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.

Front end

Using reference photos I added wire and plastic card to the front undercarriage leg to suggest a bit more detail. Filling was necessary to blend some of the parts together and a light coat of white primer sprayed over. That’s as much detailing I’m going to do until I fit the wheels.

Most of my time has been spent on the windshield and visor. The visor was broken when the kit arrived but the fit was really poor anyway. The windshield isn’t very accurate and is far too raked. I’ve been experimenting with scratch building new clear parts. The results look promising, but there’s an awful lot of fiddling and fettling to do. I had a job to find any reference photos for the ‘cover’ under the visor. There’s nothing in the kit so there’s just a void into the nose. I eventually found some at the excellent Concorde-Photos site. Took some searching but found enough to give me some idea of how it should look. That’s what I’m doing now, trying to fit some plastic card into the nose to seal off that void. As I’m using thin clear plastic that area will be quite visible, so it will be worth the effort.

This is the plastic card cover I’ve fashioned and a clear plastic screen:

I’ve tacked the fuselage halves together at the front and fixed the cockpit in place. I didn’t do much to the cockpit as it’s so dark in there that any detail will be hard to see. The black overspray is from inside the nose. My plan is (once the cover has been painted), to fix the windshield at the top and wherever else it makes contact with cyano and then to trim, fill and sand the top to blend in with the fuselage. Any clouding caused should (I hope) be covered when I mask up the frame.
I’ve assembled some of the engine too:

I used poly-weld as there were a few gaps, but not too bad compared to the rest. I haven’t fixed the end pieces yet.

The start

For £24.44 ModelActive provided me with the 1:72 Airfix Concorde kit. Easy isn’t it. Inspecting the contents I found the clear visor rattling around the bag in two pieces. I’ve requested a replacement, but could mend it. On the other hand I might contemplate scratch-building a visor as the original part is thick and really un-defined. Scale canopies and glass are difficult to achieve but at least this subject is fairly simple.
The rest of the kit looks fairly straight forward and the size is really impressive. It certainly inspires me to put the effort in as, once built, this would look great on display.

Most issues I’ve read about have been to do with the fit between fuselage sections. The instructions suggest that the sections are constructed then these ‘tubes’ fitted together. Doing a dry run of the sections really shows the differences in the diameters along the fuselage.
I think I’ll join the sections for each side together first and then join the two halves together as I think the centre seam will be easier to deal with rather than 3 main sections of different diameters. With a little pressure the fit isn’t too bad (I’m not saying it’s great though).
There was no question that I wanted this model displayed gear down and nose up, so I’m not interested in the ‘gimmick’ of a moving nose. None of that around here, thank you very much. Besides the brittle clear plastic the mechanism’s moulded from (“Look, you can move it up, down *SNAP* oh, and off…”) the fit of the panels is pretty poor and will look sharper filled and re-scribed.
So, this will have to come off.Anyway, Step 1 : Starboard Engine and Intakes.
The moulding is very thin and the bottom leading edge of the intake is warped.
Hopefully I can sort this out when the dividing panel is fitted.

The engine panels have moulded vents on the underside, which I think are meant to be ‘spill doors’. Looking at the reference images these are incorrect.

The moulded flaps would lift into the air-intake whereas the section hi-lighted in blue is a large spill door and can be lowered. I’m not going to lower/lift anything here and I’ve sanded down the lumps and will fill and re-scribe. I’ve continued the panel lines up the side of the moulding as they were non existent. Also here are a couple of prominent panels and a few vents that I’ll try and detail.
To end my first session I tried to do something with the ‘back-end’ of the engine. The fans at the front are quite well hidden so a bit of dry-brushing will be enough there. At the hot end though some detail will be seen and something needs to be done to add some interest. The moulding is very basic so I’d like to at least add the after-burner rings. I sanded down the part using wet-and-dry on a sheet of glass to keep it flat. It didn’t take long to get through to the spokes and I was able to pop out the thin triangles and clean up the edges with a scalpel.

Looks better already.