Latest arrival

I’ve been trying to find another 1/72 airliner to complement Concorde and there are some fine examples available. But I’m too tight to spend more than £20-30. So my compromise is this KC-135R. Ideally I would have liked a 707 with the JT3D engines, but they were all out of my price range, but I’ll keep looking. I’m not going to go down the route of converting this into a 707/720.
My plan was to have my Concorde as G-BOAC in the original livery and I would like to have another airliner in a contemporary livery alongside it. I thought the contrast between the technologies of the time would be interesting. Saying that, I’m a sucker for those liveries of the 50s & 60s, like BEA and Scandanavian. So perhaps I should be looking for something from a bit earlier…

My first impression on seeing the KC was how big Concorde is beside it. The KC is still a big kit, but I was expecting it to be larger somehow.
The second thing was the quality of the moulding on the KC – crisp and plenty of detail.
Now, why couldn’t Airfix have done that.

I’ve had a bit of a break from the Concorde build and started the KC-135R. Well, I’ve got a few builds on the go, as I’m sure most people have. I find I need a change of scene from time to time, and when I return to a subject I have new enthusiasm for it. Now that I’ve discovered the way to add new sections to the blog I can keep my projects separate.

The progress on this has been swift, mainly due to the ease at which the interior has come together. I purchased the Airwaves photo-etch set from Hannants to perk-up the cockpit and exterior. I haven’t added all the parts suggested as most of the details will not be visible and will be handy as spares for other aircraft. I was quite pleased with the result, considering this is the first detailed model painting I’ve done in over 20 years. Photo etch is a new experience for me, so these completely flat parts were a gentle introduction. The detail really pops out and I couldn’t achieve the same level of detail any other way.

Even though most of the detail will be hidden, I took the opportunity to practice some techniques and effects. The most effective, I felt, was using a coloured pencil for the writing on the compartment doors. I just held a ruler up to the part and drew a line or two. An ordinary graphite pencil was used to outline various other panels.

Couldn’t resist

Last night I made a bit of an effort on the main gear. Just a bit of detailing with foil strips and stretched sprue. I sprayed some primer over and thought I could pop the wheels on to see how it looked…

…then I thought I could dry fit the undercarriage to the body, also to see how that looked……and it looked good.

The nose wasn’t as high as I thought it would be and I may reconsider cutting down the front leg. I purchased a set of resin wheels and tyres from Hannants because I wasn’t happy with the results of using some wet & dry to shape the vinyl tyres supplied. The wheel hubs aren’t too bad, but lack the detail on the inner faces too. The resin set is primed, but I’m not sure what colour to use. I’m not sure about using a metallic silver as it can look unrealistic in this scale. I’ve been thinking about using a light grey instead, but I’ll experiment a bit first. Also the shock absorber will need something to simulate a highly polished surface, perhaps some foil. The best method for some parts of the undercarriage would be telescopic tubing, but I don’t have anything at the correct size, and can’t face paying more for P&P than the contents over the internet. When I get a large order together I’ll add some tubing to it. There’s always something.

The tailfin is back on and now at 90˚ to the wings (and in line along the fuselage!). I’ve used polyweld type liquid glue and filled the gap with stretched sprue. You may notice that I’ve rescribed the panel lines on the fin so that they line up on both sides.
As a side note, I use a fine scribing nib (I think it’s a mapping nib) and holder to apply the liquid. I had a few kicking about from my art school days, but only plastic ones, so this one’s starting to fit the neck of the bottle really well… I’ve found it holds enough glue and is accurate to put it where you need it. You need to dip regularly, but I’ve never had too much running all over the work.
I’ve seen some nice wooden ones on the net, which may replace this one somewhere down the line.

Wings and wells.

I’d already made up the tail light from a piece of clear sprue, drilled a small hole and popped some red paint in there. Then filed, sanded and micromeshed to this: Other jobs done were:
Filled the fuselage seams.
A bit of foil detail to the main gear well.
Fitted the main gear doors adding some plastic tabs for support then filling, sanding etc.

Also fitted the wings without much fuss – quite a good fit actually. A good join to the gear well walls.
Miliput was needed to fill the gap on the underside along the curved outer edge and the outer wing pieces (#22).
The underside, right at the front of the wing root, around the landing lights, was pretty poor, with no attempt for the wings to fill the gap. Another one on the list for filling, along with some minor filling along the top wing root.At the back, I’ve discarded the bump-wheel well and scratched a bulkhead along these lines:
to which I’ll add a scratch built bumper wheel.
As you can see I’ve also re-sprayed the gear wells in Humbrol 93 (desert yellow).

Wonky tail

Admittedly, I’d had a glass of wine, but the other night I was looking at the plane and the tailplane just looked ‘off’. I looked down the length from nose-to-tail, tail-to-nose and it just wasn’t at 90˚ to the wings. I slept on it and checked again in the morning. Yep, definitely wrong. So, I sliced it off, which was fairly easy, filled the gap above the bump wheel well and set about some other jobs.