More TSR.2 progress. I spent more than 4 hours on the air inlets yesterday and finally just put them together like Airfix designed it, after thinning the front edge of the rear duct. The problem is the rear duct just doesn't fit, and the fuselage interferes with the duct's fit. Without really major surgery there isn't any way I can see to fix it. I don't have any pictures down the throat of the inlet so I am not sure if air was allowed to bypass, but I am pretty sure that the parts in the Airfix box are not very much like what is in the real TSR.2. Anyone able to get that picture for me? It is FOD cover time. Considering how well most of the kit is engineered, it looks to me like the Airfix people were still working on the inlet problem when somebody shot the engineers and put the kit into production.
The first photo shows part of the inlet problem but not all of it. On a positive note (and I am having fun with this kit) the wing fits very well, after just the slightest bit of work. Pictures of that also. I'm using Vol. 4 of Wings of Fame as a reference, it is very good with a ton of color photos. On the real TSR.2 the wing was mounted to the fuselage so that it could move a small amount fore and aft and up and down in flexible mounts, and the kit represents this very well. This was done to allow flexing of the wing and fuselage in high speed low level flight. There is a little filling to do up near the intakes on top, but not bad. Just a little superglue. I'm working aft of the wing now and there is a gap to work with on the speed brake wells. Strangely enough on most of the photos of XR219 flying the speedbrakes are hanging just slightly open, sometimes also on the ground.
