Salvadoran Magister (IAI CM-170K Tzukit)

[Weaver]

At Last! 

Entry #1 will be a single-seat attack version of the Magister, based on this profile (2nd one down), but with gun blisters:



Kit will be Airfix 1/72nd, colours with be mythical Honduran, the idea being that these came a package deal with their Super Mysteres from Israel.

[JayBee]

I have just posted this to Nils about his Boeing A-13C Python,
and I repeat it here with feeling.

This is going to be worth watching.
Go for it and do not stop till you are finished.

[Weaver]

Okay, first mockup shot:



I had three canopies to butcher, so of course, the first one went nearly perfectly: had I only had one, I'd have messed it up for sure....

The gun blister is half a Mystere IV rocket pod, which the Sovietize It GB will render superfluous. I had considered using the tip tank halves from the swept-wing Magister project, but that would leave the spare wings unuseable, so I went for this. It's clunkier, but that's more in keeping with this being a conversion rather than a new-build.

[JayBee]

Looking good.
Keep going.
Faster! Faster!

[rallymodeller]

The rebels will certainly be able to hear it coming with those Marbores screaming away. Cool stuff!

[Weaver]

Okay, for various reasons, I've decided to chage the nationality of this bird to El Salvador rather than Honduras.

1. Chrisonord is seriously committed to a LOT of FAH builds (not just for this GB), and it would "muddy the waters" for me to produce another FAH machine, from a different backstory, in the same GB. Actually, by making my Magister and Iskra El Salvadorean and Nicaraguan respectively, they actually provide perfect, beefed-up opposition for his beefed-up FAH.

2. I'm not particularly committed to Honduras. My ONLY reason for choosing Honduras was that their SM2 purchase provided a rationale for them buying the Attack-Magister from Israel as well. However, El Salvador is actually a MORE credible customer, because they not only bought Ouragans from the Israelis first, but also bought normal Magisters from them in the same time period.

3. In both cases the Attack-Mag is in competititon with the (frankly superior) A-37B Dragonfly. Honduras received her A-37Bs in the mid-1970s, which means the Attack-Mags have to either replace or supplement them, and all rationales for doing so strike me as tortuous. By contrast, El Salvador didn't get A-37Bs until the Reagan government decided to support the centre-left national government against the hard-left rebels in the early 1980s, which leaves a perfect late-'70s "window" for a follow-on Attack-Mag purchase.

4. I've been struggling to figure out how to apply Honduras's rather singular markings, which are mostly on the fin, to the Magister's highly unusual fins. El Salvador applies her national markings to the rear fuselage rather than the fin, which makes them much easier to adapt to the Magister, and of course, there are real El Salvadorean Mags to provide a model.


The actual model is still at the fiddling-with-the-cockpit stage at the moment, but some progress should be apparent soon.

[Weaver]

Cockpit done. The Magister kit doesn't have a gunsight in the front cockpit, which is kinda essential for this role, so I made one.

[B777LR]

Lookin' real good man!

Word around here, is that a privately owned Fouga Magister will be taking to the skies soon. It was bought to Denmark some years ago, but suffered an engine fire, and was grounded.

[Ed S]

The office is looking good.  This promises to be an interesting conversion.

Ed

[BlackOps]

You've been banging out some top notch stuff, this one seems to fit the trend 

[Weaver]

Thanks folks - much appreciated.

Okay, some more progress:

Single seat conversion pretty much done:




The rear half of the canopy can be glued on because it's going to be opaque (you can't see out of it on real Magisters even when it's clear because there's a pressure bulkhead behind the seat). The gunsight glass hasn't been lost, by the way; just removed for safe keeping:




The white patch is a slab of thick plasticard shaped to a flattened "pyramid" shape off the plane before gluing it on and PSRing it for the final blend:




That was all last night. Tonight's results are gun blisters (barrels still loose) and some possible solutions to the thorny pylon/loadout/ground clearance issue. Final decision will have to wait until a Huey kit shows up with some 7-round FFAR pods for test-fitting purposes though:

[B777LR]

Its got some harrier over it

[BlackOps]

Nice job on the area behind the canopy. This is the kind of work that is tricky.

[Brian da Basher]

Love the look of your single seat conversion, Weaver!

Brian da Basher

[Weaver]

Cheers Folks!

One of the problems with this bird is arming it. The real Magister has a weapon payload of about 300lb, and even with beefed-up wing spars and uprated engines I don't see that getting much above 1000lb, and the twin cannon fit probably uses up most of the weight saved by dumping the back seater. Then there's the ground clearance: Israeli Mags used 7-round FFAR pods, there isn't room for 19-round ones and Zunis would clip the ground at rotation. 

So I got to thinking, if you want more firepower than 7 rockets, and you can't make them bigger and you can't go down, how about sideways? The 7-round pod is 3 rockets deep and tubular: if you made it square section, you could get 9 rockets in, right? So I'm making 9-round FFAR pods:



I tried various ways of making the pod ends but I just don't have the dexterity to drill tiny holes that close to each other precisely enough, so I ended up making the rockets out of 1mm Evergreen and fitting them into a length of 3mm brass tube.



Not as much of a ball-ache as you'd imagine, actually. Now all I have to do is make another one.