F-5U Morsair (December 2004 - May 2008)

[John Howling Mouse]

Some painted parts, just waiting for a home...

[John Howling Mouse]

Landing gear doors...pic doesn't really do them justice (but it's winter and perpetually dark in Canuckville these days----flash doesn't seem to help much).

[John Howling Mouse]

Cockpit tub---not bad for a ten dollar model.

[John Howling Mouse]

I shaped six little exhausts out of 3/32" aluminum tubing and mounted them to a cowling-flap part I scavenged from the Italeri Skyraider kit (fits the cowl of the Corsair perfectly!).

[John Howling Mouse]

Filed out matching "trenches" on the leading edge of the fuselage for the exhausts to line up against....went for a kind of roadster look.

[John Howling Mouse]

The sculpted resin canopy blank pattern in situ.  

You can see it's a touch smaller all the way around than the final ideal outline; this is to compensate for the slight thickness of the clear plastic that will be vac-formed over the pattern.  In the end, it should be a pretty decent match-up.

Although I sure don't expect to get any calls from Tamiya tonight!!

   

[John Howling Mouse]

The resin canopy pattern on its own.

[Captain Canada]

Hey, the resin casting is looking pretty good, baz !

I suggest some Turbo Firecat and Turbo Otter and Beaver conversions for all your freinds at WI !

 

[Ollie]

Did someone say Beaver?      

Good job Barry, keep it up!!

 

[nev]

*shakes head in disbelief*

Once again Barry you amaze me with the quality and the ambition of your modelling  B)  

[Jschmus]

Barry, that's looking gorgeous!  Hmm, if you slap some big, out-sized cannons on the wings, it would look like something out of Crimson Skies.

(Sorry, I got an XBOX for X-mas, and that's one of the games I've been playing.  Lots of ideas for kitbashing in that game.)

[John Howling Mouse]

Thanks guys.  I do plan on having scratchbuilt cannons on the wings.  Maybe a single 50 cal Browning in each wing's outer position with two 20 mm cannons inboard of that?  Can .50 cal tracers help a pilot target for the cannon fire or would the trajectories be totally different?  At any rate, it helps having a wife who has access to plenty of used hypodermic needles for such things...

Here's some shots of the troublesome wingset.  I knew once I cut out that trademark bend that nothing would fit anymore but I could have thought it out in advance a little better...oh well, at least this way somebody else will see the in-progress steps to realize what it takes to get such a simple-sounding conversion going somewhere.

Was going to recut the forward landing gear door shape but have decided against that for now.  Easier instead to cut the doors themselves down to match the narrowed apertures.  Or maybe I'm just tired tonight...   :zzz:  

[John Howling Mouse]

Upper view of the resulting gap in the wing surface from having to remove the portions of the wing which were too curved to use in the straightened modification.

Even what you see here is the result of a great deal of wet-sanding to reduce the adjacent edges to flattened surfaces!

Once the pair of inner wing-spars are in place and a few locator rectangles of plastic are attached around the edge of the gap to form a lip, a skin of plastic will be cut to match and glued into place.  Talk about realistic panel lines once that's in place  

[John Howling Mouse]

Another quick shot of the wing cuts and gaps.

It really would have been much easier to just pull finished wings out of some other kit instead of all the rework involved in my attempt to keep the original Corsair wings for the most part.

As I worked on all of this, my mind kept wandering, wondering which 1:48 kit would be the ideal wing-donor kit so I could avoid doing all of this reshaping with flimsy parts...    

Note the little slots on the inboard wing chords where the wing will (hopefully) mate up to the side of the fuselage someday.  These slots will hold the pair of wingspars.  Well, that's the current brainfart, anyhow.

[John Howling Mouse]

Close up of the wingspar slots.  The plan is to make these precision cuts of wingspars in 40 thou plastic which are perfectly symmetrical and uh, yeah, just the right degree of dihedral, maybe 3.5 degrees?  

Oh yeah, I have to make two such spars, the one that goes in the aft wing position also has to be narrower since the wing thickness toward the rear edge is less than the thickness toward the leading edge of the wing.  

Now, perfectionists will quickly point out that, while it is convenient that I've selected the exact positions for the wingspars which will nicely box in the wheel wells inside the wings, if the forward wingspar goes the full length as planned, it would actually get in the way of the landing gear strut being able to close into the wing.

That's true.

But that's why the gear are DOWN on this model (and are staying down, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk)...   :dum: