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

[kitnut617]

Here's a pic of the kit canopy fitted to the model, I had some re-profiling of the bottom edges to get it to fit the kit's fuselage. Even then it doesn't fit to good. Plus it's a bit opaque ----



Now this is a pic of the Falcon canopy fitted to one fuselage.  This canopy is designed to fit the Pegasus, Merlin or RarePlane kits, it does not fit the Siga kit as the fuselage is out of the box. I've had to do quite a bit of cutting and filing to the fuselage cockpit opening and some slight re-profiling of the top of the fuselage nose to get it to fit. I think it looks a bit better and more like photos of the real FJ-1 but that's just my opinion.



This pic shows the result of extending the fin tips, in real world dimensions, it's 18" higher



I used fin tips from my abandoned Beechnut P-51H kit.  I cut about .166" (close to 3/16") off the top of the FJ-1 fin first, then added about .4375" (which is 7/16") of the P-51H fin to that. The P-51H fin doesn't quite match the FJ-1 fin profile, so I used enough of the P-51H fin so I could file the leading edge to match. I lined up the trailing edge first which did match the FJ-1 fin then re-profiled the leading edge of the P-51H fin to be in-line with the FJ-1 fin leading edge.

I'm also working out what I need to do to the tail plane, it's a work-in-progress at the moment though so not quite representative of the end result I have in mind.

[kitnut617]

Near catastrophe yesterday  --- I dropped the model  -----    

It bounced off a chair first, but I managed to catch it before it hit the floor but the loose parts went everywhere. As I stooped to pick up the pieces there was this ominous sound   like  'sscrunnncccccch'    yeah you guessed it   I stood on something which turned out to be my nice crystal clear canopy ----  completely flattened it.  I did try to pop it back into shape but there's a real nasty crease right across one side to the other about where the pilot's head would be.  Fortunately I've got three more but now it means more work I didn't want to do ---   The rest of the model survived reasonably well, no broken parts thank goodness

[NARSES2]

Horrible feeling when you hear that sound. Glad you at least have a repleacement

[kitnut617]

The damaged canopy, you can see the crease here. There's a couple of dimples too ----    might be able to use it for something else.

[kitnut617]

Anyway, to make this project as plausible as possible I've been doing a lot of comparing between P-51's, F-82's and FJ-1's.

Although the F-82 looks like it's two P-51's joined together, it's actually two fuselages but only one & a half wings from calculating the areas of them.  And the tail-plane seems to be one & a half of the area too.

As the F-82 is heavily based on the P-51H, here's a pic of the P-51H tail-plane over the F-82 tail-plane, you can see just how much more area the F-82 one has.



But when I do the same with the FJ-1 tail-plane (and also calculating the area), the two types of tail-plane are very close in area.



My wing on this project is still about  1 1/2 times so my thoughts are the tail-plane should be too.  In this pic I've attached the FJ-1 tail-plane as it comes out the box



It looks too much so I decided to shorten the outer tail-planes. But by how much I thought.
Here's a comparison of a P-51D tail-plane (top) and a P-51H one (middle) and the FJ-1 tail-plane (bottom)



So first I shortened the FJ-1 tail-planes to the length of the P-51H ones, but I still thought it was too much



So I shortened them again to be the same length as the P-51D tail-plane (if anyone is wondering why I just didn't use the P-51D tail-planes it's because the chord lengths are way smaller than the FJ-1 ones)



I'll look at this for a while to see if I like it, I may decide to shorten them some more.

What I found interesting is without modifying either FJ-1 and F-82 tail-planes, when I attached them to where the tail-planes are supposed to go, the elevator hinge line just lined up perfectly in a dead straight line from tip to tip

[Tophe]

Anyway, to make this project as plausible as possible I've been doing a lot of comparing

This will be great!

[kitnut617]

Anyway, to make this project as plausible as possible I've been doing a lot of comparing

This will be great!

Thanks Tophe

Here's a sneak peek at a part of the load-out this will have.

So being a long range patroller/interceptor and having thirsty early turbo jets ------



you'll have to wait for the complete load-out though. First I have to cast up a pair of the under-wing tanks (they're 460 US Gal. ones BTW and the one hanging under the wing is a trial fit-up) and second got to figure out how I want the other pylons  -----  

[kitnut617]

OK, the thinking and planning is all done, the technical issues all sorted out and all that is left to do is glue the major sub-assemblies together and tidy a few things up.

