1:24 Airfix Hawker Typhoon Car Door Build

Sure is!
Wing construction continues...

The inner wing has a network of ribs and spars that interlock with each other with cross-lap joints. They really snap into place and shows some good engineering. The first group consists of three bulkheads: wing root, mid wing supporting landing gear lug and mid-wing end.



When I took this picture I didn't realize that the end ribs were reveresed. I'm not sure how I did that. I was attempting to be very careful with the part numbers and yet it was reversed. It is possible that it was an error in the instructions. Regardless, I caught it in time before all the glue had fully cured and was able to remove them and switch them.

The next parts with included a spar and rib subassembly required some clamping to get it nice and tight.



This piece nestled into the cross-laps of the existing parts. It was these cross-laps that showed my error. When I went to connect it to the outer rib, the cross-lap was on the bottom and unreachable. The part was upside down. To rectify this I had to remove both rib, R & L, and re-glue them in the proper location. No harm no foul. With this correction, the joints were made. I needed to add some clamping to ensure that the entire length was in contact with the lower skin. I also needed to ensure that ALL the ribs were nestled down completely. If not, the top wing skin gluing could be problematic.



The gun bays were covered in leather. It's told that it was to dampen the vibration when firing the 20mm cannons. It may also have reduced the chance for sparking. I don't know. If anyone knows, please comment. I mixed the leather color with Tamiya red brown, yellow and some more red. To apply the color to the bays required some masking.



After this dried I overcoated it with some clear gloss to provide a good base for further weathering. I wanted a surface that would not be damaged by the washes.



The gun bay frames are called out to be light yellow. I first painted them with flat aluminum, then applied some Microsol liquid mask to make some paint wear. After it was dry, I peeled the mask to expose some "bare metal".



All of this stuff will be nice and dry tomorrow. I have to paint the guns too. There are brass barrels available for this model, but with the shrouds you really don't see much of them; at least not enough to warrant the cost in this case. You are instructed to drill out the ends. I do that routinely anyway.

With all this interior framing, the wings will be very strong.

Very impressive

I was multi-tasking today, wrestling with my 3d printer and building the Typhoon. I got the gun bays almost finished. Finicky, but fun.

The framing fits in tightly and needed just a little shaving in its length to snap into place. I had inadvertantly installed the ribs that go down the center of the space BEFORE the framing, but luckily, glue wasn't set and I was able to pull them out, get the frames in a re-glue the ribs. I then gave it all a coat of AK Dark Gray wash. Also installed the framing for the flaps that went in easily and is stong.



The guns get hand-drilled out for the muzzle and did so using a 0.035" drill, which equates to the .9mm called out by the instructions. I airbrushed the guns on the sprue along with all the remaining flat aluminum painted pieces that I could identify since I didn't want to keep cleaning the airbrush. All the LG parts are this color except for a hydrualic accumluator tank which is black. When the top wing is on and the gun shrouds are in place, you will barely see any of the barrel. Even the muzzle will be buried behind the shrouding.

I went back and put another coat of the yellow on the ammo feeding drum, and then painted the black areas NATO Black. I went back and forth between black and yellow until I got it almost right. These parts are glued to the guns. According to Don at eModel.com, he said you needed to drill out the gun openings in the interior spar so the guns would fit. He was right. The guns themselves would fit, but there is a part glued on top of the barrel that prevents it from passing through. I drilled it with #25 drill held in a tap handle. I then glued the guns in place.



I painted the ammo in three steps. Brass first for the cartridges, brass mixed with clear red and yellow to make copper for the slugs, and then hand-painted the belting. I then went back and touched up, and finally added some panel line accenting.

I painted all of them, but then got only one ready to install before it was time to close up shop for the day. My wife has a rule. Work stops at five! No work on weekends or evenings! I stick by it and we get along fine.

I hate hand painting yellow. And the little ribs on the drums are not very distinct so it was a challenge to get it right.



Tomorrow the guns will be finished. There are some fuel tanks that go into the wings (although I don't know why since they're buried) and then the upper skin goes on. The model's getting heavy. There's a lot of plastic in it already.

Yep, take it from an ex long time brush painter, yellow sucks

Looks great so far!

The ceiling (roof) of the wheel wells has a lot of ribbing details, many of which are added pieces. Each piece is slightly different so you have to follow the numbers with some care. Their lugs fit tightly into the slots in the large plastic piece so you have to scrape the paint off and reduce their width a tiny amount so they fit in. I pressed a bit too hard on one piece and broke it. I just installed it as two pieces and it is not a problem. But it's funny... with the huge parts count in this kit and the number of relatively frail tubing runs, this waas the first piece that I broke. Some of the reviews complain about the softer plastic that Airfix uses, but in this case it's a benefit. The small parts give a lot before they break.



I'm holding off weathering the wheel wells until their pretty much finished up... pretty soon.

The roofs went in with little coaxing. I wanted to make sure that there were firmly down into their various tab slots. I needed to slightly taper the ribs so they would ease the roof into placce. Otherwise, I was having to push too hard to create enough clearance. After applying the cement I taped it all down until the glue set. In this picture you can also see the fully complete gun bays.



