Here are a couple of pictures from my 1/72 FMA IA58 Pucara. It’s the Special Hobby kit. The injected plastic parts are really very finely engraved, and the kit also features some resin bits, a nice set of PE and some gorgeous decals.
Assembly should really start with the offices, but I decided to leave that for later and concentrate first on the main aiframe bits. There are some fit problems along the sides of the fuselage where the underside of the front fuselage, holding the cockpit bits and the front landing gear bay, meet. But so far it’s the gap between the wings and the fuselage that tops it all… This is calling for some major surgery…[xx(]
I feel styrene shims and putty coming on[;)]. Will you finish it in Argentine Falklands markings? When I was at Duxford a few years ago I came across one such aircraft that looked really beaten up (must have an old-skool pic somewhere…). It would look great as a model, not so much as a real aircraft though.
Filibert, that aircraft you saw was taken from the Falklands/Malvinas and brought back to England. The decal sheet features that particular aircraft too! I’ll probably do it camouflaged, for that conflict, unless I manage to find info about the Sri Lankan or even the Colombian machines…
I’ve just filled in the gaps, as much as I could, with sheet styrene and copious amount of liquid glue. This should give me a fairly strong joint over which I can add some Milliput…!
Have now Milliputed the wing/fuselage joints. They look OK now, but we’ll have to check properly when it’s dried up a bit. The ‘cheeks’ of the fuselage are going to be more problematic than I first thought. I’m gonna have to ‘rebuild’ them a bit on the lower side because the step is quite obvious. Obviously, the Milliput will erase all surface details there and there will be some re-engraving required… Blast!
I find Revell “Plasto” or Humbrol “Model-Filler” is the best way of filling gaps like that.
Since I often build old Airfix, Monogram, SMER etc. kits, I often have to deal with gaps like this [:D]
Drawde, ever since I’ve ‘sculpting’ for other people I’ve had plenty of experience with Milliput and other putties. Milliput has one great advantadge over other putties, you can ‘shape’ it while it is still soft, using water and various tools (usually cocktail sticks and my fingers!). Because the gaps are not really leaving any noticeable steps and that therefore both sides of the gap are on a same ‘plane’ (no pun here!), Milliput is really easy to apply and smooth over. Milliput is also much harder than normal putties and re-engraving it will not tear off little chicks of putty.
The problem with Milliput is that it does not ‘attack’ the plastic and therefore do not create a verry strong joint at all. That’s why I applied plastic card bits and lots of liquid glue in the gap first, to make sure that both pieces are somehow linked, and strongly so, before applying a thin layer of Milliput.
DJ, like Drawde, I use the Humbrol filler, but have never tried Milliput, sounds interesting.
Must admit I always attach the upper wing sections to the fuselage, then attach the lower section by the wing tips to the uppers. Once that has dried I then glue it all in position. I know it sounds odd, but Pix recomended it a while back, and it really does eliminate those awkward upper wing panel to wing root gaps.
Not sure if that would have been applicable for the Pucara, but it has helped reduce my filler consumption considerably!
Karl, it does sound like a good idea! Maybe it would have helped me… If only a little! The wings are made of 5 parts on this kit; two upper halves, two outer under halves, from wing tips up to and including the bottom halves of the engine pods, and a middle section for the rest of the underside of the wings. However this later part also includes the bottom front part of the fuselage. I think this part was not well designed, as it gives me problems on the cheek of the front fuselage and pushes the wings out a little (well, a lot really!). I’ll post pictures of my progress tonight.
