1/32 CF-5A

[LSP_Ron]

I have a fuse sitting outside, these are some pics from it.

 

 

James

 

I looks like you parked that plane in my old neighborhood in Edmonton James

 

Find it in the morning sitting on cinder blocks!

[Hagar]

I looks like you parked that plane in my old neighborhood in Edmonton James

 

Find it in the morning sitting on cinder blocks!

 

 

Lol pretty close Ron.

[ALF18]

Lots of work - not a whole lot of progress - resin conversions are like that!

The first thing I want to show is the final shape of the rear deck part before glueing the front and rear fuselage parts together.

 

I used trusty old gel superglue to get the fuselage parts together. The join is not bad, but it will need some puttying and sanding for sure.

 

Full disclosure here - I had built this kit years ago. I used the F-5E shape, but Canadian colours and a mix of scrounged and hand-painted markings. The old kit is a good example of my skills 15 years ago, and I am happy to see that some progress has been made! Here, for example, are the two cockpits.

 

 

Much nicer job on the later version so far. By the way, I went through the resin parts bag, and found that Mike Belcher had included a proper upper portion of the instrument panel!! It's too late for this kit, and as I said hardly anyone will notice. Good work for him, though, thinking of that. I only wish the instructions had made mention of it...

 

So I went through all the resin to see what other kinds of surprise were in there. Here's what I found:

The engine intakes are in resin. The shape of the kit piece is wrong, and the size of the intake is different, so these are essential. The only thing I didn't like about them is that they are thin resin, and I had a tough time chopping off the pour blocks without deforming the parts. I also need to do some surgery to get them to fit properly (more on that in a later post).

 

There's a centreline fuel tank (neat feature - he included an arrow showing which way is forward!).

 

Tiptanks and centreline pylon

 

More in the next post

ALF

Edited May 29, 2011 by ALFster18

[ALF18]

The main gear D doors (inner ones), because the F-5A and E doors are different shapes, as are the speed brakes.

 

 

There are the scoops (large upper and smaller lower versions) that the F-5E doesn't have, plus a better (more accurate) arrestor hook.

 

 

There's also a nice refuelling probe. Here is my scratch-built version from 15 years ago, made of sprue.

 

And here is the resin rear portion from Belcher's Bits. It comes with a metal rod for the bent portion of the tube (but the rod is straight, so I'll have to figure out how to bend it with my limited tools, or I may just use my sprue part from years ago instead, mated with the resin rear portion and the nicely-done resin tip).

 

One thing that has been bugging me is the massive weight of the resin rear fuselage. On its own, it tilts severely backward when balanced at the main wheel well areas. Even with the front fuselage glued in place, I'm worried it will be a tail-sitter. In related news, the Hasegawa nose that came with this boxing has the duck-bill style, which is wrong for the CF-5A. Belcher included a resin nose, which requires the chopping off of the step in the front fuselage (here you can see the step creates a gap).

 

After fretting over yet more surgery, and wondering about the tail-sitting potential, I had a flash of inspiration. I found that the old nose cone from my 15 year-old kit came off quite cleanly and easily, and it is the proper shape. I will use it, and also add a heavy fishing weight inside it, to avoid tail-sitting. Sometimes I amaze myself when I think of something brilliant...

Here's the old kit nose and weight, compared as well with the resin nose.

 

 

That's all for tonight - have some family stuff to do now.

ALF

[Hagar]

I managed to get some Dan.

 

 

 

 

James

Edited June 1, 2011 by Hagar

[ALF18]

I managed to get some Dan.

 

James

James

Thanks for the great ref pics! Now, of course, I see the nearly black colour of the aft portion of the cockpit, including the seat top and the canopy suspension. I like it all the darker colour - I think I'll use the refs you've supplied, and start the black demarcation as per these pics.

BTW, that aircraft cockpit is in really good shape! Looks ready to be flashed up and flown...

ALF

[Anthony in NZ]

Great ref pics, that HUD looks like the ones fitted to our Kahu upgraded Skyhawks....Smiths Industries????

