Thunnus Posted February 15, 2021 Author Share Posted February 15, 2021 On 2/13/2021 at 1:37 AM, MikeMaben said: Imagine trying to stuff those 3 sheets of paper into that bubble pack. I was merely irritated by it, not angry. On 2/14/2021 at 11:18 AM, chuck540z3 said: John, great show and I admire both your tenacity and guts when cutting something so important and fragile at the same time. One suggestion is to trim the interior of the Barracuda nose to make sure the radiator and other parts are dry fitted, before trimming it further for the engine. It's not a lot of trimming, but it needs some here and there and you don't want to remove stuff required to hold these parts in place. Cheers, Chuck Thanks for the tip, Chuck! I'll make sure I sort the fit of the radiator assembly before I start trimming for the engine. As for the location of the casting block... I'm personally not bothered by it. It was a rather easy removal and in some ways, I would rather have it there than on the join end, where it HAS to mate up nicely with the kit fuselage. That's just me and I understand the other viewpoint of having to avoid damaging the nose and chin intake. After completing the rear engine of the D-13, I jumped back to this one to clean up the engraving on the resin nose. With the top half cut off, the work is reduced but it was still painstaking work under the magnifiers, one rivet at a time. Derek B, D.B. Andrus, F-4Phanwell and 22 others 25 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scale32 Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 That looks excellent John. Looks like it lines up pretty well. Cheers Bevan Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunnus Posted February 16, 2021 Author Share Posted February 16, 2021 6 hours ago, Scale32 said: That looks excellent John. Looks like it lines up pretty well. Cheers Bevan Thank you Bevan! But there is still ALOT of work to be done that will make this connection less positive. That solid section at the front of the fuselage needs to be cut away to make room for the back of the engine so that will reduce the contact area. But I'm still holding off on that particular task for now. Upon Chuck's recommendation, whose build is serving as a second set of instructions for this build, I decided to make sure that the intake stuff fits into the big chin opening before messing with the resin engine above. The intake assembly is comprised of a front radiator face and rear radiator face. I could get the rear radiator in place without any adjustments whatsover, which was a big relief. But the front radiator was too large to fit into place without trimming. This makes sense since the Barracuda intake opening is smaller than the kit intake. I trimmed both the inside of the Barracuda cowling and the outside of the front radiator piece to make it fit. The roof of the radiator exit had some molding defects so a cleanup was necessary. I also treated the rivets and panel lines at this time. Radiator assembly looks good for now. scvrobeson, Hartmann52, Scale32 and 20 others 23 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Excellent work, John! Kev Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuck540z3 Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 John, Man are you fast! Two more tips if I may: Buy the Barracuda radiator ring, BR32141, which is much nicer than the kit offering. Don't glue Part E1 to radiator ramp Part E18, until you have attached the nose to the fuselage. You need access to the rear when gluing the two assemblies together and E1 blocks that access, as I found out the hard way. Cheers, Chuck Uncarina, Thunnus, Greg W and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunnus Posted February 16, 2021 Author Share Posted February 16, 2021 9 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said: Excellent work, John! Kev Thank you Kevin! 2 hours ago, chuck540z3 said: John, Man are you fast! Two more tips if I may: Buy the Barracuda radiator ring, BR32141, which is much nicer than the kit offering. Don't glue Part E1 to radiator ramp Part E18, until you have attached the nose to the fuselage. You need access to the rear when gluing the two assemblies together and E1 blocks that access, as I found out the hard way. Cheers, Chuck Thanks Chuck! Appreciate the guidance, as always! As you did, I found fit issues between E1 and E18 as well as between E1 and the resin cowling so more work will need to be done when it comes to gluing time. But will definitely heed your advices on order of attachment. As far as the radiator ring goes, I've chosen to use the kit part. I had the option of buying the Barracuda radiator ring when I bought the nose correction set but felt that the difference wasn't very significant, at least based on photos. I think the Barracuda intake was designed as a replacement for the PCM Tempest kit, which I can see is a worthwhile upgrade. The two-part design of the Special Hobby part allows for some refinement and I'll probably thin the edges a little bit but I think it looks ok. Derek B, scvrobeson, chuck540z3 and 3 others 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunnus Posted February 17, 2021 Author Share Posted February 17, 2021 The cockpit of the Tempest has six flare holders and a holder for the flare gun as well. And I have this leftover flare gun from my Tamiya Corsair built that I left off. So... why not right? I'm surprised that more