Carried this back from my previous trip to Shanghai. Rare find for me in Singapore. There is less than 2 other kits of this version in the whole country. I am itching all over not to work on this. Since the Stuka is giving me a headache on bad kit, I decided to jump head long on this one.
First is to make the counter mass, I put metalised rocks I bought in a very large hobby shop in Aachen Germany 2 years ago. I put in 1/3, super glued the mixture with one tube of 3M single dose, Catalyst dosed, Then added another 1/3, did the same. Finally, top it up and pour in white glue and stirred in till all bubbles are removed and set into the sun for drying for 2 hours. This forms a 200g nose cone counter weight. Before I pour in anything, I seal off the nose pitot tube provision hole with masking tape. Position it vertically with Blue Tack.
The nozzles were sprayed with black and white lines and drybrushed with white to accentuate the alumina ceramic tiles.
The goal is to mimic this look which is taken from the nozzle end of the engine.
Engine rear end view. Quite happy with the way it turn out. However, my night mare is about to begin.
Night Mare Number One - Millions of ejection marks all over visible areas. This includes the insides of intakes, on the top of fuselage, intake areas, bottom of fuselage.
Engine intake compressor is ok, metalized and happy with the look and feel of it after putting in the Tamiya brown wash.
Nightmare Number 2, the fit is shit. I was told this is a very old tech mould in the formative years of Trumpeter, a big throwback from the present market leading standards. What a shame. Lots of fit is due to the main fuselage part being warped due to bad fit assembly strategy. The gaps formed by the rear 3/4 of the bottom fuselage could have been integrated to the main to form a single pc to increase rigidity. The filling in caused the saw tooth panel lines to be totally wiped out. No choice as the disparity of the left and right is more than 0.7mm. A shame.
Same trouble along the full length of the intake housing. I filled these areas with back and forth sanding, refilling, repeating 3 times at least, till I get a smooth outcome. Liquid cement from Tamiya, half bottle with a complete tube of Tamiya Putty.
The intake parts are warped, so I tagged parts of it with CA glue and accelerated to force it into shape. Gaps needed to be filled, 4 times sanding and refilling to get it nice and smooth. Nightmare Number 3, the edges o the straight edges have flashy parts and warped and is very sharp, needed all to be sanded down.
The nightmare continues to the rear section of the fuselage where it meets the nozzles. The error is almost 1mm lopsided to the outside. Lots of putty and sanding with 320 grit sand paper!
Nightmare Number 4, the engines in, the nozzle and the intake area does not fit, it has gaps about 2mm in size. For this, I solved in by moving the intake deflector to full, so that it blocked the view internally to show only 1/2 the compressor, what a waste of effort to properly painting and weathering it! Crap!
Protection of the panel lines are done with masking tape. However, for the unavoidable, I chose simpler to re-scribe sections, a necessary evil, the lesser of the two, which ever applies.
Once the wheel wells are in, no matter how hard we clamp with G clamps, the warpage is so severe, we cannot have a flushed contact between the lower edge of the wheel wells and the fuselage, leaving large 0,5mm gaps. These needed to be stuffed with Tamiya 0.3mm plastic cards. Nightmare number 5, the Kevlar balloons are moulded in soft nylon type of plastic. Fit is like the 1970s Airfix models. The amount of putty in the picture above is self explanatory.
After sanding. Quite smooth after 4 rounds of hard work.
Once the gaps are stuffed, white vallejo paints are used to fill in the gaps and Tamiya washed are used to weather the gaps that have been filled with white paint to tone it to match the remaining rest of the wheelwell.
After toning and filling with Vallejo white! Glaze all over to tone up the area to match the rest of the wheelwell.
The gaps in the underside of the intakes and the fuselage is mismatched by almost 0.5mm to the portside of the bodyworks, so, both sides needed to be patched and built up with putty, sanded down 3 rounds and rescribed! Crap, double and triple crap!
The insides of the intake frames needed to be filled as the gaps are quite visible. There is mismatch of the top from the bottom that needed 1mm to be sanded down and the gap filled up on the other side with putty! The flash on the intake edges needed to be smoothen.
Nightmare Number 20,489! My God, the nozzle bosses is offset! By almost 0.7mm! Look at the left end of this photo and you realize the mistake. I spent 4 days just filling it up and sanding it down, refilling, curing, sanding, refilling etc. About 5 rounds. There is also the MacDonald's arches from the mismatch between the rear 3/4 panel to the warped fuselage main body needed filling and sanding. Looks like another 5 days of crap! I should have continued with the STUKA! Between the two, this is 10 times worst than the STUKA from Hasegawa. Life is too short for regrets, so, I decided to soldier on.
Tail planes being filled and sanded. Top Photo shows also the side nozzle roots being filled and sanded down to match the lopsided shape.
Tail plane roots being sanded to remove ejection marks and putty. Its a shame that some of the details are lost. However, since it black in colour for Jolly Rogers, its a comforting thought.
The gaps in the wheelwell innards being stuffed with 0.3mm plastic cards and putty!
Injection mould marks on the top of the fuselage! SUPER CRAP! It had t be filled up 3 times and sanded down just the same to achieve a smooth surface! What a dodo man! CRAP!
Nozzle roots mismatches sanded smooth, but the part with the nozzle is another story on its own.
The duck tail where the chute and fuel dump outlet is locate is so warped that it needed a 2 inch size giant clamp to hold it in place while its CA glued. Then liquid cement is used to melt the other parts not glued so that there is insurance of a permanent joint!
What a place to find injection marks! Right on top next to the cockpit! Also, the bleeder vent is mismatched and needed a lot of sanding to just to get it to sit right into the slots provided. The vent is made rectangular but the hole is trapezoid, the mould designer forgotten about the offset angles!
Overall, I will rate this well packaged kit as tip top in marketing and packaging, fitting is close to the standard of the 1970s Shorts Stirling model from Airfix which I made so many years ago. Its crap, but anyway, since the project is started, I have to grit my teeth and hold on for dear life!