Camelot 200, Rhino,
5.0, Ball.
This is my second article here, but so far as I can tell, this is a first for an
article on ARC. In my wanderings around this site, I've not seen an
aircraft built in the landing configuration. This was not hard to do,
though, on account of the quality of the kit. The plastic was just soft
enough to be cut and shaped easily, and just hard enough to break away fairly
cleanly from the wings. The fit of the pieces was good to excellent
overall, and the decals, especially the cockpit instrument panel. More on
that later.
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The trailing edge
flaps were cut at the join between flap seal and wing, and new seals were made
out of sheet styrene. The seals molded into the flaps where then reshaped
to form the leading edge of the flap. The actuators for the flaps, not
modeled in any particular detail, were just little bits of .015" styrene
rod, intended mainly to brace the flaps in place. The flap hinges were cut
apart and glued back together in the down position (or in some cases just bent
into position). The leading edge slats were simply cut out and glued into
their new position.
The landing gear were just as
easy to make. They were actually from the first F/A-18E Super Hornet I
built (same kit, alternate decals), Camelot 211. For the nose gear, the
torsion link was cut off, then cut apart and repositioned, the axle assembly was
cut off, the oleo shaft was cut out and a new one was made from a small piece of
sprue. Then the whole thing was reassembled. The main gear was even
easier. The trailing arm was cut off and glued into the new position, the
existing oleo shaft was cut off, and an extended oleo shaft made of sprue was
installed. The position of the main axle pivot link was adjusted too.
The wheel bays are also sufficiently detailed to make many of the more
detail-minded modelers happy, including the linkages that open and close the
gear doors. I also built the landing gear that came with the kit
unmodified so I can swap out landing gear sets, depending on how I feel like
displaying the aircraft today or tomorrow. I also made a crude hinge for
the tailhook. This was accomplished by cutting off the tailhook, drilling
a hole through the hinge point, and bending a couple pieces of paper clips to
serve as the crude yet functional hinge. The plastic hook was then taped
to the pieces of paper clip with a small piece of duct tape. Don't worry,
I camouflaged the crude construction by painting the tape and bits of paper clip
the same color as the rest of the plane. Speaking of which, the entire
thing was painted in Light and Dark Ghost Gray, with gloss white and red for
landing gear and wheel wells, and flat black for the tires, and flat black and
gray for the Cockpit, interior canopy framing, and ejection seat. The
pilot figure was scavenged, and painted in Olive Drab, with a gray helmet and
black oxygen mask and visor. Apologies to Captain C. R.
"Snapper" Wright if I got those colors wrong. After the rest of
the decals were applied, the whole plane sans the vertical stabilizers (painted
gloss black and decalled separately, then drowned in three coats of Testors
Glosscote) was covered in three coats of Testors Dullcote. Then the
Vertical Stabilizers were installed and the gloss black wingtip and horizontal
stabilizer trim was added.
The instrument panel decal actually comes in two versions: power on and power
off. Naturally I used the power on version. The instructions said to
sand the plastic pane flat, But I had no way to do that so I just cut the decal
into its constituent MFDs and instrument panels, and applied these to their
places on the panel. Seems to work just fine. This decal's detail
really took me by surprise. The armament control screen is accurately
depicted, as are the moving map display, engine control panel, HUD control
panel, and primary and backup flight instruments. I'm surprised they
didn't provide a decal for the HUD itself.
All in all, a very fun build, with a respectable level of detail possible with a
minimum of extra work.
John
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