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When Vought designed their first jet fighter, a simple design with straight wings which first flew in October 1946, they must have thought that the only problems would be those associated with the new method of propulsion. In fact almost everything went wrong. Performance, particularly on take-off, with the J34 was abysmal and led to it being fitted with an afterburner which then required a redesign of the rear fuselage and, for the production version a longer front fuselage. There were many aerodynamic problems which required wing TE fillets, tail LE fillets and no less than 6 different versions of the tail. It was a most undistinguished a/c but I felt that I ought to have one in my collection of early jets. What follows is a warning that persons of a faint hearted or gentle disposition should not try this at home! I think that the model was almost as much trouble as the original a/c. I wanted one in the original configuration but none was available. Then Admiral brought out a kit of the ‘early’ F6U-1 which supposedly could be built as one of the prototypes which had the afterburner and final tail assembly. I made a start on it but ran into several problems. The fuselage halves were a very bad fit and required inserts to keep them aligned as one would for a vacform. There was trouble getting the fuselage and wings aligned but it all came to a halt when it came to assembling the tail and finlets. The tailplanes were warped and unevenly moulded so it seemed that there was little chance of a satisfactory outcome so it ended up on the shelf of doom. A contributing factor was the announcement by Prop & Jet that a model of the original version was in the works so it seemed sensible to wait for that as I have a very high regard for their products. Alas the Prop & Jet version never appeared and an email to them elicited the information that work on it had stopped due to the economic situation in Russia so thoughts turned to restarting mine. However reading one of Tommy Thomason’s Tailhook Topics blogs revealed that the kit was in error in that the XF6U-1 version had the longer front fuselage, whereas the actual a/c had the original (shorter) version so I decided to try to use the kit to build a model of the first prototype.First task was to build a new back end and one thing was immediately apparent. There appeared to be no information about its shape and the thrustline obviously differed between the prototype and afterburning versions. There was only one thing to do and that was to consult the Oracle – Tommy Thomason (aka Tailspin Turtle). He provided much of the information that made this project possible and deserves a round of applause. The back end was made from planking over formers and sanded to shape with only a side view as a guide. The rather complex shape came out naturally as I worked it into what looked like a streamlined form. The only real problem was finding the shape of the underside of the tail cone as there were no clear photos of it. I settled for a flat ‘V’ section which gave the right shape where it met the jet exhaust. For the jetpipe the back end was built around a tube into which was inserted another section of tube which carried the bullet fairing which can just be seen in some photos. The front end was shortened by cutting out a section just ahead of the wing. A new canopy was made to match the smaller one fitted to the prototype. When fitting the canopy it became apparent that the two halves of the fuselage had different cross sections where the front of the canopy sat and this had to be rectified with Milliput. The gun ports were drilled out. The dorsal fin was removed and the fin made smaller and reshaped. The fillets where the wing trailing edge met the fuselage were removed. The intakes were tidied up and boundary layer off takes fitted. The strakes at the leading edge of the tailplane were removed and some sanding done to remove the uneven moulding of the parts. Just when I thought that everything had been sorted out I discovered a couple of other problems. The u/c legs were far too long. I think that they had been made to match the fully extended version and the decals were not right for my version as they had the red bars. Infuriatingly the instructions showed a version with the red bars as an optional extra. Fortunately Hannants had a suitable set. The model was finished using Humbrol Authentic Sea Blue Gloss. I don’t know how old it was but it went on without trouble. Panel lines, except for the tail, are muted because the actual a/c had a very smooth finish due to the method of construction. It used 'Metalite' - two sheets of aluminium sandwiching a balsa core. As usual - comments, criticism and extra information welcome John

Back end modified, repainted and modified FG-786 decals I have long had a wish for the Starfighter amongst my collection of prototypes but never thought that I had enough information to produce one until I came across a drawing which, apart from the lack of anhedral, purported to represent the proposed layout of the F104. The drawing matched an old Monogram 1/72 F104C, languishing on the shelf of doom, sufficiently well to show that the latter would be a good source of parts for an XF-104. The original model would have to be shortened and would require a new rear fuselage and intakes. The fuselage spine would have to be removed and the front u/c leg moved forward as the XF-104 had a rearward retracting leg. The cannon would need to be faired in and a new, longer, nose probe created. The centre section, nose and tail unit looked as if they could be used as they were although I had a suspicion that the fuselage was not as deep as it should be. So much for theory! I won’t bore you with the whole sad story but it took longer than expected resulting in a labour of love turning into labour which resulted in a bout of ‘get finished-itis’ so I am afraid that certain aspects, particularly the finish, are not as good as they should be. The configuration and markings represent ‘first flight’ status but lack the Lockheed logos. If anyone knows where I can obtain some of the correct size please let me know. The basics are described in the WIP, http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235017784-xf-104-starfighter-prototype/ which has been updated with details of the tribulations. John PS. For anybody without the brainpower to realise that this is a project to avoid I have just discovered that there is a very good selection of pictures of the XF-104 in Jay Miller's book about the Lockheed Skunk Works published by Aerofax. It includes some of the original rear end, which I have seen nowhere else. PPS. From the above you would be right in assuming that I was not terribly happy with the finished article but I posted it anyway as a number of people were interested in how it turned out. It sat in my display cupboard for most of last summer giving me a reproachful look that said I could have done better and in the end I gave in and stripped it down, did some modifications and gave it fresh coat of Alclad Airframe Aluminium. I then found that I had done the Alclad so well it was like a mirror so I had to give it a light spray of Aluminium to make it less shiny. The first 3 photos show its current state. The last one is of the original because I forgot to take that shot when I photographed it this time. Notice that I managed a reasonable looking Lockheed logo. John

