1:72 Grumman/General Dynamics F-111B "Beta Tomcat" Part 2

[TonyTiger66]

Good to see you back at the bench Bill .

 

I hope your health is still improving and the sinuses allowing a bit of proper breathing.

 

She really is looking like an F-111B now. It's going to be a very attractive model  

 

I'm home alone too, still stuck in bed but I have a kettle, teabags, cup soups, TV and Britmodeller. No 'to do' list for me !

 

Looking forward to the next update,

Best regards

TonyT

[Max Headroom]

1 hour ago, Navy Bird said:

Unfortunately, she left me a honey-do list a mile long - but I figured out a way to work on the F-111. Finish the to-do list first and fast. Wifey will be so proud.     

First off, sorry to hear about the family loss. Please accept my condolences.

 

Glad to see you back in harness whittling the plastic.

 

Now then the 'honey-do' list. Between you, me and the gate post, never rattle through the chores, otherwise Herself will find ways to fill the void with more tasks. My tactic is to give off an air of well meaning incompetence. Keep expectations low and then under deliver. 

 

Trevor

[Navy Bird]

5 minutes ago, Max Headroom said:

My tactic is to give off an air of well meaning incompetence. Keep expectations low and then under deliver. 

 

Sounds like my modelling!

 

Wifey won't know I've worked on the model, I'll let her believe that it took me the entire time to finish off her list. Unless she reads BM, then I'm in for a shellacking. 

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Jabba]

Good to see you back Bill, and this model progressing well.

[Martian]

The model is beginning to look rather handsome Bill and I never thought I would find myself saying that about any F-111.

 

Martian

[keefr22]

Yep, great to see you able to get back to the bench & progress on the 'vark Bill (wonder if the Navy would have used the Aardvark nickname?)

 

Hope you're feeling much better now

 

Keith

 

 

[Navy Bird]

Thanks, mates, I am indeed feeling much better. The sinuses aren't completely back to normal, but at least I don't have to breathe through my mouth anymore. Jeeesh.

 

Let's see, where was I? Oh yeah, the camera on the tail. Here are some photos that give you an idea of how it was shaped, and how it was attached. It appears to me that the bottom of the housing was curved to match the top of the pod on top of the tail, and that the sides of the camera housing wrapped part way around the pod. 

 

 

 

 

I decided to make this out of leftover resin pour blocks. I always save most of these, as I find the resin is often easier to deal with than sheet styrene. I found a piece that was almost a perfect match for the width of the IR pod on top of the tail, and cut it into the basic shape and size. It was fairly easy to sand it to the final shape, including the concave curvature on the bottom, which was a happy serendipity of the curvature in the pour block itself and my rat tail file. Here's what I whipped up:

 

 

 

This is tiny little fella, and he wasn't so easy to hold onto while sanding! I think I sanded off a few fingerprints in the process, and if I ever wish to change professions that might come in handy. I superglued the guy onto the top of the tail to prepare for final shaping (easier to hold onto this way!).

 

 

 

It's pretty close already, but I think the front slope needs adjustment, and the back edge needs to feather into the IR pod more cleanly. But I think it will work out.

 

I'm getting dangerously close to painting this bird - I usually start with the underside white on US Navy aircraft in the proper Light Gull Gray scheme. In this case, though, I think I'll paint the intake ramps LGG first to allow for them to be masked off easier. Then the white and finally the topside LGG. As you can see from the colour photo of 151972 sitting on the tarmac above, the intake ramps are overall LGG - none of the underside white wraps around onto them.

 

I just realised that I'm running low on FS17875 White - could a trip to my local hobby shop be in store? Will I be able to control the primal urge to acquire yet more kits, photoetch, and decals...gawd, I hope not!  

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

21 hours ago, keefr22 said:

...wonder if the Navy would have used the Aardvark nickname?

 

Sea Vark?  Noah's Vark?  Vark Royal?

 

I too never thought I'd consider an F-111 attractive (impressive, imposing, awesome, scary, enormous, powerful... yes - attractive, no), but the nose is much prettier, and almost any aircraft would look great in that classic USN 60-70s scheme.   yum yum.  

 

[Great to see you back, too, Bill].

[keefr22]

26 minutes ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Noah's Vark?  Vark Royal?

  

[Andre B]

On 2017-07-24 at 5:25 PM, Navy Bird said:

 

 

 

 

I have always wondered about the different shades of grey in front of the "NAVY" letters on that picture. I doesn't seem that it is any shadow on that part of the fuselage. And the different shade of grays contines on to the fins on the underside of the fuselage.

