Cummulus

New day, new adventures with Sword kit. Or trying to make silk purse out of pigs ear.🙄 Rudder tab is missing in the kit, and they knew it is there. It is there on the box painting! I measured the position on SH kit and made one from soda can. Trailing edge will need some serious thinning. I turned my attention to the wings. They were glued together. And I forgot to make ailerons tabs omitted in the kit. Again! Without much thinking I grabbed right wing and cut the trailing edge to make place for tab. I made cut it on upper side. It would be better to do this on lower side, so I cut the trailing edge on lower side of left wing and glued tabs on next to inner end of ailerons. Admiring my work I realised something is wrong!. Lenghts of flaps and ailerons on lower and upper side don't match! I've heard about differential ailerons, but I am sure that's not it... Warning to you all! Intakes needed a lot of putty and sanding to get acceptable look. Checking the references ( I found nice pic on IPMS Stockholm page), kit doesn't have splitter plate, just a solid plastic block. Some bucthery was needed to adress this. I marked cutting lines and removed forward part of intake on fuselage sides and made cuts for splitter plate supports. Supports and intake splitter plate were made from 0,3 mm styrene and this is the result I am satisfied with. Wing fences supplied with the kit are joke. Their profile is wrong and much too thick. I broke two of them while removing sprue gates anyway. So I cut new ones from soda can. This is the trial fit, I will have to file them to correct profile, using references. That is all for now, a lot of work and not much to show. I really shouldn't touch this kit. Thanks for watching, all comments are welcome.

Probably it will be released as soon as I glue the wings...🙄

Building two different kits I expected more work with Sword RF-84F. Most of my attention is focused to Sword kit, and as I expected all parts for SH Thunderstreak are much nicer and they fit very good. I added few oil lines to main wheel wells and cylinder for main legs retraction and extension. All wheel wells, cockpit, engine and fuselage parts were then primed and painted with AKreal interior green. For instrument panel I used kit decal. I am not very satisfied how it turned out, and I have to thik about how to tone down contrast. Kit ejection seat looks wery nice, but assembly of tiny parts fiddly. Straps are not supllied with the kit, so found some PE straps in spares box. Here is comparison of SH ejection seat and Aires resin, which will be used for Thunderflash. Thanks for watching, all coments are welcome...

Then I turned my attention to cockpit. Here I used Thunderjet resin cockpit tub and kit cockpit back bulkhead. Some sanding and carefull fitting wes needed, and finally I was satisfied with result. I used nice Sword instrument panel, suitably modified to fit resin side consoles. All reference photos I found show gray cockpit color. As I uderstand, F-84F and RF-84F were build simultaneosly. So cockpit colors shoul be the same. But I found only pictures with grey cockpits. God know what is the truth... Anyway, I airbrushed cockpit with Hataka FS 36231, and then picked out instrument with black and drybrushed with silver color. Now it looks like this: I also painted jet exhaust parts with MRPaint steel and jet exhaust color and prepared them for assembling. Thanks for watching. All comments are welcome...

Finaly I can show some progress. I continued work on wheel wells. First I wanted to use Thunderjet front wheel, but checking the reference photos found on internet, I realised, that Thunderflash front wheel well is very different fo Thunderjets and Thunderstreaks. So I used Sword parts and did some modifications. Bonus points: now I expect less problems fiting camera windows and cameras bases. All wheel wells were then painted with AK Real FS34151 interior green and weathered with oils and pigments:

Thanks! Fortunately plastic is soft, so it was done quite quickly and without much effort. I scrapped off most of the material with medical scalpel.

On sugestion of moderators I am opening separate topic for for Sword Thunderflash. Inbox content can be found in original topic here: Cockpit and wheel wells are not great with this kit. I will try to improve them a bit, using Aires resin for Thunderjet. It won't be 100% accurate, but Thunderflash & Thunderstreak were developed from F-84G anyway: So I started with main wheel wells. Resin wells roof and kit wings were thinned almost to paper thickness, and voila: Again, not 100% accurate, but looks much better to my eye... Thanks for watching.

I usually try to do something different, so I will finish Thunderstreak in EC 3/1 ''Argonne'' markings disguised as Israeli machine of Tayeset 200. Adl'A sent 18 F-84F from EC 1 to Lod AB in Israel. i've seen only pictures of EC 1/1 (red tail stripes) Thunderstreaks with israeli markings, but in the background of 1-NX picture EC 3/1 machine with david star and israeli style id stripes can be seen. Machine on the left is supposed to be 1-PJ, serial 52-9034. Adl'A Thunderstreaks left Israel on November 15th. They went to Akrotiri, Cyprus, where they repainted them imidately. I might be wrong with my assumptions, but I like green striped scheme of EC 3/1, and I will finisg it with israeli markings. For RF-84F I will use EC 4/33 ''Belfort'' markings from the box. and I also have the same markings in DP Casper decal sheet.

Time to start! I am joining the game with Special Hobby magnificent F-84F! Everything is in pristine condition. Since there is no aftermarket for F-84F, cox contents wil do. And it look so sweet! I pulled Sword RF-84F from the stash, to add pressure. I put content to smaller, sturdier top opening box. Trees wete cut, so everything would fit in smaller box, but nothing is started, as can be seen. And the decals:

Today I taped together PJ and SH fuselage halves. PJ fuselage is 3,67 mm shorter than SH. Checking the kit wingspan, I think the whole kit is uderscale, it is approx. 1/76 scale. Also obvious is downward angle of exhaust pipe. This can be corected as described in this thread: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235061517-pj-productions-172-f-84f-thunderstreak-re-issued/

Hi, Andre. I just put together fuselage halves, because I wanted to check curvature of rear fuselage. But it looks PJ is 2-3 mm shorter at first glance. I'll do more thorough comparison with pictures in a day or two... Cheers, Frank

Hi, gentlemen. I would like to play too. In my stash I have SH F-84F (looks so sweet), PJ Productions example and Sword RF-84E. As I work at glacial speed, I think I'll start with Special Hobby kit.

Hi, some progress from last time. I finished both ejection seats and started work on Skyhawk cockpit. Fujimi cockpit is bare, so I tried to replicate padding on cockpit sidewalls and created big pouch on starboard side. Eduard PE was used for instrument panel and side consoles. I am quite satisfied with result. Much more work was needed for front wheel well of SHAR. It is open when engine is not running, so some improvment was needed. Plasticard and stretched sprue were used here. I made wheel well roof and front bulkhead. It looks more busy now... Engine fan was primed with black primer and painted. All comments are welcome. thanks for watching, Frank

Most of the last weekend I spent finishing this little fella: But I managed to add some details to cockpit sidewalls and paint most of the cockpit. Airwaves PE were used for instrument panel and side consoles. I will add HUD after fitting the instrument panel cover. My eyes were tired and even more tired looking close up pictures. But in will be fine inside tiny cockpit, I guess... Thanks for watching, Frank

Congratulations, she looks beautiful! I only wish I could finish a kit in a month. And on that level...