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Boulton Paul Defiant from Airfix

Heavens Eagle

Heavens Eagle

Well-known member
Several years ago I started a Do17Z kit (which is on the "I'll get back to it one day" shelf) The other half of the kit was a Boulton Paul Defiant MkI. It has been floating around my stash in it's plastic bag for a little while and while I have several 1/72 kits from a Redstone rocket to a Ho229 Horton, I think it would be best to get this beastie built up.
No AM is available for it at this point so it is going to be all the way out of the box.

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But the main reason I have not yet started is that I found this in my roof last nite and it looked like this in the daylight.

Roof board1.jpg


A 2x4 from the fence across and down the street a ways. Straight line winds? No, it couldn't have been as they were going North and I was South East a ways. My guess it was a micro tornado after seeing the damage that was done to the house and fences behind it.

Lucky for me my boss has super great contacts and it was fixed by this afternoon.

Roof board 2.jpg


Now for the weird part. I went up into the attic this morning to look through the roof and at the 18 inches of 2x4 that were poking through. On the way back down I noticed the hot water tank pan had water in it.

WHAT.gif


Looked around the tank and found this.

Water tank bad.jpg


If not for the roof I would have probably been in deep water as this tank is directly over my hobby "Shop". As it is the only thing wet is the pan and the tank. I have the water to it shut off and a new tank is in the garage ready to be installed.

I think I am going to go and build on a model for a little while now.

Think about this.gif
 
What? the roofers didn't take the broken 2X4 out? I'd be getting redneck with the insurance guy and tell him to get a crew out there with some new decking and shingles.
And man, now the water tank? Any chance something hit the hot water tank?
 
The roofing guy took the 2x4 and fixed the roof. (YAY!) I didn't have to climb up there and patch it before the rain tomorrow and Monday. The hot water tank is about 12 years old and it was it's time. Glad I saw it before it was water coming through the ceiling all over my hobby space.

If not for the 2x4 through the roof, I might not have know the tank was failing till it was too late. So, good came from bad even though I would have rather not had to fix the roof. That part is done though.
 
Got busy (at least a little bit) this last week. So here is an update.

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You just KNEW that I HAD to modify SOMETHING right?

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Probably could have gotten the paint on it today, but just could not get motivated. Sometime this week the paint will go on the outside. Plus I have some more AMS coming in so be advised.
Otherwise the fit of the parts has not been too bad. I did clip off all the locating pins as they were forcing some misalignment. Have just used a little CA on the seams to get things right and then away it went. All I needed to do was some prep work to get things to line up.
 
I am keeping plugging away on this one. It does seem to help my build speed a little bit to do these quick builds that are time sensitive.

MMM2024BPD-08.jpg


I had to drill some .023 dia holes for these barrels and they are only .3 inches or 7.6mm long. It was a trick getting them aligned and the holes centered.

MMM2024BPD-09.jpg


The fit on this kit is fairly good. I think I only used a couple of tiny spots of Green putty and could not tell you where those were now.
 
Wow that is something on the roof

I used to have a book by a WW2 ave Canadian (?) pilot called ‘Lucky 13’. He describes flying one of these and the flight characteristics were good but the rotating turret was not his idea of the best use of the armament

Very interesting!
 
What a nice build Paul. I am so happy that you have not had any further damage in your house, a micro tornado sounds scary enough. I guess the way the climate is going we will be getting more and more of these crazy weather situations in the future.
I love the Defiant, there is one at the RAF Museum in the Midlands, painted as a night fighter
Sure there is no AM for the Defiant? Maybe you can search for this:

www.eduard.com

DEFIANT Mk.I 1/72

DEFIANT Mk.I 1/72 - Big Ed collection of 3 individual sets for DEFIANT Mk.I in 72nd scale by Airfix. interior (self adhesive) landing flaps painting mask All sets included in this BIG ED are available
www.eduard.com www.eduard.com

Cheers and good luck

Alex
 
Thanks for looking in Alex! There used to be some specific PE but it is discontinued and I just did not feel like doing a deep search for any. I ran across the machine guns while looking around on Free Time Hobbies, but also didn't want to spend more on the aftermarket than I did on the double kit.
As to weather, this is somewhat normal for middle United States. There have been high straight line winds here before that did huge amounts of damage. Oklahoma has had HUGE tornados in the last 100+ years while Tennessee tends to have high winds and smaller tornado happenings.
 
Looking good Paul. These were one of my favourite planes when I was a kid - always loved the war comics that had stories on these like 'Battle' and 'Air Ace'.
 
Still plugging away. This one has become an experimental. Experimenting with colors for British. Experimenting with weird masking on the tiny turret and canopy. Experimenting with masking, and experimented with making some seat belts that I printed out.
It's all going so-so, but it isn't looking bad.
Here is an update.

MMM2024BPD-10.jpg


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Had a lot of problems with the paint getting it to spray and didn't get the brown coverage over where it was supposed to be in some spots. Thus I needed to do some more masking and touch up. Ended up giving the paint that patchy look which will probably disappear when I flat coat it.

I was not impressed with the canopies. The detailing was quite soft and thus it was a royal pain in the can to mask.
 
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