Starr Miniatures 1/144 resin TSR.2

By Damien Burke

History

The TSR.2 was an extremely advanced all-British strike aircraft roughly equivalent to the F-111 and designed around the same time. TSR.2 was a designation that stood for Tactical Strike and Reconaissance and it was intended as a replacement for the versatile Canberra. In 1960 the newly formed British Aircraft Corporation absorbed many existing aircraft manufacturers in the UK and was responsible for the design of the TSR.2. Mismanagement and bureaucracy stifled the project and led to massive rises in cost, with political opposition putting up a wall of flak before the first aircraft had even flown. With the government's future looking bleak, BAC were worried the next government would cancel the programme so they went all out to get the first prototype (XR219) flying despite serious engine problems. They managed this but the early flight tests had numerous problems that reflected the hurry they were in.

The aircraft showed astonishing promise, for instance being able to outperform a Lightning without even using afterburner. The second prototype was damaged before its first flight, leading to a delay; but unfortunately for the British aircraft industry the newly elected Labour government then cancelled the project in 1965 and the second prototype never flew. The F-111 was to be purchased instead, though as that project was increasingly delayed and ran over-budget, it was dropped too.

The prototypes and first production batch, many nearing completion, were mostly scrapped or destroyed on shooting ranges though two survived to later be restored and put on display in museums, one being the second prototype (XR220). The single example that had flown was shot to pieces and finally scrapped in the early 1980s; ironically at the same time that the tri-national Tornado was entering RAF service. Today's Tornado is still only approaching the capabilities that the TSR.2 was expected to have in 1970 - which is some indication of what the UK lost back in 1965.

The Kit

Packed in a stout postie-proof box with the parts wrapped in bubble wrap for further protection, Starr isn't taking chances with broken parts! The smaller parts are wrapped up in a bag within the bubble wrap too, though unfortunately the canopy (and a spare) are not separate from the other small parts and therefore vulnerable to scratching.

This is a mixed media kit, with most parts in resin, vacform canopy and white metal nose gear and main gear legs. The quality of the casting of the resin parts is pretty decent; some fine detail on the wings is evident though the fuselage is rather bare. The white metal parts need some cleaning up but look good.

The instructions consist of a guide on working with resin (a very nice touch and one other manufacturers should heed), a list of parts, additional references, a history of the aircraft, some detail pictures and basic plans. No assembly diagram as such but there are few parts and the plans diagram make it obvious what goes where. Decals are not included but two suggested third-party sheets are suggested.

Construction

Cleaning up the resin parts, an immediately obvious error was found. The main fuselage part was curved whereas the real thing is straight from nose to tail. A test fit of the nose section gave it an even more pronounced banana aspect so a little work in warm water bending the main fuselage and changing the angle of the nose attachment was required. Even then there was a distinct curve to the fuselage so a lot of sanding was necessary to get the underside flat. After that I noticed a bit of a bulge on the top of the fuselage so that needed sanding flat too; however the top of the fuselage was now too low and needed filler to build it up to match the rear end of the nose section. Paul informs me that the mould had deteriorated to cause this banana effect, and examples now being sold will not have this defect.

Large pouring plugs on the major resin parts need very careful detaching, especially on the main wing section and wingtips. These are a little undersized compared to the ends of the wings so need some filler once attached to blend them into the wings properly. The tail fin is fine and it doesn't really matter if you don't get it quite centered, as the real thing pivots around its centre-point. The jetpipes fairing is very nicely done and as long as you take your time sanding the moulding plug off and continually checking against the rear fuselage, it should match up perfectly. The rear stabilisers have a distinct step at the rear, presumably to clear the jetpipes fairing, but this isn't that necessary as the fairing curves away at that point. This is easy enough to fix by simply removing a line of resin from the stabiliser so that it is a straight line instead of having the step. If you deepen the attachment points on the fuselage, especially at the forward edge, that also helps. This worked a dream on the starboard side but I found the port stabiliser when given the same treatment went on at entirely the wrong angle relative to the fuselage, so the attachment indent needed some scrap resin put into it to get the angle right once more. My example of the port stabiliser was also rather thicker and less cleanly moulded than the starboard one and needed to be sanded down to match.

