The Real World Icon

[Henry Grimard]

ICONdelivers operational and consulting services to achieve product authorisation, through the strategic design and delivery of real-world evidence studies and late phase research. Our experts help you to identify, generate, synthesise and communicate evidence of treatment value and safety, to help regulators, payers, providers, and patients make informed health decisions.

ICON delivers operational and consulting services to achieve product authorisation. We achieve this through the strategic design and delivery of real-world evidence studies and late phase research. Our dedicated late phase research team integrates real-world evidence expertise with specialised operational capabilities. We work hand-in-hand with sponsors with sponsors to design and execute studies that address the unique late phase and RWE demands of regulators, payers, providers, and patients, while positioning your asset for optimal market access. We leverage Clinical Informatics, state-of-the-art technologies, and our global reach to maximise safety and efficiency and make data-driven decisions for every study.

We employ a risk-based monitoring (RBM) approach to holistically evaluate each individual study and determine the right organisational structure to support both central and on-site monitoring and see data trends in real time.

Selecting the right investigative sites can significantly improve timely enrolment and the quality of data collected. We take a data-driven approach to site selection, evaluating potential sites based on their:

Our field-based Clinical Trial Liaisons (CTLs) can help increase participation and enrolment in your clinical trials, while also ensuring you receive high-quality data. CTLs are highly trained PhDs, PharmDs, and medical doctors with extensive experience cultivating productive relationships across all key functions of clinical research, from site selection all the way through the clinical trial.

CTLs work with investigators and site staff to accurately project potential enrolment and optimise prescreening strategies, liaise with other departments to ensure data quality is maintained, and engage with non-participating physicians to generate interest in referring patients for your study.

We help identify real patients and the most appropriate research sites through our collaboration with leading EHR providers. Our direct-to-patient contact teams and site management associates ensure that your patients, sites, and investigators are fully engaged throughout the study.

I do intend to achieve better results on XX154 than these two attempts, honest. I hope the last ten years have given me that capability. I will share my aftermarket purchases and some areas where I worry about getting good results in the next post.

I built a 1/72 Hawk a few years ago and used the Revell kit. Not bad, but quite a few parts need quite a bit of filling and many of the smaller parts have a lot of flash that needs cleaning up. Ultimately though, it looks like a Hawk.

The rear seat rail is at the correct angle (but that is because the rear of the canopy fixes that geometry). The front seat has a rail angle almost vertical. The front and rear cockpit floors are dramatically different, when they should be identical. The real-life instrument panels are slightly canted away from the crew; Airfix has them precipitously leaning toward the crew.

I have a problem to solve on the instrument panels. I have three starting points: Airfix decal panels to go on their dodgy plastic parts; Eduard T2 PE panels to go on the dodgy Airfix parts; Flightpath T1 layered PE panels. None of these is particularly accurate. The Flightpath PE parts are quite nice, but having measured them they are too small in breadth. This means the Airfix kit has a wider cockpit than the Italeri. The Hawk instrument panels have port and starboard extensions that run down via angled panels to the near horizontal side instrument panels. The Airfix new mould has these side console panels (the old mould did not), but they are very badly wrong in angle, fore-aft length, as well as in height. The photos above show this.

I have decided to go with the Flightpath parts which will make the cockpit rather narrow. I have experimented and can use the Airfix T1 instrument panel decals to sit between the two PE layers, but with a bit of cutting up to use the instrument dials separately.

I need one last moan at Airfix. Why stick with this crass cockpit offering when doing the remould? It is not as though its hidden. If you build a T1 according to instructions, the rear seat barely shows above the cockpit wall, and even the front seat is far too low. A modeller of any level would like to believe the pilots are sitting in fairly realistic poses. Airfix fail to deliver big time on that.

So, I have started work proper. The front fuselage panel lines are actually accurate, so all I have done is sanded them down to a trace. All other fuselage panel lines have been removed entirely and I am in the process of recutting based on XX154 photos. I have not yet found any variation between XX154 today and a line-build standard T1 as regards fuselage access panels. This is a typical photo I took of XX154 in February 2024.

My style is to completely cut through the fuselage for the access panels and then build back panels using plastic card. Scribing other than straight panel lines is beyond me. Hopefully the photo explains that okay. You can see the access panels on the Airfix kit (aft of the intake) are a complete work of fiction. In fact Airfix did a half reasonable job of placing the access panels on the port side, and then copied those onto the starboard side. Dohhh.

I have also removed the aft most fuselage section ready to take the Flightpath jet-pipe piece. Despite the Flightpath item being for the Italeri kit, at first sight it does look a pretty good fit to my Airfix model. The front cockpit coaming has also gone in the bin, and the inside of the air intake added.

I hope the flat side shows in the photo above, by the tailplane locator. The Airfix fuselage shoulder above the tail is wrong. The rearmost frame in the photo, (3), (remember there is the final section missing, awaiting the Flightpath jet-pipe), the upper corner is very square and Airfix are ok with that. Moving forward, over the distance of the removable panel covering the horizontal tail actuators, the corner transitions to a rounded shape, joining the horizontal fuselage top to the vertical fuselage side (4). The next most forward panel is where the corner transition is very curved but the fuselage side by that point is not vertical (5). Luckily the Airfix fuselage is moulded very thickly here, so pretty aggressive plastic removal can be done to change the geometry. This might all seem unnecessary, but it is not possible to scribe sensible panels on the rear upper fuselage unless the geometry makes sense. The panels I scribed do not show up that well in the photo, but they do to the eye.

The port fuselage has almost caught up with the starboard now (no NACA inlet yet, just a big hole). In case anyone is wondering, the access panels are cut right through the plastic, then a blank glued on the back. Fitting access panels will happen after the final paint job. I have cut out the rudder.

Glad someone else is worried about the shape of the fuselage above the exhaust pipe. A lot of the problem stems from angles and light in pictures of the area which sows doubt about the shape. Grate work so far

So, the cockpit. Previously I said I chose the Flightpath PE as the way to do the instrument panels, but accepting the fact that they are too narrow for the Airfix cockpit width. Whether the Airfix kit is too wide, or the Italeri too narrow is not for me to say. The shape of the Flightpath panels looks pretty good, compared to this photo I took of XX154 recently.

From my photo above you can see I have perched the side consoles on chunks of plastic strip to raise them such that the front instrument panel joins the consoles properly, and, (hopefully) the front panel itself sits in the right orientation to the cockpit sidewall and coaming. The other constraint is achieving the right inclination angle for the instrument panel itself.

I will finish by showing the general coat of Humbrol 5 Dark Admiralty Grey. Once matted off and weathered a touch it will be a good match to life. The Airfix T1 decals have now been fixed to the backpanel in line with the dial openings.

The newer Airfix starter kit looks miles ahead of the '08 tooling, despite the obvious simplified aspects to it of being a starter kit. I actually have a few of the Fujimi Hawk's in the stash, though I was never sure how accurate they were, they seemed a lot more refined than this later Airfix tooling despite being 20-25 years older.

My understanding is there was an original Hawk kit in 1975, and then a "new tool" of the T Mk1 in 2008. Have there been any other newer tool Mk1's from Airfix? I'm not interested in extras added such as weapons or Red Arrows gear. The model I am currently making was from the Airfix First/Last boxing in 2022. I presumed this was the 2008 version of the tooling.

Airfix are still boxing the 2008 tooling as far as I'm aware (though I think only the 100 series version is still in the range at the moment) which replaced the old 70s kit. But the a couple of years ago they made a simplified 'starter kit' for newer modellers much like they've done with the Spitfire and F-35B (and the soon to come P-51D and Bf109F).

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