Written by 9:43 pm On the Bench

WIP : Kinetic 1/48 Alpha Jet Pt. 3 – Main Construction

With everything requiring multiple dryfits, trimming and adjusting, progress is going slower than I would like. Anyway, onwards we go. First up though, is a picture of the seats by themselves which I forgot to show in my previous WIP post.

The Alpha Jet’s flaps remain raised while on the ground so while it’s nice Kinetic offers the flaps down option, it simply means more work in this case.

The flap actuators fit fine but some of the holes for the pins are too large and will require filling.

There are blocks and sockets for the wings to fit into the fuselage but the sockets are bigger than the blocks so they aren’t of much help for alignment and to get the correct anhedral of the wings. In the end, due to the loose fit, I focused on the proper alignment and fit for the leading edges and will fix the gaps on the trailing edges.

This picture also shows the big gap right behind the cockpit. Since I doubt normal putty will be able to cover this, I filled with epoxy putty from the inside, pushed it out and trimmed off the excess.

To distract myself from the monotony of getting all the parts to fit with minimal gaps, I decided to try my hand at scratchbuilding brake lines on the landing gear. On the Alpha Jet, there’s only 1 cable on each gear leg so I figure it’s the best time to practise.

I used 0.1mm copper wire and 0.4mm masking tape for the bands. I think the copper wire is too thin but it’ll have to do. The result looks good but not really noticeable.

The main landing gear needs to be attached into the fuselage before the bottom plate is installed.

I don’t like this arrangement but there’s no way around it. I reinforced the joints with diluted PVA glue and then the bottom plate then gets fitted. Luckily it went on with only a little trimming.

While the cockpit tub fit OK, there is a noticeable gap on the instrument coaming. There is also a slight short molding of the coaming on the port side which leads to a very unsightly gap.

Kinetic molds the gear bay doors in the open position but all the photos I’ve seen show that almost all of them are closed while on the ground. The attachment guides were cut off and I took a while to get them to close up.

The nose gear doors didn’t turn out that well but like a lot of the other parts so far, filler will fix it.

With the huge gap on the starboard gear door, it’s clear to me that the bay doors were never designed to be closed in the first place. Interestingly, the port side fit alright.

The good news however is that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Build Log
Pt. 1 – Cockpit | Pt. 2 – Main Construction | Pt. 3 – Main Construction | Pt. 4 – Main Construction
Pt. 5 – Main Construction | Pt. 6 – Painting | Pt. 7 – Finishing

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