North American P-86B (or a F2J-1 -- depending who gets it)

[kitnut617]

Well this build is back on, just got the go-ahead to join the Cold War GB with it.

[Captain Canada]

Coo coo ca choo ! Sounds good !

[kitnut617]

The straight-wing F-86 is also a nice idea!

It will look like this when done, plus some wingtip tanks.

XP-86 (straight wing):

[NARSES2]

As requested by the Mods this has been moved here as it is now part of the GB

[kitnut617]

Thanks Guys......

Apart from some of the distractions at the start of this thread, this will be of the Twin Fury in the first post.  It's my idea of a natural progression North American made, continuing on in the two fuselage vein from the F-82.  It will be a night fighter but my model will be off a later variant which had progressed to an 'All-Weather' fighter.  

The idea is it was a 'stop-gap' project which was needed urgently in around 1946-49 time period when things with the Soviet Union started to get messy.

Here is a more recent photo of what I'll try to build, this is just taped, pinned, or held together with modelers clay. Comparing it with the photos in the first post you can see I'm also extending the rear fuselage 1/2", which is 3 feet in 1/72 scale.  It will have 'slats & flaps' modeled deployed too. In the case of the flaps, fowler flaps instead of the drooping flaps the FJ-1 originally had.



Here's a pic of the bits after un-taping it so it can be seen where I am with it so far.



Hopefully, I can get this one finished  ---------  

[kitnut617]

Found this photo on the internet, so I know we're in the same time period

[Caveman]

Looks like those guys have used ample tape to hold the aircraft together too.

[kitnut617]

This project looks like it should be quite simple to do, I'm going to use the center wing section from a F-82 along with the slab tail plane.  Some major surgery needed is to move the wheel bay from the leading edge to behind the wing spar, I'll need to remove some of the old F-82 fuselage from the lower side of the wing first, then cut the wheel bays out. I'll have to fill in the hole before I cut out the new position. This below is about all that's left of a donor F-82 which has seen parts go to a number of projects I've built in the past;



The other bit of surgery is to remove the leading edge of the outer wings to except the slat leading edge. In my last set of photos you can see I've been trial fitting some blue coloured slats, these are originally for an F-100 and are made by High Planes. I seem to have got hold of two sets so I thought they might work on this project.  Here's a pic of those;



But then, while rummaging around for something else, I found that I got hold of a Cutting Edge set of F-86 slats. Not sure when I got those or from where but they seem to be a better option as far as slats go for this project,

pic of those;



But considering the rarity of these I'm loathed to start chopping them up, so I think I might just cut the leading edge off this wing, a Hobbycraft F-86;



For the center wing section I'll scratch build a slat, I've cut this out of a piece of RC aluminum strut, it's the trailing edge of the strut which has a shape quite reminiscent to the F-86 slat;





Of course the other bit of surgery is the rear fuselage extension, I've started it and filling in the space shouldn't be a problem.

Going to use some of the F-82 cockpit parts and a pair of pilots, and then use a Falcon FJ-1 canopy set instead of the original kit canopies. The last bit of the re-work, is to make the nose wheel legs 'handed', so both wheel outside faces, face outward to the wing tips.

[kitnut617]

The FJ-1 is a bit of an anomaly in North American design practice of the time, it's wings were made separately and bolted to the sides of the fuselage much like British manufacturers practice. Not their usual all-in-one wing that the Mustang got.

Here's a photo I found on the internet which shows it very well;



And here you can see it on the kit too, I've no idea why they went this route on the FJ-1 except that the fuselage depth may have something to do with a bigger fuel tank.



Anyway, started on the clean up of the center wing,

[Captain Canada]

Great work Robert and thanks for the pics....wow to the first one ! That's one of the most iconic photos I've seen....just love it thanks.

As for the single, what are the wings you are using on that one ? Love the look !

[kitnut617]

Using the spare wings from the second FJ-1 kit Todd.  Mind you. I think I'll have to use them on the Twin Fury because I've glued the ones I was going to use and I suddenly realized last night I shouldn't have because I want to make fowler flaps instead of drooping flaps. I'll then use what was the Twin Fury outer wings on the XP-86.

[kitnut617]

I've got the wheel bays cut out of the wing center section and the gaps filled in with styrene card;



so the next thing was to work out where their new position will be.  So I mated up the outer wings to the center section to see what has to be done;



First thing you'll notice is the FJ-1 wheel bays are the reverse of the F-82 ones, that is the ""pan-handle"" where the u/c leg retracts into is on the rear side of the bay and not on the forward side as the F-82 has it. So I turned the F-82 wheel bays around and then lined up the forward edge of the bay with the wing spar. I found that the u/c oleo hinge would be about in line with the FJ-1 u/c hinge would be, except they won't be in the outer wing but in the fuselage.

In this pic, I've positioned the wheel bays where I want them to be, I found that the FJ-1 fuselage is about 12" wider than the F-82 fuselage so some of the bay where the wheel retracts into will be partially in the fuselage now.  



I had worked this out previously in my mind but now can see physically what I have to do. It's one of the reasons I decided to extend the rear fuselage, the wheel bay has to come before the engine.

Now I'm looking at the slat & flap installation before I glue things together, only what I had in mind doesn't seem to work as I had imagined.  I was looking at increasing the wing area by using Fowler flaps, using technology that was already around in the time period. Only it doesn't do what I thought it would do. I might switch it to Gouge Flaps now, B-29's had that system as did Sunderlands and at least the prototype Sterling did too.  Only I've not seen photos of Gouge Flaps with slats installed on the leading edge. Got to find out if it works like that before I go any further

[PR19_Kit]

Good work there Robert, that's coming along well.

[kitnut617]

Thanks Kit,

Well been doing some research, and after looking at the various flap systems, I'll stick with my original plan and go with Fowler Flaps.  It seems there are various ways to mount and operate the system and the B-29 way (which was a Boeing variation of the Fowler flap) has them mounted on tracks so that's the way mine will go.  I think I'll look at one of my Revell/Monogram B-52's as they have actually modelled the flaps to work and the B-29 system is similar.

[kitnut617]

I've got the wheel bays glued into their new location,



So the next step was to see if it would fit into the fuselages. Starting with one fuselage first I cut a corresponding hole for the wheel bay into it,





then inserted the wheel bay into it,



a problem I could see was it would be too deep into the underside,



I decided to look at the undercarriage I'm going to use, the F-82 parts. I couldn't help but notice that there's a lot of similarities between the FJ-1 leg and the F-82 leg, except for the wheel size. They're practically the same in appearance and length. I've included the nose gear just so I can see how much of a difference there is between the lot,