly because I am very right handed and my left hand and arm are almost useless, other than to hold things.  I am not looking forward to when my right hand is fixed, because simple daily tasks- and modeling- will be a real challenge, so I scramble to do as much as possible before that happens!  With my right hand free, below is my new progress, which I consider to be the biggest challenge of this build and kit.  I understand that this kit has wing dihedral issues and two of the biggest flaws at model contests are wheel alignment and wing root fit.  Screw up the wing root and the wheel alignment usually suffers with it, so I’m going to try and avoid all that.

 

I’m going to skip Steps 31 and 32 for the rear control surfaces for now, focusing on Step 33 as follows.  The instructions have another omission, not identifying the front wing parts E15/16 and E8/11, which I have done below:

 

 

 

 

Before you glue any wing parts, make sure you glue in the identification light from Step 28.  This light should be flush rather than slightly recessed, according to my references and to alter it accordingly wouldn’t be worth the effort, especially since it’s underneath anyway.

 

 

 

 

The wings should be almost perfectly flat from the fuselage out to around the end of the landing gear bay, where the wings dip upwards.  With the wings glued to together, I don’t see any issues with that, with the wing assembly placed on a black binder.  The front of each wing doesn’t come together very well, even without landing gear bays installed, so I added extra CA glue to the outside front to keep things permanently closed.

 

 

 

 

And at the correct location, the wings dip upwards.  Still OK, other than every second panel line doesn’t line up, which can be a real pain to fix.

 

 

 

 

With the fuselage dry fit, the wing root fit is sort of OK, but the fit is really tight.

 

 

 

 

The trailing edge of both top wings extend too far as well, no matter what I tried to eliminate same.

 

 

 

 

This is entirely due to the top wing only, which is too long and needs to be sanded back.  Too bad, because there is some nice fine rivet detail to that trailing edge on the top.

 

 

 

 

Now I get why some builds of this kit have the wrong wing dihedral.  The fuselage is too wide, swelling the wings apart and tilting them downwards.  Dang!  The fix is going to be a tough one.

 

 

 

 

In order to reduce the interference of the fuselage on the wing assembly, the inner landing gear walls need to be sanded thinner- quite a bit thinner!  Meanwhile, the upper wing root that sits on top of the gear bays are too thick, so the top of these need to be sanded as well.

 

 

 

 

The fuselage needs work too, with the wing root made thinner and narrower.  Even the outer cockpit cage assembly interferes with the wings, so it was cut back and trimmed with a #11 knife.

 

 

 

 

After at least 100 different iterations of sanding, trimming and dry fitting (no exaggeration!), you want the assembly to just drop into place with little effort.  You need to walk a very fine line between attaining a nice snug fit without swelling the wing assembly, which bends the wings downwards.

 

 

 

 

After a ton or work, the bottom of the wing is now flat again.  Unfortunately, the top of the wing should be flat as well and not slope downwards from the fuselage, but with this kit, you are stuck with it.  No big deal and not many would notice anyway.

 

 

 

 

Make sure you re-paint the cockpit floor and sides, which may be visible from above.

 

 

 

 

The rear of the wing assembly to fuselage fit is poor and takes lots of glue and sanding to eliminate the join and recover the lost detail.

 

 

 

 

All better now….

 

 

 

 

Of course. all this dry fitting isn’t just to make the wings not bend.  You also want the wing toot and other parts to fit as perfectly as possible without the need for filler.  After a lot of sanding and a little CA glue here and there, the fit is now quite good…..

 

 

 

 

The rear of the top wing was sanded back to mesh with the fuselage fillet.

 

 

 

 

The wing to fuselage panel line doesn’t need to be perfect, because that will be the inner edge of the black walkways that will be painted later as a sharp demarcation line.

 

 

 

 

You may have noticed that at the front of the Barracuda nose to wing join, the resin is a bit high and does not meet the wing flush.  Like the kit parts, this is meant to replicate a flashing that covers the wing, rather than meet it.  While a bit too high for scale, I elected to keep it that way to prove I meant it that way.  If I sanded it down some more to make it look more subtle, it might look like I got sloppy with the join and screwed up.  Although I may never enter another model contest, I’m always looking to eliminate possible deductions due to misinterpretation.

