1/48th scale HPH Concorde

[Ericg]

Whilst I was perusing the instructions I came across a little hand symbol next to the pitot tube where they show it being fitted to the nose. I thought that it must have meant metal part. Upon inspecting the symbol legend at the start of the instructions, I almost choked on the nice Belgian chocolate that HpH provide in these kits when I saw that the hand symbol means `scratchbuild'. Now, I will scratch build stuff till the cows come home and usually find myself making parts for most of the kits that have passed over my bench. The thing is, this is a damned expensive kit that has left me still unable to bring myself to view my bank account balance, lest I find myself once again under my desk in the feotal position, mumbling about crappy Trumpeter kits! C'mon Hph, pull your finger out guys! there is alot lacking in this kit that I feel should be there. More of that to come.

Anyway, I hunted around and came up with a very likely candidate for a pitot tube being one from the excellent Master model range. The Tornado unit in 48th being almost an exact replica of one according to the reference pics that I was viewing online.



Here it is, fitted to the now modified nose.



I also got a few years supply of primer, clear coat and white spray cans, which should be just the ticket to painting this beast when I ordered the pitot tube.



I have started to assemble the cockpit by fitting the floor and rear bulkhead. Now I am not sure how the person who did the test assembly on the prototype of the model fitted these pieces into the fuselage, nor could I work out the way the instructions directed a series of twists and turns to get them in there. One thing is for sure, and that is that neither the rear bulkhead or the floor do not fit into the fuselage through the opened nose of the model. I had my great mate Brent over who acted as a second set of eyes on the problem and he came up with a solution of cutting copies of each part from thin plastic card that would allow each part to be bent as it passed through the opening. Great idea!

After retrieving the bulkhead from the rear of the model by shaking it back out through the front one too many times, I needed to devise an even more devious plan. Using the plastic copy, I cut that part in half and worked out what could be done using the original part, and some lateral thinking did the rest.

The first date was almost a disaster! It just wont fit!



Lets go a bit easier on the opening with something a bit more flexible



Here is the fix. Cut the rear bulkhead into two pieces, just below the shelf that the floor sits on. Shave the rear corners off the floor where they will be covered by cockpit parts.



Fill the fuselage with expanding foam just behind where the rear bulkhead will sit (to stop it from falling back into the fuselage when you are trying to fit it.)



Fit the two parts together once inside the fuselage



Fit the floor and once glued, I used some more expanding foam under the floor to give it more support.

[DesTROYer]

You're the master, Eric.

[Ericg]

Aww thanks Troy, although anybody could do this sort of stuff, it's not that hard!

Eric

[Graeme H]

aah, expanding foam, it can totally ruin vacform models
ask me how I know

[Ericg]

How do you know Graeme?

i was pretty careful to make sure that the foam had plenty of room to expand into, just in case mate.

Onto the clear parts. As I wish to have my model with the clear parts fitted and not painted black, I had to get moving on cutting and fitting the clear parts supplied with the kit. As mentioned before the clear parts were represented in the instructions and in the parts key as nicely shaped parts and one could be led to believe that this job would be fairly easy. What is supplied in the kit however is two rather crude clear plastic shapes and it is up to the modeller to cut the parts to fit the kit.

Here is the front windscreen. Notice the rather complicated shape that it has to fit into.



And here is the same part fitted into place. I cut out the shape fairly close with scissors and then sanded and trimmed the part until it fitted into place. A fairly risky operation but I didn't have to use the spare, so I was pretty happy. There will be alot of masking in this area to provide the window frames, to ulitmately provide square shaped glass.



Same deal with the visor. The visor that can be seen in the photo below was much larger and has been trimmed. I taped it tightly to the nose/fuselage combo and then marked out the rough shape with a black texta



Same process as before, trim,sand,trim,sand etc etc.... came up quite nicely.



Nose down



More soon.

Eric.

[Adam the Akrodude]

With that expanding foam you used Eric, for a moment I thought your Concorde was afflicted with some horrible sebaceous cyst! Never seen a Concorde vomit white "marshmallow" type material before!

This is beginning to look like building a 1/32 Trumpeter kit is a walk in the park!

Truly EPIC stuff mate!

Cheers

Adam

[kfutter]

Truly EPIC stuff mate!

Yep, I'm officially replacing the 'r' in Eric's name with a 'p'.

Kev

[Adam the Akrodude]

Oh that's funny Kev!

:bow: We all must bow to Eric's greatness. I'm just hoping we'll see this beauty at Expo next year!

[DesTROYer]

Oh that's funny Kev!

:bow: We all must bow to Eric's greatness. I'm just hoping we'll see this beauty at Expo next year!

It will need its own seat on the plane.

[tor lives]

Oh that's funny Kev!

:bow: We all must bow to Eric's greatness. I'm just hoping we'll see this beauty at Expo next year!

It will need its own seat on the plane.

It's so bloody big it will need it's own flight plan and ATC clearance
TOR