Depicted as an aircraft flown by Wg Cdr E Durham from No 92 Sqn Royal Air Force Germany, based at Gutersloh in 1976.
The English Electric Lightning to me screams power. Sure it may have had short range, poor weapons and it never reached its true potential but it looks like a fighter.
The box is so large it takes up so much room in the stash and having recently picked up a third kit for the stash, for a paltry sum, Its really time I build one.
I chose the RAF Germany green scheme looking for a simple build. The intent was to get some experience on this kit before I tackle a natural metal example.
The Kit
- 1/48 Airfix Lightning F2A/F6 - Kit No 09178
This was the original late 1990's boxing of the kit with very dodgy looking decals which hadn't aged well.
Aftermarket
- Landing Gear - Scale Aircraft metal gear
- PE - A few bits from the Eduard F1/F3 Set (landing gear bays and canopy mainly)
- Pitot Probe - Hobby Decal
- Exhausts - Aires
Decals
- Model Alliance ML48170 BAC/EE Lightning Pt 2 (all markings except chequer boards on the Nose).
- Cutting edge Lightning Part 1 (chequerboard on the Nose).
- Barradecals Lightning Stencil sheet (where I could) and Kit decals where I had to.
The Build
I wanted this to be a quick build so I decide to use the kit cockpit. I picked up the Quickboost seat as the detail on it looked superb. Unfortunately it's worthless as it doesn't fit in the tub Its nearly 3mm to wide. Seriously, why don't they at least check their product will fit the intended subject. It may not be a total loss however as it will fit in the Aires cockpit set.... But still that is not what it is designed to do.
Rather than use the Aires Cockpit or Eduard PE belts I decided to stick a pilot in the cockpit.
I then made up the intake but didn't stick in the centre radome section, I figured it might be easier to get it concentric with the intake when everything was together. After a bit of fiddling thinking everything was square I glued in the intake and cockpit.
I then joined the fuselage and spent a good 3 days eliminating the seam. This was harder than I'd expected (especially after reading a rave reviews of this kit).
I also wasn't happy with the kit detail behind the seat so I cut it of and scratch built some detail using the Aires Cockpit set as a template. After cutting it off I noticed the pit wasn't square. I "fixed" this by squaring off the back of the tub with a bit of plastic when scratching the detail. The non square instrument panel will be hidden under the front shroud which is good ( I suppose).
I had real trouble getting the nose section to line up. In the end I cut of the top locating tab as the radome wasn't quite concentric with the intake. This worked. I did notice that when I assembled the nose wheel bay it was kind of elliptical rather than rectangular.
However I was left wondering WTF I did wrong with the nose wheel bay. As it turned out this is a "feature" of this kit and it wasn't me. That made me feel a bit better. In the end I boxed of the nose wheel bay just to hide the gaps.
I found these wonderful sanding sticks at John Vojtech's website. The white ones have quickly become a favourite of mine. Used them to sand the nose to reduce seams and gaps.
The Eduard PE adds some nice detail to the top of the wheel wells (although I think I put the other pieces of PE around the wrong way.
The Lightning has lots of small vents so I spent some time opening them up using a pin vice and a small drill.
As the Quickboost seat didn't fit, and I didn't want to use my Aires Cockpit I decided to use the pilot to fill the cockpit (and hide the week detail in there). I modified the pilot so his left arm will be resting on the front windscreen frame. The pilot is way to tall so I sanded the seat base down a fair bit. eventually I had to sand his bum down to get him to sit low enough.
The windshield fitted reasonably well although I had to restore a bit of shape to the front right of the kit. I got a bit carried away with the sanding stick earlier on. I added a small rectangular piece of plastic just in front of the windscreen.
I also added a piece of wire for the IFF antenna coax to the canopy before masking.
I had real trouble getting some suitable dihedral on the wings. it seems the kit is made to have the wings level. Which isn't right. I snapped both wings of and reset them as I wasn't happy with the result.
To get the dihedral I refitted the wings loosely and let them droop down so the lower edges of the wing contacted the fuselage. This left a large gap at the top which I filled with plastic card and CA. Using the Mk 1 eyeball I checked it with the drawing in the SAM book and it looked 'close enough". But I'm still not 100% happy with it. Phil Flory has a much more elegant approach however see here
When fitting the various vents to the airframe I attempted to drill or hollow them out to add a bit of shape to them
The Landing gear door had some usual moulding marks in them. I don't know if these are supposed to be here.
I then added some wire to the SAC legs. These are being used for strength rather than any detail reasons as they are worse than the kit parts. The wires is 0.020" safety wire.
Painting
The radome is Mr Color FS34102 over RAF Interior green, I intended to lightly rub the FS34102 to show the Interior green, but it never happened. The nose ring at this stage is Model Master Chrome Silver. I also replaced the pitot tube with a piece of brass tube.
Onto the painting. Not trusting the Airfix decals I decided I would paint the no walk lines and other major stripes. First I painted the areas where they would go Mr Color Tire Black. Then I masked with 0.7mm tape and sprayed decanted Tamiya AS12 via my airbrush.
