Old Dog, New Tricks Part Deux -- 1/72 Trumpeter F-105D Thunderchief

[billn53]

A few months back I tackled my first build in a very, very long time... Hasegawa's 40-plus year old kit of the F-4E Phantom II. I undertook that build to refresh my long-neglected skills, and to learn a few new tricks along the way. I was quite satisfied by how things turned out, and were it not for a house move I would have immediately started a follow-on project. Well, I'm in my new place now and, although there is still a lot of unpacking to do, I'm at the point where I can spend time building again.

 

So the second project for this old dog is a much more modern kit, Trumpeter's 1/72 F-105D Thunderchief

 

 

with a full kit of aftermarket items:

 

 

... a couple of reference books to help me along...

 

 

and a spanking new work area (much better than the kitchen table from my prior build)

 

 

I am hopeful for an enjoyable building session!

 

As usual, we will start with the cockpit. In this case, Aries's resin aftermarket:

 

 

Wish me luck!!!

Edited June 19, 2017 by billn53

[Martian]

This looks interesting, I love the Thunderchief. What is the fit of that cockpit tub like? It looks like it could be "challenging". Mystic Martian hopes he is wrong but he foresees much resin dust in your near future.

 

Martian

[Christer A]

Ooooh I like the AM-load for this!

Will watch with great interest!

[billn53]

On 6/18/2017 at 9:20 PM, Martian Hale said:

This looks interesting, I love the Thunderchief. What is the fit of that cockpit tub like? It looks like it could be "challenging". Mystic Martian hopes he is wrong but he foresees much resin dust in your near future.

 

Martian

Martian -

I (ever the optimist) am hopeful that the resin cockpit tub will bit without too much difficulty. Here is a comparison of the Aires tub and the kit's

 

 

The new tub is wider than the kit's, but there's lots of room. The stock cockpit sits on a shelf inside the fuselage. Tabs at the front of the tub fit into rectangular boxes in the fuselage, and there are other tabs sticking out of the fuselage to hold the rear of the tub in position. All of these will probably need to be trimmed and/or removed to accommodate the aftermarket piece. See pic below:

 

 

I am more worried about the resin piece for the instrument panel and cockpit combing under the windscreen. It attaches to the tub at the bottom edge of the outside IP sections. Will definitely need to build some kind of reinforcement, otherwise the joint will break easily. Also, these pieces need to be assembled before installing into the fuselage, so getting everything into its proper place will be tricky.

 

 

(As you can tell from these pics, I haven't really made any progress these past few days. The joys of home owership!)

[Lifeline]

I got the same kit, cockpit resin, and even the decal sheet in my stash..

Definitely going to follow this thread!

 

Cheers,

Mario

 

[billn53]

I set aside some time this weekend to work on my Thud build. I had hoped to get the cockpit done but only got so far as the ejection seat. In addition to the Aires parts, I substituted some Eduard photoetch (seatbelts and ejection handles) and scratched an O2 mask hose and some cabling. Here are some pics. Trust me, it looks better in true life -- the camera sure brings out all of the flaws and magnifies them ten-fold!

 

 

 

 

And, a couple while testing fit in the cockpit tub:

 

 

 

Cheers!

 

 

[billn53]

With the seat done I'm itching to move on the cockpit tub and IP, but I thought it best to make sure everything fits together before doing any painting and detailing. Martian previously asked if the tub will fit, I can now say with certainty it can, only a wee bit of work is needed.

 

First, I narrowed the front of the tub to approximately the same width as the kit part. There's plenty of excess resin at the front, so no concerns there.

 

 

Next, through trial and error I found that I needed to make the 'shelf' on the inside of the fuselage wider (shown by the arrow in the pic below), and thin out the kit's fuselage where the cockpit fits (shaded area). Only a small amount of plastic needed to be removed, although I may need to grind out more once the cockpit tub's side walls are installed. I also added some plastic stock to help guide and hold the cockpit in place during assembly.

 

 

The photos below shows everything in place.

 

 

 

 

 

[Martian]

Much relieved to see the replacement cockpit fits OK.

 

Martian

[billn53]

Yes. And, I did a test fit with the tub's sidewalls and everything looks good to go with just a little fiddling needed.

 

 

[Lifeline]

2 hours ago, billn53 said:

Yes. And, I did a test fit with the tub's sidewalls and everything looks good to go with just a little fiddling needed.

 

 

Great works so far...

Love the ejection seat, I think I should consider to get me the Eduard PE.

 

Any chance you take the picture on how exactly the cockpit tub sits on the "shelf" and guidance structure you've made on the fuselage half?

 

 

Cheers,

Mario

[billn53]

6 hours ago, Lifeline said:

Great works so far...

Love the ejection seat, I think I should consider to get me the Eduard PE.

