Xtrakit 1/72 Sea Vixen

[DamienB]

Well my thoughts on the moulding quality have been well aired, so on with building the damn thing.

First of all the cockpit, while looking fairly decent initially, is a bit of a dog's breakfast really.

1 - Thankfully I have Aeroclub white metal ejector seats to replace the ridiculously small resin ones supplied with the kit

2 - Another useless bit of resin, the radar hood, about 4 times bigger than it should be

3 - I cut out a hole in the middle wall of the cockpit - in the real thing there is a large gap. Cutting this revealed that the side panel detail was too large as well but I'm living with it, under a coat of black paint it will hardly matter

4 - the top half of the pilot's panel will stick out too much if you just glue it on as per instructions, so I deepened the depression on the bottom half

5 - some fettling on the cockpit opening so that the panel would actually fit through it

The worst example of moulding flaws - note the big melted looking channel down the rudder and across the fin, and how the trailing edge of the rudder is also knackered.

The intakes are going to be a sod to smooth out the join lines I fear. There was a spacer holding the front ends apart, but it held them at the wrong distance so I've chopped it off.

6 - the engine faces themselves bear no relation to the real thing at all, so I've replaced them with some from an old Airfix A-10 kit (I think). The bullets are a bit too big but should be able to sand them a bit smaller.

7 - the wing halves don't fit together well so lots of sanding down the mating surfaces has been needed. The trailing edges are way too thick so they needed more sanding. While I was at it, I decided to cut out the ailerons as I'll be positioning them slightly deflected. Not sure if I'll be folding the wings yet.

8 - I do have the Airwaves PE set for the exterior which includes a nice looking bit of etching for the airbrake and bay, so out went the airbrake!

9 - keeping the teardrop fairing from the airbrake for use on the PE replacement

10 - I'm going to drop the hook so carefully cut the door out...

11 - ...and then spent a while thinning the door

12 - some fettling on the back end of the hook bay, as Xtrakit have it ending too far forward

13 - main gear bays are basic but most of them will be hidden by closed doors so I'm not that bothered. The generally crappy finish on the plastic of the bays may actually help them look a bit dirty and used. I have a suspicion from a test fit of the upper fuselage that the bays are going to need some thinning down on top in order to let the upper fuselage sit right.

And that's it so far, basically carrying out lots of parts preparation and taking the plunge on the extra bits of detail I want to put in - this is like building a vacform...

[bexwh773]

Damien,

And I thought I was having fun with my Vulcan & latest Phantom, looks like Im having a ball compared to you Well it will be interesting how much of pig this beast turns out to be, but sounding like youre doing a great job so far

ATB

Bex

[Paul]

I suspect that loads of people will be watching this build with interest and it's looking good!

Gotta admire Damien's pioneering spirit

[Seamus]

Well I was waiting to see one of these being built up to help me make my mind up whether I wanted one or not.....reckon I'll pass!

Good work so far though, shall be watching this one with keen interest

[Matt Roberts]

Gotta love limited run kits. That thing looks to be as much fun as the Russian repop of the Frog Sea Vixen from 20+ years ago.

That tail is horrible

Good luck with the build, looks like one of those 'what separates the modelers from the assemblers' type of build.

Matt

Confirmed kit assembler...and praying for a mainstream Sea Vixen IN 48TH!!!!

[Paul Bradley]

I have a suspicion from a test fit of the upper fuselage that the bays are going to need some thinning down on top in order to let the upper fuselage sit right.

Yes, you will. Trouble is that even thinning them as much as you can doesn't completely cure the issue. I ended up sanding down the mating edges of the wheel bays and while that made the bays a bit shallower, it did enable the wings to fit together a bit better. You may wish to thin the insides of the upper wing halves - thought there's not much to work with there either!

Have you figured out what to do with the fit of the tail booms and over-wing tanks yet?

I've got the main airframe together, but have taken a bit of a break from it as, frankly, its mentally exhausting! I'll take a look at it again tonight and start rolling again.

Edited July 2, 2008 by Paul Bradley

[smuts]

hi had mine come last Friday, thankfully the moulding don't look as bad as your example I'll follow your WIP with interest.

best of luck Andy

[DamienB]

the fit of the tail booms and over-wing tanks yet?

I was going to use bits of sprue to help align the tail booms and give them something to hang off - and as for the pinion tanks they can stay in the box, I'm doing an FAW.1!

[Paul Bradley]

as for the pinion tanks they can stay in the box, I'm doing an FAW.1!

Let me know if you need any decals.

[Tizzy]

I really want a Sea Vixen so i'm going to be taking a keen interest in this one.After all the expectation it's a shame it's let down by poor moulding quality.Hopefully you can produce a nice result from it.

[Paul Bradley]

I really want a Sea Vixen so i'm going to be taking a keen interest in this one.After all the expectation it's a shame it's let down by poor moulding quality.Hopefully you can produce a nice result from it.

It needs to be said that my copy was not affected by the same moulding issues that Damien's was. Mine must have come from a different batch. Anyone else have one and can let us know what their's is like?

