- Thread starter
- #101
Crimea_River
Marshal
Time for more assembly and this time we'll start with the fuselage halves coming together. As mentioned earlier, despite the wonderful fit of this kit, I did get a visible seam on the engine cowling that I had to attend to but it was small enough to just need a bit of surface primer. After sanding that back, I attached the small closure piece at the nose, G30, seen in the instructions below:
In my opinion, this is a bit of an odd piece and I don't understand Tamiya's reasoning here. Yes, there is an actual very thin panel line on the real aircraft at the rear edge of that piece but there's already a seam going down most of the upper cowl anyway. So why not make the entire cowl a seamless piece and use the larger panel line between the cowl fasteners and the raised fuel tank armour as the closure seam? As it turned out, because I sanded down the cowl seam ever so slightly, there was now a slight step up to part G30 that I had to deal with as so I filled this with primer again:
After sanding and polishing:
And now I have to rescribe that very thin panel line. Dumb.
Anyway, next up are the exhausts which are really nicely done, though quite finicky and not for the faint of heart as you'll see. The parts are attached to the sprue in a thoughtful location in that the tiny, separate fish tail parts glue over the attachment points and hide them. That's where the ingenuity stops though as Tamiya has chosen to make some intricate attachment details for these tiny parts so that you can't mix them up. The trouble is, it's almost impossible to perserve the details when removing the attachment points. Looking closely at the below pic before the attachment points are filed away, you can see that there's actually a step on both surfaces and a knob on the other. Pretty high expectations here. Note also that the moulded-in aft exhaust stub is solid and could stand drilling out.
This is after filing away the sprue gate remnants:
And then it's a matter of snipping off the tiny fish tails and gluing them in place without losing them. For these, I decided to take it to another level and file a crescent into the exhaust end. I stuck the piece onto masking tape and used a tiny jeweller's file for this. Those are millimeters on the ruler and you can see the exhaust end of the part peeking out of the tape.
I managed to keep all 4 pieces from flitting off into the ether and got them on without too much drama but, MAN, this is fiddley sh!t.
Once the exhausts are glued in, we are directed to the rear of the model to assemble the tail feathers. The horizontal stab comes as a complete upper half comprising both stabs with separate lower halves. The advantage here is that there's no fussing with trying to make sure the stabs are in line with each other and perpendicular to the fin. The disadvantage, for folks like me who like to deflect the control surfaces, is that the elevators are moulded in solid, which I hate. I wanted to have the elevators pointing down slightly so I cut through the horn balance line and scored the hinged edge and pushed them down.
The fit of this assembly is truly remarkable with the whole assembly easily sliding into place:
The fit is so good that it's hard to find a place t get the extra thin cement in. It's also very solid and at exactly the right angle.
Next, Tamiya asks you to glue in a small piece of folded PE to close in the elevator torque tube (done) and then attach the rudder. As you can see below, the rudder has a very fine aerial wire post moulded to it which is almost guaranteed to be broken off so I am electing to attach the rudder much later.
In my opinion, this is a bit of an odd piece and I don't understand Tamiya's reasoning here. Yes, there is an actual very thin panel line on the real aircraft at the rear edge of that piece but there's already a seam going down most of the upper cowl anyway. So why not make the entire cowl a seamless piece and use the larger panel line between the cowl fasteners and the raised fuel tank armour as the closure seam? As it turned out, because I sanded down the cowl seam ever so slightly, there was now a slight step up to part G30 that I had to deal with as so I filled this with primer again:
After sanding and polishing:
And now I have to rescribe that very thin panel line. Dumb.
Anyway, next up are the exhausts which are really nicely done, though quite finicky and not for the faint of heart as you'll see. The parts are attached to the sprue in a thoughtful location in that the tiny, separate fish tail parts glue over the attachment points and hide them. That's where the ingenuity stops though as Tamiya has chosen to make some intricate attachment details for these tiny parts so that you can't mix them up. The trouble is, it's almost impossible to perserve the details when removing the attachment points. Looking closely at the below pic before the attachment points are filed away, you can see that there's actually a step on both surfaces and a knob on the other. Pretty high expectations here. Note also that the moulded-in aft exhaust stub is solid and could stand drilling out.
This is after filing away the sprue gate remnants:
And then it's a matter of snipping off the tiny fish tails and gluing them in place without losing them. For these, I decided to take it to another level and file a crescent into the exhaust end. I stuck the piece onto masking tape and used a tiny jeweller's file for this. Those are millimeters on the ruler and you can see the exhaust end of the part peeking out of the tape.
I managed to keep all 4 pieces from flitting off into the ether and got them on without too much drama but, MAN, this is fiddley sh!t.
Once the exhausts are glued in, we are directed to the rear of the model to assemble the tail feathers. The horizontal stab comes as a complete upper half comprising both stabs with separate lower halves. The advantage here is that there's no fussing with trying to make sure the stabs are in line with each other and perpendicular to the fin. The disadvantage, for folks like me who like to deflect the control surfaces, is that the elevators are moulded in solid, which I hate. I wanted to have the elevators pointing down slightly so I cut through the horn balance line and scored the hinged edge and pushed them down.
The fit of this assembly is truly remarkable with the whole assembly easily sliding into place:
The fit is so good that it's hard to find a place t get the extra thin cement in. It's also very solid and at exactly the right angle.
Next, Tamiya asks you to glue in a small piece of folded PE to close in the elevator torque tube (done) and then attach the rudder. As you can see below, the rudder has a very fine aerial wire post moulded to it which is almost guaranteed to be broken off so I am electing to attach the rudder much later.
