Supermarine's best? [Now with added Seafire 47... & Seafang!]

[corsaircorp]

Blink ! I already popped in Dear Crisp !

So the Trumpy Seafang is good ???

My Seafire XVII is stalling a lot since I must buy some Silicon and copy my rectified nose !

If you want one, just PM me around february !

And then I restart my comparative building.

The seafire 47 will have folded wings loaded with Woooosh Boom things !

But the Mk 24 will have the exposed griffon !

I will try to have my PR XIX finished before 2017's end !

Thanks for the pics ! The Yeovilton reserves, it's a dream for me did you saw the Wyvern ??

She's another one of my weird conversion projects

And when I get in Telford, I found this one....

Result ???

I'm now searching for 2 Airfix 1/48 buccaneer ....

A S2 FAA one, A S2 desert pink (Hello sailor... Is that surprising !!) and now turning a S2 into a S.1 Silly but ...

Corsaircorpable !! 

Great job, I really enjoyed your build !

Aaaand Mojo is now back up seemingly !

Have a great modelling time.

Sincerely.

Corsaircorp 

[Richard E]

1 hour ago, keefr22 said:

 

I reckon when he finishes this lot he'll need another mojo restorer. Something like a forgotten Sea King maybe.... 

 

Keith

 

There's a floaty thing out there somewhere as well isn't there ??

[CJP]

3 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Enter THE FANG.  I am using the only game in town for the Seafang in 1/48 (as far as I know), namely the Trumpeter kit.  It's bit basic in places, and I'd lay you money that the cockpit is completely made-up - but the fit is actually excellent.

 

 

 

I found another 1/48 Seafang by Falcon models but it is a vacform kit - still available from High Planes Models as far as I know - a build thread in 2009 by Mike of BM fame on following link and happliy still retains the photos - http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/30701-falcon-148-supermarine-seafang/

 

no idea why the text is formatting with spaces

Edited December 15, 2017 by CJP

[Cookenbacher]

Ahhh, nothing better than a multi-SpitSeafire build.

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

I wasn’t aware of the Falcon vacform (& @Mike made a predictably great job of it - though I’m dubious about the spinner length even after his work) - but I’d have gone with the Trumpy kit anyway.  His build confirms my suspicions about Trumpeter’s fictional (nothing like a Spit-/Sea-fire) cockpit, too; the side panels visible in the shot before I joined the fuselage... completely made up.

 

It was worth looking at that build for another reason, though.  Despite knowing 100% that the Seafang wing was the same as the Attacker wing, it had never occurred to me to look at an Attacker for the wheel wells.  Duuuuuh; I have a fair amount of Attacker reference stuff - there is almost nothing re the Seafang.

 

@keefr22 and @Richard E, fret not about Sea King or Ark Royal; they are definitely not abandoned or forgotten.

 

@corsaircorp, you should be able to find a couple of Airfix Buccs if you are patient.  I have a very similar plan (a white 801NAS S1 & a late-70s Ark Royal 809 NAS S2, in my case), and I acquired two kits earlier this year for not very much.  I had to wait a bit, but they come up fairly regularly.  If you haven’t already acquired the 1/48 S1 intakes, let me know; I seem to have bought a set at two separate shows (D’oh!), so I have a spare set & you’d be very welcome to it.

Edited December 15, 2017 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[Mike]

1 hour ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

@Mike made a predictably great job of it - though I’m dubious about the spinner length even after his work

 

Thanks - and me too.  Didn't, and still doesn't look quite right

[corsaircorp]

1 hour ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

I wasn’t aware of the Falcon vacform (& @Mike made a predictably great job of it - though I’m dubious about the spinner length even after his work) - but I’d have gone with the Trumpy kit anyway.  His build confirms my suspicions about Trumpeter’s fictional (nothing like a Spit-/Sea-fire) cockpit, too; the side panels visible in the shot before I joined the fuselage... completely made up.

 

It was worth looking at that build for another reason, though.  Despite knowing 100% that the Seafang wing was the same as the Attacker wing, it had never occurred to me to look at an Attacker for the wheel wells.  Duuuuuh; I have a fair amount of Attacker reference stuff - there is almost nothing re the Seafang.

 

@keefr22 and @Richard E, fret not about Sea King or Ark Royal; they are definitely not abandoned or forgotten.

