Airfix 1/72 Nimrod WIP

Thanks for the complementary comments, guys!

A short tail-note: A few days after I bought the kit, in early February this year, I sent an email to Hornby/ Airfix alerting them to the decal issue. Today, some six weeks after I cmpleted the model, and more than three months after my initial message, I received a replacement decal sheet. Unfortunately, they were no better than the first ones:

The decal, which is a spare 'faded' Type B roundel from the new sheet, is shown against the starboard upper wing of a Fujimi 1/72 F-4S 'Black Bunny', which I've just finished for a review in another magazine, and which happeneed to be the nearest gloss-finish model I had to hand. I think you can see the nature of the problems.

If Hornby wish to establish a reputation for quality for Airfix, I think they may have to accept that doing the decals on the cheap is not going to help them do this.

Cheers,

Chris.

Hi Monkey, and welcome!

BUild the MR.2. It comes in more interesting colour schemes, and if you open up and detail the weapons/ sensor bay, the MODPlod won't be coming round for you - which they would if you did this on the R.1!

Cheers,

Chris.

GREAT LOOKIN BUILD!!!!!!

Chris,

I have really enjoyed following your build and have learnt a great deal from the tips you have placed on the web. I'm looking forward to getting my Nimrod kit out of the box and starting to build it when I get some spare time to get stuck into it. I've spent over 17 Years flying on the MR2 at Kinloss and the R1 at Waddington so I'm still deliberating over which version to build. Your model looks great.

Outstanding, Chris.

You've really caught the feel of '34 and the look of weathered and patched hemp. Magnificent! 

As far as SWMBO is concerned, simply state-

If you want (or expect to have) things both ways around here, then you married the wrong guy! :)

OUTSTANDING!!!

Great work Chris, really looks the part.  I like the exhaust/brass tube idea- have to remember that one when my F-86 comes to the bench.

And here, indeed, are the piccies:

Must get a bigger piece of blue paper!

Final comments to come when I've had a chance to assemble my thoughts.

Cheers,

Chris, and kudos to the Plastic Penguins and the Apprentice Chicks for their sterling efforts. Double gin all round!

Final construction stages are complete! The last major components were the weapons bay doors. These needed careful trimming and test-fitting in order to fit neatly. One area of frustration was the door actuating jacks. These were shown anchored to the inner and outer edges of the doors, while even a glimpse at the real thing ould have shown that the actuators are fixed to a point halfway between the inner and outer edges of the doors at one end, and to rails in the weapons bay at the other. I therefore scratchbuilt these rails, and installed the actuators in the correct position. The actuators, incidentally, bear not even the slightest resemblance to the real thing, being, mostly, hydraulic jacks.The kit parts are just rod structures, with no attempt to reproduce the real thing accurately.

I next installed the torpedos. I coundn't find any reliable photos of these weapons, so I left them painted semigloss white with a brown acrylic ink wash, to give some depth and interest. I cemented them in place with white glue, so that If I later find some reliable piccies, I can remove and modify them.

Further detail work included installing the Sidewinders and the navigation lights. For these latter, I used Bare Metal Foil, rubbed down, cut to shape, and then painted with Tamiya acrylic clear red and green. Final work was to install the electronics aerials, including the long wire ones. The locating points for these had to be scratch-built from brass rod, and the wires themselves from lycra rigging thread.

And there it was - finally - complete!  Project started February 13th, completed April 7th. Almost two months - the longest model aircraft build I've undertaken since a Tamiya 1/32 Mitsubishi Zero about seven years ago. Next up, something nice and simple - this year's instalment of the Heller 1/100 HMS Victory...

Piccies and final comments to come.

Cheers,

Chris.

Work continues on the weapons bay doors, of which more anon. However, meanwhile, the Komets are finished. A fun build, and more nteresting colour schemes than the Nimrod. Fit of the cockpit canopies was not of the best, however, and they had to be faired in with repeated applications of Tippex. I suppose that, with the Academy kit at least, I could have just left the canopy open. With the Hobbyboss kit, it's moulded in one piece with the rear 3/4 glazing (though quite what you're supposed to do, in a Me.163, if you spot a P-51D on your 'six' must be something of a moot point....)

Cheers,

Chris.

This afternoon, I tried to install the jet exhausts. Fit was very tight, and I managed to open a seam by the exhausts while doing so. Then the carpet monster ate one of the exhausts....

