History
The
British Aerospace Hawk has been around now for 25 years and has trained
thousands of pilots the world over. Conceived in the late 1960’s as a
replacement for the Folland Gnat its design was influenced by lessons learnt
from the Gnat’s faults, to this end some of the Folland design team were
involved in early design studies. Air Staff Target 397 was the requirement for
an aircraft to replace the Gnat, Hunter and the Jet Provost and the
manufacturer was left to get on with the design with some autonomy, this
resulted in the layout that we are now accustomed to today. Foreign
competition came in the form of several proven designs such as the Saab 105,
Northrop T38, Aermachi MB326 and the Breguet/ Dornier Alpha Jet, all were
tested but the Hawk won through in the end.
As time has gone by the Hawk has
now been developed into several versions to suit widely differing Air Forces
requirements. These range from the advanced trainer to Night / all weather
attack roll, even the U.S. Navy has succumbed to the aircraft in the form of
the T45 Goshawk.
Today the production of the hawk is running down from its hey
day and only a handful are being built. The Royal Air Force are having
difficulties procuring new airframes and there is speculation that a new order
may be placed for brand new aircraft in the future to replace the early and
high hour aircraft. Ironically, it was recently announced that the Ministry of
Defence has procured four Alpha Jets, speculation exists that they are to
eventually be used as fast jet trainers as a replacement for the Hawk? The
Hawk seems to have been another British export success having sold to 16
countries with well over 700 units being sold. This it could be said, is the
last British Aircraft as so many since have had foreign input.
Background
Have
you ever been inspired to build a model having seen it on a print? Well I was
and what follows is how I did it. It all started during a trip to the
International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in 1997. As I have been a big fan of
the N.A.T.O. Tiger Meet for several years, I just had to go with the annual
meet being held as part of the Tattoo. With such a variety of Tiger Squadrons
in attendance, there were all the possibilities of some truly spectacular
schemes to be there. 74 Squadron Royal Air Force have been flying the Hawk for
several years now and I was expecting a new and interesting colour scheme from
their paint shop. On the day of the show, I was slightly disappointed; the 74
Squadron Hawk in attendance in the Tiger’s Lair was in fact, the same XX226
from 1996 with some minor modifications. This did not really inspire me too
much but none the less I took several Photographs to possibly use as reference
later. I took a few side on shots of the main point of interest, which, as you
can see is the large Tigers head which adorns the tail on both sides (there is
a slight difference in the two sides of the fin design).
Later
during the day, I came across some members of the Squadron selling some fine
prints of the Hawk XX226 in all her glory. The print is from a painting by
Roland Wong and depicts her flying in loose echelon formation with another 74
Squadron black Hawk, both are armed with sidewinder missiles and a centrally
mounted gun pack, they are flying over a typical Welsh valley with a darkened,
cloudy sky. Set into the background is a large roaring Tigers head that fades
into the clouds. Upon asking the airman "how much? "I found my hand
going deeper into my pocket and stepping forward saying “I’ll have one
please” Once I got home I started to think of the possibilities of building
a Hawk in this scheme.
Just
a couple of months earlier I had the opportunity to buy the I.D. Models 1/32
scale Vac form of the Hawk at a local model club meeting. In my moment of
madness, I managed to get the kit for a very reasonable sum.
Now
I can probably guess what you are thinking but it would not be permissible for
the editor to post it. I can assure you that it has all been said to me during
the construction of this model. At times, I did think that I had bitten off
more than I could chew. I would say in fairness to Doug Feeney of I.D. Models
that when you buy one of these kits you know what you are getting yourself
into! You only get the basic shape the rest is up to you to build. My first
step in this project was research. This took several months and eventually I
was lucky enough to get my hands in various parts of the Air Publications
(these are like a manual on the ins and outs of the aircraft). I actually
ended up with more information than I could possibly use.
During this period
of research, I was fortunate enough to visit the British Aerospace factory at Warton in Lancashire and witness the production of the Hawks. These were bound
for Saudi Arabia; this did inspire me to get on with the project. There was
one area that my reference was lacking and this was the ejector seat, after I
made contact with Martin Baker they sent me the appropriate information and at
last I was ready to build.
The
Model
As
mentioned earlier I.D. Models are very basic and you only get the shape of the
main components, these all needed refinement and a lot of work before they
were up to my usual standards. These kits are usually a heavy plastic Vac
formed over a male mould with no extra details; all of this is left up to the
modeller. I
ended up using only 11 of the original kit parts, these being things like the
fuselage, wings, elevators and the gun pack, I had to scratch build the rest.