 

@corsaircorp, you should be able to find a couple of Airfix Buccs if you are patient.  I have a very similar plan (a white 801NAS S1 & a late-70s Ark Royal 809 NAS S2, in my case), and I acquired two kits earlier this year for not very much.  I had to wait a bit, but they come up fairly regularly.  If you haven’t already acquired the 1/48 S1 intakes, let me know; I seem to have bought a set at two separate shows (D’oh!), so I have a spare set & you’d be very welcome to it.

Hello Crisp !

Thank, I am candidate for your S1 air intake. Selled !

Let me know how to do for the transaction

Sincerely.

CC

[moaning dolphin]

Nice move to introduce the Fang, this build seems to have started with the sublime and is eeking towards the ridiculous! Not too sure where I sit with the Fang, on the one hand it looks sleek and slender but shift view slightly it starts looking a bit beefy and ugly like a Seafire having taken a few dodgy steroids. Looking forward to journey this thread is going to lead me, wherever that may be!

 

Bob

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

I promised I'd photograph the Seafang alongside the Seafire 46.  It's been quite interesting, actually - shows how deceptive Mk.1 Eyeball measurements can be.  Of course, for these purposes we have to assume that both Messrs Airfix and Trumpeter are accurate; they probably aren't perfect (no-one ever is), but I reckon they're good enough for now.  For these comparisons, keep in mind that the 'Fang wings look artificially short because the outer (folding) sections are missing.

 

Here they are 'Fang & 'Fire alongside one another (apologies for parallax distortion).  

 

I temporarily fitted the 'Fang's undercarriage (an encouragingly firm alignment and stable un-glued fit), which meant I could place 'Fang on top of 'Fire, with the rudder hinge aligned as closely as I could manage:

 

The fuselage length looks almost identical, though it is a very different shape, especially seen from side-on.  The cockpit opening is in pretty much the same position, but the most obvious difference is the placement of the wing.  The principle difference between 'Fang & even the last marks of 'Fire was the laminar flow wing, which had a narrower chord, a totally different airfoil section, and got rid of the last vestiges of Mitchell's ellipsis.  What I hadn't realised is that it looks as though it was also placed noticeably further forward; I haven't measured it, but a couple of feet?  

[Edit: of course the main spar was in a different place in the wing because of the airfoil; it's quite possible that the main spars were in the same position - in fact I'd bet on it]

 

The other major differences (which I already knew) are underneath the wing.  The 'Fang undercarriage retracted inwards and had a far wider track - had it gone into service, this would have made it far, far easier to operate from a deck.  The Seafire series slowly came up to an acceptable standard through its life as pilots got truly used to it, but it was only ever a compromise as a Naval fighter; it was hard to deck land because of the view over the nose and the narrow track undercarriage, and it had (relatively) woeful endurance / range.  Even a cursory search for images of operational Seafires brings up an awful lot of pictures of deck landing accidents, with aircraft perched on their nose and/or with a broken fuselage just ahead of the tail.

 

Here is the 'Fire from nose on.  If you ignore the monster double airscrew, it is instantly recognisable as a member of the Spitfire family.  

 

Not so the 'Fang; FAR bigger (or at least wider; they don't seem to be as deep) radiators, plus that wide track undercarriage.  

 

[Ignore what the radiators look like internally; they aren't complete yet and were simply taped on for this comparison.  That odd shape inside the cowling is part of Trumpeter's gearing system to make the props counter-rotate; this is being omitted from my model - I've never been a fan of moving parts on models, and in this case it adds considerably to elements that could go wrong].

 

If the Pacific War had gone on for another couple of years (which was the assumption most people were working to when these aircraft were being designed), then the Seafang would have been a better Naval aircraft than the Seafire.  When the time came, however, it was deemed not to be a big enough advance on the Seafire 47.  An even starker comparison would have been with the Sea Fury, which was a much better bet as a Naval fighter than either of the Supermarine offerings.

 

I am away up to Nottinghamshire tomorrow to see my Mum (93 last week), and we're off out this evening, so there will be no more modelling until Sunday at the earliest.  I will still be on the forum, but not at my bench.

 

More soon

 

Crisp

 

 

Edited December 15, 2017 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[keefr22]

Belated Happy Birthday wishes to your Mum Crisp, have a good trip!

