Scale Aviation Modeller International – April 2019

T

he Bristol F.2B

was a ighter and

reconnaissance

aircraft developed

to replace the Royal Aircraft

Factory BE.2 two-seater and

irst lew in September 1916.

Its production ran from 1916 to

1927 and amazingly was only

inally withdrawn from RAF

service in India 1932! This kit

comes as four buf coloured

sprues, one etched fret frame,

one decal sheet, one mask

set, a set of instructions and a

small sheet of acetate, a typical

ProiPACK boxing which dates

from 2005. Naturally, the build

began in the cockpit - but not

where you’d have thought. Not

being up to speed with this

aircraft, a certain amount of

time was spent researching

on the internet for images

of the Brisit. One of these

showed that there is a curtain

that divides the rear of the

double seat cockpit with the

rear of the fuselage. The kit

part is just an uninspiring

solid piece of plastic, so that is

where I started. This curtain

is fashioned out of silver foil,

which was irst wrinkled to

look like fabric, pockets added,

presumably for spare ammo

drums and put aside ready

for paint. Next task was to

assemble any small cockpit

parts including the etched seat

and mount these on cocktail

sticks or using alligator clamps.

Next, I removed the fuselage,

wings, tail plane and the

separate control surfaces from

their sprues and prepared these

for spraying. Grey Stynylrez

Primer was used on the wings

and White Primer in the cockpit

area. A pre-shade of Tamiya

XF-52 Flat Earth thinned

with Mr Hobby Self Levelling

Thinner was then sprayed on

the undersides of the wings,

and when dry the ribbing

detail were then laboriously

masked. Mr Hobby Aqueous

H85 Sail Color, thinned again

with SLT, was then sprayed

over the masked areas. The

idea being give the impression

of the wing ribs showing

through the bleached linen.

RIBBING

Because there was some H85

left in the colour cup, I sprayed

the inside of the fuselage. I

went for a diferent tack for the

top side of the wings, purely

because I couldn’t face losing

another afternoon masking

the ribs. White Primer went on

irst, then using a straight edge

of a piece card to temporarily

mask an individual rib, I

carefully sprayed H66 Black

Green in the space between

the ribs. When done, the card

Tim Hedworth looks at the 1:48 Eduard Bristol F.2B Fighter

GREAT WAR

BRISFIT!

APRIL 2019 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL

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28

FE ATURE

BY TIM HEDWORTH

BRISTOL F.2B FIGHTER

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