So I found a length of copper tube of suitable diameter, and cut off four pieces the same length as the kit parts. I filed down the thickness of the tubing from the inside, held these over a candle to give a heated, blued and burned look, quenched them in water, and polished them. To be honest, they looked better than the kit parts, so I painted the interior of the exhaust housings black, and superglued them in place. Here they are:

Cheers,

Chris.

I've just varnished the model - two coats of Humbrol Mattcote for a 'not quite matt' effect - and removed the transparency glazing. Airfix were right not to bother with detailing the flight deck. The only things I can see through the glazing are the pilots' faces and their headphones. Other than that, it's all very dark in there.

Cheers,

Chris.

Update - over the past few days, I've been giving the panel lines an oil paint wash. It's quite a large model, with more panel lines than you might think, so this took longer than expected.

For the undersides, I used Prussian Blue, and Burned Umber for the uppersurfaces. I then added some Lamp Black to both these colours, and went over the control surface hinge lines and edges again. Standard oil wash technique - thinned paint (using artists' turps) flowed into the panel lines with a fine brush, left to settle for a few minutes, then wiped off in the direction of airflow with a dry cloth and cotton buds, and then with one slightly dampened with turps. Here are some piccies:

Underside:

Uppersurfaces:

Next up - detail assembly and varnish. Meanwhile the Komets are pretty much finished.

Cheers,

Chris.

Yay! The decals are - finally - finished! !

On the plus side, the decals in my kit were thin, accurate in colour, and in-register. Against this, the dot-matrix printing made the kit national insignia unusable, and the nose art only marginally so, because there was no aftermarket alternative. The kit decals were so thin that all but the very smallest broke up on application,if you tried to move them about even slightly. And there was that horrible, coninuous, milky carrier film, which had to be removed from the edge of every single decal, down to the smallest stencil.

I used markings from a number of sources, all but one illustrated by this picture of the tail and rear fuselage:

Here, the national insignia are aftermarket (Xtradecal) items - the kit decals would have damaged the overall quality image of the product. The stencils and tail number are kit items, and once trimmed to size, went on as well as any other kit decals. It was just very, very, time-consuming, and I'm afraid that any stencil with a surface area of less than 0.5mm² (of which there were many) didn't make the cut. There were still well over 150 of them...

However, the serial number decal broke up on application (as did the rather larger underwing serial) so I had to replace it. I used dry transfers, applied to a piece of clear decal, for the letters and numbers. They're not quite the right font style, but they were the nearest I had in the decal bank.

Here's a close-up of the nose art:

Printing four colours in-register on a single image on a large decal sheet is no mean achievement. You can also see the quality of printing on the Squadron badge and stencils, which are all kit items. Airfix are so close to producing decals of comparable quality to those of their main competitors...it's so frustrating!

The other type of decal used, which I didn't use, was black decal striping for the underside of the IFR probe, which saved a fair bit of painting and masking.

Next up, after the protective coat Future applied over the decals has had a couple of days to cure, will be an oil paint wash for the panel lines, to add a bit more variety and interest. Meanwhile, one of the Komets still needs its stencils....

Cheers,

Chris. 

When I get to the main painting stage of one project, I usually start my next one. In this case, I needed some light relief, so I decided to go for a couple of 1/72 Me.163s - the Academy and the Hobbyboss ones. I dedided to do both as single-seaters, so that I could use the cockpit fittings from the Academy kit's rear cockpit (if you remember, the Academy kit gives you the choice of fighter or trainer (that must have been fun - not) versions) to replace the rahter basic moulded-in detail of the Hobbyboss kit.

Progress has been fast, and there's a good chance that the Komets will actually be finished before the Nimrod! One of the finish options on the Hobbyboss kit is for a machine captured by the RAF - RLM81/82 uppersurfaces, Trainer Yellow undersurfaces, with type C1 roundels, large fin flashes, and 'prototype' fuselage circles. Irresistable!

Cheers,

Chris.

Thanks, Frank - I reckon I'm about a week off completion. Meanwhile, here are a couple of piccies of the undercarriage painted and installed: First the main gear:

Points maybe worth noting are the flat spots on the tyres - done only after the whole u/c unit had been assembled, and test-fitted to the airframe.