This started life several years ago as a modification of the MPM kit. The original intention was to build an F1 to go with my P1040 but something, probably due to something between lack of nous and gross stupidity, led to it ending up as the N7/46, the navalised P1040. I thought that the first F1 had the short wings and tail and carried out the appropriate modifications but while searching for data on the original tailhook I found a picture of the N7/46 and realised that was what I was building. I also found that it appeared to have the the P1040's later canopy rather than the one fitted to the production Sea Hawk. Since I was in no mood to produce a new canopy at that point it was consigned to the shelf of doom until I could face up to making one. There it languished for several years until I realised that I actually had a suitable mould, created when I was refurbishing my P1081 so it was restarted. All went along well until I came to fit the main u/c legs when I discovered that the Sea Hawk u/c was different to that of the N7/46. (you would think that he should have noticed at the beginning - it's his age you know). It appears to me the the Sea Hawk main legs were shorter, perhaps to give increased angle of attack when being catapulted, so the kit legs had to be lengthened and new u/c doors made. The VP413 decals were made at home. The prototype 'P' decals were a problem as the ones I had were either a fraction too small or a fraction too large. I went with the smaller ones. There seems to be a lack of pictures of this a/c. I only found two. Fortunately one of them showed it with the wings folded so I could see the registration. For anyone building the 'proper' version from this kit the are some frustrating items. There are some 'holes' in the actual a/c for guns, boundary layer bleeds and something ahead of the windshield. None of these appear in the kit. There is a resin cockpit that requires much fettling before it will fit and a resin seat which is too wide for the resin cockpit. It has a 'battle damaged fuel tank' made from resin but lacks something that would be really useful, namely inlet guide vanes and the boundary layer offtakes in the intakes. Seen here with its predecessor the P1040 Any comments and extra information welcome John

