Westland Lysander Mk. III SD Matchbox-Revell 1/32

[MikeMaben]

[mc65]

thank you all!

 

here I am ... I am not dead, even if -modelistically speaking- I came close!

I have laid all the holy rivets. from a rough estimate and by deficiency these are no less than 3200. plus any inevitable corrections here and there. phew.

 

here during the installation of the aluminum strips. was it worth it? big BOH. we'll find out when painting is finished, I guess.

in the meantime I have reproduced the ventral tank's gas caps, a half fancy thing at the end (I was inspired by some Boeing caps).

 

and eventually I started playing with colors that should be definitive, starting with underneath surfaces.

 

I already understood that I will be a nice mess, this all black ...

 

and that's all, for the moment. next session, insignia, I hope.

cheers, Paolo

Edited February 4, 2022 by mc65

[Jaro]

The tanks gas caps are awesome!

[Phantom2]

An incredible build! 

 

Stefan 

[mgbooyv8]

Impressive, Paolo!!!

 

Cheers,

 

Peter

[mc65]

thank, pals!

now I'm entering an area in wich usually I very often make big mess, crossed fingers!

 

I got in a good mood trying to tackle the insignia discourse, coming to the conclusion that I had to ask for help, at least as far as nose art is concerned.
so I called my friend from the train modeling dept who has already got me out of troubles in a number of occasions (thanks Danilo!) and I begged him on my knees over chickpeas to resolve the question, which he said -in his infinite availability- willing to do.
then while we were on the subject of self-produced decals, we also set up the "W/T" stencils, of which these blessed English planes were sprinkled, and the serial number.

 

so I was left with the easy part: squadron and individual letters, and roundels.
a few half hours of apnea, and here we are.
I decided to rivet the vertical stabilizer after painting it, we'll see if it was a good idea.

 

following the instructions of britmodeler's cousins, I added a part of hull red to the pure red. they say 25%, I think I put even less, yet the result was this, compared to an original Matchbox decal from 1978. contemporary Revell is best ignored.

 

 

so i tried to adjust it, but without great results. after a certain number of attempts with the red, I got bored and I also sprayed the blue, in anticipation of the possibility of having to do it all over again.
this too has been tamed with a hint of black, but remains quite psychedelic.

 

aaaaaaand....

it is very far from being good, between a thousand thousand touches to be done and the blue to be sedated, but I would have decided to like it.

 

since I had the airbrush loaded, I gave some red (pure) to the fuel caps and made a few scratches in the area.

 

as usual, you will not see anything of these.

 

so I just have to wait for the autarchic decals, and in the meantime start thinking about the upper camo and the strategy to put together fuselage, legs and wing. where is the emoji with the fingers crossed?

 

cheers, Paolo

[mc65]

hi all, little upgrading downgrading on this wip:

what has happened in the mc-workshop since the last session, let's see ... I started thinking with the colors of the camo. to do this, I drew the demarcation lines starting from the only documented side of MA ° J and from various historical photos of other aircrafts. a little iguess work, in short. on this occasion I discovered that I had done a not-so-good-choice of mine, gluing the wings to the central support.

 

apart from the XXL dimensions of the complex, very uncomfortable to handle, I bitterly discovered how much the aforementioned support is made of transparent plastic (of dubious quality, moreover).

it was extremely fragile, up to breaking three times. the first two I reinforced it with segments of guitar string inserted in grooves painstakingly excavated in the material, the third I gave up and I shaved everything to zero.

 

also because, let's face it, that structure was made with circular section tubes, not square as proposed by the kit. here a test, not definitive, of two steel spars lined with aluminum tube for the front and heat-shrink sheath for the rear.

 

but I'm still thinking about it.

meanwhile the different dimensions and therefore the height between the two forced me to intervene on the fuselage structure already installed and painted, a nightmare.

 

then I'm thinking that for greater bonding strength I will use two-component glue for the steel part which will support the (considerable) weight of the wing and flex-i-file for the visible part, if I can coat the steel with pipes of adequate size styrene.

 

you may think that in the face of so much breaking of structures and nerves, I will have reassured myself with some relaxing and satisfying work...

of course: painting the cockades on the wing, I discovered how much the paint does not stick at all to the aluminum strips.

 

a trifle is enough to bring them back to virgin. okay, for the upper wing I will use the decals, I get it. and to delimit the camo? let's try with the patafix? here it is. we assume that there are a few tolerable retouches... the fact remains that the trend of the colors does not satisfy me at all.

to be retouched soon.

 

ditto on the other surfaces, where at least there are no - or limited - aluminum strips.

 

the idea was to make the edges almost clear, with curves compatible with each other ... not always (almost never, in fact) I have succeeded.

 

and then in the next few days retouching, I imagine with cardboard templates point by point, and reconstruction in various sessions of gluing the central support of the wing.

 

as if that were not enough I smashed the display of the smartphone with which I take the pictures, and having replaced it with a non-original one, I do not see the colors of the images correctly until I transfer them to the computer, with obvious consequences on the already poor quality of my photos.

 

Oh well.

I-can-do.

probably.

 

cheers, Paolo

[MikeMaben]

Doesn't look so bad from here Paolo  

Keep on keepin' on 

[dodgem37]

Great work.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[themongoose]

Looks like its all coming together as your pictures progressed through the story 

[mc65]

thank you all... too kind!

Mike, actually I think that from there doesn't look so bad, because we are pretty distant from each other!

 

well, I'm going around the gluing of the wing like a shark around a 200l barrel... in the sense that I know that I'll break my teeth and I'll not get anything good, but I am going to give it a bite.

truly, there are still a lot of little things to fix, before taking this decisive step. eg some retouches on painting. I tried to make the curves less sharp and more harmonious.

