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1/72 Vought F-8E (FN) & F-8P Crusaders


Andrew

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Hello everyone,

I would like to make a few contributions to this Group Build (if time permits) and this is the first. It reflects a longstanding desire to complete a French Navy Crusader in their final service scheme and to the upgraded 'Prolonge' standard. Luckily, the Academy kit is a wonderful palette on which to work and it gives you the parts and decals to build one. I seem to have lost the instructions for the F-8P boxing, but I'm sure I can muddle through with those from Academy's F-8J kit.

The sprues as of this afternoon, post-wash (and still drying judging by the damp spots on the background):

P1000073.jpg

P1000071.jpg

P1000074.jpg

I'm keen to start on this in the very near future.

cheers,

Andrew.

Edited by Andrew
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Welcome to the GB.

Great to see the Crouze, my first encounter with them was the air display given by two Aeronavale F-8E(FN)'s (as they were then) at Greenham Common - flipping LOUD!

As Enzo said it's a great kit.

This link may be useful http://www.escadrilles.org/histoire-et-histoires/12f-sur-reacteur-3/

BTW, this is the 50th GB thread - and we're only on day one.

Edited by Wez
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Hellow, Andrew! It will be great to see making of this kit - I always said that the real Crusader is a french one:) If needed, I can scan and upload instructions for this kit. It seems it will be a hard work to deduce stencils placement on the wings out of f-8j...

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Hi everyone,

Thanks for the welcome and interest. Thanks to Wez for the link (bookmarked tres vite) and to Snorry for the kind offer of the instructions - as luck would have it, I have the painting and decal placement guide, so should be able to bumble through to those stages. The guide has reminded me that the kit offers decals for the mid-service scheme of allover light grey as well; it's a tad tempting to build two Crusaders at once...

With any luck I might actually do some modelling today.

cheers,

Andrew.

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The guide has reminded me that the kit offers decals for the mid-service scheme of allover light grey as well; it's a tad tempting to build two Crusaders at once...

They overall grey scheme would be my choice as well, so I fully support you building two Crusaders at once! :D

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They overall grey scheme would be my choice as well, so I fully support you building two Crusaders at once! :D

Enzo, I really appreciate some constructive goading. Do you think it's coincidence that I'd put two kits in that box? There is just enough difference between the two schemes to make it an interesting comparison. Hmmmm... maybe I'd better build them in parallel. Is it okay if they both appear in this thread?

cheers,

Andrew.

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Enzo, I really appreciate some constructive goading. Do you think it's coincidence that I'd put two kits in that box? There is just enough difference between the two schemes to make it an interesting comparison. Hmmmm... maybe I'd better build them in parallel. Is it okay if they both appear in this thread?

cheers,

Andrew.

I'll reply on Enzo's behalf because I know full well that his reply will be "YES"!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Okay,

Finally, after a week of no updates, here's an update. Most importantly, there is now another Academy Crusader on the desk, as I've decided to complete two jets; one will be in the mid-service scheme of overall light grey and the other will be the late-standard F-8P as originally planned.

In searching for the instructions to the French Crusader boxing, I discovered that I had a lot more aftermarket for my F-8s than I remembered, some of which will be used in these builds. As an added bonus, I found the instructions I was after!

Here are some pics of the additional bits and pieces.

I want the fold the wings on one of the jets, so this Wolfpack set will help me with that. It contains three pieces which directly substitute for the main wing sections in the kit (parts B1 & B2) and will require the kit's leading edge flaps be added in order to complete the wing surface. Unfortunately, this set has the trailing edge flaps moulded up, so if I want the depict these drooped (and I do), I'll need to cut them off and re-attach. The parts are well-cast and feature nice detail on both inboard and outboard sections at the wingfold. I had to remove a bit of warpage on the trailing edges of both outboard sections and on one side of the main piece.

P1000076.jpg

Another couple of bits of aftermarket I'll use are the Quickboost afterburner intakes and some metal pitot probes by Hobbydecal of Korea (another arm of Mr Wolfpack's production, I think). The inlets of Quickboost items are hollowed-out and thus much better than the kit items, which are moulded with a flat inlet (i.e no void, or pretence at one). The pitots are gorgeously fine (think the equivalent of Master pitots etc) but can only just be seen in this photo; clearly I should have checked they were actually visible in the packaging when taking the picture.

