Lesher Pintail - FINISHED!

[PR19_Kit]

What's a 'Lesher Pintail' then? A different Lesher Teal, one powered by a jet engine no less. 

Here's the AviS Teal kit box.



The box is about 9" long, but the sprues are less than half that size, so it's a very small model, and it's only 1/72 scale too.

Here's the sprue collection, sat alongside my 1/144 scale Tiny SHAR!



There's loads of teeny-weeny bits for the kit, and it even has rudder pedals on the sprue, but I can't tell them apart from the sprue gate, so I didn't bother with them

Here's one half of the fuselage, with the bare cockpit assembly in place. There's very little to indicate where the various bits go, no markings or lugs to connect to anywhere, which makes life a tad difficult. The really important bit is the tiny strip marked with the red arrow as it's the location for the landing gear, and that's REALLY important. I just hope I've got it in the right place.



That pic will be just under half full size on a laptop screen BTW, it really IS small. 

[Rick Lowe]

Wow, that is tiny.
And they make you attach that little ledge yourself? Nuts...

Of course, if it's that size compared to the 1/144 Harrier, you could scale-o-rama it into some sort of exotic interceptor in 1/144... just a thought... 

Edit: Ooh, it'd fit right in as something in the 'Thunderbirds' world... maybe Brains' personal flitter?

[Weaver]

Nice: competitior to the SIPA 200 Minijet or the Microjet 200, presumably.

[Dizzyfugu]

Tiny! And has a certain French vibe? 

[Mossie]

Nice idea. How are you mounting the engine? With that wide tail, it'd suit a Miles Student style layout.

[PR19_Kit]

The engine will be where the piston engine was in the Teal, in the middle and exhausting out of the tail.

I'll need to add larger air intakes I expect and a jet pipe too, but the latter may be just a cut down rear fuselage.

[PR19_Kit]

I've got all the major assembly done on the Pintail now, not that there's much of it of course.



I had to scratch up the starboard fin as the Carpet Monster gobbled the original, but it wasn't exactly hard work. As with many AviS kits, the parts fit where they touch, IF they touch even, and the wing was no exception being full 2 mm too long fore and aft to fit into its recess in the fuselage. A smidgeon of cutting and filing fixed that of course.

What you can't see is the gaping hole in the underside, which has a special part supplied to fill in part of it as the landing gear slots in on either side of that part. The problem is the part itself only vaguely resembles the hole, so more cutting and filing will be needed. 

[frank2056]

It looks great! Avis may be related to Amodel and Micro-Mir, and the molding technology looks similar... but I've cursed less when building an Avis model than either Amodel or Mikro-Mir.

[Andrew Gorman]

It's a giant BD-5J!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede_BD-5

[PR19_Kit]

It's a giant BD-5J!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede_BD-5

I've done the LS kit of the BD-5J already, and the LONG winged version too. 

[zenrat]

I'd always assumed Avis and Amodel were the same entity.

[Charlie_c67]

It's got a hint of an FW Flitzer about the nose. Twin boom it! I dare ya 

[PR19_Kit]

No chance! I've got enough trouble building it as it is!

[jcf]

You'll need to make up a fake entry for the Minijets site.

Minijets

[PR19_Kit]

Thanks to the actions of the Carpet Monster, and the crazy mould design on the part of AviS, I've had to pretty well scratch build the main landing gear bay. 

Here's the Pintail's underside currently, and the new engine air intakes are arrowed in red, plus the jet exhaust is pretty obvious, right aft and  modelled with a scrap of white styrene tube.

The central spine of the gear bay is also obvious, but there's an amount of struttery under it to take the place of AviS's crazy ideas.



I've masked up the canopy now, and after a bit of PSR on the gear bay I should be OK to prime it.