The Lockheed-Martin-BAe F-35D Thunder

[PR19_Kit]

Yes, it does say F-35D............. 

I've had this idea in my head for some time and only just now found an F-35B kit that looked OK to me and didn't cost an arm a leg. This one only cost an arm.........

The root kit is the Italeri F-35B, which comes with RAF/RN, USMC and Italian decal schemes, not that you can tell one from the other as they're all lo-viz and the aircraft is GREY all over. This model is going to be anything BUT grey however!

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Here's the obligatory box pic.


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And here's the equally obligatory sprue shot. There's only  three sprue trees in the kit, bar the clear one, but they're LARGE! Lots and lots of weapons to hang on, or load into, the finished model, but I'm not not going to use any of them. 

It's a rather odd kit , it's VERY well engineered, using slide moulds to get some amazing detail in the weapons bays and other places, and the parts fit is amazing (see later) but it feels like a kid's clip together kit for some reason. When I test fitted the main gear bays in place, I had to LEVER them back out to apply the glue! The main fuselage and wings are only two pieces, top and bottom, and that's it.

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Here are the two main parts with some parts added, the cockpit assembly in the top half on the right, and the main gear bays and the lift fan deflector in the bottom half on the left. The chunk in the middle is the mind bogglingly curved intake and lift fan assembly. The parts fit incredibly well, as I mentioned before, but they sure are a strange shape.

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Here's that whole assembly in place inside the lower half of the fuselage. The part ringed in red, that's part no. 14 in the kit, is my FAVE part as I installed and looked after the MASSIVE machine that welded that lift fan together at Rolls Royce's factory nr. Nottingham in the mid noughties. 

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Lastly here's the upper and lower halves loosely fitted together trapping the lift fan assembly and the intakes in position. You can see how close the intake ducts fit even when just plonked together. Amazing stuff.

More on this later, but I doubt I'll get as far as getting any colour applied for some time as I have a quite complex decal sheet to design for it yet........... 

Oh yes, of COURSE it'll have longer wings! 

[The Rat]

Oh yes, of COURSE it'll have longer wings! 

We expect nothing less! 

[Wardukw]

Oh that would be the culprit which attacked your wallet at that model shop I take it ?  .
Well its looking good so far matey 
Tell ya I'd love a Tamiya 48th F-35..wow that kit is nice..and the price isn't "glup" 

[AeroplaneDriver]

Will is be Gray allunder??      

[Devilfish]

When I did my RN F-35C, I really wanted to convert it to a 2 seater.  I'll be interested to see what you do with this one!

[PR19_Kit]

Oh that would be the culprit which attacked your wallet at that model shop I take it ?  .

It's only money. 

(I keep telling myself that......)

Will is be Gray allunder??     

Actually no, but there may be a BIT of grey about it somewhere........ 

When I did my RN F-35C, I really wanted to convert it to a 2 seater.  I'll be interested to see what you do with this one!

That would be very difficult, it's such a strange shape, and you'd probably need two kits to do it. Mine won't be that radical, shape-wise anyway.

[thundereagle1997]

So how would the tandem seat rearrangement would go? Side by side similar to the F-111? Let me know your thoughts on this idea in the comments below, thanks.

[Wardukw]

Oh that would be the culprit which attacked your wallet at that model shop I take it ?  .

It's only money. 

(I keep telling myself that......)

😄😄
Oh god I keep trying to tell myself that but I just scored a AMT F7 Tigercat..been wanting a Tigercat for decades 😅

[PR19_Kit]

So how would the tandem seat rearrangement would go? Side by side similar to the F-111? Let me know your thoughts on this idea in the comments below, thanks.

By definition a 'tandem' seat can't be side-by-side, 'tandem' means one in front of the other. There's not a hope in hell you could get a side-by-side cockpit into an F-35 airframe without it ending up looking like a TF-102, with bulges everywhere, hardly 'stealthy'.

Putting one seat in front of the other would be more likely, but they'd need to make some hefty changes in the weight distribution, and maybe the thrust differentiation between the rear exhaust as the lift fan or the whole thing would be far too nose heavy. Modern day thinking about two-seaters also call for the rear seat to be higher than the front, and that would also make it more nose heavy, just through the extra structure weight.

[PR19_Kit]

My original thoughts on this build were to scratch build wing extensions to fit it with F-35C wings, but they're not only larger in span, but far deeper in chord too. So much so that the LE of the tailplanes actually OVERLAP the TE of the wing! 

It may still be possible, but I'll need a lot more styrene to do that, so I may just do my usual tip extension job on it.

I wanted to have the engine in the vertical landing mode, with the lift fan doors open and the exhaust swivelled down, but I didn't see any point in actually installing the whole engine in there, which comes as standard in the kit, as you can't see it at all.

WRONG!

Without the engine in place there's nothing to hold the exhaust in position and it'd be suspended in mid-air, so now the F-35D has an engine. Once again the engineering of the parts is amazing, it all plugs together beautifully and keys into the fuselage structure with tabs and overlapping joints everywhere.

That's apart from one problem I've found so far. The engine body has three spigots on the bottom that are meant to fit over three pegs sticking up from the bottom of the fuselage, but only the front one fits properly, the 2nd and 3rd ones are out of position by a mm or two, so I just cut the problematic spigots off, the front one is more than adequate to locate and support it.

The spigots and posts are ringed in red below.

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If the model is true to life there's one rather odd thing about the lift fan position in that it's tilted slightly rearwards, the thrust line pointing a few degrees forward of the vertical, and that's not apparent looking at the real aircraft because you can't see inside the airframe of course.

[Devilfish]

When I did my RN F-35C, I really wanted to convert it to a 2 seater.  I'll be interested to see what you do with this one!

That would be very difficult, it's such a strange shape, and you'd probably need two kits to do it. Mine won't be that radical, shape-wise anyway.

I'm hoping to eventually get a 3D scanner and scan the front of the C, then alter it in CAD and resin print it.  As you say, wouldn't work with a B, as the weight distribution would be off.

[zenrat]

Plenty of room for a second seat if you lose the fan...

[PR19_Kit]

But then it couldn't land vertically!!!

Or maybe not even take-off with a full load either.

[Gondor]

It's only the 'B' version that has the lift fan, both the 'A' & 'C' versions manage ok without it.

Gondor

[zenrat]

But then it couldn't land vertically!!!

Or maybe not even take-off with a full load either.

Hence the longer wings.