One of the issues with a large-multi-wheel aircraft is to make sure that all the wheels touch at the same time, and this is particularly so with flattened tyres. I approached this by standing the model on a large sheet of paper, and noting roughly where the wheels touched. I then removed the model, painted these areas with white enamel, and then, before the paint could dry, replacing the model so that some of the white paint touched the tyres. I then removed the model, and let the paint dry. Then I removed the u/c from the airframe, and sanded flats where the white paint showed, carefully comparing the two legs so that the area of flat was identical on both.

Here's the nose gear:

I think I've got the wheels on the wrong way round - port should be on starboard and vice versa - because the mud flaps should be on the bottom of the mudguards, not the top! Anyway, I think I might install some mud flaps made from black wine bottle foil.

Some notes about painting. On the real thing, the gears are (usually pretty grimy) Light Aircraft Grey. However, I think that LAG is one of those colours of which it is possible to have too much, so I decided to go for a darker grey (Humbrol 140, my notes say). Over this I applied a standard diluted Tamiya Smoke wash, and then drybrushed a very light grey from the Citadel acrylic range. I picked out the large bearings with Citadel Mithril Silver, and the oeleos with Testors Chrome Silver, a colour which I wish it were possible to buy reliably in the UK. Unlike Humbrol 191 Chrome Silver , which is an otherwise fine shiny silver shade, the Testors paint actually dries!

And a final point here. While mudguards moulded solid with wheels may have been fine with Airfix's 1969-vintage 1/72 Meteor F.3 (and Matchbox's Meteor NF.11, of the late 1970s (? - my sample has fine raised panel lines, which means it comes from the era after the mad trench-digger had been retired) , for that matter), we are now in the 21st Century, and standards have moved on. If Airfix's competitors can mould separate mudguards in 1/72 (and they can - check out the main gear on Revell Germany's 1/72 C-160 Transall), then so should Airfix.

Cheers,

Chris.

Sorry folks, you haven't got rid of the Penguin! My computer's been down for the last fortnight, but in the interim, I've done the main painting, and am about half-way through the decalling. Here are some progress piccies:

First of all, here are the starboard intakes. Notice that the seams are what resulted after several applications of Milliput and paint!

In fact, so long as you don't look down them with a photoflash, they don't look too bad. Also, I blanked off the landing light lenses with foil. While installing the lenses, the port one flew off to be eaten by the carpet monster, so I had to fashion a replacement from clear resin. It's not the clearest piece of resin you'll ever see, so I may have to just cover it with BMF, depending on what it looks like when I remove the masking. In any event, though you can't see it in this piccy, I took the opportunity to correct the shape of the landing lights, something which I handn't origiinally intnded to do.

Main painting was pretty routine. Underside was Light Aircraft Grey, uppersurfaces Hemp. I added a few drops of some lighter colours (cream, white, very pale grey) to the colour cup for some panels, to add a bit of variety. Here's the undersurfaces, masked but with some LAG - soon to be oversprayed - still showing:

and here are the uppersurfaces:

and here's the undersurfaces, with masking removed. I used the closed weapons bay doors to mask the weapons bay, gluing them in place with white glue:

At the moment, the main u/c legs are just slotted in place. The retraction jacks prevent them from falling out when the model is turned right way up, and I might just keep it that way. Other than that, painting has been uneventful - some touch-up work needed around the intakes, and I also added some very dark grey rims to the intakes. I couldn't be sure that XV234 actually had these, but it adds a bit of variety and interest.

For the last three or four days, I've been decalling, and that, my friends, is another fleet of kippers altogehter.

Keep tuned....

Cheers,

Chris. 

Have been following along and really enjoy the build of your NIMROD, Chris, especially the histororical points thrown in along with the pics.  Used to live in Jackson, MI and back in the '70's almost went to work at a plant where the Sonabuoys were made.  Had lots more hair back then too ...  Keep up the great work on your Airfix build!

Kit builder wrote:

Chris, I've finally managed to get sight of those cylindrical objects we were discussing a bit back. It looks as though they are intended to be Mk2 'buoys, which were never carried by the MR2.

Thanks for that, KB. The topic has been discussed over on Britmodeler, and that was the consensus, too. I'm fitting four MK.43s and the SAR pack, as well as underwing Sidewinders. The Sidewinders may not be historically accurate, but they look good!

My research suggests that Mk.2 'buoys were about 4' long. If so, the kit items are way overscale.

Just finished cleaning up the wing-fuselage join. No drama. Piccies to come.

Cheers,

Chris.

For some reason, i have a real softspot for the nimrod.