 

 

 

 

Now a few shots of the bottom.  BTW, the front wing leading edge parts E15/16 and E8/11 fit terrible and take a ton of work to make them look natural.

 

 

 

 

Landing gear bays put to bed for a while.  I’m really happy with the look of the wiring and now think the extra effort was worth it.

 

 

 

 

 

Proof of life, that I fixed those panel line mismatches, along with several others.  I will add the short gun barrels, Parts PUR 18/19 at the end of the build.

 

 

 

 

There’s a little rectangular panel on the inner ailerons that looks like a trim tab, but there is no actuating arm on it, making it very hard to detect on photographs.  In any case, it is on 3 out of 4 of the aileron parts, but missing on the left upper wing part B2, while it still shows up in the instructions.  I discovered this after rescribing and repunching the rivet detail, so I added a new one and filled in the few rivets within.  Later I found in the last Step 46, that you are instructed to add same, which is no doubt a last minute correction.  I checked other builds of this kit and about 50% of them have missed it, which is easy to do.

 

 

 

 

With all the hard steps of this build out of the way, this fighter is now really starting to look the part! 

 

 

 

 

 

Next update will be Steps 31 and 32, which look pretty easy.  Famous last words!

 

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Edited October 1, 2020 by chuck540z3

[AlbertD]

First Chuck, congratulations on a successful surgery. I hope the recovery continues well.

 

The cabels and hydraulic lines in your wheel wells lay very realistically and everything else looks absolutely fantastic. I'll take your advice and try using gloss black as a primer. What you say makes sense. I've always used flat primers because I thought the color coat would stick to it better. More bite I guess. I do use lacquer for the most part so that shouldn't really matter.

[chuck540z3]

11 minutes ago, AlbertD said:

The cables and hydraulic lines in your wheel wells lay very realistically and everything else looks absolutely fantastic. I'll take your advice and try using gloss black as a primer. What you say makes sense. I've always used flat primers because I thought the color coat would stick to it better. More bite I guess. I do use lacquer for the most part so that shouldn't really matter.

 

Thanks Albert.  I use gloss black lacquer on just about everything.  It sticks to the plastic like snot to an oven door, is super thin with minimal paint buildup that can fill fine detail and the gloss finish exposes every tiny flaw imaginable.  It's also a terrific Alclad II primer for anything metallic.

 

I also use gloss black rather than flat black when flat black is required, like on tires, etc.  Gloss black with a dull coat just looks better to my eye than flat black, which can often be too rough to begin with.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[Brett M]

Super tutorial for the fix! She’s definitely looking good.

 

Question on your gloss black; are you still decanting Tamiya cans or have you found an easier option?

[chuck540z3]

2 minutes ago, Brett M said:

Super tutorial for the fix! She’s definitely looking good.

 

Question on your gloss black; are you still decanting Tamiya cans or have you found an easier option?

 

Yes, I'm still decanting, but only to get rid of my rattle can stockpile.  I think the Tamiya lacquer in the jars (LP line) is the same stuff.

 

Also, for the first time, I will be using MRP paints for the camo and roundels.  I've heard so many raving reviews about this paint I just need to give it a try and thanks to my friend Justin (Funkyzeit), he gave me a boatload of it to try.  I'm not sure how it will react over the gloss black Tamiya paint, so I'll experiment with it a bit before I commit to my model.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[zaxos345]

I really admire your work!! Awesome as always!!

 

John

[fastterry]

Jeez Chuck, there's an awful lot of work there to get the wings right, I don't remember having this much trouble with the PCM Tempest. I will of course have to do all this on my Mk II. A quick note about the red and green lights in the wing, they are I.D. lights so you will still have to add nav. lights to the wing tips.

TRF

[AlbertD]

The MRP is in fact a great paint. It does everything well. Never tried it over Tamiya lacquer though.

[nmayhew]

this is a masterclass of both modelling and presentation

 

thank you on both counts

[dodgem37]

Very well done.  Great show.

 

Sincerely,

Mark