iggie's brewing up a storm ***FINISHED***

[iggie]

Thanks chaps

Further progress; 4 evenings work has produced this:

[Stuart]

That looks blooming lovely Jim! Nice work!

[ShaunW]

Man alive that cockpit looks good, Jim. Great detail on the parts brought to life by some nifty painting. Top work

[iggie]

Thanks Shaun and Stuart

A little tip for anyone building this kit in the future; don't assemble the cockpit fully until after assembling and fitting the seat...... which to be fair is what the instructions tell you to do but of course I knew better, didn't I?

Anyway, the cockpit is now finished, with the supplied fabric seatbelts and the fuselage sewn up. I've also built the front end and the prop

[ShaunW]

The cockpit looks good in the fuselage and those fabric seat belts lie very naturally on the seat. Great stuff. I've also been caught out in the past by venturing away from the kit manufacturer's suggested build sequence - sometimes to me it makes sense to go out of sequence but sometimes the manufacturer really does know best

[Stuart]

Those belts look great - a real nice thing to add into the kit.

Superb progress Jim

[iggie]

Thanks chaps

The belts are these new-fangled fabric ones, which the instructions would have you screwing up into a tiny ball before use; mistake in my opinion! All this achieves is to make the belts spring out at all angles and make it (even) harder to thread the various PE buckles etc. onto the belts.

I got stuck into the wing assembly last night; lots of detail in the wheel wells, but I decided that I would leave out the very detailed wing-mounted cannons.

Once I had assembled the wings, I had a dry-fit of the nose to fuselage and it appears we (or I ) have a major problem..... The engine and cowlings are round, the fuselage sides are basically flat. This leaves some howling gaps which are going to be a whatsit to deal with. I suspect some large clamps and lots of CA will be required. I'll try and photograph the problem later on.
In the meantime, here are the wings

[iggie]

This is the gap:



However, all may not be lost. Reading a couple of build reviews and doing a little research, this gap was a combination of cooling vents and a fuselage miss-match when the Centaurus engine was used instead of the Sabre.
So..... we'll go with it and see how it turns out!

[ShaunW]

That's quite a big gap, Jim. I've just had a look at photos of the Tempest II on Google Images and indeed it has to be said that the fit of the cowling is not brilliant with some gappage being evident!

[Stuart]

It is indeed an impressive gap - lthough as you guys have said the aircraft seems a bit if a chop job anyway. I'm sure you'll get it sorted.

[iggie]

Well, we have something that more closely represents an aeroplane now
Pretty much all the main assembly work is now complete, and some relatively minor filling completed. A little more masking to do, mainly the wheel wells and it'll be time for a dash of primer.
The aforementioned gap doesn't look so bad now but with hindsight it would have been an idea to have put something behind it but too late now

[Stuart]

Wow that looks fantastic Iggie!!!

[59North]

Looks like a very precarious perch for such a finely built, large model.

[ShaunW]

That looks excellent, Jim, the Tempest has great lines. Top work

[iggie]

Looks like a very precarious perch for such a finely built, large model.

I hadn't really thought about that! It's quite high up, so the cat (totally useless climber) shouldn't be an issue, but if the worst happens, there is altitude to spare