 

ALF, does the Belcher conversion include that HUD?

 

Cheers

Anthony

[williamj]

Thanks for the great pics sir.Have the BB conversion and the Black Box pit along with some serious decals.planning on 5A this year so this is a super tutorial.

Watching with great interest.cheers.

[ALF18]

Thanks for the great pics sir.Have the BB conversion and the Black Box pit along with some serious decals.planning on 5A this year so this is a super tutorial.

Watching with great interest.cheers.

Glad you're gaining something from this. Which decals are you going to use? I am balking at the price of Canmilair in this scale ($40+); and even he doesn't have the 419 sqn tail flash I would like to have. For now, I'm planning to do it with no tail flash, and maybe 433 sqn markings - or maybe not. Also debating if I'll go for the wrap-around camo, or the light grey bottom version. A lot depends on the decals I can find...

ALF

[Kagemusha]

Glad you're gaining something from this. Which decals are you going to use? I am balking at the price of Canmilair in this scale ($40+); and even he doesn't have the 419 sqn tail flash I would like to have. For now, I'm planning to do it with no tail flash, and maybe 433 sqn markings - or maybe not. Also debating if I'll go for the wrap-around camo, or the light grey bottom version. A lot depends on the decals I can find...

ALF

 

Maybe you should consider masks http://www.adastramasks.com/contents/en-uk/d39.html

[ALF18]

Great ref pics, that HUD looks like the ones fitted to our Kahu upgraded Skyhawks....Smiths Industries????

 

ALF, does the Belcher conversion include that HUD?

 

Cheers

Anthony

Anthony

The upgraded HUD was something that came into service after I lost touch with the aircraft. According to RCAF.com, the HUD was a "GEC-Ferranti 4510 HUD/weapons-aiming system".

 

So it doesn't look like it's exactly the same, but physically it kind of resembles it. As far as the kit goes, you can see in these two pics the options I had. The one installed in the kit is the Hasegawa F-5E original panel and HUD; that HUD looks a lot like the ref photo in this thread. The resin upper main instrument panel held in my hand is the Belcher Bits version; it clearly represents the simple combining glass aiming system that the CF-5A had when I flew them. It seemed pretty high-tech to me at the time, but really wasn't. It represented an aiming dot that was manually set to a fixed depression value from aircraft waterline; the magic was in the way it was gyro-stabilized (when the wings were rolled, the aiming dot was adjusted to provide proper aiming still). The two-seat CF-5D didn't have this; it had a fixed aiming dot that was not gyro-stabilized, and when you were dropping bombs or firing rockets, any tiny amount of roll would induce an error into the aiming. Of course, both the single and dual versions had the same inherent errors that were possible if your angle of attack was different from planned; flying too slowly would tilt the nose higher on the attack run, meaning the aiming dot would hit the target too soon, and the bomb/rocket/bullets would fall short. After this rudimentary aiming system, the fully-compensated CF-18 aiming system in the HUD was truly like magic. No matter what your parameters at trigger squeeze or 'pickle', as long as you were stabilized for about a second, the HUD aiming was literally a 'death dot' - the ordnance went exactly where the aiming said it would in the low level attack role.

 

It looks like in my ignorance/laziness, I forgot to check the bag of resin parts, and failed to notice that the proper combining glass input box was in fact on the Belcher panel, as were the proper Canadian pre-upgrade instruments. Sigh.

 

For your purposes, you could probably use the F-5E kit HUD as a reasonable facsimile of the NZ Skyhawk HUD.

 

ALF

[williamj]

Glad you're gaining something from this. Which decals are you going to use? I am balking at the price of Canmilair in this scale ($40+); and even he doesn't have the 419 sqn tail flash I would like to have. For now, I'm planning to do it with no tail flash, and maybe 433 sqn markings - or maybe not. Also debating if I'll go for the wrap-around camo, or the light grey bottom version. A lot depends on the decals I can find...