Cockpit
With
most models today construction starts with the cockpit and I followed this
routine. I like to spend time doing the best I can in the cockpit, as this is
where most people look first. Once I had built a bathtub to the right
dimensions, I started work on the instrument panels and side consuls. I built
the instrument panels starting with a piece of 10 thou plastic card cut to
shape and painted white.
To this, I then marked out the position of all of the
instruments with a pencil. Once happy with the position I placed an
appropriate decal from Reheat 1/48 or 1/32 scale instrument decals in the
desired location. Once this has settled I made the bezels from very fine
copper wire wound around a suitable size piece of spru and cut so as to form a
circle of wire. These bezels were carefully placed over the decals and some
gloss varnish was applied, this serves two purposes, one, it sticks the copper
to the decal and two, it gives a gloss face to the instrument looking like
glass. Wherever there is a raised switch or knob I replicated them with
stretched spru which is inserted into holes I drill in the panel, this is
super glued from the back in order to avoid any damage to the delicate front.
With all of these bits of spru sticking out of the panel care had to be taken
in handling it especially in the next step. In order to get all of the
switches to the same length I cut them back with scissors then, use a
soldering iron which I hold near to the surface the spru heats and mushrooms
on itself, this may seem a little daunting but with practice it’s a very
easy and rewarding task.
A similar operation was executed on the side consuls.
Once completed the cockpit was painted, this operation required a steady hand
as there was now so much detail in the completed subassemblies. The painting
took place over several nights. After I had done the block colours of medium
grey and very dark grey with the airbrush I use oil paint to add any colour.
If you look at the instrument panel in any photograph, you will see many
instructions around the dials and knobs; I replicated this by using a pinhead
loaded with oil paint and scrape it where I want it. If I want a perfect
straight line then I will use a similar method but using a scalpel blade in
place of the pin with a light grey mixture.
After this had dried for several
days I went back and gave the whole assembly a wash of very thin oil paint,
this gives the impression of depth. The final step was to add any extra detail
and give a very subtle dry brushing of a metallic paint in areas of ware and
tear. The control sticks were carved from a suitable piece of plastic rod and
knobs added as described, the same was done for the throttles and rudder
pedals.
My next step which I got on with whilst the paint was drying was to
make the ejector seats. In the Hawk, there have been two different versions of
the same basic seat, the Martin Baker Mk 10. After trying to find suitable
resin or white metal seats I decided to scratch build my own. I began with the
bases of plastic card embellished with various bits of copper wire and seat
cushions made from Miliput. The headrests were carved from chunks of Miliput
and adorned with various details made from wire and sheet pewter. All that
remained was to add all the harnesses and straps, I made these from masking
tape suitably painted with Reheat 1/32 scale seat belt buckles in etched
brass. I then made the emergency eject pull handles from two pieces of copper
wire, one painted yellow the other painted black and twined together. This
gives a good representation of the real thing without having to resort to
difficult painting.
Then I painted the seats in a similar fashion to the rest
of the cockpit. I noticed that all seats have an inventory number painted on
the sides of the top box. I reverted to my pin and oil paint technique and
managed to paint legible numbers on the sides of each seat. As a final detail,
I then add some home made decals of information plates often seen in and
around cockpits. These were made from Bare Metal Foil painted black then
scraped away to reveal the underlying colour with my trusted pin run along a
straight edge very lightly, once complete they were cut to size and attached
to where ever it was appropriate.
Wings
These
were made as per a normal kit with top left and top right wings mating to the
whole lower wing. All trailing edges were thinned down using a scraping method
with a scalpel rather like using a plane. With the main assembly together I
decided to lower the trailing edge flaps to add some more visual interest,
after marking out the location of the flaps they were removed by using a razor
saw. Some shaping of the wing tips had to be done in order to retain the sharp
angled trailing edges, this was achieved by inserting some slivers of sheet
pewter, and then I build up the area with some super glue.
When this was dry
some careful filing was needed to reshape the corners, this is a problem with
most vac forms as they loose detail in this area and need some work to regain
the lost shape. The wing tip lights caused some head scratching and I overcome
this by cutting the area out of the wing tip. I backed it up with plastic
card, inserting a pinhead [this represents the light bulb] and slowly filling
the area full of super glue. This took several sessions but the result was a
solid clear light cover that I then filed to shape and finally polished to a
glass like appearance. The wing assembly was then scribed using an Olfa P
cutter and engineers scribe.
