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AIRFIX 1:72 B.A.C. TSR.2 |
Reviewer:
Kevin Ronayne (kevin.ronayne@nuigalway.ie)
Kit Review submitted:
19 April 2006
The box art (or at least a portion of it), depicting the only occasion when the TSR.2 went supersonic. Engaging the afterburner on one engine only, test pilot Roland Beamont left the accompanying Lightning 'chase' plane behind. This is not the final version of the artwork. The final version refers to 'TSR-2', as does the construction guide, which also refers at times to the 'TSR 2'. Both are wrong - TSR.2 is the correct designation.
Date: April 15th, 2006
I am in something of a quandary about the sort of potted aircraft history that I should include here. I am well aware that there are plenty of aircraft modellers who have only the vaguest notion of what the TSR.2 was, and why it is (or was, or should have been - take your pick) so important. On the other hand, there are lots of modellers who know all about the TSR.2, and don't need me to retell the story here in abbreviated form. This review is going to take long enough even when just dealing with the kit itself. To those who feel they need to inform themselves about the TSR.2, I direct you to the references at the end of this review.
I can't let this opportunity pass, however, without making some comments. The TSR.2 is one of the most famous aircraft never to enter production. It would be wrong to suggest that it is only famous for being so controversially cancelled by the UK Labour Government way back in 1965. There is every reason to believe that had the TSR.2 not been cancelled, it might still be in service even today, and not just with the RAF. It is very probable that the RAF would never have ended up using the Buccaneer. The Tornado programme may also have turned out very differently. As to why the TSR.2 was cancelled? In a single word: politics. One is also tempted to add such terms as 'incompetence' and 'stupidity', and a whole lot more besides. The TSR.2 affair is often given as the primary example of how both the UK aircraft industry and national defence policies were mishandled over many years. A more detailed explanation is beyond the scope of this review: again, consult the references if you do not already know the gory detail.
This is a historic kit on a couple of counts. First and foremost, it is the first injection-molded kit of the TSR.2 in 1/72 scale - or any scale as far as I know. Apart from the subject matter, the kit is also notable as the first all-new 1/72 scale aircraft kit from Airfix for about 15 years or more. In other words, since the Shorts Tucano if my guess is correct. The Concorde doesn't count, as it was essentially a joint project between Airfix and Heller, if I have gotten my facts right. Airfix's next all-new kit will be the Bae Nimrod, so you certainly cannot accuse the company of playing it safe.
This kit was announced towards the end of 2004, amid suitable fanfare. Rumour had been rife for sometime, especially on the official Airfix web site forum. Cryptic references to the 'BWPT' had me baffled for a while, but it was eventually revealed to mean 'Big White Pointy Thing' - although that is also used as a reference to the Concorde. Few people imagined that everything would be plain sailing from that point until the kit got released. Firstly, the list price went up from STG £15 to STG £17, or from series 6 to series 7 in the Airfix pricing structure. This was the least of my worries, and any realistic analysis of the market would, in my view, show that this is still a fair price. The rumour mill was much more preoccupied with whether or not the kit would be tooled using limited-run technology, and where it would be produced. The kit was eventually produced in China - if it's good enough for Revell, it's good enough for Airfix. As for the actual mold quality, the bottom line is that it is plenty good enough, but the review proper will deal with this in more detail.
The projected release date was another hot topic of conversation, with the initial date of sometime in Autumn 2005 eventually becoming late February 2006. Few modellers could really have been seriously upset about this. We modellers have to be patient, and if it's a choice between getting a kit now and getting it right, almost all modellers would prefer to wait for a more accurate product. The final issue - and probably the most contentious one - concerns the size of the production run, and when there is going to be another one. The initial run was supposedly 10,000 units, although I have heard that that number was allocated for the UK market, with a few thousand more for key foreign markets. Whatever the true number, it appears to have been rather conservative. Not since the first edition of On The Origin of Species has such an eagerly awaited product been the subject of such an unambitious first run. But while Darwin got straight down to work on a second edition, it's possible that we might have to wait some years for a fresh issue of the TSR.2. The reasons for this are not clear to me, and may have something to do with contractual reasons, based on the initial release being a 'limited issue'. Quite whom Airfix may be contractually bound to is something else that I can't quite understand.
