F7F-3 Tigercat - BuNo 80405 - VMF 312 MCAS - El Toro, CA 1946

[KUROK]

Looking good!

[MikeMaben]

                          Weird bunch are'nt we?

 

                  Speak fer yerself

 

[LSP_Ray]

Glad you are breaking trail for us, Brian! Looking good!

[scvrobeson]

Brilliant work Brian.  You've definitely persevered on this one, and it looks great!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matt 

[Out2gtcha]

Thanks gents!   Very kind words, from some very good modelers. Part of what keeps me going on tough build like this is that kind of encouragement honestly. Ive been working from home the week of Christmas, and this last week of New Years as well, and have been hitting the big kitty HARD.

 

Ive gotten a lot further than I expected to be at this point in time, and that includes adding adding most all of the internal fuselage detail I intended to add. Most of that due to being able to dabble here and there on the F7F in-between working on actual work stuff. I have yet to take non-bench pictures of this progress yet, but Im at a point where that should be possible tonight. 

 

Pics soon! 

[Out2gtcha]

Throttle quadrant complete. Throttle control "rods" (AKA EZ Line) added and just dangling here prior to me attatching them to the throttle actuator pivots on the port side fuselage:

 

 

 

 

I'll post all of the pics tomorrow after a bit of rest.

Since this pic, I've glued the throttle quadrant on, gotten the quadrant rods glued in, finished off both sides of the fuselage, 75% of the IP, got the seat belts in, control stick, and really only have the rudder pedals and a few other misc details left to finish off the cockpit.

I also by some miracle have finished completely the nose gear well pack, and all of the nose gear I can before gluing the fuse halves together.

 

Cheers till later today after some sleep!

[Phartycr0c]

Brian, a short absence and a re visit to this build and you've forged ahead. 

 

The solution for the front undercarriage is sublime as is the cockpit and IP work. 

 

Im sure you will have this project beaten into submission before long.  

[Out2gtcha]

Thanks Pharty! It's coming along. I'm overall probably about 80% ready to close up the fuselage.

The main thing I'm going to have to deal with very soon, is how I want to tackle the lower wing section that is off.

 

The wings are scheduled to go on pretty soon after the suselagenis closed, so I've been contemplating how best to move forward with that.

 

I'm organizing my pics from the last week or two, and when I'm done with dishes, I'll post some more progress pics

[Gazzas]

Brian,

That throttle quadrant looks freaking fantastic.

 

Gaz

[crobinsonh]

Incredible detail work.

[Out2gtcha]

Thanks gents, very kind of you.

 

Ok guys, this one is going to be SUPER pic heavy, as I have made a LOT of progress, in various areas of the fuselage internals, so hang with me..........

 

. First up is the IP. I got the multiple layers of the IP sandwiched together as per the directions and some corrective paint on the spots I boogered up. I wasn't willing to risk pulling any of the IP decals up off of the PE, so I rethought my earlier process of masking bits of it off, and spraying it, and just hand painted the whole thing with the some MM interior green acrylic which turned out to be a great match for the MRP interior green. 

This is just the base product of all the layers, and I have not yet added any of the other extraneous PE bits, nor put any of clear in the instruments to simulate glass yet. I also rethought my plan of gluing the layers together with CA, and used MS foil glue on each side of the PE which seemed to work out very well.

 

All things considered its not perfect, but Im pretty happy with the way it turned out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up I finished off painting all of the necessary nose gear parts DSB. I assembled what I needed to as per my plan, leaving off the main resin part the the bottom of the oleos will connect to, as I need to get the air-frame completed to see how much I need to leave/cut off of the main nose gear support rod to make the model sit like I want:

 

The all critical nose gear fork:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have now competed all of the nose gear bay pack, and glued all of the nose gear parts together including hydraulic ram, as well as getting all of them painted, weathered, and brake line ran. The nose gear pack is now ready to be installed into the fuselage:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MORE......................

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dandiego]

Instrument panel...Wow.

 

Dan

[Out2gtcha]

Nose gear pack continued................

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fuselage side walls are also pretty much complete save a few more minor details like the oxygen hose that I made out of a model car parts spring and the rudder pedals as well. The cockpit is SO crowded at this point, that Im not sure there is even room for it.

 

I havnt weathered it yet, until I know if there is room for it. That will get determined a bit later when Im close to assembling the cockpit :

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fuselage side walls contain a lot of extra detail including a highly modified throttle quadrant, throttle actuator pivots and actuator rods, trim actuators and dip switches made from flat sprue that is stretched by candle, then cropped down to the correct size (SO small in fact I debated on whether I could actually add them or not). I initially painted the dip switches silver as I saw in my documentation, but they nearly completely disappeared, so I added a fictional white top to them so you could actually see them. I knocked many off just trying to paint them. Gluing and painting them proved a BIG chore.

 

Unfortunately, with the way the cockpit is laid out and the amount of "stuff" in there, some of this will be nearly invisible after assembly:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STILL MORE.......................

 

 

[Vandy 1 VX 4]

May I have more

[Out2gtcha]

Sidewalls continued. The Starboard side wall need some obvious cleaning up here which I will do soon. Sometimes it really takes the extremely harsh eye of the macro lens to know what you have...........or dont have yet............

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now all that was left was to finish the cockpit itself, which it is, about 85% done. I still have to debate on adding the O2 hose, and making sure all this junk will fit with the nose gear pack as well as both the nose weights.

HGW seatbelts and seat are done and glued in, all dip switches glued on, control stick glued in, as well as adding some wire bundles make from EZ Line. I also added the belly and wing tank manual release levers too.

I have to say, I really like HGW seatlbelts although I haven't quite perfected painting and weathering them yet. Once I do, they will be all I  use, as I find them much easier to use than other AM seatbelts and much much thinner too. 

 

The only disadvantage to the F7F HGW seatbelts is there are zero visual instructions with them. You will have to do what I did and pull of a picture of the visual instructions of the HGW F4U seatbelts, which from what I can tell, are nearly identical to the F7F belts.
Here when I glued them in, I always make sure to glue them in a manor in which makes them appear to be soft fabric (laying down in all crevices and depressions), which to me is one of the major advantages of the HGW belts:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All for now lads. Im back to working at actual work tomorrow, meaning my bench time will be cut a bit, but I feel like Im on a modeling roll here, so hope to capitalize on that in the coming weeks and keep this progress going.

Im closer than I thought I would be to closing up the fuselage at this point in time than I thought I would be, so that makes me happy, and I feel like if I can tackle these problems of the gear, then I can tackle any of the problems to come.

 

Cheers till next time!