P1000085.jpg

Next along, here are some parts from CMK's undercarriage set (x2). I've decided to use only the main gear sections and not the nose gear part of the set - I'll reserve those for some Hasegawa kits in the stash; heaven knows they need them much more than the Academy kit does. In removing two of the gear doors from their moulding blocks, I was a little bit too enthusiastic and took off the edges of those doors. I was pleasantly surprised that I could rebuild those edges with either plastic strip or resin offcuts, and priming seems to indicate that all looks okay for the repair. I also lopped off a bit much of the kit part (A8) that features the opened lower main gear doors moulded on, so have started to restore what remains to accept the new resin doors; hopefully I don't have to do much more to make the resin bits fit.

P1000087.jpg

I also found some resin ejection seats to use in the models; the tan one is by True Details and the grey one is from Quickboost. Both are a big improvement over the kit offering. Obviously by this stage I'd also sprayed some grey paint in the cockpit tub, the fuselages and the control sticks, over my preferred primer - black Mr Surfacer 1500.

P1000083.jpg

P1000080.jpg

More to come in another post.

Andrew.

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En avant - some priming, painting and even assembly.

Primed - undercarriage bays and doors, plus the speedbrakes and their interiors. I may have forgotten to mention I'm going to use these resin items by CMK as well; apologies.

P1000092.jpg

Primed and partially painted - the ejection seats.

P1000097.jpg

Nearly all painted - the cockpits and fuselage interiors.

P1000093.jpg

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Assembled - intakes.

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My modelling these days is conducted in sporadic bursts of short duration at best. One of the reasons for this can be just made out below:

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He (James, nearly four and complete with gigantic scratch on his nose) likes to help where possible and he took a big interest in this evening's photography. James said he wanted to make sure the camera was working correctly from the front as I took the pictures, but something tells me that he really just wanted to be in the photograph.

I hope to make some big progress this weekend, as I have a couple of extra days off beyond the usual allowance.

cheers and thanks for looking,

Andrew.

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Nice selection of aftermarket bits there Andrew, should make for a (or two) very nice kits.

Just in case you are considering depicting your build with the wings tilted, remember when parked the slats are always extended in that configuration and to that end the F-8E (FN) had different slats to that of her USN counterparts - these were additionally extended to accomodate the slower landing speeds needed for French carriers.

Something I'm mulling over myself wether or not to scratch these additional extensions or position the wings lowered so the slats are retracted as normal. On searching through hundreds of images I found @ 95% of images show the wings in the lowered position when parked - that appears to be the standard config.....or we add a pilot :popcorn:

of course this assumes the Academy kit hasnt addressed this????

Keeping an eye on your builds either way

Edited by Gary West
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Hi all,

Thanks for your interest.

Gary, thanks for the observations regarding Crusader wings. On these builds, both wings will be lowered and both will incorporate some droop to the trailing edge flaps; I'm only going to fold the outer wings on one of them.

cheers,

Andrew.

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Nice selection of aftermarket bits there Andrew, should make for a (or two) very nice kits.

Just in case you are considering depicting your build with the wings tilted, remember when parked the slats are always extended in that configuration and to that end the F-8E (FN) had different slats to that of her USN counterparts - these were additionally extended to accomodate the slower landing speeds needed for French carriers.

Something I'm mulling over myself wether or not to scratch these additional extensions or position the wings lowered so the slats are retracted as normal. On searching through hundreds of images I found @ 95% of images show the wings in the lowered position when parked - that appears to be the standard config.....or we add a pilot :popcorn:

of course this assumes the Academy kit hasnt addressed this????

Keeping an eye on your builds either way

The Crusader didn't have extended slats but lowered slats - I've got an idea Vought called these "Leading Edge Flaps" but I could be wrong on that.

The F-8E(FN) had double drooped leading edges, the angle of droop was different for the two sections, if memory serves correct the forward section drooped the most to increase the curve of the wing. This was one of the changes made when the F-8E's were remanufactured to F-8J's and Academy captured this in their kits.

Another difference between the F-8E(FN) and the F-8E was that the former had a larger area tailplane, I don't know whether Academy captured this, Heller did.

Hi all,

Thanks for your interest.

Gary, thanks for the observations regarding Crusader wings. On these builds, both wings will be lowered and both will incorporate some droop to the trailing edge flaps; I'm only going to fold the outer wings on one of them.

cheers,

Andrew.

