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Modern (1975-today)
Discuss the modern aircraft age from 1975 thru today.
My R-11 Refueling Truck Build
18Bravo
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Colorado, United States
Joined: January 20, 2005
KitMaker: 7,219 posts
AeroScale: 101 posts
Posted: Monday, August 05, 2013 - 03:04 PM UTC
Few things are better than arriving home after a few weeks and finding a few boxes of models waiting to be opened. One of those boxes contained the long awaited R-11 - not just one, but several.
Before I start talking about the build, I'd like to thank the refuelers at NAS JRB Ft. Worth for allowing me to photograph the actual R-11 about two years ago. I brought a few kits by to share, and to my surprise, a few of them had already purchased the kit! I guess they were waiting as long as I was.
Here they are with the kits I left:


It's nice to see smiling faces, isn't it?

Now on to the build.

I'm an armor modeler, so the first thing I usually do on a tank kit is cement the barrel halves together. That way, when I get to the step that calls for it the bond is cured and I can start getting rid of the seam.
I took a similar route and went after the large fuel tank halves. Later, the seam cleaned up very nicely. I will say you may want to cut off the locater pins and line the halves up by feel. I did this and it worked well.





For the rest of the kit I followed the instructions. There were no surprises to speak of. The control box behind the cab takes a little finesses to assemble, but wasn't too hard to deal with. The handrails along the top of the fuel tank are delicate, so I took extra care in cleaning them.

This is where I ended up after only about two hours of modeling - nearly finished.



One extra tip: For the stowage and tool boxes that attach to the chassis, sand them with fine grit wet/dry paper on a flat surface such as a granite counter top. They will benefit from it, as they're not quite flat.

Now for some pros and cons:

Pros:
The interior is not bad at all. The dash is correct in every way, down to the last switch. The doors have no inner detail though, but it hardly shows once together. The seats have the correct profile. The stitching is different than what I've seen, but I don't think it detracts from it at all.

The pump control station has a very detailed control panel. It can be closed up within a roll top style door, or displayed with the door rolled up.

The deals are very crisp and on register - always a concern with multi-color decals.

There is somewhat of an underside to the vehicle, even the air brakes are represented.

The kit scales out very well. I spent a few hours measuring the real thing, so I'm happy about that.

Cons:

No decals for the dash or the control panel. Not too serious as you can paint both, but it would have been nice to have.

There are seven clean out caps missing from the top of the tank, even though they are shown in the instructions. I've looked at the sprues, they are not there. These can be replicated fairly easily, but I'm mystified as to how they got left off.

There is also a missing fuel outlet at the lower left rear of the tank. Right by where it should be are also some electrical boxes missing from the inner rear fender. These again, can be easily replicated, but the at least the outlet should have been present.

There is a multi-curved pipe on the sprue (I don't recall the part number as I removed it) that does not show up in the instructions at all. You'll need to install it between the lower front right of the tank and the underside of the control box. The good thing is that it fits perfectly.

Now for what I consider to be the low point of the kit - the wheels, or more precisely, the tires. The tires are in two halves which cement on either side of the wheels. That makes painting the wheels a breeze, but the tires themselves have a ficticious tread pattern - almost a military tread pattern, when they should have an automotive tread. I understand the limitations of injection molding in styrene, so better tires might have been done in rubber or vinyl. In any case, I'd look to see them done in resin before too long.

So, without painting the beast yet, I'd say Kinetic (or Skunkworks) have a real winner on their hands that, with a little extra work could be an absolute show stopper. (You could really go whole hog plumbing the brakes, the fuel tanks, and other wiring)

My thanks to Raymond Chung of Kinetic for generously providing the kits for me and the men at NAS JRB Ft. Worth.


drabslab
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European Union
Joined: September 28, 2004
KitMaker: 2,186 posts
AeroScale: 1,587 posts
Posted: Monday, August 05, 2013 - 07:40 PM UTC
You obviously know this refeuler quite well. I did a review for aeroscale and found paint instructions badly missing. Do you have any good pictures of the inside of the truck or any painting tips?
drabslab
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European Union
Joined: September 28, 2004
KitMaker: 2,186 posts
AeroScale: 1,587 posts
Posted: Monday, August 05, 2013 - 07:42 PM UTC
The same for the underside, is everything just green? And then, what green exactly?
18Bravo
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Colorado, United States
Joined: January 20, 2005
KitMaker: 7,219 posts
AeroScale: 101 posts
Posted: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 - 04:18 AM UTC
I didn't see your review until you mentioned it. I wasn't expecting one to be out so quickly.