 

Keith

[giemme]

8 minutes ago, keefr22 said:

Belated Happy Birthday wishes to your Mum Crisp, have a good trip!

The same from me!

 

Fascinating comparison between the two models, Crisp! Thanks for sharing

Ciao

[CJP]

Hi Ex-FAAWAFU  Firstly can I say that Seafire 46 looks great! - interesting to see the Seafang coming together and the issue of the wing position - I have found another couple of articles on the Trumpeter Spiteful which is essentially the same airframe but does mention the wing position, the first is a review of the kit and there is also mention of a BM build by Andrew Jones 2012 of the Trumpeter Spiteful but as per norm the Photobucket thing has wiped out the photos in Andrews article which is really annoying but the post still has a lot of useful text on the build.

http://www.aeroscale.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=Reviews&file=index&req=showcontent&id=8164

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234917340-trumpeter-spiteful/

What a shame no Spiteful/Seafang made it in to preservation - luckily only one? Attacker did

CJP

[corsaircorp]

Hello Crisp,

Best wishes to your mother !

93... That's great, should we both get at that age ... And still making models !!!

Have a nice week end !

Sincerely.

Corsaircorp

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Prompted by CJP’s post above, I’ve been doing some more research into the Trumpy-Fang.  To the surprise of absolutely no-one, I am sure, there appear to be some fairly major accuracy issues with it.  The wings are too narrow, especially at the root - the leading edge is in about the right place, byt the trailing edge not.  The nose - like a good few Griffon Spit- & Seafire kits - is a bit too svelte.  And the rudder is not that great.   You already know I am replacing the rudder.  I will not be fixing the wings or nose.

 

The only new issue that I will be fixing is the undercarriage legs; Trumpeter’s are an entirely fictional shape.  When I’m back home I’ll illustrate this, but for now just take my word for it.  Buzarrely, the real shape is LESS complex than the Mustang-like “inverted question mark” shape as provided by Trumpeter.  Since this will make a significant improvement to the look of the kit without a stupid amount of work, I plan to scratch build new legs.  I also have some resin wheels acquired for the ‘Fire 46 build, but not used in the end cos I thought Airfix’s looked good enough, so they’ll probably be brought into action.

 

I definitely don’t want to get bogged down in making this a conpletely accurate ‘Fang; to be honest I included it in this build as a bit of fun - new legs comes within the bounds of a “bit of fun” build, but major nose and wing rework does not!

 

 

 

 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Illustration of what I was saying above:

 

Trumpeter wing shape:

 

Real wing shape:

 

The Trumpeter trailing edge doesn't go far enough back.  But there is no way i am fixing that!

 

[Great to see that the Griffon lived up to its reputation for leaking!  This particular aircraft seems to be a Spiteful-Seafang hybrid; no folding wings, but an arrestor hook, and a single 5-blade airscrew rather than the twin counter-rotators]

 

Trumpeter undercarriage leg:

 

Real undercarriage:

 

The real one is essentially a straight line.  Pretty solid, too; I suspect the Trumpeter leg is too slender, though I haven't measured it yet.  Their retraction jacks etc are wrong, too, because they have a kink in them which is clearly absent on the real McCoy.  Very fixable, I think.

 

One thing has surprised me.  You will recall that I replaced the Airfix airscrew blades with resin ones, because the Airfix offerings were far too dainty and slender to transfer all that raw Griffon-icity to the air; look at the airscrew(s) on the 'Fire 46 above.  Having looked at Trumpeter's offerings as I took them out of the box, I expected to have to do the same thing - but actually, as you can see above, the real blades were relatively slim at the tips.

 

I reckon VB865 has the Seafire 47 curved windscreen in this picture - the windscreen configuration varied quite a lot from airframe to airframe, apparently.  The Trumpy windscreen is the more normal angular job, but I might see whether my unused curved screen from the Airfix kit has any chance of fitting (if not, no great problem, since both types were used).

Edited December 16, 2017 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[Brandy]

That wing doesn't look too bad to me, (on my phone btw). It looks to me as though a simple plastic card fillet could fix the rear trailing edge where it joins the fuselage, but you're far closer to the problem and I'm sure you would have considered that if it were an option!

 

Ian

[71chally]

The wing positioning looks reasonable to me.

The aircraft in the underside shot is an F.31 which didn't have the folding wings and had the single 5 bladed prop, only the six F.32s featured folding wings and the contra-props.

