1/72 Skybirds '86 Supermarine Scimitar

Gallery Article by Gavin Parnaby on Nov 13 2017

 

      

1. Components
Skybirds '86 1:72 kit
PP Aeroparts ejection seat handles and canopy mirrors
Model Art decal sheet 72-004
Hasegawa AGM-12B Bullpup missiles

2. Introduction
I began construction of the Skybirds '86 kit as an 80th birthday present for somebody I knew who flew the aircraft. The kit dates back to 1990, and although there have been other kits released since, notably the lavish CMR resin offering, the type is still sorely underkitted. Perhaps Airfix will follow the precedent set by its 1:72 Swift and do right by the type at last. The Skybirds '86 is naturally a little dated by now, but it was thoroughly and carefully engineered by the late Mike Eacock, and has few aspects that one wished were different.

As for the kit itself, it is accompanied by a particularly detailed instruction sheet, in text rather than diagrammatic form. It is intended that the instructions be followed precisely, which is what I did. The kit is in the form of injection moulded parts representing the fuselage halves, flying surfaces and four tanks, with white metal castings for the nose cone, gear doors, cockpit bathtub, undercarriage,intakes, jetpipes, airdata and IFR probes, dorsal intake and aerial fairing, joystick, rudder pedals, ventral dump pipe, and ejection seat. A vacuform acetate canopy and vacform wing fences are included, along with circular plasticard jetpipe blanks, and a fret of photoetch parts for the airbrakes and instrumentation. 

3. Wings
The construction began with the wings, which were sanded to fit, a more than adequate gap being left for the later addition of the fences. Some details were rescribed, notably the number of small access hatches on the upper surface and the wing fold lines. What was there was not substantially wrong, however, so far as I could determine. Some dimpling on the outer upper wing panels was corrected with Milliput. Careful checking was required to ensure that the undercarriage would fit later on.

4. Fuselage
Next up were the fuselage halves. The centre fuselage is divided into upper and lower segments, and these were carefully sanded until the wing fitted adequately. Some rescribing was necessary, notably around the intake trunks and the access panels on the forward dorsal spine. Extra NACA intakes and louvres around the forward fuselage were added, to the best of my ability. The kit is deficient in the ventral intake louvres, but the dorsal ones are well represented. Only two cannon ports are moulded, appropriate for some machines but not others, and these are somewhat on the perfunctory side. The port wing root required some filling to make good, and I suspect that I may have inadvertently removed material from the starboard leading edge. 

The aft fuselage was divided vertically and comparatively little additional detail was required to be scribed into the two halves. The attachment was straightforward, with comparatively little filler being required to blend the two parts of the dorsal spine. 

The jetpipe castings were filed to fit, although I was perhaps a little overenthusiastic with the feet, which caused them to 'toe in' excessively. They were polished with toothpaste, but the presence of some surface blemishes inhibited me from leaving them unpainted, as the manufacturer suggested. Might work another time. The plasticard blanks were painted black and glued into position with epoxy. Meanwhile, I had carefully bent the photoetched airbrakes (considered by the manufacturer as the most difficult part of the model) into shape, via rolling them on a food tray with a No.2 X-Acto handle, as directed, until they matched the fuselage contour. Although this approach neatly sidestepped the insuperable difficulties in representing them in short-run plastic parts, it does mean that they cannot be modelled opened. The larger, plain, ventral airbrakes are represented as part of the ventral centre fuselage. The airbrakes and jetpipes were fitted together, using cyanoacrylate for the photoetch and epoxy for the white metal parts. Once the contour was right and the joints filled, the contour of the jetpipe lips was painstakingly built up with Milliput, the castings as fitted seeming too shallow. 

5. Empennage
The tailplane is represented as a single piece, including the aft bullet fairing, and was glued in place atop the fin root once the necesary panel lines had been added. The fin needed little additional scribing and was glued atop the tail assembly, care being taken throughout to achieve correct alignment. This arrangement, although the only practical option from a manufacturing point of view (a tab and socket would never have been precise enough) is the weak point of a model whose sturdiness otherwise echoed that of the original, later breaking off during handling at the cost of hasty rebuilding of the joint. 

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6. Cockpit
Turning my attention to the opposite end of the aircraft, the forward fuselage was vertically divided in two, and the two halves were carefully sanded in order for the casting that made up the cockpit bathtub and nose gear bay combined to be installed, having first fitted the rudder pedals. The photoetched instrument panel and consoles were all folded as directed, and the coaming bent to shape, partial slots along the bend lines being provided to ease matters. The throttle handles were glued in place. The acetate foil representing the instruments was painted with Humbrol Matt White and attached with Humbrol Clearfix, after the panel had been painted in Humbrol Matt Black and drybrushed, with the details picked out appropriately. The instrument panel and consoles were glued to the bathtub with medium viscosity cyanoacrylate, then the assembly was slid into the glued fuselage halves from the rear. The instrument dials were filled with Kristal Clear. This unusual approach meant that an aft cockpit bulkhead could not be attached beforehand, and had to be cut from plasticard to fit the resultant cavity. An ejection seat runner was fashioned from scrap plastic. After this was installed, various sidewall furniture, principally lights, circuit breaker panels, and piping, was added from scrap plastic and fuse wire. The cockpit overall was finished in Humbrol Matt Black, with a slight dark grey drybrush.