Next I masked up and painted with Gunze Mr Hobby RAF dark green . This looked way to dark and as the aircraft is pretty big it looked way to monotone. To change this I applied some Tamiya XF81 RAF Dark green in random patches, then some Tamiya NATO green then some modern Mr Color RAF green then some.... well you get the idea. Unfortunately the images don't really show it, but it is supposed to be subtle.
The Gun ports were painted Alclad Exhaust manifold. The reference photos showed a range of shades from nearly copper to black. The anti glare panel is Tamiya NATO black.
I removed the masking from the underside and didn't like the stark silver. Looking at photos of the F2A I noticed the bottom was quite stained. So I used Alclad shades to tint , shade, weather the bottom. And following a couple of weeks of touch ups later and it was finally ready for the gloss coat.
All glossed up and ready for decals. I couldn't decide on whether to use the Cutting Edge sheet or the Model Alliance sheet. The Model Alliance Sheet was the front runner at this stage, but as you'll see later nothing I do is ever that simple.
Gloss is Tamiya clear thinned with Mr Color levelling thinner. I even sprayed it over the Alclad, usually I don't but I was worried about silvering considering the size of the serials.
For some reason the Tamiya clear seems more sensitive to fingerprints than usual so I gave it a week to fully go off hoping this will make handling easier (it doesn't). Maybe it's because it was so bloody cold.
At this stage I touched up the tail , the underside strakes and upper panel with some Humbrol satin oak a bit of white. Enamel was used as it makes removal of any over-spray easier. I painted the antenna(?) on the tail black although you can't see that in these images.
Decals
The Airfix decals and stencils in particular, from that era are simply awful so I don't want to use them. Thankfully I have Roy Sutherlands Barradecals sheet for the F1, F2 and F3 aircraft so after cross referencing the stencils on Roy’s sheet to the Airfix sheets I concluded that most stencils were the same or close enough to it.
The notable exceptions were the Ejection Seat warning Triangles and yellow markings on the tail (which were only on the all green F2A).
I applied the first decal and straight away I've got a dilemma. The aircraft I want to do is on the Model Alliance sheet but the Sqn Checks on the nose look way to big when I apply them to the aircraft.
Comparing them with the Airfix and Cutting Edge Sheet and all three are different in height. The fin flashes are also significantly different in size.
After comparing with photos and profiles I go with the cutting edge bars but the MA fin flashes. To me this combination "looks right". This brings another problem as the red in Model Alliance sheet is also different from the Cutting Edge red so I have to cut the roundel from the Model Alliance sheet to ensure the red remains constant across the model.
Where I had to use the Airfix stencils I dip them in Future to minimise the risk of silvering. This seems to have worked well. I was especially worried about the yellow dashed lines on the tail but I think I may have got lucky as these look ok.
I also didn't use the right Ejection seat warning triangles, the F2A ones are slightly different with an extra line of text. However the Airfix ones are terrible and being so prominent on the model I didn't want to use them. I used a set from the Barracudacals sheet as being Cartograph printed these are lovely.
After about 6 hours straight of decaling she was pretty much done and ready for a sealing coat and wash.
The sealing coat of Tamiya Clear is applied and I post some updates on Britmodeller. Unfortunately I'm informed the Serial under the right wing is around the wrong way. I check the decal instructions and they confirm the worst. I briefly consider trying to remove it but decide against it.
Weathering was done with Flory models wash and usual pastel chalks. I also used some oils in a few spots
Final Assembly
I spent about 2 weeks trying to sort the nose ring. It's not the chrome finish I wanted but I gave up trying to achieve that. I tried Alclad chrome over gloss enamel (Humbrol). That was a fail. Model Master Chrome Silver, another fail. In the end I go back to Tamiya AS12, this stuff is impossible to stuff up.
I couldn't figure out how the undercarriage
legs went together. But I remembered
Phil Flory's Saudi Lightning Build mentioned this. So I basically did the
same. But I also trimmed the lower part of the U to get it to sit
correctly.
All that was left was a final selling coat of Dullcoate and then to attach the canopy and pilot probe. The metal probe is nice but bends easily.
Conclusion
This kit has a reputation as one of Airfix's finest. And it probably was when it was first produced in 1997. The scribing is pretty nice and stands up well even today. It's similar to a Hasegawa kit of the same vintage detail wise. The aircraft has some complex shapes and curves and Airfix appear to have captured these well.
Fit however is another matter. The kit suffers from a number of fit issues , hopefully I described them above. The Nose bay and intake area are the worst bits of the kit and are difficult to get everything assembled and aligned. The lack of positive location points is a problem thus making the modeller guess where significant assemblies should be positioned.
Detail in the cockpit and undercarriage bays are sparse. Although very little can be seen in the cockpit the high wing and stance of the jet means the main gear bays are quite prominent.
None of the above however is enough to put me off wanting build at least two more of this wonderful looking British cold war warrior.
The Photos