The last main thing to do to the wings at this
stage was to make the integral main gear bays. I produced the wheel bays from
plastic card and filled them with lots of wire and appropriate clutter from
various materials. The flaps and their actuators were made later, all being
scratch built in plastic card filed to shape, the actuator housings were made
by heat forming thin plastic card over a carved wood mould, this gave the
opportunity to make more than one and have them all look the same.
Fuselage
The
kit fuselage is split vertically; it also incorporates the vertical fin and
needed a lot of reshaping especially around the nose area. This was done with
Miliput spread over the plastic and shaped whilst still soft with a wet
finger. I realised very early on that the Hawk has very visible engine intakes
and these were going to need producing. At this stage, I filled the fuselage
with some expanding foam, the stuff that you can buy at DIY stores for filling
cavities in walls.
With this in place, I began to carve the intakes out of the foam. This
proved demanding as I could not get my fingers down the intakes and all of the
surgery had to be done at the opening of the tunnel. Once I was satisfied with
the shape I spread Miliput over the insides of the intakes with a long handle
paintbrush and smoothed them out with water. This took more time and effort
than any other part of the model as constant refining was made as I went
along.
With the internal structures complete I added the external trunking and
faired these in with Miliput. At the rear of the tunnel is a compressor face,
I couldn’t find a suitable one in my spares box so I had no alternative but
to scratch build one. Once I had created a bulkhead to mount it on I took a
circle of 10 thou plastic card and cut 64 lines radiating from the centre out,
about 5 mm was left at the centre of the disc uncut, each of the blades were
held in a pair of tweezers and a slight twist was bent in. The resulting fan
face needed a centre hub, which I turned up in my motor tool from a piece of
old, spru. Several large intakes are evident on the Hawk and these were made
using various sizes of hollow tubing and boxing in on the insides of the
fuselage. A suitable size piece of brass tubing was used to make the exhaust
and a rear compressor face was made in a similar fashion to the front one.
A
nose wheel bay and the air brake housing were constructed before the fuselage
sub assemblies were brought together. Judicious use of super glue and a lot of
manipulation completed the basic fuselage construction sequence. Once I had
the fuselage together, I could see that there was a large area on the
starboard side of the spine that was badly formed, this needed several
applications of Milliput to regain the appropriate shape. If you have the
opportunity to examine a Hawk up close, you will notice that the rear portion
of the fuselage is covered in raised rivets. This I later found out is due to
two different factories making the parts and one initially using the wrong
rivets! This did not prove to cause any problems aerodynamically as, by the
time the air gets to this part of the airframe it is very disturbed and dirty.
I decided to try and replicate these rivets as they are such a prominent
feature, in a similar fashion to that used on the instrument panels I drilled
out each hole then inserted a length of stretched sprue. This time instead of
using the soldering iron I melted them with M.E.K or Liquid Poly glue.
This
resulted in a very convincing representation of the rivets although I did not
count them! Also on the Hawk, as with most aircraft, standing at certain
angles to the plane you can see stressed skin rippling and reflecting the
light, I wanted to try and capture this effect as the final scheme was to be
black and this didn’t allow for too much shading. After thinking about it
for a couple of days I came up with a solution, that I think gave a very
realistic effect. Once all of the panel lines had been scribed, I took a
scalpel and scraped away at the area I wanted to stress with several heavy
passes over the panel line in order to take enough material to give a three
dimensional look, when completed I went over the area with wet and dry to
smooth out any marks left by the blade.
The most prominent area of stress is
on the outsides of the cockpit and this helps to break the monotony of the
flat featureless panels in this area. One other small thing on the Hawk is the
proliferation of naca ducts, these are small curved shapes almost like a
triangle with two curved sides and the rear face flat, they have an air intake
built into them and are all over the airframe. To make these I took some sheet
aluminium, then with a scribing tool using a template I heavily scribe the
shape, as the aluminium is only 5 thou or so it takes only a little pressure
to cut through. I only cut the two sides and the rear face of the triangle and
leave the small attachment point at the front. The middle piece, still
attached is pushed through into a position that looks like the ducting
underneath, the whole thing is then cut around the outside with nice straight
edges, this is in turn placed into a suitable sized and shaped hole on the
model, this is then faired in with super glue.
