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XF5U-1 Flying Pancake FINISHED


ericg

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After finishing the Mirage, I went and had a look through the few kits that I have started since I begun that kit and was looking for something to do. Nothing took my fancy as I just felt that for once I would like to start a new kit without the unfinished Mirage hanging over my head. I wanted something quick and easy to do but different all the same. I do have a CAC Sabre conversion waiting in line as my next Aussie build but am waiting on some parts to arrive. I also need a bit of a break from having to do major work to a model, so the Macchi is also on the sidelines for now.Thought I would break open the new Planet Models Flying pancake and give it a run. I spent today at home on reserve without getting called in, so I had quite a productive day

 

First up, the kit, all resin with white metal undercarriage, vac formed canopy and screen printed decals for the one marking option:

 

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The box is rather large for the kit, well packed.

 

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I made a start on the propeller hubs and boss mounts. I didn't mess around with this as there will be alot of weight swinging off the props so it was straight to the lathe where I faced off the back face of the hubs, center drilled the rear face of the spinner and then reamed a 3mm hole halfway into the solid resin. Push fit of some 3mm aluminium tubing for strength. I then did the same to the boss and inserted some larger tubing that was also a push fit into the boss. The whole assembly fits together very nicely and has almost no play at all but allows the props to move freely whilst giving it a very true spin.

 

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The front of the fuselage doesn't fit too well! I have since taped it together and poured almost boiling water over it which fixed the problem.

 

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Onto the intakes, and here is one area where it will be very difficult to get right if the instructions are followed. The round intake and the engine cooling fan/dome are supposed to be assembled as one and then glued into the fuselage. doing this will make it almost impossible to sort out the resulting join as there is not enough room to sand/fill/paint.

 

I have glued in the intake at the bottom, and have started sorting out the most visible seam. Once I am ready to close up the fuselage, I will join the top of the intake and then leave the back end of the kit open and exploit the flexibility of the resin to open it up and insert the cooling fan/dome from the rear.

 

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A test whether the above theory will work or not.....

 

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Edited by ericg
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I started hollowing out the kit exhausts to give them some depth, kit on the right, modified on the left

 

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Here is the instrument panel. The kit has very small holes for the instruments, and doesn't actually have any decals or detail to put in the holes. I like to use airscale decals, so I bashed up a new panel with instrument holes that will match the airscale decals.

 

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Stay tuned, this will hopefully be a quick one!

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Here is some more progress on the Flying Pancake, I am really enjoying this kit, not getting too hooked into going beserk and superdetailing it. 

 

As discussed previously, the biggest issue with the kit is how to get a nice smooth finish on the intakes considering there is no room around the radomes of each intake in which to work once they are glued into place. My theory of gluing the front part of the kit together and installling the intakes through the rear of the body once the intakes were smoothed and painted has worked very well.

 

Once the intakes are glued into position and the front half of the body glued, it was a very easy job to get them nice and smooth and then paint them without the radome in the way. I have used Gunze Midnight Blue, which is glossy straight from the Airbrush. 

 

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Here is the procedure which would make any Gynaecologist proud. I stabbed my knife into the resin radome/cooling fan assembly and held it in place whilst wicking gap filling superglue around the join. This method has provided a very stable and clean way of executing the task.

 

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And the result. Will make masking and painting the rest of the kit very easy.

 

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So the aircraft had wooden propellers which surprised me as I thought by such a late stage `46/`47 they would have been metal. I guess not being an `off the shelf' prop these may have been typical of a prototype. In this photo of the real one, you can make out the rather distinctive pattern of the woodgrain in each blade:

 


 

I decided to try the Uschi Van Der Rosten woodgrain decals. http://www.uschivdr.com/  These require a fair amount of persistance to apply and I think look quite good.

 

First, I painted the prop blade Tamiya Nato Brown, which I found was too dark to contrast the grain against the colour of the paint. I then lightened it considerably which seemed to get the effect I was after. The decal will tint the colour that you have chosen, so you have to think a step ahead. I applied them straight over the flat paint without any clear coat.

 

Here is the sheet that I used, with a blade that was painted straight Tamiya Nato Brown (as mentioned which was too dark)

 

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The sheet has sections of straight grain and swirly grain, of which I am cutting out sections of the straightest grain.

 

Here is a blade before and after the application, as you can see the decal darkens the blade.

 

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The finished product (although the decal setting solution wasn't quite dry hence the smear on the black cuff) it is quite a 3D effect when turned in the light and looks very convincing. Under a coat of clear and with a yellow prop tip they will look just right.

 

D9C3BFA6-C47C-4C96-851C-7F6AF4B42A9C_zps

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