The upshot of all of this is that getting your hands on a TSR.2 could range from the very difficult to the next to impossible. I was very lucky to get mine. There was no such thing as an allocation for Ireland of course - we just use the UK distribution network. I had actually decided that I could do without the TSR.2 for now, and wait until later to get one - of course, 'later' might have meant several years from now. However, many people had ordered more TSR.2 kits than they needed from a range of distributors, just to be on the safe side. And I do mean kits, as the TSR.2 has huge 'what if' potential - Hannants produced two hugely successful XtraDecal sheets for the TSR.2. This pattern of pre-orders meant that some surplus stock was available for a very short time. An alert friend of mine saw this on the Hannants web site, and quickly ordered one for himself via our local model shop, and suggested the shop get a second one for me if possible (thanks Dave). The first I heard about it was when I was in the shop checking something else, only to be asked if I wanted a TSR.2 that was on order. Now that's what I called Customer Service - kudos to Jim and everybody at Gamers Realm here in Galway.
Phew. If that sounds like a ridiculously long introduction to a kit, remember that this is no ordinary kit. As for the made scramble for the kit, I would much prefer if anybody who wanted a TSR.2 could buy one. I have no time for anyone engaging in speculation on the basis of this or any other kit being a limited run - i.e., buying up kits with no real intention of building them. Nor is it a particularly reliable or effective way of making money in today's world. Anyway, I will now hop off my soapbox and finally talk about the kit itself.
The kit comes in a surprisingly big box. That is partially because of the trend towards bigger boxes than are actually required - apparently, there are good marketing reasons for using ever bigger boxes, and that applies not just to the kit industry. The main reason for the box being big is probably that the TSR.2 is a deceptively big aircraft, quite a bit longer than other contemporary strike aircraft - by which I mean the Mirage IV, Su 24, F-111 and A-5. The parts are properly packaged, including a separate sealed bag for the transparencies. The kit is molded mostly in brilliant white plastic - think of all of those toothpaste adverts. Normally, I don't like it when a kit is molded in the same colour as the paint scheme, but not if white is the colour. The sprues are very thick, but the quality of the parts is not affected by this. The recessed panel detail is very, very good - not as good as the very best that you will see on some current kits, but very good nonetheless. There is no flash to speak of, and mold seam only on a few parts, most notably the main undercarriage struts. As is traditional with Airfix, all parts are individually numbered. Since there are only 97 parts, but part numbers greater than 100, there must have been a couple of parts that were dropped from the final mold.
A large well-printed decal sheet provides markings for three TSR.2's:
The latter two subjects are depicted in their currently restored condition.
© Kevin Ronayne 2006
Apart from the option of a single bomb (more of which later), there are no 'what if' options in this kit. Airfix has correctly decided - in my opinion - that this is best left to the aftermarket companies. Nonetheless, there are a surprising range of possible options in terms of undercarriage, air brakes, bomb bay and canopy configurations, even if they are not all clearly spelled out. The instruction booklet (10 pages, A4) is generally very good, even if Airfix has not yet cottoned on to including sprue diagrams. Paint codes are supplied as Humbrol colours only, which is no problem for me, and no problem to anyone who consults the appropriate cross reference charts.
This could be quite a long entry even by my standards, because I could make comments about almost every part of the kit and about every stage in the construction process - good, bad or indifferent, as the case may be. The one thing that I will say straight up is to have a supply of model filler ready. You are going to need it, although hopefully you will need nowhere near as much as I ended up having to use. That's another way of saying that you might be able to learn from my mistakes!
