JayW

Juggernut - the Aircorplibrary Republic drawing file for the P-47 is just awesome. Just about every drawing is there, and readable. I love it. I used it extensively for my 1/18 P-47 build, recently finished if you want to peruse the "ready for inspection" site. One thing Republic was very good about was keeping airplane effectivities up to date on their drawings. The true source is the "used on" drawing, not the next higher assembly block on the drawing in question. But seldom have I seen discrepancies on the P-47 drawings, and none here. Drawing 89L41000 (Installation Landing Gear) has five different next higher assemblies (NHA's) - 89X1000 through 93X10200 - from P-47B to P-47M. All these drawings are the top drawings for the model - "Airplane General Assembly - 3 View". And 93X10200 covers P-47D-25 through P-47M (i.e. the bubbletops). 89L41000 also has a general note on it just to the left of the bill of material which states "See 96L41000 for later P-47 models....", whihc is of course the N-model configuration. Republic was really good about providing superceding configuration information on drawings, and also going the other way sometimes. BTW, the NHA for P-47N landing gear drawing 96L41000 is 96C22000 wing panel assembly complete - strangely! It could be that the manufacturing process was rearranged for the P-47N. I can tell the P-47 drawing system tends to be "design as built", so shows assemblies and sub-assemblies much like they would have been built up in the factory setting. Perhaps LG was installed further up the chain for P-47N....

Here is what the engineering drawings say: 89L41000 MLG installation drawing effective all P-47's including P-47M. 34 x 9.0 tire with Bendix wheels and brakes. These must be the 6-spoke wheels. 96L41000 MLG installation drawing effective P-47N-1 and on. 34 x 9.9 tire with Goodyear wheels and brakes. These must be the 8-spoke wheels IPC is in agreement. I suspect there was no interchangability due to different size brakes? I did not realize the N model had wider tires. Wider gear I knew about. It appears to me though that the 8-spoke wheel is all that is available today. All today's P-47 resto's seem to have it far as I can tell.

Your Dzus fasteners are better than mine! By alot! Can you elaborate how you have done them?

Oh my! What fine looking P-47's. Curious - what about the engines?

Am in a struggle right now trying to develop critical dimensions for the R2800. It is so jam packed with stuff, if I get something wrong, it will result in something not fitting. So, cylinder outer diameters, engine block cylinder base plane distance from centerline, location of intake and exhaust ports on the cylinder heads, distance between rocker arm covers, etc, etc, etc. You may wonder why I do not just duplicate my P-47 engine, but believe it or not it was chalk full of inaccuracies, all of which I intend to correct. The best thing to do here is model it digitally, but I am seriously hesitant to one, pay for the program software, and two, learn it. I can manual draft pretty well.... Stay tuned!

Just amazing Peter - realism and cool factor way up high!

Here is a shot in the dark - I think I can put a perfectly scaled 1/18 R-2800 into this cowling. No need to alter it to account for really thick cowl panels or other scale errors, like I had to do for my P-47 engine. So I would love to get my hands on some R-2800 drawings or scaleable figures. So far I can find nothing other than poor outlines on the power plant install drawings for the P-47, F4U, and F6F (drawings provided by Aircorps Library). Anybody know?

It's not going to be perfect, but MUCH better than it was!

