Lesher Pintail - FINISHED!

[George the Cat]

Nice, but it does need longer wings!

[PR19_Kit]

No, it doesn't!   

[Charlie_c67]

Errr, who are you and what've you done with Kit?! 

[PR19_Kit]

They're ALREADY long! That's why I liked it so much.

[Old Wombat]

Kit's Rule 1 ) Any aircraft can be improved by fitting longer wings ....

Doesn't say "unless they're already long"!   

[PR19_Kit]

Well yes, but if the Pintail's were any longer than they are, it would look REALLY silly, instead of just ordinarily silly. 

[Later] Perhaps if you REALLY insist I could fit it with winglets? Lesher actually proposed mod that with the Teal, but didn't carry it out.

[Old Wombat]

I'll point out that the wings aren't very much wider than the length of the fuselage ... Winglets would be the least I'd expect from you, Kit! 

[PR19_Kit]

The model's 99 mm span, and it's 80 mm long, including the jet pipe.........................

[Charlie_c67]

Sounds more like a glider 

[Captain Canada]

That's a neat little machine ! Defo has lots of whiffy potential !

PS-who makes the tiny Harrier kit ?

[PR19_Kit]

PS-who makes the tiny Harrier kit ?

This one was a Minicraft re-pop, but it's also available from Revell, and the original one was from Crown.

[PR19_Kit]

After umpteen PSR sessions, 8 I think  , I got the Pintail to a smooth enough state to apply some colour, and here it is. It's deliberately NOT NMF, like the Teal was, just to show that it's different enough, and because I like blue too.



It needs a bit of paint trimming yet, and then I'll have to add the landing gear, and THAT'S going to be a problem as it's so fragile as supplied. I'm going to upgrade it to metal legs to give it a chance of surviving.

[PR19_Kit]

The Pintail's landing gear really is RIDICULOUS! I've built many 1/144 scale airliners and I don't think I've ever come across a model with wheels as small as this! The mainwheels are 3.5 mm dia and the nosewheel is even smaller, at 3 mm! 

Similarly the main gear legs are on the thin side, LESS than a mm in diameter but a stalky 100 mm long. Here they are on the sprue.



They're the long stalky bits in the middle. There's only one problem, they should have a bit sticking out sideways to glue the wheels onto, but they're not there, that's where the red arrows indicate. Of course that makes them useless as there's no way I could scratch some of those bits and glue them on.

The nosewheel leg is equally tiny, that's it ringed in red, and it's wheel peg is 0.5 mm across! 

So help me, I've about had enough of these TINY bits and pieces that are just too small to get hold of, let alone glue into position. I think I'll get my B-36 kit down from The Loft when I get home prior to Telford as I plan to make something BIG for a change! 

I bent up some main wheel legs from 1 mm brass wire and I've glued the wheels onto them and glued them into the wheel bays in turn, plus added the nosewheel and its door too. Results seen below.



The mainwheel doors are bizarre PE parts that for the life of me I can't figure out how they're meant to be bent or glued, and there seem to be far too many parts to match up with what pics I can see of the original Lesher Teal's gear doors anyway!

Still, if it was simple and easy everyone would be doing it I guess.

[Rick Lowe]

In that scale? A couple of bits of 10 thou and Robert's Your Mothers' Brother.
And they'll stick better to styrene than PE... 

[PR19_Kit]

That's exactly what I did, the PE parts just fell apart when I bent them to shape, and the doors themselves were far too long and would have scraped on the ground!

So it's just a touch of paint, a coat of Klear, and then decals will finish it all off.