builds have not incorporated a flare gun and some flare cartridges. I chopped off the body of the gun and glued on a piece of brass tubing for the barrel. I also cut two pieces from smaller diameter brass tube for a couple of flare cartridges. Before doing anything with the resin engine, I thought I'd check the fit of the spinner. There are some casting irregularities that need to be smoothed out. One of the prop blade openings has a disfigured opening. Both flaws were easily corrected as excess material is always easier to deal with than lack thereof, as we shall see. Mounting the spinner onto the backplate revealed a problem... the spinner is too small and there is a noticeable step between the two. In this view, you can see both step on both the top and bottom edges just to rule out the chance that the unglued spinner was not centered on the backplate. Mounted on the resin nose, you can see the issue. Don't mind the step between the fuselage and backplate... that was probably caused by a slightly mis-centered hole. But the undersized spinner is definitely noticeable and distracting. For comparison, here are how the kit parts go together. It may be inaccurate but at least the parts fit with one another. The engine is only held in place with tape but you can see that the fit between the nose, the spinner, the backplate AND the resin engine is pretty good. Not sure what to do at this point but unless I find a way around the under-sized spinner issue, I will forgo the resin nose and stick with the kit parts. Chek, Seversky, LSP_Kevin and 7 others 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scale32 Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 I'm sure you already checked but can you use the kit spinner with the resin nose? Cheers Bevan Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenshb Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 The problem with the kit spinner is that it is too blunt - compare the images of the two spinners. The Barracuda spinner is what it's supposed to look like (apart from the slight out of roundness). Annoying though it is, you can add some epoxy putty to where it doesn't match the circumference of the backplate and sand smooth. If there is any added thickness around the cutouts for the propeller blades, you can remove material from the inside or chamfer the edges to make the edge thickness consistent. Given that the real thing would be sheet metal, I'd think that would be a sensible thing to do anyway. Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek B Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 How thick is the wall thickness of the kit spinner John? Perhaps you can add a thin layer of epoxy putty to the inside forward of the kit spinner, then chuck it and sand it to match the resin shape and correct base plate diameter? Regards Derek Thunnus and Uncarina 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncarina Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 Something I’ve thought about before as a workaround is to stick with the kit nose, add a ring of epoxy putty to the interior of the intake, then sand to everything to match the shape of the Barracuda nose. Cheers, Tom Thunnus and Derek B 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bdthoresen Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 John- You could, as a last resort, try soaking the spinner in really hot water for 30 to 45 seconds, and set it over a conical shaped object (I used an old model rocket nose cap I had lying around that I had trimmed the tip off of to just under the diameter of the backplate!) apply some downward pressure, and shock cool it in some cold water to lock in the shape. If the spinner is thin enough, it should allow the bottom edge to “blouse” out a bit, matching you backplate diameter.....worth a shot..... Great work otherwise! THOR scvrobeson, Thunnus, Derek B and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek B Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 Just now, bdthoresen said: John- You could, as a last resort, try soaking the spinner in really hot water for 30 to 45 seconds, and set it over a conical shaped object (I used an old model rocket nose cap I had lying around that I had trimmed the tip off of to just under the diameter of the backplate!) apply some downward pressure, and shock cool it in some cold water to lock in the shape. If the spinner is thin enough, it should allow the bottom edge to “blouse” out a bit, matching you backplate diameter.....worth a shot..... Great work otherwise! THOR Good method THOR! Derek Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scvrobeson Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 I agree with Thor, might be worth seeing if you can expand the resin spinner a bit to meet the baseplate, especially since it appears to be more on one side. Matt Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunnus Posted February 17, 2021 Author Share Posted February 17, 2021 Lots of great suggestions! I've written to Roy at Barracuda with photos and measurements of the spinner and backplate to see if a replacement spinner could resolve the issue. Referring at Chuck's build, it looked like his spinner matched the backplate pretty well. I've also started to try and re-shape the kit nose. Uncarina and Derek B 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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