Bell YFM-1B Airacuda

[Mossie]

Colin of Freightdog fame very kindly sent me this kit of the Bell YFM-1B Airacuda.  I'm sure I remember this being voted kit of the year by some body or other year before last.  Cheers Col!



Not quite sure what I'll do with it yet, I might convert it to an attack bomber or I might just do it oob as it's a wonderfully odd looking machine.  I'm planning on putting it in Brazillian WWII markings, genorously offered to me by Tim (the darkmaster).

[jcf]

If you want to build it OOB, the two YFM-1Bs were basically just YFM-1s re-engined with V-1710-41 engines without turbo-superchargers.
As the kit rendering of the exhausts is all wrong (horribly, horribly wrong), perhaps a solution is to grind off the offending
raised worms and replace them with Airacobra type exhausts.

There is an interesting footnote in Birch Matthew's Cobra about a plan to re-engine with radials:
"... the R-1830C Twin Wasp radials would be used as pusher engines with an extension shaft to drive the propeller.
The engines were shrouded in round cowlings exceeding the geometry of the gunner's housing thus creating an
annular intake for cooling air. Because of the extension shaft, the aft end of the nacelle tapered to a relatively small
diameter forward of the propeller. The proposed design provided a fan to exhaust cooling air just forward of the
propeller hub."

Another design study performed was re-engining with Pratt & Whitney's experimental 24-cylinder X-1800 engine.

Jon

p.s. kit of the year for subject perhaps, but not for execution.

[Weaver]

Interesting.....you could do a million different things with that, from a simple operational paint scheme to a mad-as-a-box-of-frogs re-build.

I always imagined it with the nacelle guns replaced by engine-driven fixed gatling guns and the gunners by huge drum magazines......

[Ed S]

Or you could make it into a post war civilian transport with space for sightseers in the wing pods.  Just the thing to fly through the Grand Canyon.

Ed

[philp]

Think Mav did a bunch of profiles on this.

[JayBee]

Or you could make it into a post war civilian transport with space for sightseers in the wing pods.  Just the thing to fly through the Grand Canyon.

Ed

Now, that idea, I like