There are two fuel tanks in each wing: a central tank consisting of three parts, and a wing leading edge tank with two parts. The right hand leading edge tank seemed to fit too far forward. I thought the upper wing skin would fit around it, but it really didn't so I removed the tank and, using the 1" belt sander, removed some of the tank's girth. More about this later.

The lower outer wing is a separate piece, whereas the upper wing is a single piece. There is a strong spar and a compound lip at the last rib. The tips glued on very well without any clamping needed. There's a filler piece on the D version I'm building that replaces a landing light assembly on the other versions. Also, the ailerons attachment member was a separately added piece. This too went on well and has a huge gluing surface compared to its size and will do the job.



The tips fit nice and tight and I don't anticipate filling the seams that remain.



With the wing tips in place it was time to install the upper wing. It's a big piece with a very long gluing edge. Don at eModels.com, in his 10 part build video, said that it worked best to glue the leading edge first and let it cure thoroughly before attempting the glue down the rest. The wing fit it tight and it's very springy, so his method is the way to go. It was in attempting to glue the right wing leading edge that I found out that the pesky leading edge tank was impinging into the joint and no amount of pushing and shoving was moving it back. I pulled it out, ground off a lot of it (you'll never see the front of this tank... the back is somewhat visible through the main spar's truss work), and got enough clearance to get a reasonable joint. I used masking tape instead of clamps since the clamps kept sliding off the taper of the wing.



I hope the glue holds well because there will be some tension on it as I pull the back edges into postion. The leading edges will need some post-gluing finishing. I'm going to mask the rest of the leading edge so I don't remove too much of the lovely rivet details. It's not so much to close any gaps. It's more to remove a little "over bite". The plane's getting large and I had to remove a lot of the paint bottles that were occupying the workspace.

Does anyone know if the Typhoon's flaps were down or up when it was at rest. The Mustang's flaps droop when it's sitting on the ground.

Moving right along. I went through 8 Typhoon books and from prototype to end of war I could only find 5 photos of parked aircraft with the flaps down; two were during a maintenance photo shoot

Okay… so it looks like it's "Flaps Down". I didn't go for the Eduard PE set that would have made the flap details more refined.

Very late start today, but did get the upper wing fully glued and started addressing leading edge finishing.

With a bevy of clamps, I used Testor's tube cement applied with a dental spatula to the flap and aileron spar, and the wing tip.



After about 1 hour I pulled the clamps and everything was tight. I went back and added some solvent cement on some questionable areas, and the added more to the inter-wing areas like were the gun bays and wheel well ribs intersect with the skin. I added clamps to these places also.

After pulling the masking tape at the leading edge I did see some separation at the wing root. It was holding and strong, but there was a gap. I used Bondic to fill the gap, mainly because I can cure it so fast. I masked the area so the sanding wouldn't destroy too much of the leading edge detail. I used my MicroMark precision sander to quickly knock down the hardened resin and to remove the "over bite" where the lower wing extended out a bit from the upper wing. I had to be careful not to square off the leading edge with all the sanding.



I will go back and add a touch of Tamiya filler and do some restoration of the details. Here's the top wing without clamps or tape. It's quite solid. I've almost broken those guns sticking out about four times. Luckily, the Airfix plastic is pliable and didn't break or deform. I'll feel better when the gun shields are in place. If I had purchased the after-market brass ones, I would have broken them off from the receivers. Best that I did go that route.



While the wing was drying I started working on the fuselage side (that imfamouus Sprue M that was missing). First I cleaned up the sprue marks and then removed the front portions that will expose the radiator cooling system. There is a deep engraved line inside that helps you cut this correctly. I used the micro-saw to make the cuts. The vertical stabilizer is glued on as a separate piece. It has a broad gluing area, but I added a piece of styrene on the top edge to reinforce that especially if I have to fill that joint. There needs to be filling on those reinforcement plates at least. Those plates were added to later production Typhoons because the earlier models had the unfortunate habit of having their tails fall off. Makes it hard to control the airplane. The plates would be solid across their length so the joint isn't right.



There's some painting inside the fuselage; Nato Black in the cockpit area. I will do this tomorrow. Notice I already painted the inside of the tail wheel well using flat aluminum.

Good stuff.
Note that the black cockpits on the Typhoon only appeared with the later 'bubble top' version. The 'car door' type was finished in the standard Cockpit Grey Green, with the frame tubes in silver below the door bottom level.
Also, as Geo discovered, the flaps would normally be up when parked, unless being inspected / serviced.

With Terry.

Thank you for that very useful information. I just painted the black walls, and as you'll see, already glued one half of the fuselage into place, so color changing is no longer possible. But the flap information is very useful.

Today was a good day: I got a new cutting pad. MicroMark had a sale with them at half price. It will enhance my picture taking.