The parts breakdown for the airframe should be mentioned here. The wing is supplied as a single section with upper and lower halves, although the downturned wingtips are molded onto the upper wing part only. No surprises so far. The fuselage consists of two halves, with two dorsal inserts (forward and aft of the wing) and one ventral insert for the wide rear half of the fuselage. Again, this should not come as any surprise to anyone who has built even a Jaguar, let alone something this big. And, before I forget it, you won't need to weight the nose. The TSR.2 is definitely not a tail-sitter.
As is often the case in my reviews, I will not describe the actual build sequence. Instead, I will just go over different areas of the kit, and comment only on the critical construction sequences, where you must follow the sequence outlined in the booklet.
The tandem cockpits are supplied as single piece, with the instrument side panels in place. The rear bulkhead for the navigator station back-seater is also molded into this piece, but the rear bulkhead for the pilot station and the navigator's main instrument console are separate parts. I decided that it was best to leave these two parts off until after I had attached the main cockpit unit to the starboard fuselage half. This was because test runs had shown that neither of these parts were great fits against the fuselage, and it would be easier to alter the parts this way. The cockpit assembly also includes a control stick and rudder pedal unit for the pilot station. The control stick looks good, but the rudder pedals are too thick - but it doesn't really matter, as this would be hard to spot, even with the cockpit open. There are no fewer than 9 decals for the various instrument panels. Four of these are for the navigator main console, which is partially explained by a large circular protrusion in the middle of the console. This is probably a radar scope.
There are crew figures supplied, but I did not use them - I'm not sure if the TSR.2 ever even flew with two crew. Each Martin-Baker ejection seat is in four parts. The resulting sub-assemblies are good, but not outstanding. I'm sure there are (or will be) aftermarket replacements for those who want them. The cockpit is painted mostly Humbrol (Hu) 164, aka Dark Sea Grey. This is not a problem even with the overall white outer finish, as the white plastic is sufficiently opaque to mute the effect of this dark hue. The cockpit transparencies however, were a different matter. Apart from the framing, considerable parts of both canopies need to be underpainted with a couple of coats of Dark Sea Grey, especially the rear canopy. It took four coats of white paint over this to finally block out the underlying grey, and a fifth coat mightn't have gone amiss. The transparencies are very thick, leading to distortion. Actually, even some ultra-thin transparent parts can suffer from distortion, but there is no escaping distortion with plastic this thick. Since the navigator station side windows are quite small, you can see hardly anything of the interior detail unless the canopies are attached in the raised position. The instructions don't mention this possibility, but it's an obvious option. If you do go down this route, remember that there were a couple of jacks used to raise and lower the canopies, and these would need to be depicted. Consult your reference pictures.
After all that, I'm still not finished with the transparencies. The rear canopy is too wide, and there is no easy way that I can see to fix this, although I did my best to make it less obvious. Something else that is (are?) not obvious are the demarcation lines on the transparencies - you need to look hard to see some of them. Although I cannot be sure, it looks to me as if the port and starboard rear canopy windows are slightly different shapes. Note also that large parts of the framing should be black, not white as implied in the kit. This is pretty obvious from most reference photos. What is less clear is the extent of the black framing around the rear canopy windows. This is because the framing detail on this part relates only to the window/canopy demarcation, but a second set of framing detail should mark the limit of the window frame, and thus the limit of the black area. To a lesser extent, the same is true of the front canopy - on the rear section right around the pilot seat, you must decide where the white canopy body ends, and the black framing. You should also know (or you will find out!) that the pegs (i.e., hinges) at the rear of the canopies don't fit very well into the grooves on the fuselage. Wield the knife and don't spare the filler. Finally, the canopies are tinted, requiring Hu 1322 transparent orange. I didn't have this when I was building the kit, but I can always apply it at some later stage.
