S-3 Viking

I've had enough of detailing the main gear bays and it's time to get moving with this build so tonight I've started to glue the inner Wolfpack wings to the fuselage. As they are quite a big chunk of resin I'm using a two-part epoxy resin glue for strength as for something this heavy I do not trust cyanoacrylate;

It's a five-minute epoxy resin glue but it won't be fully cured for at least 24 hours so I'll repeat the process tomorrow night. Although I've had enough of detailing the gear bays those sonobuoy tubes underneath are still bothering me so I need to have a think about them :o)

S-3 Viking

I've done a bit more to the bays, this time I've added hinges to the upper gear bay doors;

They hang a LOT better than if I had glued the doors directly to the fuselage. I drilled holes into the roof of the gear bays and although it looks a bit naff you won't see them unless you turn the model upside down.
All that is needed is connecting rods from the doors to those white round bits with sticky out bits attached to it during the final assembly after painting.
Trouble is I keep looking at those sonobuoy tubes as they are starting to bug me....hmmmm.....

S-3 Viking

I added a bit of detail to the main gear bays as there is'nt any in the kit apart from the fictional lumps of plastic either side that are supposed to represent part of the retraction system. So a few happy hours have been spent cutting styrene rod, tube and strip to jazz them up a bit and 5 amp fuse wire will be used for the hydraulic piping, some of which has already been fixed in place;

When cutting the main gear legs from the sprue I managed to break one of the legs, not a problem as it was easy enough to drill a couple of holes, insert a length of brass wire and glue it together again. While I was doing this it occured to me to do the same to the other gear leg as the weight of the resin wings is giving me cause for concern as to whether the undercarriage will be strong enough so a bit of metal in them will help (hopefully).
The nose gear bay won't be getting any superdetailing as you can't see it but the nose gear leg will get some hydraulic piping added where necessary.

Fokker E.V/ D.VIII

The wing has been stripped, start again I s'pose;

It took a LOT of sanding to get it down to virtually bare plastic but at least the trailing edge is thinner so every cloud has its silver lining really :o)
All I have to do now is figure another way of getting the effect I was after the first time.

Fokker E.V/ D.VIII

I masked off the wing last night so that I could spray the white band around the leading and trailing edges and wing tips. I had a sneaking suspicion that all would not be well as even after a month or so the varnish was still susceptible to finger prints, anyway after spraying the white I removed the masking tape;

Unfortunately the masking tape pulled up the wood grain decal underneath the paint....BUGGER!!!
This means I now have to strip the wing entirely and start again from scratch.
Analysing it now the first mistake was to use Johnsons Kleer as a way of getting the decals to stick. Secondly the use of Winsor and Newton gloss varnish over the top of the paint as I should have known the stuff stays tacky forever.
So I'll strip the wing entirely and recover it with the woodgrain decal, however I'll use an acrylic paint instead of oils for the streaky effect as I can use varnishes that don't take long to dry.
I can't say I'm pissed off as I'm used to making mistakes these days, it's just the time factor and keeping the motivation in projects when things like this happen. Live and learn I s'pose....

S-3 Viking

I've been tweaking a couple more areas on the model, one thing that is poorly done in the kit are the fuel dump pipes on the lower rear fuselage;

So with some styrene tube bent to shape and drilled out I now have new fuel dump pipes;

The worst fitting part so far is the cover for the FLIR turret under the nose but looking at reference pictures the cover is'nt quite correct anyway so a small strip of styrene sheet with a crescent cut out was added to one side as per the actual aircraft. The kit supplied door had a smaller curve put into the edge and then fitted into place;

The 330gal fuel tank arrived from Poand this week so after a bit of fettling to get the tail cone to fit flush to the rest of the tank, holes were drilled into it that corresponded to the styrene rod that was glued in the pylon earlier. The oval indents in the tank were filled and will be sanded down when I'm off work next;

I decided to replace the turbine blades on the Wolfpack buddy refueling pod with brass sheet cut to size as (A) the kit ones are too thick and (B) I managed to break off one of the blades which promptly disappeared into the arms of the Carpet Monster....ffs!
The bomb bay doors have been closed up and these needed some TLC to get them to fit properly, the elevators have been glued to the rear fuselage too, taking care to get the dihedral correct and all the panel lines that disappeared after sanding have also been rescribed.
The next big job will be detailing the main undercarriage bays, what will also be interesting is fitting the resin wings as I can't see the wing fold hinges being able to carry that much weight. The 'plan'' at the moment is to fit the red braces that you see on Vikings when the aircraft are parked up so I shall be looking at references to see where exactly they are fitted on the wings and fuselage.

S-3 Viking update

 I had a good session at the bench last night until 4.00am and I've finally managed to stick the fuselage together, also the underwing pylons received some TLC with extra bits added;

The styrene rods sticking out of the bottom of the pylons will match up to holes drilled into the refuelling buddy pod on the port side and the fuel tank on the starboard. The kit does'nt have any fuel tanks so initially I stole one from a Tamiya Skyraider with a view to putting two extra fins on the rear however after a search online a Polish company (www.attacksquadron.pl) produce the Douglas 300 gallon tank with a choice of fins so hopefully one will be on it's way soon. (Factoid; the Douglas tank could be fitted with a variety of rear sections to suit different aircraft and could be found on the A-1 Skyraider, A-4 Skyhawk, A-7 Corsair, A-6 Intruder, EA-6B Prowler, S-3 Viking and AV-8B Harrier).
The engine pods have been glued together and cleaned up and for these I'll be attempting to make intake covers, probably from thinly rolled out Milliput. When I started this kit a while back I separated the elevators from the tail plane and built up the leading edges but that's as far as they got so last night I fixed them in a lowered position as originally planned.
Still some way to go but at least I feel I'm progressing with it at last.