A little brute force has sorted out the dihedral problem.


There, I can hardly tell it from the one in the museum.

I mixed up a batch of 5 minute epoxy to keep that huge chunk of resin firmly attahed to the fuselage. Everything's solidly attached now, and the first coat of putty sanded down. There's much more work to do, though.




A modeller of my acquaintence once remarked that while a half-finished vacuform kit impresses those modellers who fear them, a completed vacuform kit just looks like any other model

The decal windscreen idea didn't work because the pillars managed to place themselves at slightly different spacing than the decal was drawn. I had hoped to be able to cut out each decal window and drop it into place on the model. Those hopes having foundered on the shoals of reality, I placed masking tape over the holes and traced the window outlines with a sharp pencil. Then I stuck the tape to my piece of clear acetate and cut out each window seperately. It took several nerve-wracking sessions of cutting, trimming, fitting, and gluing, hoping not to drop the windows irretrievaby inside the model. Finally it's done.

It's hard to tell that there are actually windows in this picture.


See? They're there! The light reflects off them in this shot

The ragged edges should be hidden by the outlines in the decal cheatline. At least that's the theory I'm working on. It may still all go pear shaped.

More filling on the rest of the model. I used Bondo on the larger gaps and flooded the upper wing centre section-to-fuselage gap with a generous dollop of Mr Surfacer. Soon I'll be sanding. Again.

thats looking great jessie, cant wait to see it painted,i've not done any civil airliner stuff maybe this will tempt me.


my little update...
i've bunged some decals on,not the ones that came with the vac as those fell apart as soon as i started to look at them !!! let alone putting them in water!
the decal pile came to the rescue.

weathering, flat coat and canopy to come soon!

anyone else still out there apart from jessie and myself?

paul

My build is still just sat there. I don't get a much time as I'd like at the moment since we moved house earlier in the year.

I've also hit a bit of a wall as I always envisioned putting the intake and exhausts in this kit but I haven't worked out a way of getting the oval shape of the inlets to a round shape for the turbines yet

How about using paper tubes? Wrap paper around the fan and glue in to the lower wing half so the excess tube extends beyond the intake lip, then glue the upper wing half on, making sure not to squish folds into the paper. Apply a bit of superglue to blend everything in then trim off the excess. This should give you your oval intakes and round fans. I used this trick for the OKB Tu-104 although I'll gant that those intakes are far less oval than a Nimrod's.

I am finishing up some kits over on Armorama. I have not decided if I will fix the Venom tail boom or switch to another kit (like the Rareplane 1/72 P-43).

Hi Folks

Been busy finishing some other projects. progress on the Skyshark to date.

Assembling the components. A basic jig to keep everything in alignment prior to committing to glue. Graph paper and cardboard thingamejigs help here.


Lines drawn at strategic places help the eyeball get a feel for where the mating surfaces may send things out of whack. Everything is set from the fuselage centreline with perpendicuar lines for wing roots, wingtips etc.


Of course the most important point is that have the fin vertical, which can be quite an act at times. Still not quite right here.

Filling and sanding. A bit of effort required under the port wing root as the bottom of the fuselage isn't flat. Copiuos sanding meant I blew through the plastic, more filler, more sanding, more filler, more sanding...i think you get the picture.


All done, starting to look like a Skyshark now


To open the canopy requires the kit part to be split into three pieces. Not sure why Rareplanes did it this way as the carving was a challenge. The foggy appearance isn't a concern as this piece is solid


I told you I would make a hash of the spinners. After a couple of attempts to correct my errors the holes have now turned oval. Time to refill with milliput and have another crack. This time a friend has lent me his Dremil drill press. Hopefully that will hold things steady rather than holding onto battery drills by hand (Thanks John)


I decided to scratch built the tailwheel assembly as the kit part wasn't up to the task. This was my first attempt which I was pretty please with. (sorry about the poor photo). This has been biffed as it is too big being closer to 48th scale and another has been made. This time I had to build the wheel as well and again I was able to surprise myself with how well it turned out.


Work continues - onto painting soon

nice work brent


paul

mine's finished but i could do with a nice day to take the pix...no studio setup at the moment...

paul

As has been said previously, this thread is tremendously encouraging and helpful to the uninitiated. A tip of the hat to you all.
I am an observer this time, plenty of other irons in the fire, but I hope there will be a second Vac Attack campaign in the future. It so happens I have a Welsh models 1:144 C-130 tucked away in case the need arises.

ok, here we go...
i'm not really happy with the finish(the weatherings not very good) but this campaign was really to prove that i and others could make a vacform, so from that point of view were succeeding...






i'll be keeping a keen eye on the rest of the builds and hope to see them all finished by the end of the campaign.

paul

I've been going througn a seemingly endless round of fill, sand, prime, curse. Every time I think I've got rid of it, the upper seam cracks open yet again. I'm probably going to have to run a bead of superglue down the entire upper fuselage and then file it down before it gets too hardened. I hope I don't make things worse by doing it. It looks as though I should have run tabs down the entire join rather than the few that I used.

A little more progress. I've finally got the seams to behave and stop cracking open. Now the first undercoat of flat white is on and the Comet is looking like an airliner at last.

Now I have some gloss on, and an oopsie.


I have to spray outside on the deck right now, and a gust of wind blew in a couple of raindrops at exactly the wrong moment. I'll have to buff them out once the paint is fully cured.

Looking Good Jessie I've lost count of the amount of times that has happened to me, but that's just our typical British weather.

I unfortunately won't have time to finish the Nimrod so I'm going to pull out of the campaign. This will become one of the Hangar Queens for next year though (Along with the other 3 I have planed)

for all of those still going in this campaign....less than a month to go !

lookin good jessie, the water thing has happened so many times with me...

all the best

paul

More progress. It'll soon be time for decals

During the time the site was down I got the decals on. The windscreen outline didn't fit very well (as I had feared). I think that the artwork didn't match the moulded windscreen pillars. I should have cut it out of the decal and used paint instead.




I cleaned it all up with a little custom mixed blue, a fine paintbrush and a steady hand. At the same time I painted the edges of the window cutouts.




Now I have to clean up that sliver of white below the cheatlines at the nose. I didn't get the curve exactly correct when I masked.

that is sweet.
the custom mixing of paint I can do, and the fine brushes I have, but where can I get a steady hand like the one you have?

Staying away from coffee helps

I've fixed the white problem by placing a sliver of silver trim film overtop. I soaked on the Solvaset and let it go to work.



Then I got out my bottle of Krystal Clear and my high-tech applicator tool.



Filled up the windows



And waited a while. Voilà! Crystal clear windows!



The end of this build is in sight. All that remains is the landing gear.

It's finished!

excellent jessie, i really really like that

paul

Nice one Jessie, looking real good.

Still progressing with the Skyshark but having trouble with paint drying at the moment. Time to break out the lacquer thinner to beat it into submission. We're fast running out of time and i'm starting to get nervous. Will post some progress shots once I get the proper paint cover.

Cheers

Brent C

I don't think I'll make it. I'm pressed to finish my build for the "Total Tamiya" campaign. Thanks to this campaign I did take that first step into the world of vacform kits so they are not as daunting as they used to be.