All this canopy work is, of course, something you will be doing only once you have (at the very least) assembled the fuselage halves. Apart from the cockpit assembly, there are three other steps that must be completed before the halves can be brought together. The first step is the engine intakes. Each intake is a three-part subassembly which shows some very deep intake detail, which reminds me that the lack of this type of detail is the only major shortcoming in the otherwise superb Revell Hunter F.6. Remember this if you ever feel like criticising Airfix on the grounds of lack of detail. The intake assembly steps look odd and counter intuitive, but they are correct, but Airfix has actually engineered the parts correctly to show off the detail of the intakes, and the construction process makes sense when you study the intake profile. The outer intake fairings don't align that well with the fuselage sides - more filler needed here. Also, inside the intake, there is a slight gap between the front and rear sections. This is hard to describe, but it will be obvious to anyone building the kit. This may not be a problem - perhaps this is part of a bypass system? I don't know enough about the TSR.2 and it's engines (Olympus 320-22R) to comment any further. It would have been nice to have the intake suction relief doors as optional position parts - these are the panels on the outer fairing.
The second step is the fully enclosed nose wheel bay, which includes two bulges at the upper rear to accommodate the tires. The bay is very detailed and fits very well to the starboard fuselage. However, it is only when you assemble the fuselage halves (even just as a dry-fit) that you realise that the bay is slightly too narrow. Actually, this isn't too much of a problem given how the nose wheel doors will be attached.
© Kevin Ronayne 2006
The last part that needs to be attached at this point is a biggie: it is a bomb bay and main wheel bay all in one. There is some seam line to clean off - no surprise, given the size of the part. There is also a massive ejector mark in one of the rear sections of one of the main wheel bays. Actually, I'm being kind when I call it an ejector mark, it's so ugly. Never mind, as it is easily removed with just a few minutes sanding. Now, there is a problem attaching this part to the fuselage, but it is not a problem with this part itself. The problem appears to be with the alignment markings on the interior of the fuselage. In a nutshell, I believe that they are positioned slightly too high. My insistence on positioning the unit exactly as per the marks meant that there were some unsightly gaps to be dealt with later on, including when I attached the main ventral fuselage section. Looking back on this with the benefit of hindsight, I believe that the bomb bay/wheel bay unit should be positioned about 1mm lower than indicated. 1 mm might not sound much, but it can save you a lot of grief and a lot of filler. The majority of the filler used in this kit went into rectifying this problem, which is what I meant earlier when I said that you might need a lot less filler than I did!
The only problem with the main wing unit is that it will not fit properly; at the front, it just sits up too high, instead of being flush with the fuselage. I had to cut away at both wing and fuselage join interfaces until I got a satisfactory fit. That's all I really need to say about the main wings. Before you attach the ventral fuselage insert, you must attach the main undercarriage struts. You must also attach the all-moving fin and tail plane units, followed by the engine nozzle subassembly, in that order. Airfix has designed the control surfaces to be moving, with the movement of the tail planes being restricted just as on the real thing. Neither the fin nor the tail planes line up perfectly with the contours of the fuselage, and the tail plane joins in particular are very weak because of this, and also because the mounting shaft/washer arrangement isn't big enough, strong enough and tight enough to properly hold the tail planes in place. I initially attached the parts as per instructions, but I eventually decided it would be better if I fixed them in position permanently, having trimmed the edges first so that the parts mated better with the fuselage.
The five-part nozzle assembly doesn't need much elaboration, except to say that one of the nozzle pipes was too tight a fit, and had to be vigorously sanded down. The exterior surface of the nozzle housing should be painted before the sub-assembly is attached to the fuselage. Airfix suggests silver (Hu 11), but a better choice is Humbrol Polished Steel Metalcote - if you want to, you could paint the rear boundary of the housing a lighter colour, such as the aforementioned silver. The paint/decal guide is confusing in that the lower view suggests that not all of the lower part of the nozzle housing should have a bare metal finish. This is wrong.
