Hello Chaps,
This is my fourth "Hairy Stick" adventure that I completed in January 2017- again, this was a very basic kit by Matchbox from 1980 that has been in my stash untouched for a very long time. Upon opening the box, I found that the decals were missing along with the port-side air brake. I was fortunate to discover that a fellow modeling buddy had a spare set of decals for this kit that he kindly sent to me, the port-side air brake, I scratch built by using the starboard side air brake as a template and marking out the shape onto a molded part that had very similar surface geometry.
The cockpit for this two-seater version was very basic- just two seats in a blank tub, so I decided to scratch-build 27 parts and added 15 sections of decals from my spares box to dress up the scratch-built instrument panels and the side-consoles. I scratch-built foot pedals and their support mounts, two joysticks, two instrument panels, seat-belts, ejector pull handles- 2 to each seat mounted at the front ends of the seat side panels, green display screens for front and rear IP's, the canopy actuator and its housing behind the Pilot seat.
The exhausts were just two hollow tubes which I didn't like, so, I decided to make the inner afterburner tubes and thrust rings to dress those up a little and include the turbine fans in the rear of the tube. The inner tubes were created from spare bomb parts that I glued together then chopped off the nose ends. I then took spare 1/32 scale Eduard Me109 E-3 wheels and cut the center hubs out and the rings that were left were used as the thrust rings. The spoked hubs that I removed were used as the fan blades in the back end of the tubes.
For an old basic kit, I had a lot of fun building it and adding the extra scratch-built items, crude as they may be....
If you'd like to see my "Build Update #1" YouTube video showing what did within the cockpit, here is the link to that:
https://youtu.be/xaCem-lZVn0
...and if you'd like to see my "Final Reveal + rest of the build' video, then here is the link to that one:
https://youtu.be/UZ_h-KEwGZw
Thanks in advance for checking in and leaving any comments, much appreciated!
Happy modeling,
Cheers,
Martin 