Royal Navy Grumman-HSA Tiger FGA.2

[Weaver]

Done a bit of undercoating, minor assembly and modifying. Scribed a new radome line further back and filled in the old one, and carved off and filled in the upper gun muzzle fairings 'cos this one's supposed to have two ADENs.

The AIM-9B Sidewinders in the kit are rubbish: noticably short and underspan (the latter not even in proportion with themselves) and no launch rails, even though the box art shows them. Ironically, the earlier F-9 Cougar kit has much better (but still not perfect) Sidewinders and has launch rails moulded into the pylons. Unfotunately I can't nick the pylons because they're a different and distinctive shape.

Why do manufacturers do this? It's as if they go to imense effort to get the sexy aeroplane bits right but then dash off the nasty killing-people bits as quickly as possible because they can't bear to look at them for long....

More modern kits have better 'winders in them, but the trouble is that most of the ones I've got are of later aircraft with later, and visually different, models of AIM-9. Think I've already robbed most of the decent AIM-9Bs (round nosed) I can find in the stash....

[PR19_Kit]

How about the earlier, WWII type 'Grumman Fold' as used  with the Hellcat and Avenger so that the wing twists and folds flat alongside the fuselage?

The wing tank connections could be self sealing. Believe me, I'm a hydraulics engineer.... 

[Weaver]

How about the earlier, WWII type 'Grumman Fold' as used  with the Hellcat and Avenger so that the wing twists and folds flat alongside the fuselage?

The wing tank connections could be self sealing. Believe me, I'm a hydraulics engineer.... 

Hmmm, it's a swept wing and there isn't a ton of ground clearance. That means the leading edge will have to go down, which means the 'twist' pivot would have to be quite far forward. The 'fold-back' pivot is then going to have to be at an angle to avoid the wingtip being too high. That's quite a complicated pivot that has to take most of the structural loads but still fit into a very thin wing. The advantage of a simple fold is that it can be a 'piano hinge' with a simple joint on all five spars.

The loss of fuel in the outer wing isn't such a big deal actually. I'm replacing the 4 x 20mm guns with 2 x 30mm ones, and done right, that creates a bit more space for an extra fuselage tank(s) that would get most of it back.

There is a way I can have my cake and eat it. I can say that in the initial version, the RN took the view that since a folded standard Tiger was only a shade wider than a Skyhawk, it wasn't worth the effort of redesigning the wing, particularly since it was nice and simple and seemed to work well aerodynamically. However later, under pressure to sail bigger and bigger air groups on the small carriers, they introduced an updated version with an inboard wing fold because they were desperate for space. Whiff backstories don't have to improve on reality: they only have to make interestingly different mistakes....

[Thorvic]

What about going with Red Tops or even Blue Dolphin if its got radar

[Weaver]

What about going with Red Tops or even Blue Dolphin if its got radar

Doesn't really go with the 'buy American for the Navy' theme though does it? Also, Scimitars had Sidewinders.

Havn't got any Blue Dolphins and my understanding is that the AI.23 radar (which it's supposed to have) couldn't illuminate for a SARH missile without a lot of modification.

I want to add an extra pylon to each wing inboard of the existing ones. There's space for it and some Super-Tiger drawings show six pylons. Loadout will be four Sidewinders and two tanks, with the tanks on the middle pylon. I don't know why the Tiger didn't have inboard pylons as standard (there's room, even accounting for the u/c door). My best guess is that it may have been related to jettison clearance for the tanks vis-a-vis the low-set tailplanes: the real-life wet pylons are just outboard of the tailplane tips.

[Thorvic]

To be honest it was the time period, AAMs were the new big thing, so missile loads were minimal, plus load capacity was somewhat limited for the earlier generation aircraft, more weapons came with more power and less aircraft replacing the previous generation so would have to deliver more bang for the buck.

You could go with Sparrow of course, that's what the Navy wanted a day/night fighter with radar and radar guided missiles as tail chase winders are not great when flying CAP to protect your ships.

Didn't Super Tiger have the over fuselage pylons for winders ? (can't see those being popular with pilots having a missile fire behind the back of your head !!)

[Weaver]

To be honest it was the time period, AAMs were the new big thing, so missile loads were minimal, plus load capacity was somewhat limited for the earlier generation aircraft, more weapons came with more power and less aircraft replacing the previous generation so would have to deliver more bang for the buck.

Well the preceding Cougar could carry four Sidewinders plus two tanks, so I can't see them settling for any less than that. The Skyray could also carry four Sidewinders, and the Cutlass and Demon could carry four Sparrow Is, so four missiles wasn't an unusual loadout by the late 1950s. An AIM-9B only weighed 155lb so all four of them plus launch rails were under 1000lb.

You could go with Sparrow of course, that's what the Navy wanted a day/night fighter with radar and radar guided missiles as tail chase winders are not great when flying CAP to protect your ships.