 

maybe isn't so evident, but I changed these in several spots.

 

 

also, the rivets on the stabilizer. in positive or in negative? the initial idea was to emboss them using resin decals, then I waited for them to arrive, then they were the wrong ones and wait for the right ones, then I thought it was better to place them after painting, to avoid tearing them off with adhesive tape... in the end I have them negative after painting. luckily I had given an alu coat on all metal surfaces, so that riveting this is flawed out with a pleasant effect, IMHO.

 

again to avoid painful tearing with the tape, I decided to put the decals on the wing. I used the "recent" ones from Revell, while also having the original Matchbox ones. well. it may be the age, it may be the quality, but I struggled a lot. as you can see, the red circle overhangs the blue creating an horrendous halo. then to make them adhere to the surface, even if on a Mr. super clear base, I spent two days and a Super Sol bottle.

 

now we're here. and I still have to correct the halo.

 

in parallel I placed the spats. here too nothing goes in its place in the grace of god... in the end I opted for the use of bicomponent glue, doing a whole heap of masks to avoid glue spots everywhere.

 

and here it is with its wheels installed temporarily. these must be filed in the right place to emulate the weight effect, and I also have to remove a couple of coils from the tail wheel spring, it seems to me too high, like that.

 

what else is missing... the seat! it must necessarily be placed before the wing, the shoulder straps pass over a horizontal tube that will end up under the main spar.

here it's with HGW belts installed. a couple of hours of work, but I find these spectacular.

 

et voila in place. I also fixed the wires that have been between my eyes so far: two go to the fuel tank, two more will go to the map lights to illuminate the instrument panel.

 

and viewed from the opposite side. here you can also guess how the front spar will be placed on the fuselage structure... I foresee a tragedy.

 

and while I was in the area, I also placed the cloche.

 

now I just have to mess around with the oils, and then I guess I have to bite into this stinking barrel...

cheers, Paolo

 

 

 

Edited February 22, 2022 by mc65

[Iain]

Brilliant work! 

 

Iain

[KiwiZac]

Fantastic progress, Paolo!

[mc65]

hi all, thank you for the encouragement!

 

as expected, I had some troubles gnawing this part of the building, and if before I was doubtful of ending in terms of this group building, now I am sure not to make it.

 

therefore, what happened in the mc-workshops in the last few days... first, I had to divide the work into several two-component gluing sessions, which - given the drying times - forced a slowdown in the work. after the first step in which I glued the landing gear to the fuselage, I made the central spars of the wing, a considerable problem, especially doing it now. had I planned it before assembling the wings, or at least before painting them, I would have struggled less.

Anyway. this is what I achieved: a steel core coated in aluminum for the visible parts, and in styrene for the parts embedded in the wings.

 

before gluing the spars within the wing, I retouched the roundels, you can still see the dark halo around the red, but it's already better. net of the adjustments still to be done, I must say that I'm satisfied with the yield of the reinforcements on the ribs.

 

to glue the wing straight, symmetrical and with the right dihedral, I have not found better than making a wooden template. 24 hours under torture and it came out as I wanted: straight and sturdy, finally.

 

the next step saw the struts glued to the wing. here too 24 hours waiting after having temporarily positioned the wing in its place.

 

to protect the cockpit in view of the next phase, the wing-fuselage bonding, I covered it with kitchen film, leaving windows only at the bonding points. if the trick has worked (especially if the glue has set as I hope) just cut it off to get the cockpit back without damage or glue smears.

 

and here we are. now it does its 24 hours in the warmth, and tomorrow we will see what has come out.

 

to try to align everything I once again had to resort to the wooden dock you see: while the two side walls give me a reference to level the wing, the blocks stopped with adhesive tape on the plane hold the orthogonal wing to the fuselage, while the central wooden block, pulled by two rubber bands in turn stretched by a second block under the belly, keeps the wing structure in positive contact with that of the fuselage. I must say that it is a gamble, more than a leap of faith: the wing-fuselage contact points are ridiculous, and I have had to rectify these several times. those of the uprights to the landing gear I feel worse: these are not well adherent and asymmetrical with respect to the legs of the LG, I plan to cover these in aluminum after adding reinforcing metal pins by drilling from the lower part of the spats.

 

in short, again, a nightmare.

let's hope so...

cheers, Paolo

[mc65]

hi all, 

a very quick updating, tonight I'm really tired, I need to go jump in the bed asap.

 

first of all, the bonding holds up, and it already seems to me a success. then it also looks straight, which doesn't hurt.

saving the surroundings of the gluing points with the kitchen film was definitely a good idea: in that intertwining of parts I would never have been able to intervene later. taking it off was a breeze: once the adhesive tape anchors were gently removed from the fuselage, it was enough for me to gently pull it out of cockpit structure. in a couple of places it was touched by the glue, but with a blade 11 and a pair of tweezers I removed any residue, I think.

 

the worst is on the coupling uprights-landing gear: both uprights do not reach the legs of the LG except with the reference pin, one of the two in particular remains detached by at least a couple of mm. so I carefully drilled two holes from under the legs, and inserted a pin.

 

this reassures me a little about the strength of the coupling, obviously the whole area has been generously filled with two-component glue.

 

but this is not enough to decently fill the gap that has been created between the parts, so after letting the glue dry, I plastered it with magic sculpt.

 

now I just have to wait for the latter to dry and then I can sand and touch up with paints.

 

and now in the cot!

cheers, Paolo.

 

PS obviously I have overstepped the terms of this group building. I ask please to move this build to the work in progress section. TIA!