rob_van_riel wrote:More verbose update with pictures tomorrow...
Progress (and sleep) over since Monday have been less than stellar, on account of one of the cats going AWOL on Tuesday and Wednesday, seriously rattling the nerves of your's truly and her more faithful sister. Apparently the extended expedition didn't agree with her much, because when she did return, she felt really needed loads of attention and kept me awake begging for hugs and cuddles.
Furry distractions aside, I committed some brutalities against the bombbay insert to chop down that horrible step at the rear (could this error have been caused by someone looking at a Grand Slam modification, I seem to recall those having a step at the rear?), then sanded the whole fuselage seam smooth with a rather more delicate grade of sandpaper. The gaps between the inboard nacelles and the wing were treated to some Milliput, and finally, I gathered up the courage to attach the wings. I fully expected a serious fight, since this is the primary trouble spot on most aircraft, and this kit had shown some fit issues already, but to my surprise, the wings joined up with the fuselage very smoothly, and with a very clear postition fix. That particular part of the engineering on this kit is very much appreciated. That, roughly, was the end of Tuesday.
Wednesday was mostly spent assembling and painting the gun turrets. I always find working with transparencies in general, and painting the frames on them in particular, a rather nerve wrecking job, and my nerves weren't too good to start with at this time, so this took some time. The tail was also assembled during this day.
Yesterday, I mounted the front gunturret and fixed it in place with the "collar" (for lack of a more accurate word). The collar didn't fit worth a damn, lining up reasonably at the bottom, but leaving a gap of almost 1mm between the fairing on top and the fuselage (does anyone know what lives under that fairing?). Fixable, but sloppy, although to its credit, the turret remains turnable nicely.
I expected the rear turret to also be locked in by the pair of plastic bits at the very rear of the fuselage, but it turns out it remains completely free. I consider this a good thing, as it allows me to keep the turret safely out of harm way while I finish and paint the aircraft. What I can't figure out though, is why there were two sets of these plastic bits at the rear. I can't seem to find any difference between them, and the instructions only indicate a choice between the pairs, but no criteria for making that choice. In the end, I took the lazy option, and picked the pair with the least flash on them
Then it was time for the really, really scary bit, the undercarriage legs. From the instructions and casual inspection of the parts, this looked like a fidgety, but mostly fool proof construction. I was right about the fidgety part, but apparently, I'm a better fool than they'd reconed with. Some parts of the legs and especially the bits that extend to the rear of the bays are so thin, I had serious doubts as to whether they could take the weight of the complete airplane. Never mind that they look great and are probably to scale, lumping this heavy a kit on top of a few tenths of millimeters of plastic is creepy.
In spite of the theory that says a triangle with sides of a given length can only have one shape, tolerances in either the production of the kit, or my inept handling of it, were enough to mis-align the left and right legs.
In the picture, it looks like I'm going to be in a world of trouble with this, but I'm beginning to suspect I might get away with it. Few people will be checking for alignment, the Upkeep is going to get in the way of any such checks, and most importantly, the airplane still appears level. I measured the distance between the bench and the wingtips, and the left wing is about half a millimeter lower than the right. At this size, it won't be noticed. A single sheet of paper under the left leg, and everything ends up level. I could fix this by very lightly sanding down the right wheel.
Despite this, just sitting there it is beginning to look like a Lancaster.
I hope to finish adding all the smaller exterior bits today, and maybe even masking and priming.
?