Yeah, thought about that. There was a Sparrow option on the Super Tiger (G98J-2), but it also seems to have had a bigger radar in a longer and wider radome, so I suspect that a radar you could fit in the standard Tiger wouldn't have the power to properly exploit Sparrow.

Didn't Super Tiger have the over fuselage pylons for winders ? (can't see those being popular with pilots having a missile fire behind the back of your head !!)

Yep, two in tandem that extended upward on trapezes for firing. To fit them in, the canopy would have had to be changed from sliding to side-hinged. The Super Tiger prototype had the original sliding canopy though, so the forward dummy missile had it's nose cut through at an angle and the front section moved backwards and upwards with the canopy, which makes for some very wierd photos...

My main objections to the spine missiles are:

1. Got to be awkward to load, particularly on a carrier.

2. It looks horrible...


The Super Tiger was also tested with two Sidewinders mounted on a pair of belly pylons and a 1000lb bomb on the centreline. Both look a bit sketchy from a ground clearance point of view, and the Sidewinders don't have any 'look up' into turns from there, but Grumman seemd convinced and it worked on the Starfighter....

[Old Wombat]

Could you go for a "buy American with British mod's" & fit over-wing Sindwinder pylons?

[Weaver]

Could you go for a "buy American with British mod's" & fit over-wing Sindwinder pylons?

You could, but I don't see the point since there's room for an extra inboard underwing pylon. Overwing pylons are quite awkward to load, although they'd be easier on the Tiger's lower wing than the Jaguar's high one.

[Thorvic]

Could you go for a "buy American with British mod's" & fit over-wing Sindwinder pylons?

You could, but I don't see the point since there's room for an extra inboard underwing pylon. Overwing pylons are quite awkward to load, although they'd be easier on the Tiger's lower wing than the Jaguar's high one.

Is there room for a centre line tank ?. I wouldn't worry about the weapons load its no different to the Scimitar or in fact the Sea Harrier 20 yrs later. You might want to look for the Hasegawa A2A set for the early winders and possibly adaptors or nick em from a harrier kit.

[Weaver]

Could you go for a "buy American with British mod's" & fit over-wing Sindwinder pylons?

You could, but I don't see the point since there's room for an extra inboard underwing pylon. Overwing pylons are quite awkward to load, although they'd be easier on the Tiger's lower wing than the Jaguar's high one.

Is there room for a centre line tank ?. I wouldn't worry about the weapons load its no different to the Scimitar or in fact the Sea Harrier 20 yrs later. You might want to look for the Hasegawa A2A set for the early winders and possibly adaptors or nick em from a harrier kit.

It'd be so small it'd barely be worth having: 50 gals maybe?

I've considered replacing the standard drop tanks with Lightning ones since they have the same 'vertical keel' shape at the back but ate 260 gal rather that 150 gal. I think the jettison clearance from the tailplane might be an issue though.

And what mod did they introduce to the Sea Harrier immediately after actual combat? Two extra Sidewinders...

I was on the point of ordering a Hasegawa A2A set from ebay, however I think now that I'm going to nick the missiles from one of the other Cougar kits in my stash: they're not perfect, but they're way better than the Tiger kit ones. Would Sea Harrier kits have the right version of Sidewinder (AIM-9B: straight body forebody with a hemispherical nose & plain delta fins)? I thought they started off with AIM-9Gs and then got AIM-9Ls from US stocks for the Flaklands.

[Thorvic]

I meant nicking the Sidewinder rails from the Harrier, you might get them from a pair of the Airfix Buccaneer with the Desert storm and RN optional parts

[Weaver]

I meant nicking the Sidewinder rails from the Harrier, you might get them from a pair of the Airfix Buccaneer with the Desert storm and RN optional parts

Sorry, I see what you mean. I was going to cut the rails off the Cougar pylons, but looking at them, I think I might try fabricating them from Evergreen first. Some of the early rails are pretty much a square-section tube with tapered ends.

[Mossie]

I've considered replacing the standard drop tanks with Lightning ones since they have the same 'vertical keel' shape at the back but ate 260 gal rather that 150 gal. I think the jettison clearance from the tailplane might be an issue though.

The tanks that are in the kit weren't used on production Tigers, they were only on development aircraft.  The Tiger carried Aero 150 1A tanks which can be robbed from a Skyhawk kit.  I think Colin did some tanks for the Airfix Skyhawk at one stage as, IIRC, no kit manufacturer has ever quite got the shape right.

[Weaver]

Sorry there've been few updates on this. Nearly nothing happened for ages, then everything happened at once. I thought I might get the Tiger (and the Cougar) done for Telford and I might have (just) done it, but...

They were at this stage:



Then I put a coat of Wilko's white undercoat on them, and this happened:



I suspect that the paint and propellant in the can wasn't mixed thoroughly because it happened on the first areas I sprayed, but not others. I don't think it's unrecoverable by any means, but I only just had enough painting/drying/decalling cycles left between now and Saturday and now I don't...