Assuming you have the main undercarriage legs attached, only now can you attach the ventral fuselage insert. Note: you can complete the main undercarriage assembly before you do this, or do it afterwards. Like a lot of other parts in the kit, the fit is almost but not quite perfect. It was at this point that I had to apply a lot of filler to bridge the gap between bomb bay and ventral fuselage, because of my earlier mistake in positioning the wheel/bomb bay part. As for the bomb bay itself, you have three choices:
I initially fitted the insulation, which was the obvious choice as I was modelling XR219. I also painted it orange, as directed. However, as it got to decision time on the final configuration, I decided I wanted a model with wheels down, but otherwise as 'clean' as possible. That meant closing the doors. I advise attaching the door halves together, and only then attaching this unit (once set of course) to the fuselage.
Next up, it's time to talk air brakes. The TSR.2 had two pairs of air brakes, on the upper and lower rear fuselage. Both pairs can be assembled in either the open or closed position, and it seems to me that all four were operated in unison, although I could be wrong. In other words: have them all open, or all closed. Actually, most (but not all) photographs of XR219 in flight show the brakes being slightly ajar. Perhaps this was due to teething troubles hydraulics, or something similar? Anyway, in line with my decision to have as clean a profile as possible, I closed the brakes. The upper brake doors needed to be sanded down considerably on the inner surfaces before they would fit. I did try to dry fit the doors in the open position using the supplied jacks, and I saw enough to suggest that there might be some work involved in doing this for real.
Almost there! Completing the undercarriage assembly should have been easy, but there was a glitch. On the main bogies, the locating pins for the wheels are far too long. In cutting these down to size, I broke off part of the port undercarriage unit. Later on, I broke it in a second place. As you can see from the photos, I did get it all assembled properly in the end, but I am conscious of the fact that the port undercarriage might be weak, and so I tend to handle the model very carefully.
Last of all come the undercarriage doors. As with many other aircraft, the TSR.2 only had the full range of undercarriage doors open when retracting or lowering the undercarriage. The construction guide shows all doors in the open position, but the paint/decal guide shows the 'correct' configuration. I opted for the cleaner configuration, which was in line with how I wanted to build the kit. This did mean that much of the wheel bay detail would be hidden, especially the extensive spar and trunking detail in the large forward sections of the main wheel bays. For the nose bay, the small door sections that were extended should be at an angle. Putting the larger rear door sections in place showed them to be quite a poor fit.
Each main undercarriage bay has three doors, two large forward and one smaller rear. The configuration is very similar to that seen on the Mirage F.1, F-8 or A-7. In the clean configuration, only the rear door is open. The main problem was getting the lower front door section in place. Just as with the upper air brakes, I had to remove quite a bit of the interior detail on the doors before they would fit. Incidentally, there is an interesting design feature in these door units. Each of these units has a rectangular opening to which part of the wheel bay trunking connects. This must be some sort of exhaust system. The rear door parts have positioning tabs, and by the looks of the fuselage design, the doors can only be attached in the closed position, which is odd, as this is not suggested in the instructions. All you have to do is clear away the thin plastic at the tab attachment points, and then it is simplicity itself to attach the doors in the open position.
© Kevin Ronayne 2006
Apart from some trivial items which don't need to be discussed, that is finally that! About time, too. One final item: there are some parts unique to XR220, namely an extra pair of undercarriage struts, and a fairing on each side of the fuselage between the intake and the undercarriage bay. The locating holes for these fairings are supposed to be of the drill-out variety, but they are already open. You just have to cover them up if you are not modelling XR220.
How easy does this get? The prototype TSR.2's had an all-over finish of satin (semi-gloss) white, or Hu 130 in the instructions. There is not much else to say on this, except that the bare plastic colour seems closer to the 'real thing' than does a couple of coats of Hu 130. The construction guide (stage 16) seems to show the wrong position for the wingtip navigation lights. The lights were actually located just ahead of the wingtip proper. The general paint/decal guide shows the lights in the correct position, without explicitly referring to them.
