At the end of my previous post, I’d completed the assembly of the cockpit and rear compartment of this aircraft. Some more bits and pieces needed to be modified and detailed before I could begin assembly.

First, wheels. The Lysander had a spatted fixed undercarriage, with landing lights recessed into the front of the spats. The kit provides locating holes for the wheels which correspond to the position they occupy in flight—but they sink a little deeper inside the spats once the shock-absorbers are loaded on the ground. So I needed to adjust the wheel position with a little judicious chiselling. Here’s the before (left) and after (right) view:

And the corresponding before and after wheel positions:

The landing lights proved problematic. A parabolic reflector needs to be fitted inside the spat, with a transparent cover fitting flush over the top of it. There seemed to be no discernable way the kit parts could be made to fit inside the spats in the way the instructions portrayed. I ended up removing a lot of plastic before I could get things to go together neatly, like this:

The rear wheel likewise needed to be adjusted. First to remove a large fairing that doesn’t match the appearance of the Special Duties aircraft, and secondly to shorten the oleo to depict its compressed position on the ground. Here’s the original part:

And the trimmed part in the final wheel assembly:

I also want to model this aircraft with the canopy open—top panel slid back, port-side window slid down. This requires a bit of work with a razor saw, because the transparent parts in the kit are not designed to allow open sections. Here’s the tricky upper canopy as supplied:

And once I’d divided the two sections:

Next, the wings. The Lysander had an innovative set of automatic flaps, connected to leading-edge slats, which deployed in response to reduced airflow over the wing. So when it was parked on the ground, both slats and flaps were fully deployed. The Eduard kit doesn’t provide any sort of option for this—flaps and slats are moulded in the stowed position, as if the aircraft were in flight. I got hold of a CMK Lysander detail set, which provides, among other things, a set of slats and flaps. But, amazingly, only the outboard slats. Since the inboard slats were mechanically connected to the flaps, it’s actually impossible for the aircraft to have flaps down without inboard slats deployed. So if I wanted to model this aircraft at rest on the ground, I was faced with building my own inboard slats. After a bit of hunting around for ideas, I used some 0.1mm aluminium sheet to reproduce the missing slats. First I applied some Tamiya masking tape to the inboard leading edge of the wing, and traced out the shape of the slats. Then I peeled off the tape and and stuck it to my aluminium sheet, so that I could cut out the correct shape. Then I taped the flat aluminium sheet into place on the leading edge, and gently bent it into shape. Presto, I had a slat.

Then I needed to remove most of the leading edges of the wings, and cut away the kit’s moulded flaps. Here’s the result of that:

I was certainly beginning to feel a little committed at this point. I applied CMK’s replacement outboard leading edge, and improvised an inboard leading edge using the material I’d cut away from the outboard leading edge. So here’s how that all looked:

CMK provide slat supports for their outboard slats, with enough spares to allow me to add them to the inboard wing, too. I’m going to leave the slats off until late in the build, for ease of painting. But here are the flaps in position:

Eduard provide some photoetch flap hinges, but of course they’re intended for flaps in the stowed position. They were easy enough to split and position correctly on the lowered flaps. The inboard hinges are in position, above; the outboard hinges need to wait until later in the assembly, because they attach to the wing support struts.

Next, the tail, in which I installed CMK’s replacement control surfaces and tailplanes. The Lysander tailplanes were (rather notoriously) adjustable, and needed to be cranked slightly downwards at the leading edge for take-off and landing. The kit, of course, doesn’t permit that adjustment.

Life was complicated somewhat by the fact that I seemed to have two port tailplanes from CMK:

They’re identical top and bottom, and since I was adjusting the position of the locating tabs anyway, in order to tip the tailplanes forward, I simply sawed off the tabs and repositioned them:

More complications, however, because there’s a plate attached to the upper surface of the tailplane, which tips with it, and this plate is inconveniently moulded as part of the kit’s tail:

I traced the plate on to Tamiya tape, again, and transferred the shape to some thin styrene sheet, before sanding off the moulded part and scribing in the missing panel lines:

You can see I’ve also carved away the kit rudder, in preparation for replacing it with the CMK version, slightly deflected to the right to match my rudder pedals. The CMK rudder looked like a good fit when held against the intact model, but ended up needing a little filler to make a snug fit. Here it is, dry-fitted, with the tailplanes attached and the styrene plate in position:

So that’s all the bits and pieces ready to glue together. More next time.

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