...Guy

Chris, I've finally managed to get sight of those cylindrical objects we were discussing a bit back.

It looks as though they are intended to be Mk2 'buoys, which were never carried by the MR2. 

 I also removed the small intake detail between the two main engine air intakes on each wing. This was not so much because these small intakes are slightly inaccurate (they are, too round when they should be ovoid, and slightly larger), but because the wing sean cuts right across them. In cleaning up the join line, the detail would have got destroyed anyway. I therefore replaced the grille detail with a couple of small pieces of etched mesh, and will later replace the vanes with pieces of plastic strip or maybe thick metal foil.

It wouldn't have been too difficult for Airfix to have moulded these intakes as separate pieces, and thus have avoided this problem.

The tailplanes needed panel lines scribed on them - I found some scale drawings of the Comet IV which I used as references, and scribing panel lines on the flattish surfaces was simple enough.

Finally, it was time to join the wings to the fuselage. I used superglue for the strength joins fore and aft, and then liquid poly for the rest. the join was pretty good - a little CA was needed as filler for the forward fuselage join, but other than that, cleaning up looks to be a simple matter of sanding the joins, using a spot of Tippex where needed, and restoring the panel lines. No more than the average modern kit, and much better than most of Airfix's efforts in the recent past. Here are some piccies of the wing-fuselage join before any filler has been used:

Wing-fueslage join. No filler yet used, Tamiya tape to hold dihedral while the glue dries:

Port forward join between fuselage pannier/ wing and fuselage proper. Note Tippex around canopy:

Starboard intakes. Note small gap on wing/fuselage seam yet to be filled, and Tippex used to smooth over intake seams:

All in all, the wing-fuselage join is much better than it has been shown to be in test-shot build articles published in the modelling press recently.

Cheers,

Chris.

Five days since the last update!

Since then, I've cemented the fuselage halves together. This was a fairly drama-free experience - the seam line needed rubbing down, and a spot of Tippex here and there, especially along the upper spine, but no real drama. A certain amount of Tippex was needed to fair in the cockpit glazing, but less would have been needed if I had used a 40 thou shim in front of and behind the cockpit, in stead of the 30 thou one that I did use. Cleanig the seam was time-consuming, not because there were any real problems, but more because there was so much seam to clean up.

I then went on to install cabling in the weapons bay. This was simply several dozen short lengths of red heat stretched sprue inserted into pre-drilled holes. At this stage, I also installed the MAD stinger and a few other detail fuselage bits - again no drama.

Moving on to the wings, I installed the intake trunking - no problem. painted up and test-fitted the exhaust nozzles. The kit instructions would have you sandwich the exhausts between the wing halves and then join the wing halves together, but you can, in fact, install the exhausts after you have joined the wing halves, which makes life a lot easier.

Again, filling the wing seams was time-consuming. The trailing edges needed thinning down, and a few spots of Tippex were needed, but none of this was really anything to write home about, just that there was a lot of it.

to be continued...

Progress update. I've finished detail-painting the nose u/c bay - and did the nosewheel while I had LAG in the colour cup. Also, I've put the nose weight in - Airfix say you need 30g, but I added a couple of large steel nuts behind the flight deck, and two layers of aquarium lead strip in the nose forward of the nose u/c bay. Should be enough.

Cabin windows have been installed. Press-fitted first, then cemented in place around the edge with CA. Elliptical window outlines were tricky to mask, and often needed two attempts. Bulged observation windows were covered internally with black lining tape, to hide the lack of anything to see, but enable viewers to see through them.

Assembled the cockpit detail:

There's really no need to add more, you'll never see it on the finished model.

Fuselage halves were then taped together to hold them in place - fit, as I've remarked previously, is very good:

and then covered the whole seam with 2cm lengths of Tamiya tape:

The gap around the cockpit is due to the spacers I installed to make the flight deck glazing fit better. I'll fill them in with CA and accelerator later - shouldn't be a problem.

One thing to watch - before cementing the fuselage halves together, you need to open up locating holes for some fo the aerials. These differ between versions, and while the kit insructions tell you which aerials go with which version, they don't tell you precisely where they go, and the kit doesn't provide flashed-over locating holes. You're left to your own devices here, so get those reference photos out!

Next up, cleaning up the seam, adding fuselage underbelly/ wing lower section and intake trunking. And deciding if I care about the landing light inaccuracies (no chance!)

Cheers,

Chris.