The saga continues. I’m half way through my Thunderbird project now. With KittyHawk’s new F-5E & F versions out I picked up the canopies, seats and a few other miscelaneous parts that will make this half-scratch-built model look the part.
I’ve got 3 Hasegawa kits, 2 KittyHawk kits, the Belcher Bits F-5A conversion, The Daco book, and A Pictorial History of the T-38 Talon, cockpit shots from Peter Fleischman, plus my own walkaround shots from the T-38A at the Praire Aviation Museum. I learned how to scribe during the Fall so I plan to rescribe the whole plane to be accurate.
Tonight I worked on making the intakes out of the resin parts provided for the F-5A.
Check it out…here’s what I started with
For consistency I kept everything plastered to the plans. Glad I made 3 copies of everything since I cut and sanded these plans
I extended the front edge of the intake to use as a guide for the razor saw. The cut doesn’t extend to the bottom of the resin piece. On the drawing and in photos you can clearly see a fillet on each end of the angled face. So what I did was drill a hole at each endpoint to make a smooth radius. Then cut in from a 90degree angle to seperate the pieces.
Initially I milled the large sections off but for the 2nd one I decided it was safer (for part integrity not me lol) to cut the excess off with the razor saw and then file down the resin to the edge of my sharpie marker shadow.
Finished it up with my diamond files…And I present to you 2 perfect intakes ready for attachment!
Good question…and one I’m still staring at. the top of the fuselage follows the profile well. The bottom to your point is about 4mm shallow by eye. My current thinking is that i can build this up, shape it, and add inthe panel lines. any thoughts and advice on how best to do it would be valuable!
extending it is most valuable i think if doing wheels down. That’s because the cockpit is too shallow due to gear bay depth. Since mine will be in flight I just removed the bay and plan to drop cockpit onto the floor of fuselage.
Heres a profile pick for those who may be wondering. With the front fuselage fitted since i took this shot, i found that the top matches better than the bottom in profile. I’m going to try something end-on though using the camera and see if I can be more definitive about what needs addressed to get it right.
I had a few hours before my wife came home tonight and decided to see what the fuselage profile looked like under the cockpit. It appeared to be an even 4mm shallow.
One thing led to another and since I had so much success with the intakes I decided to cut the fuselage in half. It helps that I have 3 of them for sure. The drawings show the sides as really straight so I found a location where I could go straight down the body line and started sawing.
These last 2 show the remaining gap at the bottom. I think I can fill from the back of the air brakes forward to get the shape right and everything will match up pretty clean.
I learned where to make the cuts with this one. Over to the intake strake and then down instead of up. Otherwise the strake ends up in the wrong place and won’t line up. Also I think the nose is 1/2 or 1mm too thick. For the final version I will taper the spacers from 4mm at the intake to 3mm at the nose.
So let me know what you think, respectable match isn’t it?
Hmmmm, very interesting… What’s mostly interesting is that the F-5 fuselage should be deeper than the T-38 under the wing especially. Not shallower. The F-5 had a heavier and larger landing gear to fair in. However, I think you are going to get real close and will not have invested as much as I have in the Collectaire T-38 sitting in my stash.
jeaton01 that is interesting. I went back and checked on the prints and the T-38A vs the F-5A from Belcher Bits match up near perfect. For whatever reason it’s only forward of the main gear bays that the difference exists.
Didn’t do much except work at my bench today…no laundry, one run out with the kids, ordered dinner, you’d think it was winter out or something.
Where to start, guess we’ll take a random order based on stream of consciousness. Once the final front fuselage was cut and reassembled the level of the seats had to be set.
She’ll be in-flight so the air brakes and gear doors needed trimmed and fit. For not being made to close they line up pretty well.
Back to the rear cockpit. Opened up the Daco book again and tried to simulate the rear IP. Here it is mocked up. Then I took the coming between the cockpits from the F-5F kit and made up one based on the IP and canopy that I have. Once it’s dry tomorrow It will get sanded and then it’s painting time.
Last I wanted to have the intakes open so that you aren’t looking at a blank panel every time. Given the small diameter of these intakes I don’t plan to put a fan inside the fuselage but who knows I may test something out just to see if my thought that it’s too small is true.
My wife works all day Sunday so I expect I can finish the cockpit unless the kids decide they want dad time
Lots of little, boring stuff going together lately. I’ve got the main bay covers on now, the lower wing scribed and sanded the auxiliary intake covers fitted and misc pieces aligned. Yesterday and today I worked on assembing the cockpit so I thought to share progress.
