I decided to jump in and start on my long awaited TSR.2. I am building this kit OOB without a whole lot of extras thrown in.
As with every aircraft kit it seems, we’ll start with the cockpit.
Overall, the cockpit of the kit looks pretty good. I have never been in a TSR.2 and I doubt very many of our readers have been in one. After searching on the internet, there isn’t very many resources for this minus the popular Thunder and Lightning website. This is a great site for TSR.2 walk around pictures.
The fit of the cockpit components is great! The detail looks good too. I’m not complaining, I think the instrument panels leave a little to be desired, but overall not too bad.
It surprises me that the panels are simplified. The 1/72 kit I did had decals for the panels that were pretty accurate compared to photos in a Wings of Fame volume.
The TSR.2 build continues. I deviated from the instruction sheet a little bit.
So far everything is going together without any major hiccups. I glued the fuselage halves together and installed the nose radome.
The nose radome (27C) has a pretty good gap between it and the fuselage. I filled the gap with super glue and sanded it to shape. There is also a separate lower piece (26B) under the forward half of the fuselage that was glued into place. Why Airfix made this a separate piece, I have no idea!
The top piece (25B) just aft of the forward section and just before the wings was put into place. I glued just ithe forward attachment area. I glued just ithe forward attachment area. This allows me to adjust the rear part of 25B prior to wing attachment.
Did quite a bit of work on the TSR.2 the past couple of days.
I assembled the wings and attached them to the fuselage. The fit fit here isn’t the greatest and was quite a disappointment. There is going to be a lot of filling and sanding here.
Another point of contention is the main landing gear doors. THe istruction show the gear doors open. I’ve looked a some photograpghs of when the aircraft was inoperation on the ground and these doors are not open when sitting static. These door are not made to be closed. There are gaps between the edges of the doors and the fuselage requiring a gap filling super glue and filler. The right side gear door follows the contour of the fuselage, the left, not so much. Once again requiring filler to get the shape.
I also do not like attaching the main landing gear struts to the wheel wells during the construction. This is something usually left until last. On this kit, you can’t do that due to the way the MLG attaches.
[tup]Hmmmm I am enjoying watching this one as well! Lots to overcome but you seem to be winning! These tough kits can really improve skills and I like to watch.
This is pretty cool! I have been eyeing this kit for a couple months now in the Squadron flyers, but the somewhat (comparatively) high price tag has had me a bit cautious.