Spent quite a bit of time finishing up the leading edge. First some Tamiya putty and then re-scribing the panel lines and drill out the now-missing rivets. I attempted to keep them in line, but occassionally slipped. It's just for effect and to hide all the sanding work that had to be done to bring the leading edge to form. I used a dividers point to mark the location and lightly drilled them with a #80 drill in a pin vise.



Then I installed the gun shields. You glue in the bottom half first aligning two extensions with an unseen rib inside the wing. After it set up a tad, you glue the top half to the bottom and into the wing leading edge. You can see that the gun barrels are now completely hidden for their whole length and painting them was an exercise in painting practice, but nothing else. I'm glad the covers are on because they're much stronger than the naked barrels.



I masked the fuselage for the Nato Black, but the masking also was superfluous since the demarcation line between bare plastic and black paint will be invisible when the fuselage is glued in place.



It was a quick air brush job. There was a little overspray, but again, not visible.



There's a couple of parts sandwiched in the fuze for the tailwheel: the wheel well and the tailwheel strut. The strut had two plastic pins trapped in a hollow lug on each fuselage side. It fit tight and was keeping the fuze from closing tightly at the back.



I decided the plastic pin had to go. I replaced it with 1/16" brass. I drilled out the lugs to accept the slightly larger brass. I also shortened the pin slightly to make the fit better. I tested it and it worked as designed.



So it was time to start gluing the fuselage onto the front assembly. It glues at the wing fillet, a little bit at the firewall and an arc at the rear cockpit area bulkhead. It seemed like it would be a troublesome fit, but it wasn't. I cleaned the paint off the wall so it would hold glue better. I first used tube cement, but had to go back and add some solvent cement and got a good joint.



The wing root fit was surprisingly good. The tube cement leaked out a bit, but it should be no problem to clean it up.



I ended the session fitting the right fuze side when I ran out of time. I was also continuing my battle with my 3D printer. I got success today, but changed three variables and don't know for sure which one or combination solved the problems I was having. More experimentation is warranted.

Very nice

Lovely work so far!

Thanks guys! Glad you following along.

Ran into a minor problem today. After gluing up the right fuze side, filling the upper seam gaps and sanding them, and restoring the now-almost-removed rivet details, I attempted to install the belly pan. I was expecting this to just plop in. It didn't!

Something was drastically wrong. It overlapped the tail joint by a 1/16" and didn't sit down along the joint anywhere. I could not push it further forward.



The entire fuselage and wing assembly was for some reason sitting 1/16" farther back than it should for the belly pan to actually fit. I do not know how this error was created since everything was located to the main wing spars and lugs on the body frame. There was no way to move it forward upon assembly, even if I wanted to. My only redress was to work the pan until it fit.

In looking at the firewall I could see that the body was sitting farther back than it probably should. The wing couldn't move more forward as you can see how it nestles into the tubing at the rear engine mount. The fuselage itself wedges into the wing root fillet so tightly that it couldn't move more forward either. I don't know how this error appeared.



First thing was to cut the 1/16" off the back end of the belly pan. This got it to at least fit in the space. I then had to relieve various alignment lugs that were supposed to interlock with each other and were now interfering.



The gap at the tail was rather large so I chose to fill it with Bondic. There were other problems at the belly pan front caused by the same 1/16" rearward misalignment. The wing fillets didn't line up and, again, it was 1/16" too far back. At first I thought I would trim the fillet to force it to fit, but decided against it since it was eliminate the rivet detail. Here's how it looked before any work was done on it.



Not only did it not fit looking from the top, but it also didn't fit below. I chose to reform the entire fillet with Bondic. Here was the Bondic before sanding.



I filled the underneath with a could of strips of styrene which I then shaped to blend the fillet.



After reshaping and opening the rivets, the fix is passable and wil be okay after the flaps are in place and all the painting is done.



With this mess fixed a bit, I turned my attention back to the remaining joint. I applied tape very close to the joint edge so I could protect the raised rivet detail. It's one thing to re-drill the sunken rivets. It's an entirely another thing to rebuild raised rivets. I can be done, but I don't want to do it. You can you Archer rivet decals or apply tiny dots of resin, but either is a pain in the butt. The filler is drying overnight and will be finished tomorrow. This image really shows how Airfix created a beautiful stressed-skin look to the plane. It was a missing in model plane construction and this scale lets them pull it off.



Since I'm not using any of the nose cowling, I need to close up that unsightly gap in the firewall. A piece of 0.020 X 0.030" sytrene filled it nicely. I'll have to mask and paint it too. I also noticed, that my little aluminum airbrushing I did around the model put some fine overspray on the the painted parts. OH NO! It actually looks like weathering. I'm going to weather the engine a bit more anyway so it will be okay in the end... I hope.

What looks like a gap on the body over the firewall is actually filled.



I'll finish up the belly pan tomorrow. Next up is the tail surfaces. BTW: got some research from some folks that spoke to whether parked Typhoons had their flaps up or sagging a la P-51s. Verdict: Flaps up unless being inspected or repaired. I may have them up especially since that fillet area ain't so hot.

Nice build to follow.