To keep the shape of the nose I cut almost through it with a razor saw.
Looks like it should be one of those African nose piercings doesn’t it?
Now I’m onto the cockpit. I have the rear all set. Here’s a profile showing the alignment to the canopy
…and a shot of the IP work I’ve done so far - just through the mock-up canopy for now to get a feel for how it’s going to look.
Slow but steady progress today. This cockpit is going to take another 2 weeks I bet before it’s done. Puting the canopies up I found that they weren’t square to each other so they didn’t quite lay in a straight line. At first I couldn’t figure out why, then I remembered neither KH or Hasegawa made a closed canopy, the only option was open. Which made me realize I was missing the loop that separates the two canopies…DUH. So that’s what I custom made tonight. Took me 2 tries to get one that fit in nicely. Now I’ll have something easy to mount the rearview mirrors to.
The top of a Vallejo 17ml bottle worked great as a backstop to keep from breaking the piece while sanding.
Now I need to adjust my pilot height and I’m all set. Looking at pics from the references I have the seat looks about right here but then again I’ve stared at it for days so let me know if your eyes think the seats should be moved any at all?
Tomorrow I hope to work on the coming. Then I can start putting things in solid and filling and sanding to make everything come together smoothly. Night All…or even Good Morning to some lol
keavdog you got that right! I keep hoping I can get it smooth enough that you won’t see allthat once it’s painted. I feel like I’ve been working on this cockpit for a year.
Time for a motivational sidetrack! I drilled and pinned the wings this morning. Put some tape on the tail to hold it in place. Now it’s starting to take shape
small compromise on the wing position. They’re aft about 2mm due to where the main wheel bays are on the belcher kit. Anything else looked stupid because the gear doors on the wings didn’t line up.
Character established! I finished up the nose tonight. I’ve gotta say I think this turned out pretty great. I was limited by the Belcher Bits kit profile which was based on the hasegawa kit so there was only so much thickness I could add without putting a step in the profile starting at the cockpit
I made up some templates for the horizontal and vertical profiles. Then sanded slowly till the profile matched the template.
Here’s where that issue with the height of the fuselage comes in. What I did was make sure the profile on the top and the bottom matched the drawings. The overall scale thickness is then left about 2mm thinner than it should be. If you checked out my earlier posts you know it’s already 4mm thicker and any more would make it look like the plane was pregnant!
So of course I had to put as much together as I could to see if the profile looks the part now. Check this out and let me know what you think?
All finished with the major profile changes for the front fuselage. Canopies are all fitted and lay down pretty nice with a uniform gap between the cockpits. Now it’s time to fill it with foam and tape it up until all the fine putty work is done and sanded. I’m hopeful those big spacers down the side will cover nicely and not show through the body-work.
I love that moment when you put a coat of primer on your model and like magic all the rough spots, sanding marks, and lumps and bumps show up clear as day! Where were they before? It sure felt smooth to me
I worked some putty around the nose pitot and I used Mr Surfacer 500 to round out the fairing and blend it into the nose.
Mr Surfacer really shows how much work I have to do yet. Looks manageable though. I think the transition of the fairing looks much better than the sharp edge I had previously. Lots to do around the pitot tube and up where the nosecone mounted to the fuselage.
Finished up the sides, Sanded this to 600 grit in preparation for the MrS. I also extended the coaming a little further into the windscreen so the transition will look right. From the side view here you can see how the angle looks consistent now.
This I’m extremely happy with. The side extensions I grafted in have disappeared. Just a few pinholes and maybe one shallow area around gun port was. This will finish out nicely. Once I have everything smooth then I can work on scribing based on the drawings and pictures I have.
You know these little models are nothing like their full size partners. When I need to figure out if I have the bodywork smooth on a car I lay a paper towel on the surface, lay my hand flat on it, and then slide it across the new bodywork. It’s amazing how if you take your eyes out of the process and just use feel how well you can tell of the surface is flat. Not here! So I initially did some sanding on the offending parts shown above and I ended up with a step down in the bondo. Not what I wanted
Time to break out more tools…This is a great profile tool for models…and the kids thought it was for facial recognition, bah.
Obviously the right side is lower than the left, so I need to add putty.
The workbench now looks like this
This was the worst side. This pic shows how far back I brought the putty to feather in the edge and get the profile correct.
Much better profile now. I also did one on the sides but I’ll spare you those views
Final version, 1 day’s worth of time. I made sure to let everything dry. I tend to move too fast and sand before anything is dry…
