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Airfix 1/48 Hunter F.6 Inboard Pylon shape


YK GOH

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2 hours ago, junglierating said:

Cor....Selwyn you got me all excited talking about EMRUs and ERUs.....start talking about mk6 no volts test set and you'll set me carts off 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Well I'll help you along until then......

 

AVO Mk.8 and 250V Wee Megger...........

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I was speaking to an old friend yesterday at work who was an line armourer on the FGA 9 Hunter during his RAF service, and I asked him about the  Hunter release units. He stated that the FGA 9 pylon release units were all ERU on this  mark, and he had never seen the EMRU equipped pylons.

 So, looking at the  photo evidence  it appears that  up to the F6  with the small drop tanks the aircraft used EMRU's, and The ERU pylons probably first appeared on the F6A  onwards,  and on the inboards especially with the large drop tanks (which is logical from the store jettison aspect). There may be some overlap of the F6/F6A marks, with some F6's being retrofitted with the later release units.

 

Another thing I spotted  on the diagrams posted was the Air Publication  (AP) number  in the top RH corner   in the format below:

 

                1301

AP 101B-            -1A     

                1301A

 

From my experience of AP's this format of numbering suggests that the  AP is applicable to two Marks of aircraft. Without seeing the AP  front page title I speculate that the  "1301" probably  relates to the F6, "1301A" to the F6A which ties in with the photo evidence I have seen. 

 

Selwyn

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Well spotted Selwyn, the AP I scanned was a combined F.6/F.6A one.  It makes no definite distinction between the two as, like you say, some F.6s were retro-fitted with ERUs. 4FTS had a number for example. The FGA.9 picture is a little unclear. As you say it would make sense to have ERU-equipped inboard pylons with the big 230 gallon tanks coming along. Although some folk have stated that, because of the bracing strut, the big tanks were not jettisonable, they actually were - the strut was designed with a clever ball and socket connection at the wing end so it could disconnect and fall way if the tank was jettisoned. So an ERU would make sense to help shove that big tank away. There were plenty of FGA.9s with EMRUs on the outer pylon though so, as ever with Hunters, there are no hard and fast rules.

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For some reason, the Airfix 1/48 Hunter kit provides 2 sets of inboard pylons and 2 sets of outboard pylons.

 

Airfix Pylon sprue_a

 

This gives the opportunity for a simple fix to the incorrect height of both pylons.

I estimated that the height of the inboard pylon need to increase approximately by 2mm and the outboard by 1mm.

 

The following pics showed how the height of the inboard pylon is increased.  Two inboard pylon parts are cut and joined up to form a modified one with the correct height.

 

Modify steps

 

Here's the final product for both the inboard and outboard pylons.

Corrected Pylons

 

This still does not have the sway-bracing, but at least it looks right now when the tanks hang on the pylon below the wing.

 

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  • 11 months later...

Having originally asked this as what I thought was probably a silly question, I now have an answer.

 

On the Airfix 1/48th Hunter kit I see the lower wings have holes to be drilled out for locating the inner pylons, and what I presume is  a hole to locate the sway brace for 230 gallon tanks. 

There are also two part drilled holes much further outboard.   I presumed those were intended to be in the correct location for fitting the outer pylons  They looked a long way out to me so I checked a few sources.  I am now convinced the outer pre-drilled positions on the Airfix Hunter wing are incorrect for fitting pylons. 

They are set in the correct position for the 'A'  rail of the old 3 inch RP armament. The correct position for the outer pylon coincides with the position of what was the 'B' rail for the 3 inch RPs.   That is why, on old photographs, the second rail of RPs was slightly set back, because the pylon fittings interfered with rail fittings.

 

So  don't use the Airfix part drilled outer holes, unless you want to fit RPs.

 

Any comment from the experts welcome! 

 

John B

Edited by John B (Sc)
More information found. Query changed to statement, comment awaited.
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John

 

You are correct....I am still puzzling and researching it out as much as I can BUT it then also throws up a few other errors. I will report back when I have finalised my thoughts, hopefully soon.

I am working on a few other Hunter sets so as we go we all learn or are forced to learn more and not to just accept what is given to us.

 

cheers Ali

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Thanks Ali.

I shall be most interested to hear more, in due course, about the other errors thrown up, which I haven' t yet spotted ! 

I quite agree that we shouldn't just accept what is given to us - it's surprisingly easy for errors to creep in, despite everyone;s best efforts.

 

Cheers,

John B

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Thanks for the links and information guys, all of this has and is helping a lot, I am nearly there sorting out this and a few other little sets for the Hunters,.............stay tuned.

 

Ali

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On 4/25/2019 at 2:48 PM, YK GOH said:

For some reason, the Airfix 1/48 Hunter kit provides 2 sets of inboard pylons and 2 sets of outboard pylons.

 

Airfix Pylon sprue_a

 

This gives the opportunity for a simple fix to the incorrect height of both pylons.

I estimated that the height of the inboard pylon need to increase approximately by 2mm and the outboard by 1mm.

 

The following pics showed how the height of the inboard pylon is increased.  Two inboard pylon parts are cut and joined up to form a modified one with the correct height.

 

Modify steps

 

Here's the final product for both the inboard and outboard pylons.

Corrected Pylons

 

This still does not have the sway-bracing, but at least it looks right now when the tanks hang on the pylon below the wing.

 

 

I would have thought, by now, that most buyers would have realised that this is why Airfix included two sets of each pylon in their kits.....I was just surprised that they had omitted the modification procedures in their kit instructions.😏 

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Not a full reply, but I will detail some findings soon as noted in this link that I am linking here, but new sets are available to sort and detail the Hunters further.

Soon I will post more pictures and findings here. 

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235072218-new-hawker-hunter-sets-for-the-airfix-kit-quite-a-few/

 

cheers Ali

 

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