ALF

Will be doing a 434 bird..John Lumley sent me the blue 434 logo as well as the Bluenose for the fin,He had a friend do them a while back.

have the roundels etc.should be an easy. The Belcher Bits set is a LOT of resin,might grind it out somewhat.

This is the one planned.

Edited June 2, 2011 by williamj

[ALF18]

Now for more progress. This conversion is not for the faint of heart, and probably not even for the impatient or poorly-equipped in tools, like me...

 

The vertical tail section from the kit must be chopped to fit on top of the resin Belcher aft fuselage. Here you can see it, along with the kit's engine door parts (closed) glued in place. Those door parts fit very well, by the way.

 

The resin part is not exactly even, but I didn't trim it, knowing that the chopped-off kit part might not fit perfectly anyway.

 

REFERENCE INFO: for those who are wondering about the position to choose for engine doors, here's what those little things do. The CF-5A had tiny intakes, which were very long and sinuous. The airflow to the engines could easily be reduced or interrupted by low speed (high angle of attack) or yaw movements. For take-off or landing, it was mandatory to open the engine doors, which provided a source of air to the engines just in front of the compressors. Looking at how far back the doors are on the fuselage (behind the trailing edge of the wing), you can easily see just how long the intakes are.

It was very commonplace to have 'compressor stalls' with the CF-5. A compressor stall is when the airflow through the engine is disturbed, and the high-pressure air within the engine core pushes forward (instead of backward toward the exhaust like it should), and causes the compressor to have disrupted airflow, which effectively 'stalls' the air over the airfoil-shaped compressor blades. The symptoms include bangs, rumbles, popping sounds, and engine thrust dropping radically to near-zero, with a high exhaust-gas temperature that can damage the engine. Imagine a compressor stall happening at high thrust settings on one engine - it will result in a dramatic nose swing in the direction of the compressor-stalled engine.

The engine doors are designed to ensure a high volume of air to the engines at low speeds, thus avoiding the possibility of compressor stalls. The doors are opened prior to take-off, but often not until the last minute or shortly before taxiing from the flight line, and closed after take-off. They are then opened again when the gear and flaps are extended for approach, and closed again during the post-landing checklist.

 

FOR MODELERS: these doors are rarely opened, and usually only when engines are running in take-off or landing mode. There are some cases, for maintenance, or when a pilot forgets them, that they may be found open when parked, but that would be quite rare. That's why I model them closed.

 

Here is a sad pic from my father's log book. He was in charge of a crash investigation, of a dual CF-5 that crashed in Cold Lake in 1981. It was tail number 844. They were practising a 'flapless' approach, which means they deliberately did not extend the flaps. The student pilot in the front seat forgot to open the engine doors, because the checklist was written in such a way that it led him to stop before selecting doors open (because he stopped at 'FLAPS'). He got a bit slow on the approach, and advanced both throttles rapidly as they performed an overshoot just over the runway. One engine compressor stalled (certainly due to the doors being closed), and the aircraft rolled toward the stalled engine. At slow speed, this was fatal. The aircraft's roll was unstoppable, and it hit the ground between the parallel runways in Cold Lake inverted, killing both pilots. This pic was taken after the fire was put out, showing the fuselage upright after hitting upside down and rolling upright again. RIP, lost friends...

ALF

[ALF18]

I chopped off the kit vertical tail. Did I mention my poor selection of tools? I used a black marker to highlight the raised panel line that was to be my guide. My saw attachment to an exacto knife did a reasonable job, but I think I strayed too high on the tail at the back end. Dry fitting afterward showed a gap at the rear slanted portion, just forward of the rudder.

 

The instructions (Belcher) said to try glueing a reinforcement into the centre of the chopped vertical tail; I used a small bit of plastic that I had chopped off, and this helped in keeping the wide cross-section of the vertical tail. I didn't go so far as to make an insertion tab, which would have been far more work. With a generous amount of gap-filler CA glue, this is what it ended up like. Putty/sanding will definitely be needed here!

 

 

 

ALF

[florin13]

I like so far. I watch carefully what you do, because I want to make one one, but much more exotic than your own.I look forward to your work.

Florin