Now time for filler, and you'll need quite a bit. The wing to fuselage joint is the main culprit and has some deep gaps that need filling; this area is also perfectly flat on the real thing so make sure you give it a good sanding afterwards. A coat of grey paint to show up any imperfections in the surface found a few bubbles in the resin but mostly filler was limited to joints. A notable exception was the top of the nose, which I felt was a little undersized so I built it up a bit to give it a more conical shape.

The white metal undercarriage is rather nicely done and needs only a little adjustment to get it to fit at the right angle; I just superglued it in the bays but you may want to drill a hole in the bay roof to give it a defined attachment point. The main bay doors are nicely shaped though rather thick and you may want to replace them with appropriately bent plastic card; you have to get the card out for the nose gear doors anyway.

Next up, the cockpit. The two neat little ejector seats were painted up and one soon departed this life and sought safety somewhere in my carpet, much to my annoyance. A replacement from Milliput soon got put in the rear cockpit, the one with least visibility! As there is so little area of the canopy that is actually transparent I didn't worry about adding any other detail to the cockpits. The vacform canopy was cut to shape carefully and popped on with Kristal Klear and a little filler used afterwards to fair it in.

On priming the area afterwards I found I hadn't built the fuselage up enough here as the canopy bulged above the line of the fuselage, so a further filler session was necessary to blend the canopy into the line of the fuselage. While doing this a look around the real example at Duxford showed up a couple of things that need correcting on the kit. First of all the innermost flap guide fairings under the wings are too close to the fuselage; on the real thing their is distinct separation between the two; it was rather late to do anything about it but I did reduce them in size a little where they met the fuselage. Secondly, there are four prominent exhausts on top of the fuselage just before the wing root - I carved out a rough rendition of these with a scalpel. A pitot probe from the end of a pin and some plastic card nose gear doors finish the kit off.

The lack of decals had me chickening out of doing a prototype, so I chose to go with a 'What if' scheme - what if they'd entered service? Well, the RAF's 1970s scheme of light aircraft grey undersides and camouflaged top surfaces is rather nice and that at least meant I could use the various Modeldecal roundel, fin flash and serial sheets as the smaller items on those sheets can provide for 1/144 kits easily. Given the sheer size of the TSR.2 I thought I could get away with using the 208 Squadron markings in the Airfix Buccaneer kit too - though I cut the flash in front of the fuselage roundels down to a smaller size. Other options for a future scheme include the all over camo used by Tornados in the 1980s and early 1990s, or the overall grey schemes now in use - or how about a desert pink example?! The instructions handily list a number of serials of the aircraft on the production line when the cancellation came so you can pick a real TSR.2 serial for your 'What if' example. Do note that if you choose to do the second prototype, XR220, that it had camera mount fairings on the intake sides and you'll need to build these yourself.

Unfortunately my luck deserted me completely when applying the paint job, and I had a lot of problems with some years-old Xtracolor paint and had to redo the painting three times to get the current barely acceptable result; by this time I was a little fed up to say the least so please excuse the surface imperfections!

Overall a nice little kit which needs some work but nothing beyond the capabilities of the average resin modeller. I was very impressed by some of the detail put into such a small scale kit and the saving in display space has even had me wondering whether to switch from 1/72! Accuracy-wise the wingspan is about a foot under scale, but length and height are spot on and it certainly looks the part. The only real criticism that could be made is the lack of decals; the TSR.2 prototypes had few markings that would be visible in this scale, but the faded roundels are not common items and the dashed walkway lines will be near impossible to find - and applying a line and hand painting each division may test your patience! Hopefully one of the decal manufacturers will come to the rescue though.

Available direct from

Starr Miniatures
91 St. Anne's Avenue
Stanwell, Middlesex TW19 7RL
UK