All rivets were then drilled
out, these are done with the smallest drill bit I have and each one is done by
hand. I turn the drill one complete twist then reverse it for half a twist to
remove any burrs. The nose on this aircraft has a large landing light mounted
inside of an aerodynamic covering just below the Pitot tube. This proved to be
easier to make than first anticipated, the light itself came from my spares
box and if memory serves me right it was a 1/24 scale car headlight cover
which I mated to an old model car light.
I then had to make a new nose fairing
to go over the light and match the size of the fuselage. I found that the F.L.I.R. cover from a 1/48 scale S3 Viking was the perfect size for me to vac
form over in clear plastic a new replacement nose fairing. This I then faired
in to the rest of the fuselage with Miliput. I replicated the long pitot from
several sizes of Stainless Steel one inside of the other to get the proper
look of the original. At this stage, the fuselage was beginning to take on the
appearance of the real thing but there was still a long way to go yet.
Bringing
it all together
The
next step was for me to mate the fuselage to the wings, after a bit of
manipulation I super glued the two together. Just a little more filler and
they were blended together, I then moved my attention to the wing root
blending, this I thought was going to trouble me, however I can honestly say
that this was an easy job. I wanted both sides to match so I produced a set of
templates for the individual plates in this area, these I then taped to some
sheet pewter and cut out. Sheet pewter is a flexible material that can have
compound curves introduced by careful application of pressure in certain
places. The plates I super glued into place and with paint brush handle I bent
them to fit and at the same time, I got the compound curves which are evident.
Undercarriage
The
main gear on the Hawk is a robust affair and the best way I found to make them
was out of brass rods soldered together with some scrap plastic attachments. I
had the Italeri 1/72 scale kit to hand so I used the gear from this kit as a
point of reference, Taking measurements with a micrometer and scaling them up
by 225%. Various sizes of rod were cut to length and then cleaned up with wire
wool, once I was satisfied I lined up all of the components and held them
together firmly in some metal clamps. I then applied some Flux to the joint,
heated it up with the soldering iron and applied some solder; capillary
reaction did the rest and takes the molten solder around the joint. The result
is an extremely strong joint, which should last for years.
The rest of the
gear had to be carved from solid plastic and this took me several attempts to
get a matching pair. Wheels proved to be another trip down the scratch
building road as I turned up the main wheels in my motor tool out of a chunk
of resin, in order to get a pair I copied my master by coating it with latex
rubber to make a mould, when dried I removed the master then filled the mould
with a two part Polyurethane resin which went off in about 10 minutes. A
similar technique was employed for the nose gear and wheel, this time the
wheel was an almost direct copy of one I found in my spares box.
The
undercarriage doors were made from laminated plastic card cut from templates I
made from the gear bays. In order to retain the structural integrity of the
metal gear I had to make a strong mounting point, this I did By embedding the
gear in a lump of Miliput and carving it to shape when dry. I made various
hoses and connectors from thin solder and copper wire all were attached with
careful applications of super glue (I apply super glue with an old artist
inking pen, the type usually found in compass sets that allows you to draw
circles in ink). Hinges on the doors I made from old Photo etched frets, these
are very strong and the brass is normally thin enough to be cut with a pair of
scissors.
Canopy
This
was going to be one of the focal points of the finished kit and therefore had
to be perfect, or as close as I could make it. I found that the kit-supplied
canopy was not the right shape and hazy when viewed up close. Yet another part
to be scratch built, this was easy as I had a starting point in the form of
the kit canopy. This I filled with my resin and when dry I attached the resin
plug with small tacks of super glue to the fuselage, from this I then
determined that some refinement was necessary and this I did with Milliput.
Once satisfied with the shape of the resin plug I removed it and tidied it up
by sanding it with progressively finer grades of wet and dry until I was
polishing it with car wax polish. I then mounted this plug on a hefty piece of
wood and turned to some heat forming. I did not need to vac form as there were
no undercuts and the shape of the canopy was one gentle curve in the
longitudinal axis and one short gentle curve in the width axis. I took the
advice of a friend who also showed me his way of heat forming, I followed his
technique to the letter, and it worked as planned. I take a piece of 10 thou
clear P.V.C and cut it into a rectangle slightly larger than the area to be
formed. This is then clamped into two home made holding devices rather like a
pair of chop sticks taped together along one side as to form a long hinge. I
use one either side of the P.V.C. and carefully heat up the material until it
appears to shimmer when nudged, this was done over the kitchen cooker electric
ring.
When the P.V.C. is as hot as I need it, it is just a case of gently
moving the P.V.C. over the plug mould and pulling it down in a rocking motion.
