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

[John Howling Mouse]

Coming back to the initial subject, the USAF writing F-5U Morsair was surprising, the USN writing F5U-1 Morsair would have been more clear, a F4U-7 Corsair derivative replacing the nice but doomed XF5U-1 Flapjack circular wing (I have a model of this one to build).
In both code systems, F means Fighter, while:
- in Pentagon rules F-5U means version U from Nr5 of the F- class
- in Navy rules F5U-1 meant version 1 from Nr5 of the U- subclass (Vought) of the F- class.
So... what-if a F-5U would have comen after the Northrop F-5A and F-5G? To come back from dreams to logics, the relation to the F4U would have been a nose radial-piston-engine for long staying above the clouds waiting for the enemy bombers to fight... No?  

Holy Conjecture, Tophe.  Who would have guessed you'd understand so much about this kind of conformity!!  

Okay, now that I am quite confused, what would be your final suggestion for the naming convention regarding my Morsair?

F-4...??    

And here is a pic of the first (raw) wingspars, cut from 0.030" styrene.  Thankfully, I don't have to drill holes in them to lighten them for actual flying.

[Tophe]

Okay, now that I am quite confused, what would be your final suggestion for the naming convention regarding my Morsair?
F-4...??

Uh, no I was not all saying you were wrong... According to me, this is nor a USAF weapon nor a Navy weapon, this is a cute JHM model.
In your collection, it seems the F4U was called F-4 as McDonnell's Phantom (Navy's F4H at the beginning), and this deserves plain respect, from my point of view. Personaly, I would have understood the official code F4U-8 or the secret code F5U-2 (after the cancellation of the XF5U-1, as the secret P-59A jet had no relation at all with the twin-boom XP-59), but you are the inventor and own the very right to select the name. And for me, this great invention of yours is the F-5U, surprisingly nice and pleasantly troublesome for my taxonomist mind    

[Ollie]

Barry, nice spars.  You should drill holes in the visible parts, that is in the wheel wells.

     

[John Howling Mouse]

Cockpit modified to fit farther aft and to provide a rear deck for the radio, etc.

See how the initial angle error re: the aft bulkhead in the fuselage has been concealed with a cross member?

Some guys are precise, the rest of us have had to adapt with deviance!

This old 1:48 Otaki-ARII (and re-boxed by Airfix) kit has a nice interior for the money.

[John Howling Mouse]

Cockpit Mock-up, aft view showing instruments.

[nev]

Looking fantastic Barry!  


As for those wing spars, you should drill the holes in them, its no less crazy than the rest of the kit-bashing this project has involved!    

[John Howling Mouse]

Looking fantastic Barry!  


As for those wing spars, you should drill the holes in them, its no less crazy than the rest of the kit-bashing this project has involved!  

Weight-reducing holes would make the spars look more realistic, that's true, but the spar is already not as strong as I'd like it to be so, unfortunately, the wheel wells will be quite plain in the end.  

Oh well, doubt anyone would ever get to see them, anyways!

[John Howling Mouse]

Ah-haaaaaaaaaa!!!  Ms. Hitler's at work, kid's at a friend's birthday party so I'm actually MODELING for once (and not for that kind of runway, either).

Some in-progress pics now that I've finally done some work...

Shot of the rear gap which had to be carefully filled with a combination of styrene and accelerated CA glue.  The little ribs of white styrene on the port side of the revised cockpit aperture look terrible in the pic but they've been smoothed out using a 3-grit fingernail file to the point where you can't even feel them anymore.

[John Howling Mouse]

Cockpit so far including scratchbuilt rear deck.
Radio stolen from a Mono Mustang kit.

[John Howling Mouse]

Test of the Godforsaken wingspars.
This is the next big step required: make some curved vertical ribs for the wingspars to be glued against, and figure out the best sequence for actually putting the whole mess together!

What--me nervous?

[John Howling Mouse]

Oh, did I forget to mention?  While I'm figuring out the Morsair conversion, I am also building a very regular Corsair of the same base kit, right out of the box, for a comparison with my kitbashed version.

Sections of silver enamel you see here serve two purposes:
- lets me see touch-ups required in the putty-sanding dept.
- will act as the "wrong" kind of base paint for my acrylic topcoat, making it that much easier to let the incompatible paints show the "bare metal" underneath (this is to be a heavily weathered Pacific Theater fighter when it's done).

[Captain Canada]

Sweet Baz....don't know which one I wanna see first, the Morsair, or the heavily weathered bird !



Those roughed-up Pacific Corsairs are some of the toughest looking birds ever !

 

[Radish]

Both looking good.
I particularly like the scratchbuilt cockpitty bits for the bubble-version.
The OFTB one looks nice.
Camouflage? Finish??.....hey that's an idea, Finnish!
No.
South American?
Honduras had real F4U-4s, but why not Peru?
If you wanted to do Chile, the insignia's dead easy for their real low viz airfraft, as they just put a white (or black?) star on the rudder.
An F4U-4 in, say, really beat-up SE Asia colours with a white star on a blue rudder?
Perhaps one relegated to a training unit so orange bands?
Say you're not doing it Sea Blue Gloss!
Canadian?
   

[nev]

Very nice job on the cockpit Baz.

As for those wings, I know you can do it

[John Howling Mouse]

As for those wings, I know you can do it

Man, I hope you're right, Nev.

I've been putting this off for soooooo long (even >>gasp<< prefering dishwashing duties to avoid continuing) but I'm just about to tackle the actual wingspars assembly now.

"Richochet Four, breaking to attack, white-hot..."

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