 

Any chance you take the picture on how exactly the cockpit tub sits on the "shelf" and guidance structure you've made on the fuselage half?

 

 

Cheers,

Mario

 

Sure, Mario. Here you go:

 

 

 

- Bill

[billn53]

Cockpit tub painted up (seat dry fitted just for photos, I'll wait to glue it in place when the build is nearly complete).

 

 

 

 

 

[Lifeline]

6 hours ago, billn53 said:

 

Sure, Mario. Here you go:

- Bill

 

Many thanks, Bill! \

It is exactly what I need...

 

Cheers,

Mario

[billn53]

Instrument panel mostly done. The center section is the Aires PE, handpainted. On the side panels I've used the Eduard pre-painted PE. They aren't quite large enough to cover the Aires panel side, so I've puttied and blended them in. Still have a bit of work there...

 

 

I had a near disaster when my paint shaker shook itself apart. Fortunately I was able to piece everything back together and, hopefully, with the help of a little CA it won't fall apart again.

 

 

Enough for tonight!

[billn53]

Continuing to work the IP and cockpit. Bent the PE rudders into shape and installed into the tub. A few other little things added and general touchups. Here's the IP in its current state:

 

 

and set into place on the tub just to give a feel of how things are going to look when all done:

 

 

 

Bad news is that my paint shaker is kaputt. Seems that some CA found its way down the shaft and seized it up. I managed to break it free but now it does nothing when I turn it on. I'm going to have to open it up and see what's going on... maybe there's a fuse that blew? I really love that little paint shaker, if it's dead for sure then I'll order a new one.

 

Good news is I received another reference book in the mail. Lots of good pictures plus some really detailed line drawings. See an example below (posted for review purposes only, just to be legit).

 

 

 

 

[billn53]

Continuing on with the Thud's office, I gave the tub a good wash of dark gray to bring out the shadows, and added the sidewalls. I did have to grind out the fuselage interior a bit more to correct the fit with sidewalls in place, but that gave me no issues.

 

 

 

Painted up the area forward of the IP with Testor's Aircraft Interior Black and some very dark gray for the canvas cover. The HUD lens is a disk punched out from aluminum foil, painted with transparent green and a drop of Future over top. I had to guess on the color as I couldn't find any color photos for reference. 

 

 

Underneath, I added a bit of spare resin to give this piece more support when I glue it in place.

 

 

Next step is to open up space in the kit's fuselage for the new IP and forward combing.

 

 

At this point, I'm calling the cockpit pretty much done and ready to move on to the rest of the build. The only thing I want to add is a Remove Before Flight tag on the pilot's seat (attached to the ejection handle). The PE RBF's I have won't fold up enough to look realistic, so I've ordered off a couple of alternatives to experiment with: Eduard superfabric RBFs and some paper printed RBFs I found on eBay.

 

Finally, a target of opportunity in my garden this morning:

 

 

That's all for now folks!

 

[billn53]

Okay, I need some help here... Does anyone have experience with Scale Aircraft Conversion's metal landing gear? I bought a set, thinking that the Thud's gear look very spindly and plastic ones could easily break. But I'm underwhelmed by the metal version. First, the metal is very soft and bends easily, so I'm not sure I would be gaining anything in strength. Secondly (and more important), the molding needs a lot of cleanup. See pic below. The kit's plastic gear are on the left, on the right are the corresponding SAC pieces. I tried cleaning up the SAC nose gear, but as you can see it's still pretty rough. The SAC main gear are straight out of the package.

 

All things considered, I believe I'll stick with the kit offerings, unless anyone can give me good reason otherwise. Any advice/guidance here would be most welcome!

 

 

 

Edited July 2, 2017 by billn53

[Lifeline]

Looks like the SAC's landing gear is shorter than the kit's?

or is it just the angle of the photo?

 

Never use one yet, but I've read somewhere it will (well, theoretically that is) offer better strength as long you don't bend it too much.

 

Cheers,

Mario

Edited July 2, 2017 by Lifeline

[billn53]

Lifeline -- The SAC gear do seem to be a bit on the small side. For example, the 'A' shaped piece for the nose gear is slightly narrower than the kit piece. Only by a hair, but enough to prevent it from sitting in the nose gear bay's receiving indents.

 

Today I moved on to a couple of new areas in this build. First up, the nose gear bay. The stock pieces are fairly well detailed, but one of my goals is to try out techniques new to me, so I decided to scratch some more detail. Photos of the actual aircraft show that the nose gear bay is full of hydraulic lines, electrical cables, and who know what else! No way can I duplicate everything! Instead, I selected a few major pipes and cables and got crackin'

 

First up was an electrical harness that runs from aft the forward bulkhead and disappears somewhere in the dark reaches at the rear of the bay. Here it is in process of being assembled from copper wire.

