Hasegawa 1/32 QF-86E

[Sabrejet]

Since I am not the most prolific modeller, I thought I would post some photos of a conversion I did a while back, based on Hasegawa's 1/32 F-86F-40. I decided to convert it to a US Army QF-86E target drone, an aircraft based in real life on the Canadair Sabre 5. The kit itself is not too bad, but to improve it a bit I did the following main bits:

 

1. Shortened the Main and Nose Landing Gear struts (Hasegawa represents them in a near weight-off-wheels configuration, making the gear too long for an on-ground a/c).

2. Cut out the speed brake wells and deepened & detailed them.

3. Discarded the kit speed brakes (which are too thin and lack detail) & scratch-built new speed brakes.

4. Discarded the simplified kit ejection seat & scratch-built a new one.

5. Detailed the aft cockpit & sliding canopy areas, which are simplified in the kit to allow the canopy to slide fore & aft.

6. Repositioned the drop tank attachments inboard to the correct butt plane position.

7. Filled and re-scribed panel lines.

 

For the QF-86E conversion:

 

1. Shortened the wings 12 scale inches each side, filled the slats and re-scribed panel lines to replicate the "hard-edge" Sabre 5 wing; added wing fences.

2. Made various fuselage aerials, wing and fin-tip miss-distance indicators, drone control panel (on instrument coaming), added destruct status light panels on fuselage.

3. Added TV camera in nose; also various cooling intakes around the airframe.

4. Blanked off machine gun blast panel (this sits slightly proud on the full-sized aircraft).

5. Made new radar pod for port wing position, fitted on a modified ejector-type pylon.

6. Heat-formed new ventral intakes (lower fuselage, trailing edge of wing area), which are unique to Orenda-engined Sabres.

7. Not shown in all photos, I also added a coaxial cable to the lower aft fuselage aerial and a smoke generator pipe along the top side of the starboard fuselage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't hold your breath for the next conversion!

[Alpha Delta 210]

Wow! That is fantastic. I love the unusual scheme and subtle weathering, but the attention to detail really makes it! Well done.

[Tony Edmundson]

Love it !!   Great job !!  Looks like your port speedbrake needs a bit more droop to match the stbd one.

 

i like the changes you made to the Hasegawa kit to represent a Canadair machine.

 

cheers, Tony

[spruecutter]

Nice work!

[frankie]

WOW !!!