August

paddleriver

Aug 27, 20238 min read

Well, it has been a while since the last post.

The house is strangely quiet today, the first time in several months. Nicholas headed back to Ottawa on Friday for his final term. He finishes up at Christmas. Marie and Christine headed to Calgary this morning. Marie to help her mom with some coming dental surgery. Christine for orientation at the UofC in prep for her first term in architecture in September. Daniel is out hiking in Jasper this weekend. He Is still Edmonton based, about to start the second half of an 8 month co-op.

Nicholas spent the summer working at Syncrude as an Environmental Engineering student in the Reclaimation Department. He absolutely loved it, and it opened his eyes to the kinds of work he could do. He was mentored by a mine planning engineer with a strong geology background, which Nicholas found very interesting. His exit interview clearly suggested they would be interested in seeing him back full time. Christine finished another successful summer at the golf course. She was obviously very good at it, as everywhere we go, people stop us and say how much they enjoy interacting with her at the golf course.

The family holiday was fantastic!. Everyone had a great time, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a wonderful chance to spend time together and reconnect with the kids. I am so very glad we did it. Almost 1400 pictures over the 10 days we were gone. I'm about half way thru them, and will hopefully finish editing and captioning them in the coming week.

I caught a cold on the flight back home, and have spent much of the last couple weeks hacking, coughing and sneezing. Today seems to be the first time in a while I haven't had to blow my nose every 10 minutes. Unfortunately, the cold passed thru everyone in the house. Nicholas and Christine had it first but seemed to shrug it off quickly. Marie got it after I did, and took almost as long as I did to get rid of it.

Otherwise it has been a pretty quiet month, enjoying the summer weather when it isn't too smokey to be outside.

MiG-21, CF-5D and Karmann Ghia

Nope, still no progress on photos or chrome trim. Guess I am waiting for the mood to strike me.

CF-104

I will start this update with an embarassing story. i was wrapping up construction of the cockpit just before we headed out on holidays. The joystick was the last thing to add to the cockpit. I had previously painted it black while it was still on the sprue. I went to clip it from the sprue and....it wasn't there. There was just an empty spot. A quick look didn't find it in the box or on the bench. A closer look arond the shop still didn't find it. So the bench was cleaned, with all the stuff picked up and put in the correct spot. Everything dusted and swept clean. Still no joystick. Next was a complete clean and sweep of the floor. Still no joystick. I knew I had another kit (no comments!) so started digging thru the stash to find it. After much moving of boxes I located the other kit. I opened the box and checked the sprues. This kit was a different version but the required spruce was the same as the CF-104. Back to the instructions to find the part number and there it was. But it wasn't in the same spot as the CF-104 sprue. Back to the CF-104 sprue and look in the different spot and there was the joystick! Two hours of cleaning and searching and I had found the missing joystick! It was still on the sprue. I had apparently been looking at the wrong location when I thought it was missing.

This is one of the first CAD designed "super kits" I have built and fit has been exceptional. A layer of paint in the wrong spot can be enough to create fit problems.

I haven't needed to use much filler, the fit has been that good. The sprue attachments are small, and typically located on a join line so they are easy to clean up. The exception was the intake, where a very difficult to reach attachment was located on a compound curve. There was no way to clean it up without damage to the joint. The result was that the top and bottom intake joints needed filler in an awkward place to clean up.

The electronics bay cover, behind the cockpit, wouldn't fit without extensive trimming of the electronics casting. I hadn't read of this issue in any of the kit reviews so suspect it was an error on my part. It wouldn't matter with the bay closed so out came the knife. The cover ended up fitting too low, causing a step around the entire rear of the cover perimeter that needed filler to eliminate. This was probably the most extensive need for filler on the kit.

The kit includes a nice, multi-piece radar for the nose. I built it up, painted it, and installed it, even though I intended to glue to nose on. But I know it is there!

Photo 1 - Filler needed on electronics bay cover

Photo 2 - Radar installed, never to be seen again

The wings and horizontal stabilizer fit really well, so I decided to leave them off to paint the fuselage. The fuselage was primed with Mr Surfacer 1500 black, then checked for errors and potential repairs. The primer highlighted a couple of ghost seams on the fuselage underside, and a little more sanding was needed at the intakes. With that fixed, the fuselage was reprimed and then repolished with 1500 and 3600 grit pads.

Natural metal Starfighters are a patchwork of metal colours, especially around the engine and tail. I wanted to do the main colour using Alclad Airframe Aluminum. This colour is notoriously delicate, so it was decided to paint it last rather than mask over it and risk damage. I tried to replicate the multiple different metal colours using steel, stainless steel and duraluminun Alclad colours, all more durable than airframe aluminum, with each new colour carefully masked before the next colour was sprayed.

With the metal patchwork colours on, it was time to spray the airframe aluminum. The initial coat went on well, but highlighted a couple spots were I hadn't done adequate prep work. These were sanded, reprimed, repolished, and then resprayed. It took three sessions of repair and paint before I was happy with the result.