I managed to make two almost perfect canopies straight away on my first
attempt! Now that I had the clear part I moved onto the frames, these were
made exactly the same way as the clear except they were made from 10 thou
plastic card, once I had made the inner one I made the outer one over the
inner one still on the plug mould, this allowed for the thickness of the
plastic. As it turned out the plastic outer frame did not give enough strength
so I produced another out of five thou aluminium sheet.
All three layers were
then laminated together and a strong canopy with separate frames resulted.
Various hoses and mechanisms were fabricated from plastic rod and copper wire
and attached with super glue. The clear blast protector screen was cut from
the clear P.V.C. and the lower angular frame support was constructed from some
I beams that I had stretched like sprue.
The Hawk canopy like many British
aircraft has a wiggly line on the inside of the clear part of the structure,
this is what is called the miniature detonation cord and is part of the crew
escape system, It is in fact as it says a detonation cord which is bonded to
the canopy not as some people believe embedded in the perspects. There was
only one way that I found to accurately represent this and that was by
painting it in by hand. I produced a template on a piece of paper and taped
this to the outside of the canopy, pattern facing in, I then turned the thing
over and with a steady hand began to paint a thin line of white ink. If I
managed to make a mistake then I could rub it off with some water on a cotton
bud and start again without damage to the clear parts.
One final step on the
canopy itself was to add the mirrors. I found some mirrored 10 thou plastic
sheet at a model show used by car modellers and cut out the mirrors to suit
from this material. Whilst working on this area of the model I decided to make
the instrument shrouds. These were vac formed over Miliput masters that I made
by forming them in place, a way I know that the end product will fit where
desired. In the front cockpit there is a prominent green weapons indicator
(which is in the raised position when the aircraft is armed, this is a visual
glue to pilots and ground crew alike), this was cut from plastic card and
attached. Now the cockpit was complete and really looked the part, the only
thing I did was to add my trademark, I placed a folded map inside of the
windscreen and it was truly finished.
Air
brake
I
had noticed that when the Hawk is parked the large one piece air brake is in
the partly deployed position, I am not sure if this is to do with a drop off
in hydraulic pressure or just routine to have it deployed when at rest,
regardless, I was going to have to build a suitable air brake. Again scratch
building was the only answer and this was heat formed plastic card pulled over
a male plug mould made out of Balsa wood.
The Balsa is carved to the right
shape then coated with several layers of super glue, this makes it very hard
and it resist the heat of the plastic without any ill effects. On the inside
of the brake, there is many internal strenghtners, which I made from several
different sizes of plastic rod. The hydraulic actuating link I made from a
length of hypodermic stainless steel tubing and turned up the piston cylinder
from some plastic rod the whole thing was mounted into two previously placed
blocks of plastic which I had glued inside of the fuselage, the two being
pinned for extra strength.
Weapons
The
weapons consist of two main parts, the gun pack and the missiles; the gun pack
was a kit-modified item that I re shaped with Miliput. To this was added
several small vents, these were taken from an old etched brass fret where I
was lucky enough to find suitable screens to cover the holes that I had to
make. The gun barrel came from some plastic tubing of different diameters
placed one inside of the other to give the desired thickness then turned up to
the final shape in my motor tool, small holes in the side of the barrel had to
be drilled and kept perpendicular, this proved to be a challenge and was
overcome by holding the barrel in a clamp and drilling using a small drill
press, this way I knew that the holes would be vertical to the barrels
longitudinal axis.
The
Sidewinders became a challenge when I realised that there are no really
descent models of them in 1/32 scale, looking at detailed photo’s of them I
soon found that they are in fact simple tubular shapes with the most
complicated part being the nose sections. I thought a little and concluded
that if the aircraft was to be depicted at rest then the seeker heads would be
covered with simple tubular shapes. Therefore I didn’t need to worry about
making the noses. With suitable sections of plastic rod to hand I set about
there construction, on the sidewinder there are lots of coloured bands which I
portrayed as a scribed lines, this would aid painting later, this I managed to
accomplish by using a pipe cutter which I only tightened enough to score, I
then turned the tube, this gave a straight perpendicular line which went all
the way around the missile body.
The fins came from the only other
commercially available set that I used that being the Model Technologies
Etched Missile fins set. It was imperative that they were mounted at 90
degrees as the slightest angle off would be noticeable, I used the same
technique as when I did the holes in the gun barrel this resulted in a very
thin finned accurate missile. The missile seeker head covers were manufactured
from small lengths of plastic rod with one end blocked off, the cup like shape
being pushed on to the completed missile and was tied on with some lycra
thread, on the real thing they are held in place with a bungie like elastic
that is wrapped around one or more of the forward fins to hold the cover in
place. The weapons pylons had to be hand carved from sheet plastic, as no
descent alternatives were available.