So here's a small photo-op of how this aircraft would look like in flight. There won't be any other photos like this as the model will be finished and displayed with everything extended (slats, flaps and undercarriage).

[Captain Canada]

Looks great Robert ! Love the way she's coming along.

[kitnut617]

Thanks Todd --

I had figured I would have to put in quite a bit of nose weight in the pod to get this to sit on it's quad undercarriage, so did a bit of test balancing today (the rest of the weekend was shot because of the holiday so not got anything done to it)

To my amazement, it balances out almost perfectly as it is.  But I think I'll put in one heavy-ish fishing line weight just to make sure it does stay on it's wheels.

[kitnut617]

A bit of the back-story ---

Sometime in 1947 the USN found they needed a jet night-fighter as quickly as possible and North American's response was a jet version of their F-82.  However, the Navy rejected it as being a bit too big for their carriers although the possibility of the Marines using it land based was kept in mind.  But also attending the prototype's flying demonstration were officers from the USAAF (soon to be renamed USAF) who were a bit alarmed that the aircraft had just made their premium night-fighter (the F-82) totally obsolete. A month or so after the event the now USAF, ordered the type in large numbers without all the Navy equipment. 

Coincidently, some RCAF officers who were on exchange, were also in attendance at the flying demonstration and they made a report to their superiors about the performance of the new aircraft, the upshot being, the Canadian Government of the time contacting North American about the possible purchase of a similar aircraft to what the USAF wanted.

Which put North American in a bit of a spot, as they were max'ed out at their existing production plants.  But after a series of meetings between the various officials from North American, USA Government and the Canadian Government, an agreement was made that with Canadian Government help, a production line would be set up in Canada, and Canadair (which had ex-Canadian Vickers management people and was now sitting idle) was chosen to be the production center.  But just as the line was set up and had built it's first aircraft, the USAF cancelled their order because more advanced aircraft were being built (and flown).  The Canadian Government were a bit miffed about the outcome and to save face over the expenditure of much need funds wasted, decided to buy what aircraft parts that had been produced so far and complete them for the RCAF. A decision was made to equip the RCAF with 100 aircraft in total. 

As a result, the first ten aircraft were built as designed powered by Allison J35 engines, but the rest were built with more Canadian content but still with the J35 until the last thirty which were powered by Orenda I engines, .  The first ten went into service not long after and after an extensive test program, were issued to squadron service where they were used to patrol the far northern border.  The more Canadian variants were redesigned to except a different armament, doing away with the twelve .5's for four 20mm's and four .5's (the 20mm's were positioned in the center wing side of each fuselage and the .5's in the outer wing side of each fuselage).  Over the years it was in service, the aircraft were constantly upgraded until the final version became as is shown below which had additional AIM-4 Falcons mounted.

[kitnut617]

Things are progressing, the two fuselages and wing and tail-plane center sections are now glued together (not the outer wings yet).

I've trial fitted the undercarriage and as I found the other day, just a small bit of lead was needed to get it to sit on it's quad-gear.

So here's a pic of it on it's wheels for the first time, posed next to my F-82.  Put the slats in place too but they're not glued in yet.  It has a slight nose down attitude at the moment, so need to adjust the leg lengths later.  There is more clearance under the pod than what the F-82 has, the large drop tanks are well clear too, more than the pod.

[PR19_Kit]

It's surprisingly large Robert. I always thought of the Fury as a 'small jet' but it towers over the Twin Mustang.

Looking VERY good nonetheless.

[kitnut617]

Thanks Kit ---

The FJ-1 is a very porky looking aircraft and belies it's real size. Although it's not much bigger than a P-51H  The wing length (not span though) is the same as the P-51H and the fuselage scales out at 4'-6". The P-51H and F-82 fuselages scale out at 3'-3". Length is about the same as the P-51H.

For my project, the length is not quite as long as the F-82, but is wider than the F-82, the two FJ-1 fuselages and the wing-tip tanks make the difference between it and a F-82.  If I hadn't extended the fin/rudder, the height of the fin would be about where the tips of the prop at 12 o'clock are on the F-82, the pod is a bit higher than the F-82's as I mentioned in the last post above.

I'll take some more comparison pics later.

[Captain Canada]

Looking good Robert ! Love the pic of the pair together, great to compare, and a natural progression as well.