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

[1to1scale]

Wow, I would have just left it alone, and got rid of it. You are truly dedicated to this aircraft.

[Gazzas]

Love to see you fixing one of the major things that bothered you.

 

WTG!

 

Gaz

[Trak-Tor]

Stunning fight going on here.... 

 

Juraj

[dennismcc]

That's a great fix, I must confess that I would have either not bothered and lived with it or not bought the kit in the first place, more credit to you though for fixing it.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[Phartycr0c]

He shoots....He scores.! good work Brian Keep it up, youll have a stunner of your favourite aircraft in the end. 

[Out2gtcha]

Wow, thanks guys. Im quite humbled by the comments. It is a bit of a fight, but I think one that will be worth fighting in the end; I hope. It wont be as good as the OOB detail was, but I just could not live with it as it was, and I WILL get this sucker built.

 
 

Great work, Brian! I still want to look at cut and paste, but your method sure looks doable!

 

Thanks Ray!  The solution you came up with is 100% doable. I just didn't attempt it that way simply based on the fact that I know my limits, and I know if I did it that way what I replaced on the top would never be as good as the OOB detail. Re-scribing is definitely not one of my strong suites.   I think if one was willing to tackle the top of the wing at the same time, it would be as doable as my method for sure. 
 
 
 
 
 
Im actually having more fun than I thought bringing the kit up to speed, but as some have have noted above, it all depends on the level of passion one has for the subject, and mine is VERY high for the F7F. Although I have to say the re-scribe part is not something I wanted to tackle, but it needed to be done.

 
So, last night after re-reading my own comments on getting started on the wing intakes, I went downstairs and had a look at them. No way I could leave them OOB, as with just the Mk 1 eyeball and no torch, you can pretty easily see inside them, and tell there was empty wing in there. You can really even make out the interior resin braces inside the wing too. The only barrier to this is a small oblong PE part that is supposed to represent the intake baffle/airflow director.

This represents only 1 of the types of intake interiors, and thanks to Peters (Airscale) wonderful documentation pictures he sent me, I have found out there is a much more common intake situation that would be much easier for me to represent, and fill the interior of all 4 wing intakes, and not have a full view of the inside of the resin wing parts.

I forgot to upload said wing intake pics, but it basically consists of two curved/angled plates on each side of the intake, with a round hole/tube in the center with two vertical baffle plates inside the tube in the center.   I have what I think is a plan to replicate this and still be able to sand smooth the joints for each side of each intake.

 

Ill upload some pics of what Im talking about soon, as well as some pics of what I'm trying to replicate on the 1:1.

 

Thanks again one and all for the encouraging comments! 
 

[Shawn M]

nice work Brian!

[TorbenD]

Top job Brian -  a lovely fix to a nagging issue that you just kicked into touch with much, much aplomb! 

 

Torben

[monthebiff]

Awesome work Brian, very clever solution to such a dificult problem, also very courageous on such an expensive kit.

 

Regards. Andy

[Out2gtcha]

Shawn, Torben, Andy, thanks for the kind votes of confidence.  It has been fun so far believe it or not, although the re-scribing was not my best work, nor would it have been something I would have chosen to do, but had to be done none the less.

 

Switching gears between modifying projects/different parts of the kit seems to have worked its magic a bit, and prevented me from getting burned out on any 1 given section.

Now its on to the next portion!

 

As the next step is to get the wing sections together, I thought I better make that next portion whatever it took to get the wing halves together................and that means the only thing really left standing in the way of getting said wing haves glued up; wing vents! 

 

Pics in a moment................

[Out2gtcha]

I have generally been "flying by the seat of my pants" so-to-speak on this build and throwing caution to the wind, as if you cant do that on your favorite aircraft of all time, what can you do it on?!?? 

 

That included the wing intake vents. There are two oval shaped wing cooling vents in each wing, and if you put them together OOB with only the small 1/2 oval curved PE part representing some wing ducting, you would be able to see right into the wing, and all its internal structure used to hold the halves together. 

I was not really sure what all if anything you would be able to see as the vents are recessed about 1/2" or less in from the leading edge of the wings, so after a quick dry fit, I found out pretty quickly that you can see most everything even with the small PE part in place; especially if you shined a torch in there:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This really came as no surprise after having handled the wings so much previously to get the paneling straight. I also began to think I would probably mess up that PE part pretty badly too when sanding smooth the intake sides to get rid of the seam there. There are a couple of different styles of intakes on the F7F, and the single vent as portrayed in the PE part is one I dont even have pics of. Even the HpH instructions show the style of vent intake Im attempting to represent here, so Im not 100% sure what they used as a reference for their intakes. 

Even on the 1:1 the intake vents are kind of tough to see, even in good light. Although that would never prevent me from fixing them, as we all know things like this can and will be seen by us and if ever entered in a contest especially a judge.

