Ha'la'tha Resistance Fighter build - 2.

Engine cluster:

The first thing I did was work on the engine cluster assembly.  To do that, I started by trimming down the fuselage on the F-4.   I took a few measurements, kinda eyeballed the rest and then marked out where I wanted to do the choppa. First thing to go was the tail fin and then I took off the tail boom assembly. I ended that assembly right about where the nozzles for the engines end.   The boom got thinner about that point so I could use the natural curves of the fuselage and it also will give a bit of a rougher "mk. Vii" vibe.    

Then went to the point where the fuselage begins the arc down toward the nozzles along the sides.  Again, I was cheating, using the original curves of the F4 to do most of the contouring.  When that cut was made, I then moved about 2" forward and then cut out the fuselage.  I left about 1/2 inch behind where the cockpit ends, as I am figuring that's about what I will want to mesh the Spitfire front in to it. 

After that was removed, I needed to take off the front of the fuselage.  I started at the top, pretty much right behind the end of the cockpit and went straight down.  I kept the intake mounts because I plan to use them and they'll make good standoffs for the intakes against the Spitfire fuselage.  

The fuselage bottom also was integrated to the bottom of the wing sections, so I had to remove those as well. I left it a little long as I expected to need to do some putty/filling/sanding and would rather have too much left over material than too little.  

Once I had all that trimming done, I glued them all up together.  The front half and back half went together very well and I just hacked off the fuselage bottom at the  point where the mounts for the intake started.  (more on this later.)  they meshed pretty closely, although there'll need to be some filling on the bottom, which may as well wait until I finish putting the nose on. 

I also went ahead and glued up the wings and tail fin.   I will use the wings, and I might use the tail fin, although I'm not sure about that.   The wings are going to be flipped to a forward-swept look, so once the wings set up, I cut off the ailerons from the wings and took the line in straight to the wing root.   On that raw edge, I glued a piece of plastic sprue, and then puttied it all up.   When all that was set up, I puttied it again to fill any gaps and build it up.  It was then sanded down to create a more appropriate leading-edge to the wing.  Yes, I know the back edge still has the original leading edge, I'll do a bit more sanding there to give it a little more realistic lifting geometry, but I'm not going to lose too much sleep over it. 

During all that, I then pulled out some 2mm sintra to build up the contours from the intake mount points back toward the exhaust nozzles.  Once I got all that glued on, I gave it a test-fit next to the Spitfire nose.  Just giving it a quick look, it works out that this is a bit smaller than I had anticipated, but it's not terrible.  It'll wind up having an all-up length that's pretty close to the Mk ii Vipers in 1/32 scale. 

Then came the putty/filling/sanding cycle.  At this point, I need to get the contours of the engine cluster flowing to something smooth as it's pretty much one of the major areas of viewing on the model when it's done.    Fill.  Putty.  Sand.  Putty.  Sand.  Putty.  Sand……