 

Looking forward to this build.  I have got some tech stuff on the Spiteful/Seafang, will see if it includes cockpit shots.

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

I don't think I am explaining this very well - though the fact that it is not immediately obvious only reinforces my decision not to re-work the kit.

 

This is hard to show, not least because of issues like lens distortion.  None the less:

 

Real Seafang - indeed, the very airframe I plan to build; Trumpeter's transfers feature two WIF schemes (fair enough) and one RN scheme... where they get the serial wrong.  They had 6 to choose from... they don't help themselves, do they?

Sorry, as I was saying... real Seafang.  Note how the wing fillet goes right to the rear edge of the canopy (in fact slightly beyond it) and the training edge is behind the windscreen join.

 

Now Trumpy-fang

 

Both wing fillet and trailing edge are too far forward.  Not very much, but it's definitely there.  The front edge of the wing is in the right place (though hard to tell here because of the cannons), which means that the wing is slightly too skinny at the root.  Anyway, it is quite subtle and I am not going to change it anyway, so I don't know why I mentioned it!

 

In other, happier, news the Richard Franks Attacker book gives me some excellent material for addressing the fictional undercarriage legs:

 

 

Edited December 17, 2017 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[giemme]

I totally agree that you shouldn't bother fixing the wing, Crisp. The issue there only became clear to me after your last explanation - it's really not evident.

I enjoyed the ride, though - this is a totally unlnown subject to me

Ciao

[gingerbob]

You are correct that the Trumpeter Seafang is NOT accurate.  But it takes a lot of fixing, so I wouldn't bother if I were you!  (Here's a thread I began with some relevant information, for people who can't look away from a crash scene.)  Someday I'll get back to that project...

 

There was also the "Silver Cloud" Seafang (and Spiteful), but that's a kit that is as inaccurate as Trumpeter's (in totally different ways, of course), with the added feature of being the sort of kit that gave "short run" its connotations.

 

Note that different contra-props were tried, and there's one Seafang with a VERY beefy one.

 

bob

[71chally]

I see what you mean with the fillet, though the wing trailing edge positioning looks pretty reasonable.  I would say that Trumpy have captured the 'look' of the real thing.

Not that it changes anything, but that last photo looks a bit compressed in the fore and aft sense, giving it a tubby appearance.

 

Modelling - what looks right to the interpreter v true drawn line accuracy is a long subject of its own!

 

 

Talking of biggish Seafangs, there was also the 32nd Iconicair resin kit.

Edited December 17, 2017 by 71chally

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

5 minutes ago, 71chally said:

Talking of biggish Seafangs, there was also the 32nd Iconicair resin kit.

There was (and still is, I think; I saw them at Telford again this year).  Luckily I am a 1/48 man... _mostly.

 

@gingerbob, even with the photos gone the way of all Photobucket-ry, that thread is not for the faint-hearted!  I am sticking to my decision to address the rudder (which I was doing anyway because I don't like fixed rudders) and the undercarriage, but leave the rest as it is.  However, the slim propellor blades just don't look convincing to me, so I am going to experiment with looking at how the Barracudacast replacement blades that I used on the 'Fire 46 - see photo above - look on the 'Fang.  Any evidence of VERY beefy airscrews that you have would be gratefully received!  If the resin blades don't look right and/or don't fit, then I still have the original undamaged Trumpy ones to go with.

[gingerbob]

If you use the "Photobucket fix" patch, you should be able to see the images again.  (I use Firefox, and it works for me.)

 

As for very beefy blades... oops, well, it appears that I may have been mis-remembering a five-bladed, non-contra example, which you can see here.

 

Personally I would also suggest "shortening" the radiators, to make them less deep.  It's quite a simple adjustment, and will make them look a lot more like the real thing.  You'd have to fix the "screens" to fit, of course.

 

Edit: Oh, also, since the subject of spinners has already come up, the Trumpeter kit's is (are?) too "pointy".  Compare to your Seafire 47's!

Edited December 17, 2017 by gingerbob

[71chally]

47 minutes ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

However, the slim propellor blades just don't look convincing to me,

In this head on shot the blades don't look that wide

https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1947/1947 - 0438.html?search=seafang

[CJP]

 

great photo of the F31 Seafang with 5 blade prop gingerbob