F117 intake meshes

[dottoreaiuto]

Am i right saying that when plane landed and parked these meshes where covered/closef? I have also seen photos of flying planes with these meshes "obstructed"?

[Jabba]

I have just looked through a couple of books on the F-117 and whether the aircraft is in a hangar or outside there are no covers fitted to the intake screens.

[uilleann]

These are called RCS (radar cross section) screens. They are not covered internally, and usually were only covered when workers might be performing maintenance near them, to protect them from inadvertent damage, when the a/c was sitting / in storage for an extended period.

 

The screens themselves, sometimes also called the "ice cube trays", for their similar visual appearance to the freezer implement, were approximately two inches in depth.  However the 'blades were angled and tilted in such a was that allowed 90% +/- airflow through, but made direct visual observation of the engine face all but impossible.  Quite ingenious really - and is why they can't be seen through in any photographs.

 

Hope that helps. It's an extremely difficult effect to properly replicate at scale.  I've been searching for a viable means to do so for almost 10 years.  So far no luck.

Edited March 29, 2017 by uilleann

[dottoreaiuto]

Thanks guys. I was hoping to find a shorcut but no, I wil have to represent them then. Thank you

[Kevin Callahan]

IIRC most of the photoetch sheets have the screens.

[uilleann]

Photo etch doesn't properly represent the three dimensional properties however.

[Whitewolf]

Photo etch doesn't properly represent the three dimensional properties however.

I used the Eduard intake mesh on my Tamiya F117 and in 1/48 it looks the part.

[uilleann]

It's fair. More fine in detail than the solid plastic parts to be sure. But it fails to capture the 3 dimensional depth, and the characteristic blockage of sight down into the F-117A's intakes. It's a difficult problem to solve at scale to be sure - and even the better kits from Tamiya and Trumpeter fail to represent the aspect faithfully.