The ejection seat had a handle added from the PP Aeroparts set. The overall finish was Humbrol Matt Black, with the cushion picked out in tan and the parachute pack in green. The piping on the shelf aft of the headrest was added, and the gunsight glass frame was fabricated from scrap plastic, being unaccountably absent from the photoetch fret. With this detailing and the seat fitted (the fit is good, with little required as far as modifying the casting is concerned), attention was turned to the canopy.

The clear acetate canopy is admirably thin and has an excellent fitting mechanism in that the vacform is designed so as to fit over the forebody. The instructions indicate the precise direction of the cuts that are to be made in order to fit the canopy precisely in place, the resulting flaps aft of the windscreen fitting precisely into depressions in the fuselage. Unfortunately, the windscreen framing and canopy limits are not moulded into the acetate, painted strips of decal being the recommended solution. After dipping the canopy in Humbrol Clear, I thus painted the interior framing in matt black, adding mirrors where required from the PP Aeroparts fret. These were to be used as a guide for later canopy masking. The finished canopy was glued in place with Humbrol Clearfix and the forebody set aside. 

After the excess had been trimmed from the canopy, the nose was glued into place with epoxy. No significant blending was needed. An extra frame or two was added to the nose gear bay interior. The completed forebody was then attached to the central fuselage, quite a lot of filling being needed to cure the resulting ventral step. 

The next stage was the installation of the intakes, the castings representing the lips and the inner walls, with their boundary layer deflectors. This was a particularly good piece of engineering, as attempting to represent such a curvature-dominated part with an injection moulded part would likely have been an utter failure. These were then blended into the rest of the fuselage, which was now substantially complete.

7. Detail Construction
Detail parts were now the focus of the effort. A string of minor frames was added to the arrestor hook bay, as was the ventral actuator. A series of minor intakes were added to the ventral fuselage, along with two blade aerials aft and one forward of the nose gear bay. The fuel dump pipe casting was enlarged to its correct size with plastic tube and Milliput, and another ventral intake added to the aft fuselage. A dorsal blade aerial was added shortly aft of the cockpit and the dorsal intake casting fitted. A small triangular aerial was added atop the latter from scrap plastic. The early-pattern swept dorsal spine aerial was removed and a later pattern right vertical one fitted instead, from scrap plastic. The kit's aft dorsal intakes were carefully opened out with a drill. The IFR probe was trimmed to length and fitted, whilst the airdata probe on the starboard wingtip was filed to fit and blended in. This casting included several millimetres, span and depth, of leading edge, leading to an admirably robust construction. One of the many thoughtful features of this kit. The wing fences were cut from their sheet and sanded to fit, prior to being installed. Some extension below the leading edge was required. 

8. Stores
I elected to replace the outboard pair of tanks with Bullpup AGMs. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a rendition of the D model used by the FAA available, so I had to convert Bs from the Hasegawa weapons set. This involved removing wings and fins, increasing the chord of the latter and increasing the diameter of the fuselage, which was accomplished via a pair of convenient lengths of plastic tube, sanded so that they fit snugly over the bodies of the missiles. The ogival nose contours were made good with Milliput, high-viscosity cyanoacrylate, and Mr. Surfacer, and the fins reattached. The wings were reattached, with chord extensions fabricated from 15 thou plasticard. The drop tanks and pylons are moulded as single halves, so the outboard pair had the tanks sawn off and launcher shoes added from scrap plastic. These latter blend in to the leading edge of the pylons, but have a comparatively short chord and straight trailing edges, in contrast to drawings. Similar special adapters were employed for 1000lb bombs and Sidewinder AAMs. Once the missiles and pylons were complete they were married up and set aside. The inner tanks were retained, with just a little amount of sanding being required to obtain the right thickness. Note that the pylons themselves have the same chord between in and outboard positions, but the roots of the outboard pylons have a significantly greater chord. Little panel detail is present on the pylons, this being scribed in. 

