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

[chuck540z3]

1 minute ago, leitch said:

The wheel wells are made up of 5? walls  which make up the wells, its the front walls that are reversed in the instructions. I believed they are pictured right just numbered wrong.

 

 

Andy

 

Gotcha.  I will note that. 

 

Thanks!,

Chuck

[scvrobeson]

Ah, I've got the Mk.2 kit in the stash. Will definitely need to take notes off of your build.

 

 

Matt 

[shark64]

all that is included in the kit? impressive.  Nice start.

 

[USMC Herc]

Chuck this going to be another interesting build to follow.

 

Chuck would you please show us how you paint your interiors so flawlessly.

Your instrument panels are always an eye catcher.

 

Cheers

Jason

[chuck540z3]

1 hour ago, USMC Herc said:

Chuck this going to be another interesting build to follow.

 

Chuck would you please show us how you paint your interiors so flawlessly.

Your instrument panels are always an eye catcher.

 

Cheers

Jason

 

Thanks Jason I will, but this will take time, probably lots of time.  This pandemic helped me finish my Harvard in record time with not much else to do when it was cold outside a few months ago.  However, during the summer months as I spend more time outdoors I tend to model much less, but the pandemic has me spending even less time modeling.  I am very fortunate to have a vacation home where I'm now spending most of my time hiding out to get away from it all, which has no modeling stuff at all.  I will finish this model, however, because I have never had a kit hit the "shelf of doom"- and never will.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Edited May 15, 2020 by chuck540z3

[alain11]

hi

I plan to build the Mk 2 , so I will follow yours with interest , .....At the first view, the instruction sheet looks very " confused " ( if I can say) , one have pay attention, to avoid any mistakes  

[Greif8]

Excellent work thus far Chuck.  Your re-scribing and riveting is fantastic; far beyond anything I can do.

 

Ernest

[oppenheimer]

Nice new project Chck, i never get bored with you work and photos of the step by step, always keep following your works, i hope this Special hobby kit will be better than the ones i tried to build, never finished one because of terrible fitting issues, looks like this one is better than the other ones, will keep looking on the progress of this one

 

Jorge

[ax365]

You're off to another brilliant start, Chuck.  I'll be checking in on occasion to see what progress you've made when not enjoying your summer 'down time'.  I guess it will be a bit different than our spring 'down time'.  Take care of yourself and enjoy the break free from isolation.  Got the roadster out yet?  The Mustang will be coming out on Monday, not that I really have anywhere to go.

 

Stay health and stay safe my friend.

 

Mike

[chuck540z3]

On 5/16/2020 at 9:19 AM, ax365 said:

You're off to another brilliant start, Chuck.  I'll be checking in on occasion to see what progress you've made when not enjoying your summer 'down time'.  I guess it will be a bit different than our spring 'down time'.  Take care of yourself and enjoy the break free from isolation.  Got the roadster out yet?  The Mustang will be coming out on Monday, not that I really have anywhere to go.

 

Stay health and stay safe my friend.

 

Mike

 

May 25/20

 

Hi Mike!

 

No, the Z-3 is still up on the hoist and my 540 under it is still sleeping under it's winter blanket.  With nowhere to really go like your Mustang, it's kind of a waste of time to drive them, but I will likely get them out sometime this summer to blow off the cobwebs and get the parts lubricated again.  FYI to others, this is where my screen name came from, when I used to really be into cars and frequented BMW forums a million years ago.  Those days are long gone and I'm just as happy to make model airplanes and drive our boring SUV instead.

 

Now back to modeling!  I've been home again for about a week and got a few more steps done.  As mentioned earlier in this thread, I will show every step, with Steps 1-4 shown already above, so lets go to Steps 5-12.  Before I do, I have discovered that every single part has a strong seam line to remove and although the resin parts are fairly nice, they are very difficult to cut off the casting blocks cleanly.  Further, the flash on the resin doesn't easily fall away, so you need to very careful to cut all of it off.  To determine what should stay and what should be cut away, the sprues thankfully have the original parts as a reference.

 

Step 5.  A fairly simple step with the seat back plate and rear cockpit wall.

 

 

 

 

The only real challenge was the removal of the seam lines on the two rods, I67 and I70.  I will not glue them together until they are painted.

 

 

 

 

Step 6.  A complex contraption that is under the cockpit seat and pedals.

 

 

 

 

This was also full of seam marks that were hard to remove, but I wonder if I will ever see it again once everything is glued on top as shown in Step 12.  I left the tank off for ease of painting and wasn’t sure whether the seam line where H28 and H29 join should be there or not, so I removed it, just in case.

 

 

 

 

Step 7.  The front pedals, which are nicely detailed resin that replace parts H14, but are very hard to clean up smoothly.  Also, part I20 should have a hole drilled into the back of it to add strength when it is glued to part I8.

 

 

 

 

 

Step 8.  Lots of seam lines on part I72, but if you check out the original floor parts H6 and H46, the resin replacements PUR 12 and 13 are a big improvement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 9.   This turned out to be a real head scratcher.  While the Mk III circular gunsight (PUR 10) is easy enough to figure out how it attaches to the gunsight 4-arm brace PUR 9, how the heck does the Mk II gyro gun sight PUR 11 attach to it, or anything else for that matter?  My subject is a late model Tempest that only saw action late in the war, so it likely has this updated sight. 

