SPA Modeler

Holy cow that’s nice fine detail work right there my man! That’s gonna pay off big dividends later and I’m stoked to see that surface with paint on it.

Thanks guys! Now who mentioned fit issues?

The cockpit of the Tempest has six flare holders and a holder for the flare gun as well. And I have this leftover flare gun from my Tamiya Corsair built that I left off. So... why not right? I'm surprised that more builds have not incorporated a flare gun and some flare cartridges.


I chopped off the body of the gun and glued on a piece of brass tubing for the barrel. I also cut two pieces from smaller diameter brass tube for a couple of flare cartridges.


Before doing anything with the resin engine, I thought I'd check the fit of the spinner. There are some casting irregularities that need to be smoothed out.


One of the prop blade openings has a disfigured opening. Both flaws were easily corrected.


Mounting the spinner onto the backplate revealed a problem... the spinner is too small and there is a noticeable step between the two.


In this view, you can see both step on both the top and bottom edges just to rule out the chance that the unglued spinner was not centered on the backplate.


Mounted on the resin nose, you can see the issue. Don't mind the step between the fuselage and backplate... that was probably caused by a slightly mis-centered hole. But the undersized spinner is definitely noticeable and distracting.


For comparison, here are how the kit parts go together. It may be inaccurate but at least the parts fit with one another.


The engine is only held in place with tape but you can see that the fit between the nose, the spinner, the backplate AND the resin engine is pretty good.


Not sure what to do at this point but unless I find a way around the under-sized spinner issue, I will forgo the resin nose and stick with the kit parts.

Yes, the Barracuda Nose Correction set is designed specifically for the Special Hobby Tempest Mark V kit. I have sent Barracuda Studios an email requesting a new spinner... we'll see what happens.

I thought it may have been a case of resin shrinkage only affecting certain copies but I think it is a design fault. Another Tempest build that I am using for a reference encountered the exact same issue. He resolved it by shaving both the backplate and the fuselage nose to match the spinner. But help is on the way! I just got an email from Barracuda saying that they have looked into this issue and will be making a new mold of the spinner. They'll be sending a new spinner as soon as Roy finishes the new casting. Props to Barracuda!

Re-shaping the kit spinner is harder than I thought. Here are the two spinners before I started sanding the kit spinner.


I chucked the spinner, which has been temporarily glued onto the backplate using CA glue, onto my David Union D300 rotary tool. It has a continuously variable speed adjustment which is handy to achieve a high enough speed without melting the plastic. That wasn't possible on my older rotary tool, which melted plastic even at the lowest speed.


After a couple of shaping sessions, the kit spinner looks a LITTLE better but not by much. I have to periodically re-scribe the line around the spinner so I don't lose it completely due to the grinding process.



I'll keep at this until the new spinner arrives.

In stand-by mode on the Tempest build. Hours of grinding on the kit spinner and yet it is still far from the shape of the Barracuda part.


Can you even see any change? Well, here's what the spinner looked like before I started re-shaping it. It's a different angle but I think my effort HAS made the spinner less bulbous, no? I'll keep at it.


Took some time to admire the resin seat. Without knowing anything about the real seat, this one looks really nice to me with the fine stitching on top of the backrest.


Great detail even on the back of the seat.


Like most of the parts on this kit, the seat adjustment spring has a strong mold line running along its length on both sides.


I have the time so I am trying to eradicate all of the mold lines I can find. And something compelled me to rescribe the spring grooves with a fine saw.

Nice work on the spring! I hate when they do that. It's nearly impossible to fix.

Very tedious work with a needle file to clean up such seams.

Excellent work all round John, you've definitely made a difference to that spinner. Would the kit spinner not fit on the resin nose?