 

None the less, the internals of the vent are there. On the real deal the intake vents have a smooth oval transition into a circular tube that has two vertical baffles in it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can start to see the tube with the baffles at the back of the intake vent however, even without direct light on it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately for me, replicating  this smooth curved transition was nearly impossible, so for as much as I would have loved to get this "perfect", I felt I had to pick my battles, and compromise a bit, buy making intake vent internals that looked realistic like they could have been real, but didnt necessarily have the perfectly smooth oval transition to a circle.
The HpH parts are just the oval vent, that has the same width all the way to the back where it just ends at the same width.  Not gonna work for me, so I set about tossing some ideas around in my head.

 

My first one was to take some large brass tube, and smash it into an oval, to possibly get that smooth transition look:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This turned out to be very inconsistent, and the brass was a PITA to mold into a smooth shape that replicated anything like the real deal. It just didn't work, and on top of that the tube had to be so big, it just would not fit into the middle section of the wing where it had to go. 

Back to the drawing board!

 

I then figured that trying to get a continuous curve to the inside of the intake, then replicate that identically 4 times over would be nearly impossible, so I steered myself away from doing a perfectly smooth curved transition, and decided that maybe  I could replicate straight sides that angled forward VS a fully smooth transition to the leading edge.      I thought long on this, and decided that for sanity sake, and for ease of building, so it wouldn't take a miracle just to A. get it done, and B. get 4 identical parts, that this was the way to go. The vents are deep enough in the wings that it actually has kind of a curved effect once in there anyway, and gives the onlooker a good idea of what it should look like without having to mold something curvy that may or may not come out alike after 4 copies.

 

I first measured up the dimensions of the vents, what I would take thickness wise for the parts to represent the angled pieces, the best angle for each and the best size of tube to use for the circular intake at the back with the two vertical baffles in it.  I then used a razor saw to hack out an angled slot in one of the vents, flat at the back for the circular part with the baffles and angled sides slanted back outward toward the wing leading edge to represent the funnel look of the real thing.

At first I used some brass strip, and cut out a section just under 1" long, and bent it up on my PE bender, after carving out the slot. It looks pretty rough with the wing apart, but that is one of the few advantages here, that none of this will ever really be seen once the wing is together. As you can see the angled slots run beyond the opening sides, so that the depth/shape of the material did not have to be oval nor fit directly inside the vent opening itself:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The premise for this worked very well,and I liked the look of it, but the brass was just not cooperating. I normally love working with brass, but in this case, it was the wrong material to use here, and it was very hard to shape, and would have been very hard to drill a hole into the correct size and placement. The brass also was very sharp on the ends and in one instance punched through the outer skin of the wing, so I moved onto a different material, but same idea.

 

I decided that I should probably use styrene strip. In the end, it was much easier to work with and much more forgiving. I cut 4 small 10mm or long pieces of brass tube, and took the tube I cut those parts from, sharpened the end with an Exacto, and punched out a hole in the center of a piece of styrene strip the same size as the previous brass strip I had used:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

[Out2gtcha]

Next I measured up the top part of the wing and cut the same shaped groove for the strip there too, so it would match up. I will fill in any minor gaps later (since the intakes are so deep in the wing, its really nearly impossible to see any gaps here, but I will still fill them as I think I will have room to do it after the wings are glued up).
 
In the end, after some fettling I got the fit I wanted and I was actually quite please at the initial results, even just dry fit, and with no baffles:
 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
The only issue I had was the ends of the strip were requiring a deeper groove than I had room to carve, and since the styrene strip was SO much easier to work with, I took everything apart, and tapered the ends of the strip, then cut some super thin styrene strip to size and glued the two vertical baffles inside the tube, then glued the small tube section to the bent styrene strip:
 

 
 
 
 
 
After a tiny bit more fettling, I got the end fit pretty good, and was pleased with the look of the intake vent in the end. This is still just setting in the wing, dry fit only at this point:
 

 

 

 






Now all I need to do is make 3 more identical to this one!     Easier  said than done, but again because they are so deep in the wings, its difficult to tell how and where they set in relation to each other, so there is that.

 

Nothing perfect or remotely exact to the real thing, but its a good representation of the F7F intake vent internals and a good compromise for me, to make it manageable, and buildable. Its also WAY better than seeing the open inside of the models wings too!

 

Thats it for tonight lads.  Now that I have the 1 basically completed, I know what has to be done for the other 3, so onward and upward! 

[scvrobeson]

Now that's the ingenuity we look forward to in your builds.  Great creativity Brian

 

 

 

 

 

Matt 

[Guest Maxim]

Excellent solution Brian! I think they'll look just fine.

Edited January 31, 2018 by Maxim

[Vandy 1 VX 4]

Lovely work Bryan

I see you got some photos of the Tigercat from Chino planes of Fame.