Model Airplane International – September 2019

70 MODEL AIRPLANE INTERNATIONAL - September 2019

KIT BUILD

almost single-handedly responsible for taking

the skill level needed to complete this kit fi rmly

up to an advanced level! Honestly, this is the

single most diffi cult sub-assembly I have ever

dealt with in a standard kit that only featured

plastic parts. It’s an incredible

achievement on the part of

Airfi x, but its design, the number of parts

and the sheer complexity of the completed

unit, mean that you have to have your wits

about you when it comes to both planning

construction and dealing with the painting of

the results.

Your fi rst hurdle concerns the

accuracy of the moulds and

tolerance between the

individual components. As

with the interior of the

wings, the designer has

been almost too good

in his creation of the

parts the combine to

create the engine, little

in the way of additional

wiggle room being

incorporated into the

design. This manifests

itself most visibly in the

way that the inner core of

the engine works alongside the

outer parts that are supposed to slide over it to

create the basic shape and design of Pratt &

Whitney’s masterpiece. The truth is that they

don’t. The tolerance between these parts is

so fi ne that I could’t slide any of them together

easily, needing to remove material from both

the inner core’s out surfaces and then the inner

rings of the cylinders and their associated push

rod parts. This perhaps could have been made

simpler if I had ensured that the two halves of

individual components. As

The exhausts are incredibly

complex in design and need

a lot of care to assemble and

clean-up. In order that I didn’t

mix them up, each one was

assembled and then dropped on

to a piece of mount board, the

individual components being

labelled as I went along. Once

painted, they could then be

dropped back on to the card,

ready to be fi xed to the engine.

In terms of fi nish, each pipe was

airbrushed with Super Metallic

Iron and then polished with a

soft cloth. Though not done at

this point, further work with

washes would be added later on

to add a further layer of wear.

The exhausts painted, they could be ‘fi xed’ in place.

Initially, I thought that this would be a simply case of

locating each one and then applying some glue. As

it turned out, the fi t here was so tight, that I had to

actually ‘snap’ each one in place using brute force

and ignorance, no glue being needed. The downside

to this rather tight fi t was that the collection of pipes

added so much tension to the inner core, that they

conspired to split the ring onto which they were

located, the crack being seen in this shot...

That engine panel seen earlier is
fully painted. Though references
suggest that this panel should
be natural metal in fi nish, the
instructions direct you to fi nish
it in Interior Green, so that’s
what I went with. In order to
add a little interest, I decided
have some fun with this part
and accentuate its shape with
highlights and shadows, as
well as oil paint fl ourishes that
helped further defi ne its shape.
Very little of this can be seen on
the part now it’s in place behind
the engine, but it was fun to paint,
even so!

individual components. As

design. This manifests

The engine is festooned with all manner of intakes

and their ducts, all of which need to be painted Interior

Green. In order to create a little contrast, these parts

were not painted in the three shades used within the

cockpit and on the other, larger structural members,

instead being sprayed with straight Interior Green and

then highlighted with Interior Green lightened with

yellow. This create a lighter fi nish that added a neat

level of contrast within the engine bay, creating the

impression that these items were manufactured and

fi nished at a different point to the other components.

The inner ring, as well as some of the

straps, needed to be fi nished in metal so I

masked them off with Tamiya masking tape

ready to airbrush them with Gunze Sangyo

metallics.

And here is the inner ring, airbrushed with a dark

metallic shade mixed from SM Iron, mixed with Super

Fine Silver. Note the panel lines and rivets, defi ned

with oil paint washes.