The thing to watch is that the flaps and ailerons were on the inboard (non-folding) part of the wing, I've got it in my head that the inner portion is the flap and is quite narrow, it was drooped to a greater extent than the adjacent aileron which is the bigger (wider, greater area) section. IIRC (and again, I'm willing to be corrected on this), the ailerons were both drooped in the tilted wing configuration, the difference was that the aileron would still maintain differential operation unlike the flaps which were both drooped at a constant angle.

The Detail and Scale book has an extract from the USN Tech Manual which describes this far better than me and is really worth getting if modelling a Crusader.

As for your models, you're making great progress and it will be interesting to see the two versions side-by-side.

Wez

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Hi again,

Thanks to Wez for your thoughts on the Crusader flap operation. I have the D & S book you mention and will look closely at the extract to get a sense of what I should be doing with the flaps and ailerons.

Progress has slowed thanks to some minor numptiness on my part.

With these models I wanted to add some external stiffening/strengthening plates installed around the main undercarriage bay; these can be seen on most late Crusaders. They're fairly easy to make out in photographs, but I don't have them in any of the drawings in my reference library, so my representation of them (with thin sheet plastic) has been guided by those photos and relating those to the same area on the kit. As I discovered, it's a problematic way of doing things...

Here's a view of the mid-fuselage area a French Crusader from the Master194 site; the plates I'm referring to are rhombus-like (with the ends cut off) and can be seen around the forward and aft upper corners of the main gear bay (at each end of the line along which the gear door hinges).

My first depiction of these plates can be seen below. I was so pleased with what I'd done that I even attached the second 'layer' of the plates, which is much smaller and are placed in the middle of the larger plate - they were not yet attached when I took this photo.

C53BFF3C-63C0-404A-9FCB-4D4572093374.jpg

I started to doubt that I had accurately captured the shape of the plates the more I looked at pics like those in the walkaround at the link above, so I reluctantly decided to remove what I'd glued. Some careful excision and abrasion later, this is what I had:

DA7C9529-91DD-4FA5-87FE-224BE37F6B76.jpg

Starting again, I've now got a revised larger plate shape on one of the models and I'm happier with the look of it. I'm still to get the corresponding plate on the second kit, but this will be done today. Of course, once they're dry I have to add the second layer to both and the longer I look at images of the French Crusaders, the more I think that there are numerous locations where stiffener plates were added, especially to the F-8P. With infinite time (and motivation), I could deeply research these and replicate each one, but I'm fast running out of both. Anyway, this is what the fuselage halves looked like just before I glued the first (new) set down:

95150C38-C61E-41F7-9784-EA3B249D1E5C.jpg

Thanks very much for looking in.

Andrew.

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Still going -

Here are the finished strengthening plates on the fuselage of the F-8P; the other kit is similar. I've sanded them as thin as I dare and I hope they will look okay under paint. Also visible in this shot is some plastic stock I've added to the trailing edge of the wing fillet, immediately adjacent to the inboard flap. This will be sanded down to the trailing edge profile and should allow for the inboard flap to clear the fuselage side when lowered (fingers crossed). Obviously, a corresponding amount will be taken off the flap (or flap and aileron in total) to get the overall dimensions correct.

P1000108.jpg

The assembled intakes are delights to clean up (meaning next-to-none was required) and were the first elements to be installed in the fuselage halves. They fit very well; their length and the need to line up with the inlet and nosegear bay are no impediment to them sitting nicely in place - the engineering of the kit is excellent.

P1000105.jpg

Here the fuselages are getting closer to being joined. The cockpits are in, some noseweight has been added and the speedbrake and maingear bays are installed. I even remembered to fit the arrestor hook recess! The kit that appears to be together was only trial fit at this point; some small issues became apparent, but there was little to be changed on any of the inserts, so I went ahead and glued them together soon after. The kit's big tail needed lots of clamping to get a nice join all the way around, and overall there weren't too many problems when I checked them this morning.

P1000111.jpg

Assembled - the fuselage seams were filled with rubber-toughened cyano after cleaning up the worst of the joins and this how the two kits look currently:

P1000113.jpg

Thanks for stopping by.

Andrew.

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Isnt it funny how it can sometimes be as easy to build 2 kits at once........... shaping up nicely Andrew

Thanks Gary. I agree, but I think that Academy should take the credit on this occasion for making it easy.

Andrew.

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