Fokker F-28 COD/Tanker

[Hobbes]

I've been planning this for a while now, and with a couple of current projects finally out of the way I can't wait to get started on this.

I recently acquired a Fokker sales brochure via eBay (thanks to Thorvic) which provide lots of detail for the build.



In 1981, Fokker offered their F-28 to the US Navy as a replacement for the C-2. They offered 4 versions: COD, Tanker, AEW and ELINT. The COD and tanker can be combined into a single airframe, and that's the one I want to build.

I've got a Revell Fokker 100 kit, the first step is to convert this to the F-28. Luckily there are lots of commonalities, basically I can shorten the fuselage and wings and get pretty close to the F-28.

[PR19_Kit]

Ahah, so THAT'S what those Speys were for! 

Sound great, a pity the USN didn't take them up on it, an F-28 going off the cat would have been awesome.

[Captain Canada]

Always cool to see stuff like this....stuff I had no idea ever existed !

Sounds like a great idea, and I always enjoy your small scale builds. Looking forward to this one.

[Weaver]

Nice one - BAE tried to flog them the 146 for the same missions....

[sandiego89]

Looking forward to it.  Bring it on.  Would have made even the A-3 "whale" look small. 

[Mossie]

This should be good!

[Hobbes]

I've made a PDF of the brochure. If anyone's interested, PM me for a copy.

[Army of One]

What..... And they were offered the BAe 146 as well...... Never knew about either of these......looking forward to this......

[Joe C-P]

I will do a DC-9 as a COD, if I can ever find one, and now I find there were MORE?! 
Looking forward to there result!

[kerick]

Sounds a little like landing and launching a C-130 on a carrier.  Not too practical since you couldn't land or launch any other aircraft while it was on the deck it was so big.

[Thorvic]

Sounds a little like landing and launching a C-130 on a carrier.  Not too practical since you couldn't land or launch any other aircraft while it was on the deck it was so big.

Its not that big, if you get a copy of the PDF off Hobbes you will see its styled on the Skywarrior for Carrier footprint and handling

[Hobbes]

It's a bit bigger than the C-2 and E-2 (takes up 25% more deck space).
One of the design features is a massive extendable nose gear, (1m15, 45") to get enough AoA during takeoff. They reckoned that if you left the nose gear extended while parked, the front of the aircraft is far enough off the ground (more than 8ft) that you can work underneath it. If you subtract the space that frees up, it takes up the same amount of space on deck as the E-2.

Unlike the C-2, the same aircraft could be used for both COD and tanker duties.

[Hobbes]

Inspiration has taken hold, and the past couple of days have been really productive.

The basic material:


I've scaled the 3-view drawing from the brochure to 1:144


The first job is to shorten the fuselage. I've found a good set of instructions for converting the Revell Fokker 100 kit to an F-28.
I need to remove 2 fuselage sections. The one in front of the wing is simple enough, using a mitre box and a razor saw to get nice perpendicular cuts.

Here it is after removing the section. This is the fuselage half with the locator pins, so I can't just put it on a flat surface. The blocks of MDF support the edges of the fuselage, now I can slide the sections together for gluing.


The rear fuselage cut is more complex because you end up in the wing box. I've left the wing box intact, and I'm going to fit this over the tail section.


The F-28 is a fair bit bigger than the E-2...


The tailplane needs some cutting as well.


After:


The wing is a bigger job. It's shorter, but I can't just remove the wingtips. The chord is narrower as well. Cutting off 5mm from both the wing tip and wing root gets me close to the desired wing shape.


Filling in the windows for the freight door:

[Gondor]

Nice. This looks as if it is one to watch.

Gondor

[kitnut617]

How does the F-28 compare to the DC-9 or MD-80 Harro?  Aircraft in Miniature have just re-released their 1/72 MD-80 vacuform and this might be something to follow. Mind you I do have one of AiM's old DC-9 kits in the stash.