Painting
With
all appropriate masks in place I could begin the process of painting, after a
first coat of Halfords Grey Primer I did a visual inspection of the model and
rectified any faults, only small areas needed work and soon I was spraying the
Primer again. Once happy with the finish I gave the whole model a wipe down
with a Tac Rag, this is a sticky rag used to pick up any last minute dust
before spraying.
As the final colour was to be Black, I decided to use another
of Halfords cans. I find that the pigment in these cans is very fine and
leaves a great finish that is hard to the touch inside of thirty minutes. To
aid the flow of paint from the can I immerse the can in some very hot water
for a few minutes; the result is far better than straight out of the can cold.
Once the black was finished I masked up any small areas that needed to be a
different colour and sprayed the appropriate colour, this included things like
the wheel bays, air brake bay and exhaust. There was only one awkward part and
that was the backing for the tiger head decal, for this I used a spare
photocopy of the decal as a template and sprayed white through it in order to
get over the fact that I wasn’t able to do white on my home made decals.
Decals
Early
on in the construction I realised that I might have to hand paint the tigers
head on the fin, however I was fortunate enough to have a good friend who
helped.
From my original side on photographs of the real plane we scanned the
image into a computer, the images were imported into Corel Draw 7 and
manipulated in order to get the colours as true to life as possible, this
allowed for the printing of the photo’s and sunlight effecting the colour on
the original aircraft on the day of the I.A.T. With the images ready to print
I went to local high street printers and asked them to print onto clear decal
film on a colour laser copier at 600 dots per inch. After some convincing of
the assistant she accepted my idea and tried it. Her main concern was the high
operating temperatures of the colour laser copier and its effect on the clear
decal film whilst in the machine, suffice to say that it had no ill effects on
decal film or the expensive machine. I was printing onto Xtradecal clear film
and as this is clear, you must remember that white will not print or show up
so this is why I had to paint white before the decal was applied.
Just before
I had the decals printed I realised that I couldn’t read the pilots name
just below the cockpit from my photographs, as I was going to the lengths of
printing the decals from photographs I had to get the pilots name right! At a
model show that I attended I had the half completed model on display with some
of the original photo’s next to it, during the day I met a chap who
mentioned in the ensuing conversation that he went to school with the pilot of
this aircraft, what a stroke of luck! He went on to tell me the pilots name
and sure enough later after the model was finished I found some clear shots of
the pilots name and he was right.
With the decals now printed it was time to
apply them, this was done in the normal fashion using appropriate setting
solutions, a lot of the white markings came from the excellent Echelon
Lightning decal sheet which were left over from building that model some years
earlier. One last problem was the lack of good ejector seat warnings in 1/32
scale; these came from a 1/48-scale sheet.
Final
Details
Very
light weathering was apparent on the real thing and I replicated this with
thin oil paint run in any area it needed it, light oil streaks were made using
the oil paint run back along the line of airflow, some small bug splatters,
like you get on your car windscreen in the summer were done by using various
colours of oil paint applied heavily around the nose and wind screen areas.
A
dark wash of Paynes Grey oil paint thinned to the consistency of ink was run
in and around the gear to finish off. Lastly the small wing fences and vortex
generators were cut from five thou aluminium sheet and attached with super
glue. Some small remove before flight tags were made from paper soaked in
white glue and attached with small lengths of fuse wire where appropriate.
The
Base
I
always try to make a simple base to display the model on and this was no
exception, it started off life as a sheet of Formica laminate covered 9-mm
plywood. To this I added some beading as an edge with the corners mitred, the
whole base is sprayed a light brown/grey mix, then I do the prominent
expansion lines with a black ink applied from my inking pen from a compass
set.
Once dry I spray a dark tone over these lines in a very fine misting,
this represents the shading which is evident on all hard standings. Some
splatters of thin oil paint gives the impression of dripped oil and fluids and
there you have it.
Conclusion
A
lot of work was involved in this project and the end result was worth it,
although I would not recommend something like this to the beginner I would
urge any one with experience to have a go. One down side to the whole thing is
that when painted no one really knows what went into it except me, now
hopefully you. All in all this worked out as a very cheap model to build, I
spent four months on the project and spent less than £20 the most expensive
part was the decals which came out at about £12