[upnorth]

Mine looks fine, no molding errors evident.

[Leadsolo]

Mine looks fine, no molding errors evident.

Likewise - at least none that I could see. One of the two boxes was missing the instruction sheet though

[upnorth]

Sounds like the MPM/Xtrakit quality control elves inspected the Sea Vixen run the morning after a serious pub crawling session.

Edited July 3, 2008 by upnorth

[general melchett]

Hi there , must admit mine doesn't seem to have any moulding issues either So far it hasn't produced any major probs other than those mentioned ( but then I spend most of my time scratching and correcting kits anyway!!!). Does seem to be a quality control issue. Lack of locators for tail boom is a pain but after struggling with the old Frog/Novo ( too short ,too fat) and Magna (quality issues) effort this should build into something quite reasonable with work , it's certainly not for newbies though...

Cheers ,

Andy

[DamienB]

I've been slowly working away on this horror, half an hour here, an hour there, as and when I get the appetite for more self-flagellation. Wing and tail halves are together after some sanding of the mating surfaces; same for main wheels and drop tanks.

14 - I've cut and sanded the leading edge of the top of the tails to better match the real thing (compare with the one on the right, as yet untouched when this pic was taken)

15 - Thankfully the big moulding flaw on the this tail has mostly disappeared with some firm sanding. Remains to be seen if it looks okay under some paint though.

The rear stabiliser is another area Xtrakit haven't got right...

16 - I cut the fairings off the tail sections, as they are part of the stabiliser in real life, not part of the tail. Resulting gaps filled with plastic card.

17 - Glued the fairings to the stabiliser.

18 - Scribed a missing panel line on. The line the '18' is on top of is going to get filled in as I don't see it on the real thing.

19 - airbrake bay roof is a PE part from the Airwaves set. Whole area painted dark grey as a base, and the part glued in place with PVA glue. A further solid roof from plastic card will be added shortly. The basic nose gear bay needed some cutting to match the nose contours.

20 - the wing fold bulkheads needed some support from scrap plastic while the glue set. Also lots of scraping and sanding of the top of the gear bays so they wouldn't foul the upper fuselage.

21 - built up an arrestor hook bay from plastic card and added the jet pipe surrounds at this point so they'd at least fair in nicely on one half of the fuselage!

22 - more scrap plastic to help locate the cockpit tub

23 - lots of plastic card to help the nose halves locate, and also give the cockpit sides a better surface

24 - lots more scraping here to try and stop the gear bays from fouling this area

[Sten Ekedahl]

Looks just like normal MPM kit building. Been there - done that - got the T-shirt!

[DamienB]

A bit of work on the cockpit today.

25 - added a sidewall and side stick for the observer. As this is one of the few things you can see through the small window, its absence would be noticeable I feel. I'm probably going to have the hatch open anyway so the more detail in here the better.

26 - the observer's main console is far too far forward if you follow the Xtrakit instructions for placement - only realised this once offering the tub up to the fuselage. Repositioned it further back (the edge of the console should be visible through the window). I also added a thin strip of plastic along the top dividing wall so it would meet the top of the fuselage, and accentuated the curved-edge flat panel on the pilot's side by adding a couple of thin sheets of plastic card on that side. A coat of black paint, some drybrushed grey and some spots of paint here and there for effect and that'll do me for the cockpit, which has since been glued into the fuselage.

The Aeroclub seats are also painted up and just need the ejection handles added; they'll be put in the aircraft later in the build.

[Tizzy]

Looking good,but what a work up!I really want a Vixen so i'm watching your progress with interest.

[DamienB]

Intakes and exhausts next...

27 - plastic card roof for the airbrake bay

28 - intakes. Try as I might I could not get the paired assembly to fit both sides equally well, so I ended up cutting the two sides apart. Some minor fettling on the mouth of the intakes made the fit a bit better there, and some work with a dremel and sandpaper smoothed the joins of top/bottom halves enough that the join line wasn't noticeable. The replacement compressor faces had a bit of plastic rod added for the obvious extra pipe seen on the real thing, and were glued to the back of the intake tunnels individually.

29 - exhausts. Xtrakit would have you glue the rear faces of the engine to the rather short outer jetpipe parts; this puts them too far to the rear and too easily visible as a result. So, I used a McDonalds drinking straw to create some inner jetpipes, and attached the engine faces to those (some cutting needed to get them to fit as they're oversized). Then some Tamiya tape to increase the diameter of the inner pipe so it can be a friction fit to the outer pipe... and some tape on the outer pipe so it can be a friction fit to the jetpipe surrounds.

30 - pipes pushed into place, and superglue run round the joins. To make sure they can't be accidentally pushed into the fuselage at a later date by mishandling I think I'll add a plastic bulkhead in front before I join the fuselage halves together. The thin plastic of the drinking straw is tricky to work with but makes for a beautifully scale thickness inner jetpipe, and it really looks the business from the back end now!

[DamienB]

The fuselage is now together. As expected, a total sod, and I had to work round it bit by bit to get it to match up all round. The seam on the side of the nose is awful despite each side's mating surfaces being sanded down and all those location tabs being added.

