I got started on the F-111B this evening and took some pictures of the progress. I will post those later.
Tonight was spent working on the wings. Using the FB-111 kit I got the wings glued together. That is a simple task of gluing two halves per side. Generally they go together nicely but there are two or three things to watch out for with this:
1) Before you do any gluing though, decide if this is a flaps / slats down or up kit. The kit is designed for an all dropped scenario. As you will see when I get to my F-111F though, you can build them up very nicely. If you are going to build with the flaps / slats up, you need to do some cutting and attach them before the wing halves are glued together. We are dropping our flaps so on to building as described in the instructions.
2) The center of the wings are hollow (no supports at all) and the way Hasegawa did the flaps, the back end is open with the front closed up. Because this center section is hollow, be careful not to get any glue in that hollow area or you end up with a badly warped wing. Especially watch down towards the wing tip area where the hollow goes away. Gluing before dry fitting will result in the flaps being a real bear. It would not be a bad idea to stick some extra plastic strips inside the hollow area, though it is not necessary.
3) Make sure you pop out the holes for the weapons pylons first. You can't get things lined up right if you don't.
I set the wings aside to dry and started working inside the fuselage halves.
Tools Used:
1) Set of clippers to remove items from the sprues cleanly
2) Liquid, fast drying cement (I use Ambroid but there are many others)
3) A hobby / Xacto knife with a number 11 blade to trim excess plastics from the manufacturing process and prep work.
Tip for the day:
I like to glue as many things as possible from the non-visible side. If that is confusing lets try this. If I can, I like to place the glue on the inside of a kit. In this particular case the ventral strakes along the back end needed to be attached and were this evening by putting them into their slots and then dabbing glue from the inside of the kit. This generally allows for sufficient but yet very neat gluing. I also glued the wing glove doors, which are not used on the F-111B, from the inside. Again, this allows for the glue signatures / mess to be on the inside of the kit where no post processing work (sanding) is required. Be careful though as this is not always possible. For example, as much as I would have liked to glue the vertical tail on or the weapons pylons, they both would be difficult to paint attached to their surfaces.
F-111B Kit Modifications Completed So Far: Only one modification has taken place thus far. On later versions of the F-111 there is a wing root glove box where a part of the fuselage opens up and the top flutters in the breeze. This was developed to allow for longer slats. This was not present on the F-111B 151972 (and I don't think was present until later AF F-111's either). To correct the problem, simply glue the three (per side) glove doors shut. There are two on the underside, one on top. However, it now presents a new problem on the wing. Somehow I have to think about how to cut off a tiny sliver of the slats and glue them into place while the rest of the wing slat remains "deployed." More on that later though.
F-111B Upcoming Modifications:
- The production tail (sharper corners) which comes on the kit needs to be transformed into the preproduction model (tapered end). I am hoping this will be easy because I have a copy of the original Revell TFX, the part is contained in the kit. I am thinking lots of mods are needed though.
- Again using the TFX kit, a modification needs to be made to the rear of each side ECM pods (if that is what they are) that sit outboard of each exhaust. Again, here is what is the standard production (left side) and what I need to go to (right side).
- As noted above, the wing slats need to be modified to represent a preproduction model with no glove box.
