The office is complete, or so I thought until I saw these pics. This is the office of my Tamiya 1/48 F4D-1 with PE goodies. Now I know why I never post pics of cockpits. It seemed so much cleaner before this?
Here is a pic of the update with a couple of changes. I think it works better than the old which I have happily removed!
As always, advice is greatly appreciated and in this case, warranted. The blob on the seat is where I dropped the CA soaked toothpick I was using on the PE parts…D’oh!!
(Pix makes it look so easy…)
Actually Tailspinturtle, early navy jets used a similar system to prop predecessors - the chut was the cushion and it stayed with the personal gear not the aircraft. I thought it was strange too unitl I did some research. As for the reticle, yes I know - kinda know my way around jets…
Thanks for the kind words Darwin. I’m not sure what markings to use just yet. The kit comes with several nice options, but I am hesitant to use the clunky Tamiya decals.
Bryan, Johan, Rick - thanks for the words.
When I get home from the office tonight, I am going to clean this up. I think I will repaint the radar bezel and dry brush it . Any tricks besdies clear green for radar screens? - and fix the left side of the throttle quadrant which has dried all wrong.
The transition was made as “modern” ejection systems became more dependable and lighter for use on navy ac. I am uncertain of a single mandate or date this occured. It seems to vary according to manufacturer and date. Some variants ie. cutlass (later), fury - had integral seat cushions. The Skyray was early too, 1951 (?) first prototype and soon thereafter fleet service (at work right now - no resources), but it joined the fleet with a Douglas ejection seat which lacked cushions on the backrest or seat. It was all hard bucket. Later the F4D was upgrade with the Martin Baker P5 - which does have the cushions. There may be a possiblity that late examples used at test centers where further updated with better ejection systems. I have come across one image of a D-1 showing a seat cushion, but it turns out it was used for aircrew orientation and was not airworthy. My research included talking to my Dad who flew F-4’s in the navy, can’t recall ever seeing an early skyray with cushions (like he could remember[:)]).