XF4H-1_2015_05_19_9_5 by johnrieley, on Flickr XF4H-1_2015_05_19_9_3 by johnrieley, on Flickr XF4H-1_2015_05_19_9_7 by johnrieley, on Flickr This started life as a Fujimi RF4B. When I decided to specialise in prototypes I thought that it might be possible to convert it into an XF4H-1. A search for data turned up some very useful blogs by Tommy Thomason (aka Tailspin Turtle). http://tailspintopics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/early-phantom-iis-redux.html http://tailspintopics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/f4h-1-large-and-small-radomes.html http://tailspintopics.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/early-phantom-iis.html Without these and his continued help this project would have been stillborn. Take a bow Tommy and those who answered my queries on Britmodeller. F4H-1 First Flight by johnrieley, on Flickr First the canopy and nose – I was told Falcon had produced a conversion set and managed to find one. That was the good news. The bad news was the nose was not for the first flight configuration and no way could I persuade the canopy to fit. It could have been due to it being designed to fit an Italeri F4B or just my clumsiness but I ended up having to make a new nose and canopy. The new nose had to have the original flush intakes. Next the intakes. The originals were cut off and new ones made from sheet and faired in by eye using Milliput. The original boundary air bleeds were removed and the holes in the intake guides filled. Boundary layer splitters were added inside the intake. There are outlets, I think, on top of the intakes. These are represented by decals. A tailhook fairing, deleted on production models was added. A strange triangular thing sticking out from the rear was apparently a fuel vent (thanks to all who answered that query). A new one was made from brass tubes. A large blob at the top of the fin (RWR?) was removed as was the second pitot on the fin. The slots on the tail were filled and Milliput used to remove the undercamber from the top surface. The wing was unchanged as the Fujimi kit did not have the bulges over the wheels which appeared on later models. The early airbrakes, full of holes, were represented by decals. Cockpit – The rear cockpit on the prototype was a ‘black hole’. The front cockpit ejection seat required modification to make it resemble the McDonnell seat as first used. earlyPhantom ejection seat by johnrieley, on Flickr There was no cover over the instrument panel at first so a few rectangular items were cobbled together to make something vaguely similar to instrument cases. After shaping the nose the probe was made from several different diameters of brass tube all covered in filler and sanded to shape. Because of the vulnerability of said probe it was not fitted until all the decals and u/c had been added. A short section of tube was left sticking out of the nose and the probe fitted into this at the end. Note that the probe is aligned with the fuselage datum and not with the axis of the nose so it looks a bit odd. Nose probe by johnrieley, on Flickr Decals – Aaah the decals. A while ago the IPMS decal bank sent a set of 1/72 decals for the prototype but when I came to use them I found that they were for 1/48 and nowhere could be found a set for 1/72 so off to the spares box…where I found that the NAVY symbol appeared to be different to the USN standard version and the Star and Bar on the wings was far larger than anything I had and had to be scrounged from a fellow modeller. The NAVY, F4H-1, walk areas were easily made but the fuselage stripes were a nightmare. Having spent ages getting them to be the right shape and colour I applied the first one only to find that when applied over grey the red, printed on to a clear decal sheet, did not even resemble the colour I wanted. I had originally considered painting them but the thought of trying to mask it put me off. Next thought was printing it on white decal paper and trimming to size. That did not appeal either so I ended up printing grey surrounding the red. This worked but was not really satisfactory as there is a trace of white around the edge from the underlying white sheet. The rings on the nose and probe? Don’t try this at home unless you planning to have a breakdown. It’s a good way to start. They are only thin strips of white decal sheet but getting the right number in the right places is a trifle fiddly and took me most of day but fortunately the weather was too awful to do anything else. The nav lights on the wing LE are missing. They are different, I think, to the production a/c and I have not yet thought of a satisfactory way of doing them. F4H-1F Wingtip Lights bottom by johnrieley, on Flickr Painting was done using Xtracrylix. The topside gave lots of trouble with it peeling off as the masking tape was removed but the white underside, despite using the same primer, was troublefree. I think that covers everything. If you have managed to reach the end I hope that you found it of interest. It wasn’t the easiest of projects but I felt that I should have a model of such a significant a/c in my collection of prototypes. John PS Whilst looking at pictures of Phantoms on the internet I came across a 1/144 version of the prototype. I wonder if a 1/72 version will follow… PPS Just remembered something about home made decals. In the past after printing and sealing with decal film I had great trouble applying the decals as they had a great tendency to curl up and refuse to adhere to the model. I 'cured' this by sealing with Halfords clear acrylic but the downside was it resulted in a very thick decal. Whilst 'test fitting' the red stripes to see if the shape and colour was correct I made an interesting discovery. As I wanted a quick turnaround I just sealed them with decal film and did not use setting solution (Micro set). They went on without any problem so the curling was due to the setting solution.

Finished at last! This one had to be wrestled to the ground. It was started over a year ago as an entry in the Vacform GB. It didn’t look too difficult – three triangles attached to a tube – if only! The initial phase of the story can be found here http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234986765-convair-xf-92a-airmodel-vacform-172/ but then it came to a halt partly because I ran out of time to finish it before the end of the GB but mainly because seeing the Hunter crash at Shoreham left a very empty feeling and it was a while before I got back to doing any modelling. The biggest problem was the u/c. The shape of the u/c doors, and in particular the shape and size of the main u/c legs proved difficult to define and while it is now ‘finished’ I’m not really happy with that aspect of it. I’m not happy with the canopy either. It doesn’t look right and I could not get a neat edge to the framing. The finish is Alclad Airframe Aluminium over gloss black acrylic. No decals were supplied with the kit so the 6682 had to be made by copying that from the Mach 2 kit (and are not correct) and the stars and bars came from other sources. The big ‘star and bar’ on the nose proved a real problem as there is considerable compound curvature of the fuselage and the decal would not ‘sit’ without creasing. The actual a/c was the first true delta wing a/c to fly, in 1948, and Convair expected it to be a lot faster than it was. It started with a J33 engine but was later fitted with an afterburner but even that wouldn’t make it supersonic unless dived. One thing really puzzles me about the actaul a/c is that I cannot work out how the gear is retracted. I can see no evidence of a jack. The only thing is a strut which appears to have a joint in the centre and if the top half is rotated by something inside the fuselage the strut would fold and pull the gear up. If anybody can enlighten me further I would love to hear from them. John

