GusMac

Nice bit of trivia. He was one of the great British eccentrics. I did dig out The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse for a listen last night after seeing his name. Hadn't listened to it in years and it was a nice shock - Urban Spaceman and Can Blue Men Sing the Whites still make me laugh

Wow, loads of brilliant builds. Love the Jackie Stewart and Kenny Roberts ones especially.

Looking great Peter. It is such a joy to build, as close to trouble free as I've experienced in a long time.

Why did I expect anything by Bob Calvert and Viv Stanshall to be anything other than bloody weird.......

Yes, she's getting fairly weighty now, will save me doing some of my weight training with the missus. Given the length she's going to be, I've been pondering your method with the Lightning and contemplating doing at least some of the basic painting before I add the nose section. It'll be a very tight fit in the paint booth either way.

Well, it hasn't been drinking a well known energy drink BUT it has got wings! Sorry, that joke probably only works if you get the same annoying RB adverts as we do in the UK. Anyway, after a lot of trimming, scraping and swearing I got the wings to a point where the gaps were as small as I was going to get so they've been epoxied in to place. Had to give it a wipe down as well to remove the blood from where I stuck a micro-chisel into my thumb, which just helped with the bad language. 😁 Still some fairly sizeable gaps so I anticipate the next few days are going to iterations of the fill, sand, prime routine until I get it looking reasonable.

Thanks Carl, except it pinged off as I was sanding it down! Should have trimmed it a lot closer before I glued it to save putting so much pressure on it trying to sand it. I've trimmed and reattached it and I'll have another go tomorrow.

And now today's progress. First got the casting blocks roughly removed from the wings and started the repairs to the damage. The broken forward section has joined really nicely so I'm hoping once it's cleaned up it won't be visible. I also noticed the other wing tip was broken so I've epoxied a piece of the casting block to it and I'll sand to shape once fully cured. Then I attached the rear section to the mid section of the fuselage. Join is pretty even so just going to be a bit of filler required.

Made a bit of progress this weekend. First of all got the rear exhaust painted up and weathered and the reverse thruster petals installed with the top one drooping as the hydraulics bleed out. The flash has washed out some of the weathering in the photos but I'm pretty happy with how it looks. Also painted the reverse thruster nozzle so I can mask that off when I paint the exterior.

Darwin Award nominee....

Got the gear bays epoxied in and filled. Fit definitely isn't anything to write home about but the main gear doors are closed on the ground, with perhaps a little sag if the hydraulics bleed, so not going to worry too much about it. Also got the other parts for the rear primed. Nice detail on the 3D printed rear section. Metallics and weathering next.

Nice! I've built the 1/32 big brother and it goes together really nicely.

Started prepping the parts for the rear fuselage. The 3D printed rear section needed a little sanding due to print lines but not nearly as much as some others I've seen, so slight bullet dodged there. There's going to be a fair bit of thinning and filling to get a snug fit with the gear bays though. Detail's fairly sparse there but the main doors are closed other than when the gear is deploying, so not going to bother trying to improve that.

Yep, if I'm going to push myself I may as well go the full hog! 😁

Nose is now filled and rescribed, so it's time to set it aside and move onto the rear fuselage. The instructions would have you join this to the rear fuselage next but looking at other builds online that leaves you with a rather large, unwieldy piece to deal with as you attach the wings. So, plan is to assemble the rear fuselage and burner can and attach the wings to that and only then join this forward section.

Thanks fellas. Got the cockpit sills on tonight with a bit of cursing. The 3D printed stuff is so fragile - I managed to snap both sills while trimming them to fit but thankfully the material also glues very firmly with CA so all recovered. Nose is also attached with epoxy. Will require a bit of filling but thankfully no major sanding, so that'll be tomorrow's entertainment once the epoxy is cured.

Rob, JetMads actually provide a full set of correctly scaled templates in the instructions if you want to cut your own masks but there are only so many hours in the day and my masochistic streak isn't sufficiently developed for that. So, path of least resistance...

Got the cockpit assembled tonight. It actually went together easier than I expected although everything is so tight that I test fitted the seat and it's now in there permanently! No glue required! Tomorrow night's job is to get the nose attached. After a quick test tonight it'll definitely need a bit of trimming of the inside to get a snug fit but it shouldn't be too difficult to do.

Thanks all. The seatbelts were actually a separate 3D printed part Peter rather than moulded on. The detail and fit are great but it was sooo fragile trying to remove it from the print supports. Amazing what can be done with it now though.

Back from our break down in the East Neuk of Fife, so a little more progress made. Got all the cockpit components painted, weathered and flat-coated. Used the Red Fox 3D decals for the instrument panels as the details are just much sharper than I could achieve with the kit parts and a paint brush. The print layers were also quite noticeable on the main panel which were all sanded away to fit this. From test fitting the tolerances to squeeze all of this into the available space are tight to say the least, so I'm going to take my time and try not to bugger it up. Also got the Maestro Models masks for the splinter cammo as I noticed Hannants was down to only two sets in stock and they've become hard to find elsewhere. Think it's going to be a while before I need them though!

Got the bang seat painted up and assembled. Now needs decals added and weathering. There are a few print lines visible on the sides of the frame but I felt it was better to leave alone and not risk destroying the detail as I suspect they won't be visible once it's in the cockpit. A la Ernie above, I must have stared at the seatbelts wrong as I lost part of the top section trying to remove a print support which was stopping it bedding in properly against the seat pad. Again, I hope it'll be fairly invisible once it's installed. Going away for a week on Thursday so not sure there will be much further progress until we're back.

Thanks Peter, that's exactly the info I was needing. I tend to paint at about 18 psi so I'll drop it down a bit for this. Think I'll have a few trials on an old paint mule first rather than bugger up this lovely kit.

As everyone has said the Merlin has such a distinctive, beautiful sound. Nothing else sounds quite like it.

Thanks Phil. I think I'm still at the learner stage as a resin builder but I think a big part of it is the anticipation/dread you build up in your head. If you just take it steadily and methodically it's actually pretty straightforward and really enjoyable. To be honest, I think the 3D printed stuff here is harder to work with as it's so brittle and the print lines are quite prominent on some pieces due to the print orientation. The Iconicair Attacker that I won in the Xmas raffle looks like another beast altogether, resin detail but without the big pour stubs, etc.

Ha ha, yes they do produce an awful lot of 'stuff' which can be achieved by other means and the panel line washes and oilbrushers and things do tend to go off very quickly. I've got tubes of oils which are older than my kids and still going strong! The paints are finicky and a bugger to get to spray nicely. I've done a couple of builds exclusively using Ammo but they aren't very robust although the colour range is decent.