Hello fellow modelers. I now embark on my 4th and final 1/18 scale mod project - an F4U Corsair. My past efforts have been a P-51D (Miss Velma), a P-38J (Lucky Lady), and a P-47D (Glen Eagleston's Eagle). You can find articles on the P-51 and P-38, and WIP and RFI posts on the P-47 on this site, if interested. All three took more than two years each, and I expect the Corsair will too. At least. Here are the customary "before" shots: Cool huh? I obtained this toy/model a few years ago along with the P-38 at a local hobby shop where a whole bunch of these large toys were donated by an estate. As you all probably know, these things are no longer manufactured. The manufacturer is Blue Box (probably originally 21st Century Toys). The date on this one is 2005. To my eye at the time, it looked realistic enough to be a good mod project. My plan is to greatly improve the following items: Engine (all new scratch build, including back section) Engine compartment including engine mount Cockpit Landing gear Gear bays Wing fold mechanisms Flaps Ailerons Elevators Rudder And there will be smaller projects as well too numerous to list, similar to what I did with the other aircraft, except even more ambitious. I hope my eyes are not bigger than my stomach here - it is entirely possible I run out of steam somewhere along the way, or not get up to speed at all. After all, I just finished the P-47. But I think not. I'll take my time and try not to put any pressure on myself (yeah right!). So when I sat down and really inspected this toy, I saw things I like, and things I don't like. As usual there are lots and lots of inaccuracies that are fixable - I expect that. Here is what I did not expect - I was very disappointed to see that the engine cowling is not correctly shaped. I mean it is deal breaker to me unless I can fix it. Here is what I mean: The engine cowling has a round cross-section just like it should. But it should also have a slight taper as shown in this side profile (drawing VS-33001): Can you see it? The taper is slight but noticeable (at least to my eye). Now look at the toy model: From the cowl flaps forward, this cowling has a constant cross-section. No taper at all until you get to the front end. This sticks out like a sore thumb, makes the nose look bulbous. So what to do. Well, this model is going to get a complete engine anyway, with removable cowl panels. So the cowl flaps and panels over the engine will be replaced anyway. The nose cowl must be salvaged (I know not how to make one). The fuselage aft of the cowl flaps is just fine shape-wise. The typical gage of the plastic is .08 inch - robust. After some research it turns out that if the nose cowl could be decreased in diameter by about .08 inch (.04 inch on the radius), and reshaped to blend out the shape, I would still have about .04 inch gage to work with on the nose cowl, and I would get the slight taper I want. Some of you know I own a small desktop lathe (a Unimat). So I decided to try to turn the cowling on the lathe. To do this, I had to lop off the cowling: I was thinking at this point if this blows up in my face, I will just not do this project at all. Here is the cowling on the lathe chuck: Ha! My lathe is intended to work with raw material no larger than about 2 inch diameter. This cowling is a bit over 3 inches diameter! I had to put a large spacer under the head stock mount (see it - its that silver spacer). I had to mount the cowling very carefully - no wobble allowed. Then I rotated the head stock about 2 deg and proceeded to turn material off the nose: Then I removed the nose cowl: Success - that worked way better than I thought. So I am off to the races. I guess the engine is going to be first on the list. The Corsair was powered by the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 double wasp, as was the P-47 Thunderbolt. For the P-47, I dedicated about 6 months of my life scratch building a R-2800. And it didn't include the aft section. This time, I intend to make use of 3D printing in some way. At the very least, the cylinders will be 3D printed. So perhaps it will not take so long and not be as tedious. Hope you can look in from time to time! See ya!

I am going to publish an article on the engine build - perhaps the most involved build I have ever done. I will advise when it comes out; it will take a little while to write it up.

Lastly - this is the example that I modeled: P-47D-30RE serial number 44-20473, flown by Major Glenn Eagleston of 354th FG, 353rd FS while on the European continent after the June 44 invasion. He was the squadron commander at that time. 21st Century Toys chose that scheme for one of their P-47 series so I used it as is. This unit was 9th AF, but was "on loan" to the 8th AF for most of the war. It was the first group to be equipped with the P-51 Mustang (called the "Pioneer Mustang Group") in late 1943, and that was their only aircraft used except for a several month period in early 1945 where they were replaced by P-47 Thunderbolts to provide ground support for the continuance of the invasion into Germany. My late uncle, Henry Rudolph, was a pilot in this group, and Eagleston was his commanding officer. And that's the reason I stayed with this paint scheme. He (my uncle) was credited with 5 1/2 victories, making him an "ace" - all either BF-109's or FW190's, and all while flying the P-51D. Before he died he told me stories of his experiences and I will never forget. For some reason he kept those memories to himself largely, until near the end of his life (PTSD?). He also told me of the transition from the P-51 to the P-47, done in only days with insufficient training, in awful weather and awful conditions (as can be seen in the picture). He nearly lost his life in his P-47, mostly because of poor training. They never got the chance to really learn the P-47, before they went back to the P-51 prior to the end of the war - an aircraft they excelled with.

The cockpit pictures did not come out well - too much shadow. So I include a couple of work in progress pictures (mostly because I was very pleased with how the cockpit turned out and want to show it off to those who haven't seen it):

Here is the link to the RFI post:

And still some more: I am not sure where to start with this adventure. The following were entirely scratch built: Cockpit Engine Cowl flaps Tires, wheels Main landing gear Tail gear Wheel wells Flaps, flap linkages Bomb pylons Gear doors All outlet duct doors Guns Tip lights Pitot mast By far the longest scratch build project was the engine - it took more than six months. For all that building, I made extensive use of Aircorps Library drawings and manuals. I cannot thank those folks enough! The rest came compliments of the long defunct 21st Century Toys. That includes the oversized canopy and some other poorly done details that I just could not correct. My aim here was to take what looked like a complex toy, and turn it into a shrink ray Thunderbolt. Will let you all be the judge of that. Thank you for looking in.

More pictures: