ALF18 Posted June 3, 2011 Author Share Posted June 3, 2011 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 Florin Just for you, I will make sure to commit a few errors - so you can see what not to do! What do you mean by 'more exotic' - more after-market parts? Paint scheme? Country? ALF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALF18 Posted June 3, 2011 Author Share Posted June 3, 2011 I puttied the gaps around the vertical stabilizer. When this dries, I'll sand a bit. Turned out reasonably good, for such major surgery. Back to the intakes for a moment. Here are the two resin bits attached. It's really important to dry fit and shave off the right amount of the splitter plates. Mine is close, but I'm sure the very skilled modelers out there would do a better job of fitting and shaving. The kit exhausts include the nozzles and some turbine deep inside. Belcher's instructions say to use a 1/2 inch (1.25 mm) drill bit to make a big enough hole for each of them. In my tool box, I had a 3/8 inch drill bit. So I drilled one, and dry fit - not even close. I also had a heck of a time getting the drilled hole to centre properly. I then drilled the second hole with the 3/8 inch bit, and dragged out the Dremel. I put a circular abrasive tool on it, and started to hollow out the sides of the drilled holes. My aim was to make them slightly oversized, so the exhaust would fit inside. The way the kit parts are made, the nozzles are of much larger diameter than the tubes that go into the fuselage with the turbines, so they would cover up any inaccuracies in the size and shape of the holes I drilled. Here you can see one nozzle dry fitted. While I had this Dremel whizzing away, I turned the fuselage over and 'had at' the large ridge where the resin didn't fit nicely underneath. I managed to get the gap fairly even, and also trimmed a bit where things were a bit jagged on the bottom to side edge (top of photo). I also did some fixing up of the underside where the forward and rear fuselages joined. This is possible to get right - my slight impatience is all that is preventing me from getting it absolutely perfect. I find this quite challenging to do this extent of surgery. Next post, the wings. ALF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALF18 Posted June 3, 2011 Author Share Posted June 3, 2011 The wings present two challenges to me - first is the trimming of the wing to fuselage joint (chopping parts of the wings off), then it's necessary to find some fine wire and make some holes in the fuselage and wings to make pins. I started with the chopping of the wing at the fuselage join. Belcher's instructions include a scale drawing of the kit parts, showing dark areas to be chopped off and a dashed line where the small underside of the wing (Hasegawa part) goes. Here's the instructions: I didn't bother to check to see if the drawing was exactly the same size as the wing right away. I glued the wing parts (top and bottom) together, then chopped the locator tab and other bits off the assembled wing. Dry fitting gave this result: I then decided to read the instructions more carefully, and found that the kit parts fit perfectly onto the drawing. Here is the underside of the wing superimposed on the dashed line: So for the other wing, I decided to chop the small bottom Hasegawa part first exactly as per the drawing, and dry fit it only. Here's how it looks: Encouraged, this led me to decide to chop the first wing (the one I already assembled, and cut more or less by gut feel) according to the drawing. I wasn't sure if it was wise to chop quite so much from the top of the wing, but it will ensure the bottom butts up nicely like the picture immediately above. Mike Belcher says that there is a gap to be expected at the top of the wing, to be filled with putty. He says that the designer of the resin changed his mind partway through the process, and decided to make an easier butt joint at the wing join, accepting the gap at the top. If you look at this pic, you'll see the fuselage has a straight bit that fits nicely up against the bottom of the wing when it's cut exactly as per the template. So as I leave off tonight, I'm busy comparing the shape of the first assembled wing to the template. The other thing I'm debating is what to do about the tip tanks vs missile rails. The CF-5A flew with either; when carrying the AIM-9 we flew with rails. I do like the look of tip tanks, though. The tips require more surgery to the wing shape, and the fitting of more fine pins to hold them in place. For now, the jury is still out. Tips require clever painting to fake the position lights at their fronts, and I also don't have the decals for the formation lights (what some people like to call 'slime lights' on these forums) that go on the tips. ALF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hagar Posted June 3, 2011 Share Posted June 3, 2011 Looks cool Dan. I may start this first seeing as the posties are probably going to cause my T-Bird stuff to take forever to come. Your build and my access to the bird are swaying me. If you go to Ad Astra for markings for a 419 bird let me know and maybe I can piggy back on your order. Might be easier for them to make 2 at once. Need any other pics or are you good? James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALF18 Posted June 3, 2011 Author Share Posted June 3, 2011 Looks cool Dan. I may start this first seeing as the posties are probably going to cause my T-Bird stuff to take forever to come. Your build and my access to the bird are swaying me. If you go to Ad Astra for markings for a 419 bird let me know and maybe I can piggy back on your order. Might be easier for them to make 2 at once. Need any other pics or are you good? James James Great idea about the masks! I'll send a query to Ad Astra about it. I'll PM you first, to see exactly what era of markings you're looking at as well. Should be OK for pics for now - I'm going to the season opening event this morning at our museum, and will take my camera around our CF-5A. It's done up in 433 and 434 markings (one on each side). After that, I'll let you know if I can't get to anything else. If we go the mask route for 419 markings, it's probably ideal if you take some good pics of the tail flash for use in our order. ALF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALF18 Posted June 4, 2011 Author Share Posted June 4, 2011 Time for a few ref pics. I took them today at the local museum (by the highway at Bagotville). I was interested in a few things: the wraparound colour scheme, antennae, and markings plus some other details. Here's a general view of it. The paint is a bit weathered due to exposure to the elements - I think it's been parked here for 20+ years. The only antennae I could find were under the nose, same as the kit's. The forward one is the TACAN, and the longer rearward one is the UHF comms antenna. I don't know where the ADF antenna is - maybe in the vertical tail? This is good news, since the tiny top antenna aft of the canopy on the spine snapped off. I thought it looked out of place, but honestly couldn't remember at all. Some closeups of the refuelling probe. I'm leaning more and more toward a 419 aircraft, with wraparound green/grey camo. Thanks to a fortuitous meeting today with another modeler who happened to be at the museum, I might have a source for the tail flash and a few other missing bits from Belcher's decals for that scheme. ALF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hagar Posted June 4, 2011 Share Posted June 4, 2011 (edited) Is this the one Dan? This one kind of calls to me too, but the first one is first for me. James Edited June 4, 2011 by Hagar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALF18 Posted June 4, 2011 Author Share Posted June 4, 2011 James I'm talking about the top drawing. I also like the ghost camo on 705, and I've flown both of those aircraft... but I think the dark green camo is the one I want to do. ALF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hagar Posted June 4, 2011 Share Posted June 4, 2011 James I'm talking about the top drawing. I also like the ghost camo on 705, and I've flown both of those aircraft... but I think the dark green camo is the one I want to do. ALF Same here. Will be looking for another conversion and kit at a later date to do the ghost. Right now the variagated greeen is the one I want to do. James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony in NZ Posted June 4, 2011 Share Posted June 4, 2011 Great and impressive surgery ALF, personally for what it's worth I have always loved that green scheme on the Canadian birds with tip tanks. Great stuff......now this is modelling! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ax365 Posted June 4, 2011 Share Posted June 4, 2011 Nice work ALF. Slow and steady wins the race. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALF18 Posted June 6, 2011 Author Share Posted June 6, 2011 More progress, slowly. This is a real challenge for me. Thanks to my loyal followers for all the encouragement - it makes a difference. I tried a different approach to chopping the second wing. First step was to cut the small underneath part as per the drawing (you already saw that it fit fairly well against the fuselage). Then, I glued the lower wing part into the upper part (note the slanted cut in the lower part near the clamp on the right side of the photo). I will use the lower wing part as a guide to chop the upper part to match. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I cut off the LEX prior to glueing the lower part on. I used these little pinces and a knife to make the cut. I did a bunch of dry-fitting of the two wings, trimming in between, and they are finally relatively close to the fuselage shape. Lots of putty will be required after they set in place! I then drilled holes for some pins to hold the wing on more solidly. This is so far out of my comfort zone, it's not even funny. I chopped the heads off some small finishing nails to use as pins. I also drilled out the locating hole for the pins for the rear stabilators. Here are all 3 holes on the first side, with pins super-glued in place. Next step is to make holes in the wings to fit the pins. Before that, I will trim the outer portions of the wings to fit the tip tanks. I have finally decided that I like the idea of tips more than rails, even given the huge amount of extra work this represents. ALF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Fleischmann Posted June 8, 2011 Share Posted June 8, 2011 Looking good ALF- Master makes a nice refueling probe tip- Here's the link: click me Scroll down a bit and you'll see it- Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Av8fan Posted June 8, 2011 Share Posted June 8, 2011 (edited) Very nice work! Amazing level of detail on the Master items Nato Refueling Probe Edited June 8, 2011 by Av8fan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALF18 Posted June 8, 2011 Author Share Posted June 8, 2011 Looking good ALF- Master makes a nice refueling probe tip- Here's the link: click me Scroll down a bit and you'll see it- Pete Pete Thanks to you and Av8fan for your suggestions - those Master parts are real things of beauty! Belcher's conversion includes a resin refuelling probe tip. Here's a pic (poor quality - sorry about that). It is not quite as beautiful as the Master part, but not bad either. And thanks to both of you for the encouragement. As I mentioned earlier, I needed some... ALF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now