 

 

 

 

I looked all over the ‘net and couldn’t find one in a Tempest of any description, but I did find this from Eduard for a Tempest Mk VI cockpit set. It would appear that it is attached somehow without the 4-arm brace.  So I’m going to skip this step until Step 40, when the windscreen is attached, to make sure the photo-etch parts on the top of the sight don’t interfere with windscreen glass.  If anybody has a pic of this gunsight in a real Tempest, I'd sure like to see it!

 

 

 

 

Step 10.  This step is more complex with many finely detailed parts, most of which are resin and photo-etch.  Resin ring PUR14 replaces 3 kit versions (I3, I4, I5), but the central flash within the ring was hard to remove cleanly.  This is a direct replacement for part I5, which I used as a reference when trimming the resin.

 

 

 

 

I modified the two rods that the instructions call for wire, since the attachments are very fine and weak and wire isn’t usually very straight.  I cut off the bottom attachments, then used a #80 drill bit and drilled a hole in the bottom.  Using 2 more drill bits cut to length, I slipped them through the bottom up to the top attachment points and glued them into place.  With the base of each rod firmly secured, the top attachment doesn’t have to be all that strong.

 

 

 

 

I will attach PE 11 after painting, since it should be metallic color anyway and doesn’t need painting.

 

 

 

 

I then glued the control stick assembly to the base created in Step 8, with the foot pedals from Step 7 just dry fit for ease of painting later.

 

 

 

 

 

Step 11.   Fairly easy and straight forward, but the face of the IP was a bit rough and the base of it had lots of seam lines to remove.

 

 

 

 

With careful micro-sanding, it turned out pretty good, with the compass part I21 left off for now.  However, I’m a bit nervous about using the kit instrument decals that come in 3 sheets in Step 16, so I may go with Airscale ones instead.  We’ll see. 

 

Note the top rectangular recess where there are no decals.  I think this is where I will be attaching the Mk II Gunsight!

 

 

 

Step 12.  Time to stop assembling cockpit parts and start painting and maybe add a few wires here and there.  One small omission is that the triangular part should have been labeled I27.

 

 

 

For my next update, I will likely have painted and detailed cockpit sub-assemblies from Steps 1 to 11, but I will be hiding out again for a few weeks, so this will take a while.  Thanks for your continued interest in this build.

 

 

Cheers,

Chuck

 

 

 

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by chuck540z3

[Chek]

1 hour ago, chuck540z3 said:

Step 9.   This turned out to be a real head scratcher.  While the Mk I circular gunsight (PUR 10) is easy enough to figure out how it attaches to the gunsight 4-arm brace PUR 9, how the heck does the Mk II gyro gun sight PUR 11 attach to it, or anything else for that matter?  My subject is a late model Tempest that only saw action late in the war, so it likely has this updated sight. 

 

 

 

 

I looked all over the ‘net and couldn’t find one in a Tempest of any description, but I did find this from Eduard for a Tempest Mk VI cockpit set. It would appear that it is attached somehow without the 4-arm brace.  So I’m going to skip this step until Step 40, when the windscreen is attached, to make sure the photo-etch parts on the top of the sight don’t interfere with windscreen glass.  If anybody has a pic of this gunsight in a real Tempest, I'd sure like to see it!

 

 

 

Chuck

 

 

 

 

 

It's not the ideal photo(s), but the top one shows the later gunsight mounted on what looks like a shelf affair.

The photo was captioned 'unrestored cockpit interior'.

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by Chek

[chuck540z3]

Thanks Chek!  It has to sit on something.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[MikeMaben]

That one is a MK I  like this one , but ...

 

Apparently MkVs used a Type 1 MkIII like this ...

 

 

 

Projected onto the windshield.

 

 

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by MikeMaben

[Chek]

1 hour ago, MikeMaben said:

 

 

 

Projected onto the windshield.

 

 

 

The top photo is the Ferranti Mk IID gyro reflector gunsight ( also built by Sperry as the K-14 for the USAAF)

The lower photo of the Mk III was indeed fitted to Tempests from Feb '44, but it wasn't a gyroscopic type.

 

Given the gyro was designed to automate (to an extent) lead aiming to a predicted point in space for a pilot I'd want to know how much choice there was as to type of gunsight fitted by pilots or squadrons. The Mk III type had a dual function for rocket firing as well as gunnery so perhaps ground attack and fighter squadrons had different preferences. Or perhaps all squadrons did all roles (I've only read one book on Tempests and that was decades ago).

Edited May 26, 2020 by Chek
layout

[chuck540z3]

Thanks guys!  A few questions/comments please:

 

-  The top pic with the Mk IID doesn't look like the Tempest Mk V- or at least the same IP as this kit.  It sure looks like a Spitfire to me, so what exactly is holding it up is still a bit of a mystery. 

 

-  The bottom Mk III is on all the pics I can find for the Tempest, so was obviously most common and I could use it all day long and likely be accurate.  The MkII is way more complex and interesting, so I want to use it instead.  However, if I mount it on the 4-arm brace supplied, even modified, it will be positioned way too high with the top reflector parts hitting the windscreen glass.  I need to do something else.

 

-  What is that pad for at the front of the Mk III with the strings holding it in place?  Some kind of head protection?

 

Thanks,

Chuck