Hi All,
Well decided that I would stray away from the 'White Stuff' for a little while.
Whilst at Darlington I bought a book on the IL-2 Stormovik, which I intend to build soon. However I also had the Hobbycraft Polikarpov I-16 Type 18 in 1/48 in the stash, begging to be built. So I decided that would be my next project.
The kit is moulded in pale grey, and has some fine raised and scribed panel lines. The kit is quite basic, but I think I can make a few improvements along the way to make it look half decent.
I started by opening the holes in the wing undersides for the underwing rockets supplied, then glued top wing parts in place, taped together and put aside to dry.
The fuselage was next point. A dry fit showed that the bottom of the fuselage needed a shim of plastic card to pack out to match the wing joint more readily. This was done with thin strips, to be sanded to a feather edge towards tail once dry.
Next the cockpit which is very poor, crude and basic. Not being a rivet counter I decided to embellish the missing details with plastic card, stretched sprue, some lead wire, and wine bottle foil. The sprue etc. was designed to give an impression of internal structure, and though not 100% accurate I think looks passable. The instrument panel needed to be brought forward into the cockpit as it sat too far in. The seat was usable but thickly moulded on the edges so was thinned down by sanding and scraping to a more acceptable scale thickness. I then added wine bottle foil to represent seat belts.
This was cut into thin strips then manipulated into a more natural fabric look before being glued in place with superglue and a little activator to make it stick.
Whilst on the fuselage I drilled out the engine exhaust stubs, and also drilled the two missing 'portholes' from underneath the canopy coaming (designed to help illuminate the instrument panel), and also the hand grips that were also there for the pilot.
Tomorrow I shall start painting the cockpit, engine, instrument panel.
Some pictures of the work so far:-
Bigkev
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