Also a good picture concerning the nose demarkation line between the back and the grey/white. The black nos ends not that far aft that one thinks concerning the "nose jobb instruction".

Cheers / André

Edited July 25, 2017 by Andre B

[Cookenbacher]

Glad to see you back at it Bill, and breathing well to boot!

[stever219]

On 10/07/2017 at 2:21 PM, Andre B said:

One problem is that most peopla here are talking inches where most of us in Europe talk millimeter. But it´s not an big problem and I will found out how to deal with the wheels wheen the time comes.

Cheers / André

 

Ps. I have an mould to make new "noses" if someone want to build an F-111B...

 

Multiply inches by 25.4 to get millimetres so for 42 x 13 inch wheels you get approximately 1210 x 325.  Sadly for mainland European modellers the F-111 was built in good, old-fashioned Imperial feet and inches.

 

Bill, looking at your two starboard side shots of '972 (post on 25th July) there appears to be a forward extension of the camera fairing below the "window" with a short rectangular ramp down to the top of the fin-top fairing.  It also looks as though the camera housing comes down as far as the horizontal centre-line of the fairing.

 

With reference to Andre B's comment on the different shades of grey there appears to be a discontinuity in the demarcation between the grey and white immediately forward of the ventral strake: I wonder if '972 had been the subject of some spare-part surgery.  You can just make out the line of the forward edge of the engine access door in the in-flight shot and there appears to be a uniform colour in that area.

 

Like others here I've never been a great fan of the F-111, even though my late grandparents bought me the original Airfix F-111A, (shades of "the excuse Wilson needed to kill off TSR2") in pale blue plastic and USAF markings but I cannot help but admire the work you're putting into this model despite your trials and tribulations and looking forward to seeing the next instalment.

Edited July 31, 2017 by stever219

[Tomoshenko]

Ditto the fellow modeller comments Bill, glad to see you back. Yes breathing well again too, I find breathing most useful 

[Tailspin Turtle]

972 was crash landed twice after inflight emergencies. The first was in 1966, when the misrigged nose gear doors cut a utility hydraulic line in the nose wheel well when the gear was retracted on takeoff. The aircraft departed the runway after touchdown because the nose gear was cocked hard over to the left. This resulted in the F-111A nose landing gear being replaced by an F-111B's. In October 1969, the left overwing fairing came loose in flight and embedded itself in the top of the fuselage, bending control rods to the horizontal stabilizer; an emergency arrested landing was made back at Point Mugu. It was repaired each time and eventually was the last F-111B on flight status, For some reason, by the time it was stricken its F-111B nose landing gear had been replaced by an F-111A's.

[Martian]

More meticulous work for us as always Bill. As to the visit to your LMS, we all know that your stash will be increasing. You are a modeller cannot fight what nature has made you, so why try and why would you want to anyway? I am sure if I think hard enough, I will come up with some reasoning along the lines of modelling is good for your health, that you can put to Mrs Bill.

 

Martian

[Navy Bird]

Sorry for the lapse in my reporting, but I've not made any progress. We've been much too busy cleaning out my brother-in-law's house, and believe me - 50 years' worth of clutter & junk is a royal pain to sort through and dispose of (or donate as the case may be). The fact that his house is right on the bay and requires you to walk down 46 steps to get there means that you must walk up 46 steps to egress. (Or was it 43 steps? I can't remember.) There is a reason why I never bought one of those stair-stepper machines.    

 

@stever219 - you're right that the camera attachment plates "wrap around" the upper half of the pod on top of the tail. I made my best guess as to the thickness of that material and determined that it would only amount to several molecules in 1:72. I decided to skip that part entirely, lazy boy that I am! 

 

Thanks to @Tailspin Turtle for the nice description of the accident damage that 151972 suffered. I haven't decided yet whether to try and duplicate the different gray tones on the aft fuselage, lazy boy that I am! But it was quite noticeable on the real thing...

 

@Martian Hale - I managed to get out of the local model shop without increasing my stash! Unless you can call getting a new airbrush increasing one's stash. I figured it was probably time for a new one, especially when one considers how crummy my paint jobs are. Anyway, I bought a Harder & Steenbeck Infinity CR Plus Two in One set. And promptly forgot to pick up the white paint that I needed. What a dolt! I had to go back - and then I increased my stash by picking up the Airfix Tucano kit. I figured it will look nice with all that CMK resin added to it.

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. I promise to spend some more time on the model. Haven't I said that before?

[keefr22]

9 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

especially when one considers how crummy my paint jobs are.