 

 

The rest of the detailing was done using various sizes of copper and lead wire, plus some Eduard PE. This is the result:

 

 

 

It might not look like much, but it was a full morning's work!

 

Setting that aside, I built up the exhaust after airbrushing the pieces with Vallejo MetalColor Acrylic "Jet Exhaust" and then dry-brushing the flame holder and exhaust nozzle.

 

 

 

 

A downside of this kit is the seam that runs down the length of the exhaust pipe, which is practically impossible to correct due to the interior ribbing. Hopefully, it won't be noticeable in normal lighting. Here it is in the bright light of the camera:

 

 

Next step is to build up the landing gear. Stay tuned... Same bat time, same bat channel!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 2, 2017 by billn53

[billn53]

As promised, I have started on the landing gear, having decided to ditch the SCS metal gear for the stock plastic ones. But, first I built up the main landing gear doors from the Eduard PE set. Each door is two pieces laminated together with superthin CA. After the glue had set, I used the original kit doors to as a mold to bend the PE ones into the correct shape.

 

 

I always dread using superthin CA, as it seems to always find a way to get on my fingers! This time, I tried a different technique. I bought a box of cheap lab pipettes from Amazon, and let capillary action draw the CA into the pipette stem. Then, it's just a matter of touching the pipette wherever I want a bit of CA. Sometimes I get a bit more than I want, but a touch with a paper towel quickly draws off any excess.

 

 

But now, back to the landing gear. First, I airbrushed the kit parts with Vallejo's aluminum Metal Color acrylic. After allowing a good 24 hours to dry, I began assembling the gear. The Thud carries a total of four landing/taxi lights -- one on each main gear and two smaller ones on the nose gear beneath the ILS radar reflector. A while back I had read in another post about using miniature lenses to represent landing lights, and I had bought some in the appropriate size for this kit.

 

 

The lights for the main gear were no problem to install, but the nose gear lights gave me fits! First, Trumpeter molded these lights onto the piece with the ILS reflector, so I had to cut those off. The problem now was that there was nothing left that I could use to attach the replacement lights. My solution was to drill a very tiny hole through the kit part, below the ILS reflector, into which I threaded a thin plastic rod (actually, a bristle from a household cleaning brush). That gave me a place to glue my lights, but my troubles weren't over. I tried using thick CA, but whenever I tried to glue a light into place, it fell off before the CA could set. Mind you, this is a very tiny light and my hands aren't as steady as they once were! I eventually gave up on the CA and instead used good, old fashioned Testor's tube cement. Results of my troubles are shown below:

 

 

 

 

And now for something completely different! On returning home this afternoon I saw on my doorstep what I, at first, thought was an old shoelace. I nearly stepped on it before realizing it was alive.

 

 

You can't tell the scale from the pic, but this little guy was at most 1/4 inch wide, yet disproportionately long. I gathered him up and transplanted him to my garden where he will hopefully find a good home.

Edited July 4, 2017 by billn53

[Vultures1]

Great WIP thread, really enjoying it.  Associated wildlife photos are a bonus!

[billn53]

Yesterday was a holiday here in the States (out of respect for the British hosting this site, I won't go any further than that). I had hoped to some get time in for building but events conspired against me. I was only able to get a couple of things done.

 

Trumpeter would have you place the engine exhaust much too deep in the fuselage, the nozzle should be even with where the airbrake petals attach. I put it in the correct location but with the lack of a forward attachment point, I had to improvise some bracing to keep it from wobbling around.

 

 

I also added wiring details to the landing gear. This is part of the Eduard PE set, which saved some effort but it was still quite a fiddly job and took longer than I would have liked.

 

 

I'm just about at the point where I can close up the fuselage. Although none of the reviews or builds I've seen online have mentioned need for nose weight, I believe I'll add some anyway just to be on the safe side.

 

On a side note, I found that there is a local chapter of IPMS in my city (Huntsville, Alabama) and attended my first meeting a couple days ago. They're hosting a show & contest on August 26 -- that gives me about 7 weeks to finish my Thud (less, actually... I will be on business travel for the better part of a week in mid-August). Better get cracking!

 

Edited July 5, 2017 by billn53

[Christer A]

Nothing better than a show to get the creative juices flowing

Nice bit of detailing in the gear bays!

[Booty003]

Loving the attention to detail that you are showing to the mighty Thud, those main gear legs with the added cabling look fantastic, combined with the gear doors are going to look absolutely stunning.  Great work.

 

Phil

[jean]

This is promising to be a really superb build to follow. So far it is quite impressive.

Re the snake, we have the same here: Striped sand snakes and other similar ones. All extremely fast snakes, and totally harmless. For you to be able to catch it, it must have been half asleep. Or you have bionic reflexes.

 

Great show!

JR