I'm not sure what the color the frame rails are - flat black, flat green? Either way, they're dusty,and not glossy, so that'll be my color for them.



You can also use that photo to plumb the brakes a bit.


The rest of the vehicle is the gloss dark green. I'm going to Home Depot to see what's available in rattle can. The only exceptions are the steps and fuel tanks/battery boxes on either side of the cab, which are gloss black, and the ladder, which is dull aluminum. Of course there are some details on the control panel if you elect to keep it open, and the red fire extinguishers.

The interior looks like this:



Also, there are some photos on the side of the box that give a good indicator of the color. I don't know the FS number, but I'm guessing there's not much out there in gloss dark green.

drabslab
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European Union
Joined: September 28, 2004
KitMaker: 2,186 posts
AeroScale: 1,587 posts
Posted: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 - 04:44 AM UTC
Thanks, that helps a lot! Any pictures of the dashboard, or the interior of the pumpinstallation? Poor paint instructions seem to be a trademark of sskunkmodels, this is a pity as they make interesting stuff.

There are many dark greens around, some of which would look totally wrong on this vehicle. I planned to do an internet search for pictures and to detail as far as possible the colour of each part for aeroscale Luckily, you make this monks job redundant ��

I will make a link to this forum thread from the one of the review.
18Bravo
_VISITCOMMUNITY
Colorado, United States
Joined: January 20, 2005
KitMaker: 7,219 posts
AeroScale: 101 posts
Posted: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 - 04:56 AM UTC
Here you go.



drabslab
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European Union
Joined: September 28, 2004
KitMaker: 2,186 posts
AeroScale: 1,587 posts
Posted: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 - 05:02 AM UTC
This thread is now already better than the instruction sheet of skunkmodels ������

Which actually also underlines how easy it would have been for them to make a decent instruction sheet!

Thanks a lot
18Bravo
_VISITCOMMUNITY
Colorado, United States
Joined: January 20, 2005
KitMaker: 7,219 posts
AeroScale: 101 posts
Posted: Friday, August 09, 2013 - 02:34 AM UTC
I'm glad this has been helpful to you. Hopefully others have found it helpful as well.
I've decided upon a color - Tamiya British Green. Unfortunately I'll be out of the country for month starting in a few hours. I guess I'll have to wait until I get back to see how close it is.
The other thing is, I have another Kinetic kit (the RG-31) that has those little round attachments on the clear pieces, to knock them out of the molds. They're just the right size for the cleaning vents on top of the tank, so I'll be using them as a basis for those. These are what I'm talking about:

alpha_tango
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Germany
Joined: September 07, 2005
KitMaker: 5,609 posts
AeroScale: 5,231 posts
Posted: Saturday, August 10, 2013 - 06:38 AM UTC
Most helpful for me too!!

Thanks for posting pix and info! I have started my kit and I am not sure if I can hold back until you resume your build, but I will follow it.

Many thanks!

all the best

Steffen
18Bravo
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Colorado, United States
Joined: January 20, 2005
KitMaker: 7,219 posts
AeroScale: 101 posts
Posted: Saturday, August 10, 2013 - 11:19 PM UTC
Unfortunately I'm out of the country for a while, but I plan to paint it when I get back.
18Bravo
_VISITCOMMUNITY
Colorado, United States
Joined: January 20, 2005
KitMaker: 7,219 posts
AeroScale: 101 posts
Posted: Tuesday, September 17, 2013 - 02:25 PM UTC
I thought I would share photos of the missing spout at the left rear corner of the tank, and some of the other plumbing missing from the kit.



The rest are on my Photobucket site in the Misc. album.

18Bravo
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Colorado, United States
Joined: January 20, 2005
KitMaker: 7,219 posts
AeroScale: 101 posts
Posted: Tuesday, September 24, 2013 - 06:21 AM UTC
Silly me. I've had a few requests for the account name on Photobucket. It is: 18bravo_photos

There is a trick to finding as well which I'll share.
If you ever see photos and want to know the origin, click "Reply and Quote" at the bottom. In most instances you'll be able to glean the site that way.

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