F11F vacuform Blue Angels

[themongoose]

I’m using Safari on my ipad and can see images.

 

Dave love the idea to take a picture of the contour gage and then scale that!! Brilliant, buy that man a Guinness! 

[denders]

Nice!

 

Right Click the link for the picture and open it in another tab. It should be visible then.

 

[blackbetty]

when using seamonkey i can see them, no joy with chrome...

[daveculp]

The two fuselage halves are about ready to be joined.  Each half has a main gear well, cockpit walls, engine inlets, gluing/alignment tabs, and additional styrene backing at the wing join location (just above the main gear wells).  The right half also has the nose gear well.

 

 

 

 

I've cut off the engine nozzle and will later print up a nozzle and afterburner can with turbine.

 

It turned out my original plan to just make an inner wall for the engine inlets was a bad idea.  It would look fine from the side, but when looking at it from a normal vantage point the bottom of the inlet area was a glaring problem.  Because the cannons are installed there, and there are no cannons in this model, there is a big hole under the inlet.  The best solution was to print new inlets.  These extend about two inches into the fuselage - good enough.  The splitter plates will butt up against the inner wall of the inlet ducts.

 

 

 

 

Painting them will be a trick.  The blue paint extends into the inlet about 2 cm, so I'll have to paint the inlet blue first then mask off the 2 cm and paint the rest of the inlet white.

 

I've started working on the wings.  It looks like I'll have to print some complete wings.  The problem with supersonic airplanes is that the wings are so thin it's not possible to vacuform them (in my opinion).  Here's a walk around photo by Cal Cochran, hosted at cybermodeler.com, showing the wing thickness challenge.

 

 

 

 

https://www.cybermodeler.com/aircraft/f11f/images/cochran_f11f_05.jpg   (scaled down to 800x600 here)

 

 

My first step in this process is to print a test piece for checking the geometry of the wing/fuselage attachment:

 

 

 

 

 

Once I get the wing/fuselage join dialed in I'll print the rest of the wing in three parts:  glove (shown), main wing, and the tip.  I'm printing it this way in order to have the option later of repositioning the slats, flaps and wing tip, even though I'm going to display this airplane with a clean wing.  I still haven't decided on how I'm going to handle the wing attachment - probably a brass tube for a spar?  I won't have a good idea until I see how much a completed wing is going to weigh.

 

-- Dave

Edited November 29, 2021 by daveculp
typo

[Dandiego]

Excellent work Dave. I think almost all vacform kits could use this approach. Cut out the plastic vac parts, add 3d prints to ease construction. 

 

By the way your 3d parts blow mine away. Better design and a better printer.

 

Dan

[daveculp]

Try resin printing, Dan.  I'm using an "Elegoo Mars 2 Pro" printer, but there are plenty just like it.  Let me know if you go this route - PM me.

 

Cyber Monday deal at Amazon!

 

-- Dave

[Dandiego]

Dave, I need to get waaaaaaaaay better in cad before a new printer will make a significant difference. 

 

Hamburger in a fancy wrapper is still Hamburger. Poor cad skills with a better printer is not the answer. Cad for me is hard and frustrating. Just can't  seem to get a groove going. Too much to learn, so much I don't know how to do.

 

Dan

[daveculp]

Fuselage is closed up, vertical tail is installed, and cockpit is getting roughed-in.  The vertical tail alignment is important because it becomes the vertical reference for the rest of the build.  The fuselage can have a degree or two of roll and nobody would notice, but the vertical tail must be absolutely vertical - hence it becomes the reference.

 

I was getting burned out on CAD work, so I attended to other things for a bit.  The wings are still in design phase.

 

 

  

[LSP_Kevin]

That's looking great, Dave!

 

Kev

[allthumbs]

Wow, that fuselage looks nice and sleek. What a good looking jet!

[Troy Molitor]

I'm not really into the modern jets but these vintage torch blowers are really nice.  Great work so far and more importantly thank for sharing this with us Dave.  

[Oldbaldguy]

The F11F was such an elegant little jet.  Arguably the prettiest airplane the Blues ever flew.  Saw them many times up close and personal.

[JeepsGunsTanks]

Chrome is locking them images out because the hosting site is "Not secure", they were doing it for my site, and I had to upgrade to my site to get the images to show up on most forums. 

[daveculp]

Today I finished printing a wing.  The results were mixed, and not usable for a couple reasons.  First, here's the CAD view of the left wing:

 

 

 

 

I designed it so that it could be printed in three parts: tip, center, and glove.  The center part is the biggest and just fits on my printer's build platform.  The tip and center parts can be mirrored to become right wing parts.  The glove part of the left wing has an approach light, but the right wing does not, so the right wing glove will be modified in CAD to remove the light, then mirrored.

 

The attachment to the fuselage will be of two types:  1)  A hole to except a brass rod.  This rod will be the main load bearing spar, but will only go about 2 cm into the wing glove.   2)  A post that will fit into a hole in the fuselage.  This post is mainly for alignment (setting angle of attachment).  Both attachment points are angled 2.5 degrees in CAD to set the proper anhedral for the wing.  Now I just have to drill the holes in the fuselage exactly horizontal

 

If you're following my L-159 project you may remember that I set the trailing edge thickness to 0.4 mm because I was afraid that going any thinner would lead to problems.  Turns out I was right.  For the F11F wing I set the trailing edge thickness to 0.107 mm at the root decreasing to 0.063 mm at the tip.  Here's the result:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The thin edges are difficult to support during the printing process, and the result is warpage.  From the edge view you can see that the warpage is more than can be fixed with sanding and filling:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll try again with a thicker trailing edge, maybe 0.3 mm.  I'll also increase the number of supports at the thin edge to keep the parts from warping.

 

The wing weighs 36 grams.

 

-- Dave

 

[Oldbaldguy]

Maximum warp, Mr Sulu.