Whirly

Posted in RFI. Thank you all again for the positive comments!

The North American XF-108 Rapier was a proposed long-range, high-speed interceptor aircraft designed by North American Aviation intended to defend the United States from supersonic Soviet strategic bombers. The aircraft would have cruised at speeds around Mach 3 (3,200 km/h; 2,000 mph) with an unrefueled combat radius over 1,000 nautical miles (1,900 km; 1,200 mi), and was equipped with radar and missiles offering engagement ranges up to 100 miles (160 km) against bomber-sized targets. To limit development costs, the program shared engine development with the North American XB-70 Valkyrie strategic bomber program, and used a number of elements of earlier interceptor projects. The program had progressed only as far as the construction of a single wooden mockup when it was cancelled in 1959, due to a shortage of funds and the Soviets' adoption of ballistic missiles as their primary means of nuclear attack. Had it flown, the F-108 would have been the heaviest fighter of its era. This is the Wikipedia abstract, full story here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XF-108_Rapier I recently completed this build from the Anigrand resin kit: since both incarnations of the mock-up (overall metal or white) were quite bland and uninspiring I chose to depict a fictitious evaluation a/c from Edwards, as imagined by the artist on the front cover of this Airpower Magazine issue: The build thread can be found here for those interested. As you will read it was truly a collaborative effort with great inputs from BM members, thank you again to all! So here are the images. Thanks for looking!

What a spectacular creation Moa! I remember back in the '90s there was a fellow club member who had completed this Contrail vacuform: I followed his progress with admiration through several evening meetings and finally saw this Art Déco monument displayed in a perspex case bought on purpose. It was impressive but in all honesty the mediocre quality of the basic kit transpired from every bit, despite the huge amount of effort he had invested in his build. Now I can say exactly the opposite looking at your completed model: it is all the more magnificent considering the sheer complexity of the subject and how much you have improved every bit of the basic kit. Congratulations!

Final touches completed: canopies are in place as well as the IRST domes at the wing root. I somewhat squeezed the missile into its bay so it is also ok. I'd call it done, just some more time to take decent images and will be in RFI. Finally I would like to say a big thank you to all those who took their time to comment, help or simply leave a Like, special thanks to Space Ranger for the invaluable inputs and to Kev for the help offered and encouragement: now it's your turn, can't wait to see your interpretation with an in-flight model!

Thank you all for the likes and positive comments! Yes! It was workable and it worked too IMHO. Please refer to this post by Space Ranger to understand what I did, I traced the shape of the rear fuselage bulkhead on thin plasticard so as to have two rough shapes of the exhaust base matching with the fuselage cross section (note that they differ a lot left from right in my kit...). Then I wrapped around them a thin band of plasticard, comprising the angular shape where the reversers eyelids would pivot, and obtained the external casing you can see below in the lighter metal shade. This would be the tapered fairing mentioned by SR in retracted position (at least how I envisaged it, since there is no mock-up image of this configuration). The eyelids themselves (clamshell doors) where fashioned crash-moulding more thin plasticard on the ogival cap you see on the right. I don't know what it is but I often keep these parts for future use instead of throwing them straight in the bin I cut the resulting "domes" obtaining four sphere quarters which I detailed with microstrip to simulate the corrugations seen in the mock-up. These were further reduced in area through trial and error so that they just peeped out from the fairings. Finally the exhausts were superglued to their respective fairings and the eyelids fixed in the gap with white glue. This way a troubled shape transition from the fuselage to the circular exhausts was succesfully camouflaged as an added bonus! And here they are in place, not perfect but a lot better than I feared one month ago. Cheers for looking!

Hello everybody! Back from holidays and a few other things to do for the famiily and home, finally found time to go on with this build. Unfortunately time has somewhat weakened my resistance and I was feeling the rush to have it finished before too long, so I didn't take many images of the progress. First the u/c doors: while the bigger ones didn't pose any problems I needed to found a way to suspend the main leg doors, so I drilled a small hole to have a sprue pin going directly in the side of the leg and then formed some thick copper wire with pliers and hammer so that it acts as a kind of bracket. And here you can see it in place, the retraction arm came from the spares box. The front leg was simpler, another spare part came useful for the retraction arm. Missile bay doors installed. If were to do another (God spare me...) I would rebuild completely the bay enlarging the dimensions: as it is and with the thinnest plasticard additions I could use it is simply too small to realistically contain a GAR-9 Falcon, let alone three in the revolving unit. I didn't want to add aerials and other completely fictitious details (not being any on the mockup) but just two red beacons to add interest seemed reasonable.

This is really most unusual! Any more images available? And where do the floats come from?

Hello, thank you for the appreciations and your opinions re. the red turbine stripe. I think I will add it together with more refined stencils if I can find any in my decal bank. Now I'll take an holiday break for a few weeks, so don't expect any update soon

Once the masking is removed the result is quite good. The silver finish is very tough and I was lucky to have only a very small blemish from masking tape under the belly, despite the battered surface and multiple filler applications. Next step the various bays to be done in Interior Green 34151. Done! The same green was used for the doors which I previously rebuilt with thin plasticard: the resin parts supplied were too thick and irregular. The curved doors were crash moulded over the resin originals: at least their thickness came useful! For my what-if I chose a plausible serial from FY 1959 and traced over the logo appearing in the Wings Magazine feature: it is too cool not to be applied on the nose! All laser printed with the special decal paper, came out quite good. And here is the logo in situ: I used all the kit supplied decals, they are quite good quality but the stencils a bit simplified. Only other addition was the Edwards tail flash robbed from a very old Airfix U-2 sheet. I'm pondering about adding also a red turbine warning stripe, what do you think? Thanks for looking!

Thank you Bill, just because is the only one progressing so far here on BM? Paint is Testors Modelmaster 2041 fluo red-orange 28913 over a yellow background.

It's funny how everybody's experience with tools and paints is so varied! To me is the opposite: I usually get quite good results straight from the can but when I need to do small retouching jobs and I decant the paint I always get a very grainy finish no matter how low I set the air pressure.

Well, summer holidays are approaching so I thought it would be better to make progress in other areas while my secondary CPU is working on the thrust reversers problem (in other words I postponed a solution ) First step was to shot two coats of Tamiya silver spray: These cans are expensive but incredibly good for big resin models where you have many sins to hide under a good paint coat! And since this is after all a flight of fancy I chose to model the fictitious Edwards paint scheme imagined on Airpower's cover. Where are my sunglasses?

Hello Kev, sorry for this late reply. Don’t worry for that: seeing what is behind the exhausts I have to think a different solution.

Now that I see the original parts I remember I had a hard time separating the casting blocks back in january.... for a reason! In my (very weak) defense I can say that your newer parts are much better cast than mine, maybe I will consider buying more kits from Anigrand (my poor wallet!) Thank you Kev, much appreciated.

Now I have a real conundrum which asks for the help of all reading this thread! The engine exhaust are much smaller than the fuselage cross-section as you can see in the images below. You could think that Anigrand's master maker was quite drunk but seems it is not the case: actually this is the least photographed part of the mock-up though there actually is a step which can be seen also in some artists renditions. What I really can't believe is that a Mach 3 interceptor could live with such an aerodynamic nonsense, what are your thougts?