 

Strewth Bill, if your paint jobs are 'crummy', there are no words to describe how bad mine are...!! 

 

Keith

[Navy Bird]

Wow, it's been a lot of work tidying up the estate of my late brother-in-law. In addition to cleaning out the house and preparing it for sale we've had numerous visits to the solicitors to get the financial side settled. Lawyers, bloody lawyers! What was it Shakespeare said?  

 

I'm still quite neglectful of my modelling duties, but I have managed to finish up the cockpit coaming (adding the HUD and some "box" that is pretty obvious in the photos - not sure what it was, but I thought it needed to be there). I've also blended in the camera on top of the tail to make it look a bit more like the real thing. Not much to report really.

 

I have, however, spent a lot of time "eradicating" Photobucket links from my threads here on Britmodeller. I've kept bookmarks for my WIP and RFI threads, and I've converted several of those over to Flickr links. Gawd, I hope they don't follow suit and try to do the same as Photobucket - then I'd have to do this all over again. What I will have difficulty switching over to Flickr are those posts of mine which aren't part of my WIPs and RFIs. I don't know what or where they are! Once I kill the Photobucket account, any links in those posts will break. Arghh. 

 

I hate computers.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[keefr22]

5 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

I hate computers.

 

I hate photobucket...!!

 

And I agree with you about solicitors Bill - my Mother in Law passed away in June & I've lost count of the visits my wife & her dad have had to make to theirs to sort out probate, power of attorney, blah,blah,blah. And of course none of them are free...!!

 

Keith

[Gondor44]

My girlfriends mother passed away back in January, its only taken the solicitors until the end of last week to sort out selling her half of the house to her brother let alone anything else!!

 

Gondor

[Fritag]

1 hour ago, keefr22 said:

And I agree with you about solicitors Bill

Of course - members of the English Bar are by contrast dem fine chaps...........you meant to add that didn't you Keith?

[keefr22]

5 minutes ago, Fritag said:

Of course - members of the English Bar are by contrast dem fine chaps...........you meant to add that didn't you Keith?

 

Errm, er, ummm, yes of course Steve, fine upstanding fellows all....  

 

(is there a Welsh Bar, like in the local pub...maybe 'our' guy is a member of that?! ) 

 

Keith

[Michael louey]

oops sorry Bill - I posted on your Part 1 -

 

Should really be here:

 

Not sure if anyone is interested but I had to pop into the city Metro Hobbies store in Melbourne at lunch. This branch is closing down and is having a clearing sale. They still have a store in Box Hill. The city store is the old VHC mentioned in this thread.

 

The reason for this post is that while rummaging through their decal sheets which are marked 50% off, I bumped into the 1/72 F111B Pete's Hanger conversion. They must have found one in the back rooms while clearing up. I know it's quite rare but I'm only really interested in F111C's and G's.

 

There web site is here -

https://metrohobbies.com.au/

 

The item doesn't seem to show up in their web site which I'm not surprised about but if you're keen, you could probably email (or phone them if you're in Australia)

 

The shop closes Sep 1 and I guess this item will get sent to their other store if not sold by then.

 

Cheers

 

Michael

Edited August 23, 2017 by Michael louey

[Tailspin Turtle]

9 hours ago, Michael louey said:

oops sorry Bill - I posted on your Part 1 -

 

Should really be here:

 

Not sure if anyone is interested but I had to pop into the city Metro Hobbies store in Melbourne at lunch. This branch is closing down and is having a clearing sale. They still have a store in Box Hill. The city store is the old VHC mentioned in this thread.

 

The reason for this post is that while rummaging through their decal sheets which are marked 50% off, I bumped into the 1/72 F111B Pete's Hanger conversion. They must have found one in the back rooms while clearing up. I know it's quite rare but I'm only really interested in F11!C's and G's.

 

There web site is here -

https://metrohobbies.com.au/

 

The item doesn't seem to show up in their web site which I'm not surprised about but if you're keen, you could probably email (or phone them if you're in Australia)

 

The shop closes Sep 1 and I guess this item will get sent to their other store if not sold by then.

 

Cheers

 

Michael

Is it the decal only or the conversion as well?

[Michael louey]

10 hours ago, Tailspin Turtle said:

Is it the decal only or the conversion as well?

Hi,

 

It's both the decal and conversion bits. I could see resin and maybe a brass undercarriage. It was right next to a Pete's Hangar C130 brass undercarriage which I bought (for no good reason other than it was half price and it "might come in handy" )

 

Cheers

 

Michael

Edited August 23, 2017 by Michael louey