Photo 1 - Black primer applied and polished. Dark metal colours applied.

Photo 2 - Grey painted on nose. Then lots of masking.

Photo 3 - Even more masking

Photo 4 - Masking removed to reveal a very shiny airplane.

With the metal colours finished, I will spray a gloss coat to protect the finish, then mask to make some repairs to the black intakes and nose areas.

English Electric Lightning

The English Electric Lightning is a British fighter aircraft that served as an interceptor during the 1960s, the 1970s and into the late 1980s. It was capable of a top speed of above Mach 2. The Lightning was designed, developed, and manufactured by English Electric. After EE merged with other aircraft manufacturers to form British Aircraft Corporation it was marketed as the BAC Lightning. It was operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF), the Kuwait Air Force(KAF), and the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF).

A unique feature of the Lightning's design is the vertical, staggered configuration of its two Rolls-Royce Avon turbojet engines within the fuselage. The Lightning was designed and developed as an interceptor to defend the airfields of the British "V bomber" strategic nuclear force[3] from attack by anticipated future nuclear-armed supersonic Soviet bombers such as what emerged as the Tupolev Tu-22 "Blinder", but it was subsequently also required to intercept other bomber aircraft such as the Tupolev Tu-16 ("Badger") and the Tupolev Tu-95 ("Bear").

The Lightning has exceptional rate of climb, ceiling, and speed; pilots have described flying it as "being saddled to a skyrocket".[1] This performance and the initially limited fuel supply meant that its missions are dictated to a high degree by its limited range.[4] Later developments provided greater range and speed along with aerial reconnaissance and ground-attack capability. Overwing fuel tank fittings were installed in the F6 variant and gave an extended range, but limited maximum speed to a reported 1,000 miles per hour (1,600 km/h).[5]

Following retirement by the RAF in the late 1980s, many of the remaining aircraft became museum exhibits. Until 2009, three Lightnings were kept flying at "Thunder City" in Cape Town, South Africa. In September 2008, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers conferred on the Lightning its "Engineering Heritage Award" at a ceremony at BAE Systems (the successor to BAC) Warton Aerodrome.[6]

Copied from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Lightning

I had noted in an earlier blog that I felt the Starfighter looked fast, even sitting still. Everything about it, from the sleek fuselage and small wings, to the huge engine, screamed speed. The Lightning shared many of those same features, in particular the incredibly thin wings. It was, by all, accounts, a veritable rocket of a plane, with an exceptional rate of climb. It looked fast, but it's deep fuselage never screamed "speed" to me the way the Starfighter fuselage did.

I bought this kit at the Uncle Bill's store closing, back in 2014. Since then, it has been pulled out several times, the plastic and decals longingly looked at, then put back in the stash. Now, after building the MiG-21, and with the Starfighter underway - both comtemporary speedsters of the Lightning - it seemed the right time to build it.

The kit is regarded as Airfix's return to quantity kit building after many years of ownership changes and less than stellar kits. Reviews were almost universally positive, even glowing, so I was looking forward to building it.

The first thing that struck me on opening the rather large box is the size of the fuselage. The unusual engine over engine arrangement led to a large, deep fuselage. The kit consist of three large sprues in Airfix's standard, soft blue grey plastic, a small clear sprue, and a very large decal sheet.

Work started on the cockpit, and it quickly proves a strange affair. The kit uses decals for the instruments. The supplied instrument decals are very simplified, really nothing more than black and white dials. The instrument panel decal bears no resemblance to the plastic instrument panel, being a completely different shape that hardly covers the upper half of the panel. I ended up placing the decal for best coverage, ignoring the raised panel detail, and trimming off the overhangs. To add insult, the instrument panel doesn't fit the cockpit, requiring significant trimming of the bottom to fit. The included pilot figure is nicely cast, and I had painted him up with the intent of placing him in the cockpit, but he is much too large for the seat. It would be necessary to grind off most of his butt to get him to sit low enough in the seat. I had wanted to include the pilot because 1) I like adding pilots to my airplanes, and 2) the Lightning has some of the most complex seat straps I have seen. With no pilot to cover up the seat, I needed to come up with some straps. I used Tamiya tape to create a poor representation of the actual rat's nest of straps. It should work okay with the canopy on.

Dry fitting the fuselage halves found installing the cockpit in the suggested location would prevent fitting together the fuselage halves. I ended up moving the cockpit tub forward a good 2-3 mm to get the rear turtle deck to fit, and to get a decent fuselage fit. I think this will result in the instrument panel being too deep under the instrument panel shroud, but oh well.

Photos 1 & 2 - Cockpit is pretty basic but very little will be seen through the canopy

Photo 3 - A busy interior, ready to close up.

Photo 4 - Some filler needed on the fuselage joint.