A look down those tailpipes...

30 - upper fuselage doesn't match the jetpipe surrounds at all well - this is the result after mucho sanding, some more still needed... and no doubt some filler.

31 - outer wings, naturally, don't match the inners too well, and the butt joint doesn't look to be reliable enough to me so I drilled holes and added plastic rod to act as a mini spar. I bottled out of doing them folded!

32 - rear nose gear door added from plastic card (resting on a bit of scrap plastic right at the back of the bay). For some reason this part is provided in resin, but is simply a thin rectangle - a pointless use of resin really, and I preferred to use plastic. The main gear doors have also been added and similarly rest on a stub of plastic, as they are slightly too small to just sit in the bay without some help like this.

Edited August 14, 2008 by DamienB

[seavixenxj494]

Looking good D.B !!! we're taking the engine out of the real thing today wish me luck

all the best mate ,

steve.

[DamienB]

Hope it went well...

I had my first filler session with this beast last night and sanded it down today. Added lots of lead ball bearings in the nose area and packed them in with filler, think it should do the job. Tail booms have gone on, aided by the use of some sections of drinking straw (thank you Paul for the idea) and sheet plastic wedged around the mating surfaces on the inside. Tailplane also in place.

Now while I dither over whether to have the radome open (which should ameliorate the shape issues with it, but requires a radar scratchbuilding session), I decided I'd take a look at the canopy. Well, what a mess Xtrakit have made of that too. The windscreen is angled wrongly, the rake is too high so it stands a bit too high and doesn't extend far enough forward. The sliding portion is just a complete work of fiction, being too wide, not long enough (very noticeable - about 4mm) and not curved enough on top. The canopy is basically unuseable if you want it to have the character of the real thing. The windscreen might be rescued by some fettling.

Compared with the old Frog/Novo/etc. kit, Frog did a much better job of the clear part of the assembly and their shape looks dead right. However, the non-clear surround is way overdone and makes it a tricky job to try and use it on the Xtrakit to replace the supplied parts. The Highplanes kit provides a perfect vacform canopy - however I really want to use that on that kit! So, Aeroclub next... they do a vacform canopy too, but while it is the correct length it's clearly been designed to replace the Frog parts so is a bit too wide and needs some careful trimming to remove the ducting along the left side (moulded as part of the fuselage on the Xtrakit effort). Happily though as it's a vacform I think it'll be okay to squeeze it into place in a slightly narrower space than it wants to go in - an attempt to do this with the Xtrakit canopy resulted in a crack right down the middle! Unhappily, Aeroclub's windscreen area is rather indistinct and lacks the very obvious framing on the real thing. I think I may try and combine the Xtrakit windscreen the Aeroclub canopy. This will no doubt take me the rest of the day...!

[Miggers]

Tremendous job Damien.

I've got me Aeroclub bits to do the old Froggie(well Revell actually) as a D.3.

Those shots of the interior in your build are highly handy to help me do a scratched cockpit for the old girl.

The jetpipes are a must too.

I'll have a bash at combining the Aeroclub hood with the kit windscreen or define the Aeroclub windscreen's framing a bit.........

She's a little way down the road yet as I'm doing her two Llanbedr predecessors at the moment,the Meteor U.15 & D.16(D.16 first).

Mark

[DamienB]

Thanks Mark! A little more progress...

33 - build up some coaming detail and a gunsight from scrap plastic, and coaming covers from masking tape; soaked that with superglue afterwards so it won't dry up and peel off in the future.

34 - this is the Airwaves etched metal airbrake, three flat bits that curve together along with two strakes on the exterior and the teardrop-shaped bump cut off the original to quite a neat rendition of the real thing

35 - tailhook. Now Xtrakit provide a resin hook end, which isn't the right shape, however adding a little bit of scrap plastic fixes the shape... but bizarrely they also provide a plastic part to represent the rest of the hook arm despite there being nowhere to place it on the kit, because the hook bay and door are moulded closed! Anyway the plastic bit is entirely fictional in size and shape so I've replaced it with some square section plastic rod and attached the whole assembly to the door I cut out earlier in the build.

36 - I've used PVA glue to temporarily fix the observer's hatch in place and fill the small window in preparation for spraying some paint

37 - I removed the inaccurate square-edged fairings on the inside edge of the wingfold area and replaced them with correctly profiled (flattened semi-circular) plastic strip positioned directly over the wingfold (same again underneath the aircraft)

38 - Filler Time! The tailbooms were slightly smaller in cross section than the boom fairings moulded on the fuselage, so sanding hasn't been enough to fair them in nicely. Hopefully I won't be spending the next week redoing this over and over again!

39 - prior to attaching the tailplane, gouged slots on the fin side to represent the slots the all-moving tailplane moves along

40 - fuel dump pipe... on the correct side - Xtrakit would have you place it on the other wing!

I've also glued the tiny resin intakes and catapult strop hooks on to the underside, those at least were drama free. Next step after getting those tail boom joints sorted will, I think, be to spray the first undercoat of medium grey to reveal any surface flaws I've missed.