North American Supermarine Sapphire Sabre

[Weaver]

Okay, well for this GB I shall be butcherrrr.... creatively modifying these two:

Parts by Harold Smith, on Flickr

It's from the same background as my RN-buys-American builds. The idea is that Supermarine get told to build straight-copy F-86s as a panic measure for Korea, then afterwards they produce a more 'Britishised' version with an AS Sapphire engine and their own wing design that serves into the early 1960s.

[Captain Canada]

This will be totally awesome ! I really like the Sabre, and the big, powerful look of the Fury, so adding even more power to it ?
#winning lol

[Dizzyfugu]

That's promising. This combo has my attention. 

[Weaver]

This will be totally awesome ! I really like the Sabre, and the big, powerful look of the Fury, so adding even more power to it ?
#winning lol

It's not actually more power: the Fury had the J-65 which was a licence-produced Sapphire anyway. The reason I'm going down this route rather than the Aussie-style Avon-Sabre is that it's a damn sight easier to get the Fury kit than the one-and-only-and-rather-rough Avon Sabre conversion, which when you're done with it looks just like a regular Sabre anyway, unless you've got one of the latter to stand next to it for comparison....

[Weaver]

And we're off....

Swift wings pruned from their centre-section, and we're immediately into problem no.1 (which was anticipated), namely that the Swift wing has a greater chord than the Fury one. Comparing the two, it's clear that the easy solution, having the leading edge of the root in the same place, puts the centre of pressure too far back since the Swift wing has greater sweep, so we have to go for the harder solution, which is to extend the Fury's wing slots further forwards.

Then problem no.2 (which was anticipated in nature but not in degree) manifests itself: the Swift wing is also WAY thicker. Keeping the existing wing slots and putting a big blob of filler on the bottom of the fuselage seems neither pretty nor credible (why would they design it like that?) so the only solution is to deepen the wing slots over their whole length...

I'm not usually a fan of power-tools for plastic modelling (they're only 1% of a speed setting away from melting, rather than cutting), but in this case, the Dremel came out, with a barrel-shaped router bit. Even on the lowest setting it still managed to blow through the bottom of the slot in places, but the job's still a good'un (well on the one side that I've done at least...)

Here's the slots. Top one just extended forwards, bottom one deepened along it's length:

Fuselage slots by Harold Smith, on Flickr

And here's the wing depths for comparison:

Wing thicknesses by Harold Smith, on Flickr

[PR19_Kit]

Blimey H, you didn't go for the easy path, did you? Re-cutting those wing slots looks like some complex work. 

If the Swift's wing was that thick it's not surprising it wasn't very much, swift that is.

[sandiego89]

Emhar is not a line I have heard of before. 

Very ambitious for a one weeker!   

[kitnut617]

Emhar is not a line I have heard of before. 

Very ambitious for a one weeker!   

The FJ-4B is a lovely little kit, got two or three of them in the stash.  The F-86H was the equivalent and I've a plan to put the FJ-4B wings onto one.

[Weaver]

Emhar is not a line I have heard of before. 

Very ambitious for a one weeker!   

The FJ-4B is a lovely little kit, got two or three of them in the stash.  The F-86H was the equivalent and I've a plan to put the FJ-4B wings onto one.

The FJ-4B is a horrible little kit with soft detail, poor fit and a joke of a cockpit. I've spent most of today making little progress while trying to figure out how to handle the cockpit. I was on the point of chopping up the Swift cockpit to try and concoct something presentable when I test-fitted the Fury's canopy and realised that it's so thick that no one will be able to see much inside anyway, and since it'll be all British Black inside, I've ended up going with the stock cockpit with a few modifications.

Just to add insult to injury, as I was doing a bit of research on the cockpit tonight, I found out that there's a Pavla replacement cockpit and canopy set, which I can't order now because they'd arrive too late to get the model finished on time...

Two other problem areas are the intake, which has a ridiculously shallow tube on the back of it with a wierd step in it for good measure, and the jet pipe, which doesn't even have a tube and has no scallop on the bottom of the overhanging fairing, giving a ridiculous semi-circle shape. Both of those have been cut off/drilled out and tubes fabricated now: not easy since the thick fuselage plastic means there isn't as much room as you'd like, so the Dremel's been at work again.

Pics later...

[Dizzyfugu]

Beware of the canopy, if you want to cut it for an open position. It's 2mm thick, at least! And, yes, the Emhar Fury bears a lot of nasty little surprises... 

[Weaver]

Believe me, the camopy's staying firmly SHUT, with a pilot figure in there to cover it up as much as possible!

Some small progress.

Wing slots reinforced 'cos the widening was coming through to the inside in places.

Cockpit modified: spacer added to lift it up (pilot's too low), rear decking added (I know it's too low for the real thing but; don't care), much fettling to get even the standard parts to fit, and much Evergreen to get it all to line up easily when I'm putting the fuselage together.

Intake tube added. Not just a simple piece of tube, it had to be sanded/scraped to paper-thinness in places to get it to fit right over the nose gear bay, and it'll still need a bit of filler on the inside when it's done... 

Exhaust tube added: aluminium with a black plastic end cap 'cos of wall thicknesses and clearances.

Wing slotted to take Fury pylons and IFR boom.

Arrestor hook plate filled and sanded ("can't have naval gear on an RAF plane dear boy!")

Not seen in this pic: forward gun tubes filled and sanded, holes drilled for the Swift tailplanes, Fury fin-tip reprofiled to more of a Swift-ish shape.

Fuselage mods by Harold Smith, on Flickr

[zenrat]

Heh, spot the Airfix parts...   

[Weaver]

Heh, spot the Airfix parts...   

Yeah: I think there's more fine detail in the Swift's undercarriage bays than on the whole of the Fury...

[Weaver]

Cockpit and wheels have black paint currently drying on them. White paint for misc bits coming up as soon as the dust settles up there...

[Weaver]

Fuselage together, complete with wing spars to make it all a bit more rigid:

Fuselage together by Harold Smith, on Flickr

Nice discovery today: the Fury's nose gear door, which the Emhar instructions have you fitting in the open position, was in fact almost always closed, even when the aircraft was parked. It may have drooped down eventually if left long enough, but since mine will have a pilot figure, I've glued it firmly shut (after trimming the too deep side of it and spacing out the too shallow side... ), thus saving myself from having to put some detail in the totally blank and too-shallow bay.

Not so nice discovery today: I thought I had all of the rattle-can paints for this, but I don't. In fact, I have NONE of them. So an expensive visit will have to be paid to Hobbycraft tomorrow. I may have to go with acrylics too, since enamel spray paints are getting hard to find...

I'm substituting a pair of small Hawk tanks (prob. about 100 gal) as seen in the photo, and I'm fitting the Swift belly tank, which is also a convenient place to hide some extra nose weight since space in the fuselage nose is a bit limited.

Going to glue the wings on shortly...