You'd think I'd never built
one of these here plastic model thingies before. I had
no end of trouble with this and, as it's produced by Tamiya
The Great and Powerful and I have yet to hear of anyone
else having anything but praise for this kit, I can only
assume the problems were caused by yours truly. Perhaps
all that solvent inhaling is finally starting to take
its toll.
About a year ago, I was
going through my "can't seem to be bothered with
models anymore, I'd best sell my entire collection"
phase, so I started the Skyray as a simple "out of
box" experience to try and get me building again.
Unfortunately, getting the pieces out of the box is about
as far as I got at the time. A couple of months ago I
hauled the Skyray out, kicking and screaming, and I'm
now happily building again. Apparently that electro-shock
therapy worked wonders. At least I think it did. Ummm.........errrr.
. . . what was I saying? Toto, where have you gone? Aunty
Em!!!
Of course I couldn't build
the damn thing out of the box though could I? Good heavens
no, that wouldn't appeal to my masochistic nature. I decided
to drop the leading edge slats as most pictures I found
of Skyrays showed them parked this way. As this aircraft
was from the same stable as the later A-4 Skyhawk I'm
guessing that the slats worked on the same principle.
That is, they aren't power operated; they are spring-loaded
and are raised by the air flow when the aircraft has reached
a certain speed, lowering again when the air speed is
low enough to permit the springs to push the slats out.
This apparently caused some interesting low speed flight
characteristics when one slat would deploy slightly before
the other. It is for this reason that the slats on the
Blue Angels' A-4s were locked in the closed position.
But I digress.
Dropping the slats proved
to be a relatively simple and painless procedure, although
why Tamiya didn't include them as seperate parts like
they did in the larger, optically challenged scale is
beyond me. It's discrimination against us manly scale
types I tell ya!!
Things seemed to go decidedly
downhill fit-wise after the minor surgery to the wings
though. The upper and lower fuselage halves went together
alright but there was a nasty seam in the intakes that
needed to be taken care of. Not the easiest to get rid
of in such a confined area but I managed to fill it with
super glue and eradicate the join with a tiny bit of sandpaper
glued to the end of a scrap of wood. The intakes themselves
were a very poor fit and quite a bit of filling and sanding
was required to blend them in. Frankly I never really
did get them to my satisfaction but at that point I'd
had enough grief from them.
Only the front and rear
of the drop tank pylons touched the underside of the wing
because the mating surfaces of the pylons had too much
curvature to them and didn't match the shape of the wing.
Several minutes of carving and sanding mostly cured the
problem.
The fit of the canopy left
rather a lot to be desired as well, and some filler was
needed to blend in the windscreen.
By far the biggest trouble
I had with this kit was the main landing gear. It took
ages to get the things shoe-horned in there (snapping
one off in the process of course) and even then they were
badly mis-aligned, the wheels pointing out at ridiculous
angles. Amazingly, I was able to twist the gear into alignment
without further breakage. I can only assume that I somehow
installed the wells incorrectly and that caused the trouble.
Because of the landing gear's reluctance to fit I broke
(no pun intended) with my own tradition and installed
the main gear before any painting was done in case things
got nasty and the paint job suffered as a result.
I found it rather difficult
removing the seam on the leading edges of the wings because
of the fences moulded in and I would have preferred these
to be seperate pieces - if they fit!
I figured my troubles were
over after getting to the paint and decal stage but alas,
no. I used Gunze Light Gull Gray and Tamiya Gloss White
for the main colours with the radome in good old Humbrol
Flat Black. The leading edges of the wings are Humbrol
Metalcote Polished Aluminum and the exhaust bits are a
50/50 mix of Metalcote Gunmetal and Polished Aluminum.
Tamiya's decals proved
to be as poor fitting as the rest of the kit and I ended
up with a nice gray seam in the dark blue spine which
I had to touch up. I almost matched the colour
with Humbrol Midnight Blue with a touch of medium gray
in it. Almost. In their favour though, I must say I was
impressed at how well the red intake warning decals went
on, albeit with copious amounts of setting solutions and
some touch up afterwards. The decals themselves were rather
thick but did settle down very nicely with Microset followed
by some Solvaset when they were almost dry. Using Solvaset
straight away proved to be a near-disaster as the decals
wrinkled up like an elderly woman in a hot tub. Much poking
and prodding was needed to get them to lie flat, also
like an elderly woman in a hot tub. I replaced the kit
stars and bars with some from Repli-Scale as I don't like
that off-white colour that Japanese decal manufacturers
insist on using.
And to finish it all off,
a coat of Tamiya semi-gloss clear which promptly "orange
peeled" on me and looked like crap when it was dry.
More sanding, another coat of clear with a bit more thinner
and less air pressure and I'd had enough. Not one of my
better efforts, but I'm happy with the way it turned out
(eventually) and I can now return for a follow-up treatment
of Prozac before finishing my latest project..... the
dreaded Roden
Lagg-3.
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