The Monkey House

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flakmonkey
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The Monkey House

Post by flakmonkey »

And here we are at the relocated monkey house.

Quick recap:

We had the Airfix Sea Vixen at the start of the year, and that was a nice kit.

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Then it was on to the 1/48 Heller Mirage IV. Which is also a nice kit. But Frencher. More French. Whatever.

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The cockpit came from Neomega;

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The raised panel lines were rescribed with the Up North Mirage IV template set from MDC;

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And some junk was recycled into the nose gear bay;

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Then a recce pod was knocked up (ooer) from plastic card, aluminium tubing, balsa and an old Sabre drop tank;

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And as soon as I sweep the dust from the workbench, I had better get back to building that.
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PaulBradley
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by PaulBradley »

Frenchy? Frenchish?
Paul

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Softscience
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by Softscience »

Frenchtastic seems more appropriate. At least from what you're doing with it
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flakmonkey
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by flakmonkey »

What I'm doing with it at the moment Ralph is just looking at it; I need to get back on the horse here. Tomorrow is looking good.
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JamesPerrin
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by JamesPerrin »

You missed out the modelling forum you built ;-)
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Dirkpitt289
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

flakmonkey wrote:
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:shock: Holy **EXPLITIVE** Monkey, that cockpit is off the hook!!!!!! :shock:
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by 6t9i6m9m6y9 »

Soooo, that's where you have been since Feb. Your old workshop window was one of the most detailed, your modeling skills are off the hook and entertaining, the Bucaneer saga had me in stiches :-D . I was getting worried but i'm pleased you're back and i'm eager to see how your Mirage is shaping up. Welcome back.
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omi
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by omi »

stunning as usual flak
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by shangos70 »

That pit looks stunning , i can't do them justice so i always bang Johnny pilot in .

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flakmonkey
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by flakmonkey »

Thanks boys. Back in the saddle today, and as i haven't really touched anything for a few weeks I thought it would be a good idea to get all of the groundwork squared away with the Mirage and turn out a complete airframe.

There are a few issues around the back end of the M.IV and the wings on my kit were suffering from a case of droopitis which needed sorting out. The first problem to overcome though is the fit of the lower wing section to the rear fuselage. In a lot of ways it's like the Airfix Buccaneer and you need to have a look at what's actually going on and think of a way around it. The initial dry fit didn't go well at all. You can see there are parts that haven't been rescribed yet, this is because there is going to be quite a lot of work needed in those areas and to scribe them now would only mean having to do it twice.

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The root of the fin was blanked off with some thick plastic card from the inside, and a prop was made from a length of sprue. This had to be shaved down to fit between the jet pipes. After some trial and error, things were much improved and at least the shapes were all the same.

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Before cementing the lower wing section on, the droop was taken out by supergluing a length of brass strip across the wings to pull them together and straighten them out. Some tabs of plastic card were also added to the rear edge. It's going to need those as you shall see.

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Moving on to the exhaust fairing, it appears at first to be too narrow to fit the rear fuselage. The key to making it fit is to remove some plastic from the bulkhead that carries the jet pipes. The black marks shows roughly where it needs to be trimmed away.

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Much trimming, sanding and cementing later, and the fit is improved. It's still not perfect but it's much better than it was before. You can probably see why those tabs were necessary on the lower section now too.

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Nobody can seem to agree on the correct camouflage colours for the M.IV, and some people are recommending RAF dark green and dark sea grey. The dark sea grey isn't a million miles away but the dark green is much brighter than RAF dark green. For this build I have decided on Tamiya XF-66 light grey (in reality a bluish-grey that is quite close the colour used on the all over grey Mirage F1 and 2000 air defence schemes) and XF-67 NATO green, which is as dark as RAF green but brighter in hue. They look good to me. Having decided upon that, the insides of the intakes were sprayed and also the tricky to reach parts of the fuselage behind them. The rear faces of the intakes were left blanked off and painted black, it's very hard to see anything at all down there and certainly not worth the trouble of scratchbuilding a full intake.

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The intakes were assembled and left to set, and some detail was added to the upper wings for the main gear bay roof panels. This will form the basis for more work later on.

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Finally, the intakes were cemented in place and the upper wings attached. There is a a fair sized gap at the wing roots to fill. Actually there's quite a lot of filling needed all over the place but in the kit's defence I would point out that it's getting on a bit now and the very soft plastic does the fit no favours at all. As you can see from the Humbrol tin, it's quite a large model in 1/48.

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The Mirage genes are coming out now. Tomorrow I will probably cover it in filler.
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Old_Tonto
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by Old_Tonto »

She is a big girl isn't she. :lol:

This is turning into a great tutorial. Keep it coming.
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by 6t9i6m9m6y9 »

Good to see that your break has recharged your fantastic modeling batteries. Your ingenuity knows no bounds and attention to detail is nothing short of other worldly, so i any many others will be pleased that a shadow of your hand snuck in to prove you are like the rest of us, just blessed with an amazing amount of skill.
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TomW
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by TomW »

I have the 1/72 scale version sat in the 'to build' pile and seeing you making great progress with yours Flak is making me want to start it. Keep up the great work!

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Stamford
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by Stamford »

Nice idea with the prop on a jet. I like you doing kits like this as I learn stuff - even if its not quite up to Bucc standards. Now enough of the two hour lunches with half a bottle of cheap red and get some paint on it.
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flakmonkey
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Re: The Monkey House

Post by flakmonkey »

Thanks for looking. Although really with some of the horror stories we have on here I should have called this thread Saw VII.

As previously threatened I have set out on the long journey that is closing the gaps. They're actually not as bad as all that, the soft and rather thin plastic does make life more difficult than it needs to be though as many of the parts are, for want of a better word, floppy. The tall plant eating wife, who is rudely reading this over my shoulder, finds that word amusing for some reason.

The first thrust (there she goes again) is directed at the rear. Oh really this is intolerable I can't type with her laughing.

As I was saying, the first job was to close the gap at the rear (barely a smile). Filler would just drop out and I'm not a fan of the superglue method, especially when the kit plastic is as soft as the stuff that Heller have used for the M.IV. This then is a prime candidate for plastic card. I used a strip of 20 thou card with one edge shave down to a chamfer. This helps to get it started as you insert it into the gap. Liquid cement is then brushed on and as this begins to soften the plastic card you can give it a shove and it will go in nice and tightly.

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Whilst that set I had a look at the wing roots. There are big gaps here and you have the added problem that the upper wings don't want to form an aerofoil shape. You could use a rib section cemented to the wing root at the fuselage to give you something to cement to but there's not much there to attach a rib to and where's the fun in that anyway. I started by strapping up the wings with stretchy vinyl tape to close the gap as much as possible.

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The largest gap is at the leading edge, a piece of plastic card was used to stuff this and also to act as a joint piece. Personally I don't find the term "joint piece" remotely amusing but somebody here does. Must be a colonial thing. A small spring clamp was used, not to squeeze everything tight but to keep the upper surface of the wing lined up with wing root.

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Once both leading edges had been sorted out, the trailing edges were fixed up. Again a sliver of plastic card was needed between the wing and the wing root. This left the centre sections of the wings which were drooping down past the root. An offcut of brass strip was given a tweak to make a sort of springy end and that was pushed into the wing through the wheel bays to line up the two sections.

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Everything was left to set and I went off to drink the other half of the bottle of red that was left over from lunchtime. Eventually, it all turned out reasonably well.

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All that remains now is to sand most of the kit away to nothing, trowel a load of filler on and then cut up the wings I just carefully fitted to seperate the flaps so they can be given a bit of a drop. It's a shake and bake.
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