When jets started to go fast thoughts turned to ways of helping the pilot to withstand the more extreme ‘g’ loads when manoeuvring. One suggestion was to have the pilot lying down in a prone position and to this end, in 1955, a Meteor F8 was converted to have a cockpit with a prone pilot section grafted on to the nose. Some 55 hours and 99 flights later the idea was abandoned after it was found that whilst the position was very effective in reducing the effects of ‘g’ on the pilot every other aspect of piloting was much worse. The main problem was the pilot’s inability to see behind and also forward when in a steep turn. Other problems concerned the cockpit ergonomics. Quite why it needed an actual aircraft to find this out is not clear. One feels that the same information could have been derived from a mock-up. Even my wife, a renowned technophobe, commented 'How could he see behind?' when first told about it. This was built for the Meteor GB. WIP here http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234993470-meteor-prone-pilot/ It seems to be MPM's F8 kit with added parts. The nose and tail sections have to be sawn off and replaced. The replacement sections don't quite fit, the nose being a trifle narrow and the tail cone a bit wide. The wings needed some thinning to fit the fuselage and could have done with a some more on the outer panels, Nose and tail parts of the nacelles are undersize and had to have filler to fair thenm in. The wing root fairings needed some sanding to fit neatly. I did this before glueing the wing in position, something I had not tried before, and found it much easier. Finish is Alclad aluminium for the main airframe, semi matt aluminium for the prone pilot section and dark aluminium for the nose. The decals separate from the backing sheet almost as soon as it is damp. Great care needs to be taken with them as they are very thin and are prone to wrapping themselves around the backing sheet as they are transferred to the model. A Meteor shower! A final thought. I was amazed to find recently that the Americans had an equivalent - a modified Shooting Star John

First flown in 1945 powered by Rolls Royce Trent engines which were basically a Derwent engine fitted with a reducing gear which drove a propeller. After a dodgy first flight during which both engines attempted to lose all their oil the fault was corrected and it became a useful research tool contributing to the very successful Dart. Despite being much heavier than the Meteor F1, from which it was derived, the take-off distance was reduced, initial climb was improved and was faster than the earliest Meteors. The model went together quite well but there are some significant errors. The propellers seem to bear no resemblance to the actual thing and had to be slimmed down. There is some confusion in my mind about the props as they were initially 8ft in diameter but Eric Greenwoods description of the hairy first flight (Air Enthusiast March 72) states that the engines went back to Rolls Royce for modification and came back with 4ft 10” props. However later pictures appear to show it flying with the larger diameter versions. Can anybody clear this up? Anyone who wants to see what the props should look like have a look at this thread where there is a photo of the actual article http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234947300-gloster-trent-meteor-prop-blade/ The kit would have you fit a new tail bullet which does not appear in any photo that I have found and neglects to have any provision for the anti-spin parachute housing fitted for the early flights despite it appearing on the box art. This version had a longer u/c than the jet because of the need to provide clearance for the props. MPM would have you fit longer legs but these would not fit the u/c bays. Some discussion about this in another thread came up with information that it had the same legs but the oleos were pumped up. If you compare photos of the two versions you can see that the trailing arm is angled more downwards so I kept the original leg and adjusted the trailing arm so that the wheel position matched that of the photo. The picture shows the difference between the two kit arms, Trent and original, and my modification. Incidentally this task was made a nightmare because the resin wheels are too narrow for the trailing arm and they kept falling out. Glueing did not seem to be an option as they are weighted and I couldn't guarantee that the flat bit would sit parallel to the ground until all wheels had been fitted. Eventually I got it together but it was suggested that a better idea would have been to drill out the wheel hubs and fit an axle. I wish I had thought of that. The kit nosewheel needed extending. I'm not entirely happy with what I have done. The top of the strut and retraction jack could do with improvement but getting at it now the props and aerial are on is a bit daunting. One item of contention was the colour of the forward panels on the nacelles. The kit says “Sky” but the consensus appears to be that they were unpainted primer so I used Tamiya XF4 yellow/green as my memory says that this matched the primer I saw used in my apprentice days. Built for the Meteor GB. WIP here http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234990667-trent-meteor-mpm-172/ Any comments (critical or otherwise) and additional information welcome John PS. References Gloster Meteor by Butler and Buttler published by Aerofax Meteor - Aeroplane Icons series Air International March 72 Aeroplane Monthly July 75 contains a superb Charles Brown colour photo

This started life back in August and appeared under work in progress as http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.p...c=53543&hl= Progress hardly seemed an appropriate term and the at the beginning of December I had some rather painful back trouble which was followed by 'flu in January but finally I managed to get a grip on things and now it's done. It's a mixture of Heller F84G fuselage, Airfix F84F wings and tail. Nosewheel undercarriage is from the F84G. The main u/c used F84G legs and wheels with F84F wheel covers. A new canopy was moulded using a shape derived from what pictures I could find. The body of the nose probe was turned from 1mm tube using a battery powered drill to get a bit of taper and the tip was 0.5mm Finish was Alclad polished Aluminium over Alclad basic black undercoat. I am a bit disappointed with it as a couple of years ago I produced a stunning finish on a P1 but haven't been able to repeat it since - very frustrating! Fin decals were homemade. It took a lot more effort than expected. Was it worth it? Well, there can't be too many of these about... John