9. Landing Gear
The nose gear had its mounting lug trimmed to shape, along with its baseplate. The baseplates of the main gear legs were similarly trimmed to suit the recesses aft of the main gear bays into which they were designed to fit, in an admirably sound and robust design that really ought to be copied. I added the gracile forward torque links to the main gear legs, which already featured the much beefier aft ones. Both early and late pattern mainwheels are provided, these fitting to the gear legs via a socket extending over the entire outboard face. This enables the brake to be more clearly moulded at the end of the main gear leg and a robust join made. Another excellent feature, unfortunately unrepeated anywhere else so far as I am aware. The nose gear leg is in two halves, an upper, with the retraction jacks and the baseplate, and the lower forks. The upper was fitted first, and the lower later, the tines being bent apart slightly to fit the nosewheel. The legs were painted in Humbrol Aluminium overall, as were the gear bays. The doors were trimmed to shape and had a few minor surface imperfections made good, before the inner faces were painted in Aluminium. The tail bumper assembly was painted in the same way, apart from the ventral face. The arrestor hook was painted in Humbrol 24 Trainer Yellow with matt black stripes and the hook itself in Humbrol 56 Aluminium.

10. Painting
The model was first primed with acrylic grey primer from a rattlecan, and remaining surface imperfections attended to. Then the underside was recoated with acrylic white primer, again from a rattlecan, before gloss white, from a rattlecan left over from a previous build, was applied for the topcoat. The demarcation lines for the upper surface colour were then applied with masking tape. The stores, pylons, and gear doors were painted along with the undersurfaces.

The upper surfaces, which wrapped around the wing leading edges to an extent of several scale inches, were initially sprayed with Humbrol 128 Extra Dark Sea Grey. This was then given a top coat of Xtracolour Extra Dark Sea Grey.

With the colours completed, a layer of Humbrol Clear was applied to ensure a good surface for the decals. This was initially applied at too high a pressure. The resulting chalky deposits absorbed several hours' worth of careful cleaning with household ammonia and cotton buds. An expensive mistake in terms of time. 

Once the decal application had been completed, the jetpipe areas were masked off and sprayed, initially with Humbrol 56 Aluminium, and then with Metalcote Polished Aluminium. The jetpipes themselves were painted in Humbrol 53 Gun Metal, followed by Metalcote Gun Metal. The heavy exhaust staining seen at sea was rendered in a mixture of pastel and Windsor and Newton india and sepia inks.

Again after the markings had been applied, detail painting was applied: radome in black, windscreen panel putty in white, the pitot head in Humbrol 56 aluminium, the wingtip navigation lights in Humbrol 11 silver with Tamiya clear red/green painted over, the forward dorsal aerial in white. The bands on the missiles were picked out in black, as was the plastic nozzle cover. 

11. Markings
Most of the kit markings were put aside in favour of the Model Art sheet. Between this and the kit, markings for pretty much every Scimitar squadron are available. Despite its age, the sheet worked perfectly well, the only hitch being the failure of the fin decorations to meet at the leading edge. Humbrol 85 Satin Black and 154 Insignia Yellow answered the case. One of the underwing serials was applied upside down (one of the serials should read inwards, the other outwards, rather than both in the same direction). 

Neither the kit nor the Model Art sheet included ejection seat warning triangles, so these were sourced from the spares box. The Model Art sheet has sufficient for all markings, apart from the roundels on the upper wing surfaces. The kit markings include significant quantities of the camouflage with them, which would be difficult to blend in adequately with the paintwork. The roundels also seemed a little light as far as the blue was concerned, and to suffer from a degree of showthrough against the Extra Dark Sea Grey of the upper wings.

All the decals were amenable to the Microsol and Microset solutions, and once fully dry, a second coat of Clear was sprayed on. The surfaces were washed fairly heavily with Pro Modeller Dark Dirt wash, before this was sealed in with a coat of Xtraacrylix matt varnish. 

12. Final Assembly 
Once the finish was complete, the undercarriage was glued in place with epoxy. The legs were fitted first, then the wheels added. The tail bumper and arrestor hook were then added, along with the undercarriage doors. Brake lines on the main gear legs were made from 5A fuse wire, and extra retraction jacks and struts from plastic rod. 

The missiles were then attached to the pylons with medium viscosity cyanoacrylate, and the four pylons attached to the mounting lugs. The latter worked admirably. No filling was needed.

13. References

  • 1. Aeroplane Vol.36 No.12 Issue 428, December 2008

  • 2. Scimitar: Supermarine's Last Fighter, Richard Franks, Dalrymple & Verdun Publishing, January 2010.

  • 3. The Scimitar File, Eric Morgan & John Stevens, Air Britain Historians Ltd., 2000.

  • 4. Warpaint Series No.85: Supermarine Type 508, 525, & Scimitar, Tony Buttler, 2012.

  • 5. Scimitar, David Gibbings & J. A. Gorman, Society of Friends of the Fleet Air Arm Museum Monograph No.3, Picton Publishing, 1988.

Internet resources:

Gavin Parnaby

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Photos and text © by Gavin Parnaby