There are around 100 decals to be applied, mostly small stencil detail and walkway markings. The quality of the decals is extremely good, and I regret not scanning the sheet at a higher resolution than I normally do, as I could have then seen how clear the stencil text is (note: the image included here is reduced from the copy that I did scan in). For this kit at least, Airfix seems to have decided that it's better to have slightly thicker, glossier decals if that helps to make them better in terms of register and integrity. I messed up one of the rear fuselage walkway decals, which was really my fault. Since you can't have a decal on one side an not the other, I did not apply the corresponding decal on the other side of the fuselage. I have not yet decided what to do with this - the walkway markings are far too intricate to be painted.
Once applied, the decals were varnished with Humbrol SatinCote. Incidentally, I painted and decalled the kit in stages. Everyone has quirks when it comes to building kits, and this is something that I tend to when I have a kit with a lot of decals.
Most of the accuracy and detail concerns have already been touched upon during the build review, so there is no need to restate them here. The main accuracy concern I have is about the thickness of the main flap trailing edges - look at the last photo in this review to see what I mean. There are a couple of other minor irritants; for example, the fin aerial beneath the nose is far too thick. But then again, there is nothing stopping you from replacing it with some suitably thin plastic card.
In discussing accuracy, there are also some plus points (apart from basic overall accuracy!) that should be pointed out. The TSR.2 had a distinct downward attitude on ground, which the kit captures very well. On the underside of the fuselage just behind the undercarriage bays, there are two fairings, one on either side. I painted these black, based on what I could see on review photos. The accuracy issue is this: on the kit itself, these fairings are both placed on the right-hand side of their respective underside panels. On the paint/decal guide, they are both positioned towards the outside of the panel. A close study of photographs shows that the kit is right - i.e., the units are asymmetrically positioned. Because the paint/decal guide is wrong on this point, I had some difficulty in deciding how and where to position some of the many stencil decals that decorate this part of the aircraft.
© Kevin Ronayne 2006
A last point on accuracy concerns potential 'what if' alterations. Besides weapon and other stores fits - both internal and external - there is also the question of alterations to the airframe itself. The development aircraft had only a very basic electronics fit. It's a fair bet that any production aircraft would have sprouted a few additional fairings and aerials. I should mention here that there were no plans to fit the TSR.2 with a full range of defensive countermeasures, but it's difficult to imagine some alterations not being made on the basis of experience. The ultimate 'what if' scenario would probably be based on a study initiated by the UK Conservative government in 1981. This proposed resurrecting the TSR.2 and, involved (among other things), the use of slanted 'Tornado-style' intakes. This is not as daft as it might seem - the Tu 22/26 'Backfire' got this very treatment.
This is a hugely welcome return to form from Airfix, even if the product is not quite up to the standards of Revell, Hasegawa, Tamiya and co. Nonetheless, the kit is for the most part very well engineered. Airfix has relied on its' traditional strengths: interesting subject matter, excellent basic accuracy and good major part fit. This matches anything that Revell has done over the past few years in terms of imaginative subject matter, although Revell has of course released far more exotic items in that time. Anyway, all that's left for me to do is to start saving for the Nimrod!
© Kevin Ronayne 2006
Two references stand out here: the first is Issue 4 of the Wings of Fame journal, which contains a detailed feature on the history (in all respects) of the TSR.2. This article is written by none other than Sir Bill Gunston. His views on this and other similar topics should be well known to readers by know, and some might accuse him of bias. However, it's hard to fault his reasoning on this topic, or on many others. The best online reference is the TSR.2 entry on the very wonderful Thunder and Lightnings web site. One of the references mentioned here is the TSR.2 entry at the Target Lock web site.
Between these various references, you should get most of the information that you need to bone up on the TSR.2 - the Wings of Fame article and the Thunder and Lightnings article are also excellent sources of reference photographs. There are a number of interesting pages out there on the UK nuclear weapons programme - the WW2 & Cold War History in Britain site is well worth a read, especially the page on nuclear and chemical weapons.
© Kevin Ronayne 2006
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