There are several braces and
actuators that required detail
painting, plus I scratch-built a
couple of main gear door actuators
from brass tube. Once assembled,
I was quite pleased with the
finished undercarriage, which
has plenty of detail for the scale.STORES
The 1500 litre fuel tanks were
moulded with prominent, and
inaccurate, raised circumferential
rings, which I sanded off and
replaced with scribed lines. The Sky
Shadow pod is very nicely rendered,
although I did wonder if the fins
were positioned correctly. I opted
to leave well alone and concentrate
instead on the BOZ 107 pod for the
starboard wing. The chamfered
fairing on the rear was moulded
180 degrees out, facing towards
rather than away from the fuselage.
I used a razor saw to remove it,
before re-attaching and filling it.
I also felt that the mounting holes
were too far forward, so I drilled
a new pair slightly further back.CANOPY
By far the most difficult part of
this build was correcting the poorly
moulded canopy. After taking the
time to detail the resin cockpit to adecent standard, hiding it beneath
a less than perfect canopy seemed
pointless. So...what to do about it?
No viable vac-form replacements
are available. Having obtained
from fellow modellers several
spare Revell canopies, all of which
are similarly flawed, it seems like
the issues are common to most
versions of the kit. Having said
that, I have seen nicer examples
at model shows, so perhaps some
earlier boxings would be better.
After much deliberation, I
decided to vac-form my own
replacement. Much advice was
sought and found online, so,
armed with this information, I
made a start by moulding a plug
over which the softened plastic
would be formed. I made this by
coating the inside surfaces of
the original canopy with release
agent (petroleum jelly or similar),
before tightly packing it with
Milliput. Once set, the plug was
removed and any obvious voidsfilled with more Milliput and a
coat of Mr. Surfacer 1200. This was
subsequently flatted using sanding
pads, progressively finer grades of
Micromesh, and finally polished
with T-Cut. This resulted in a
glossy, smooth surface. It should
be noted that even the tiniest flaw
on the plug will become painfully
obvious in the formed plastic.
The finished plug was placed
on a home-made vacuum plate,
which was basically a block of
wood with a hole for a vacuum
cleaner hose in one end, leading to
a mesh grid on the top. I obtained
some Bayer Vivak 0.5 mm PET-g
clear sheet from eBay, which was
placed in a simple wooden frame,
and heated in the kitchen oven -
about 170 degrees C for around 90
seconds seemed to work well.
Once the plastic was seen to
become “wobbly”, the vacuum
cleaner was switched on, and
the hot plastic placed over theplug. I assumed there would
be a lot of trial and error, but
in reality it was quite easy.
I made several mouldings
and selected the best. After the
excess plastic was cut away, the
edges finished, and a quick dip in
Klear, the process of framing and
detailing the canopy could begin.
For the framing, I used Tamiya 0.1
mm Pla Paper, which, as the name
suggests, is paper-thin plastic
sheet. I added some rivet detail for
the hoops and cut out the lower
sides, before scribing, painting, and
attaching to the canopy with PVA.
At this stage, I added the Eduard
rear view mirrors and a few more
scratch-built details, such as active
grab handles and pipework to the
internal surfaces. Using online
references as a guide, I also placed
a few small decals on various parts.
The Miniature Detonation Cord
(MDC) that runs along the top of
each canopy was made by bending30 • NOVEMBER 2017 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL
TORNADO GR4
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