RAF Sabre with slats, 1/48

[guillaume320]

Hi everyone,

 

I want to make an 93 Sqn Sabre F4 with the slatted wing, in 1/48

 

What are the options to get me there?  I’ve seen an online build a while back using a resin conversion from Red Roo, but I’m a bit worried ordering something from so far away... So what are the alternatives?

 

I already have 2 Sabres in my stash: An Academy ‘hard’ 6-3 winged which will be made as an Italian 4th Stormo bird, and a ROG rebox of the Hasegawa kit to be turned into a Luftwaffe Sabre (wings need to be shortened on that one). For what it’s worth I like both kits, but I do have a small preference for the Hasegawa, mainly because the gun panels are a pain to close on the Academy. That being said if one would yield a slatted F4 easier than the other, that’s the one I would go for....

 

Looking forward to suggestions and inputs....

 

Guillaume 

[Sabrejet]

Guillaume,

 

I managed to get a slatted wing (with slats) by cross-kitting a Revell F-86D (wings) with the Eduard/Hasegawa F-86F. It's a bit of work, but can be done fairly easily. See here: 

 

 

Easier still, I'd cut the leading edge of the Hasegawa/Eduard kit, remove the '6-3' part (scale 6 inches at the root and 3 at the tip), glue the leading edges back on and scribe the slat panel lines (obviously you'd have slats retracted for this option). The 6-3 wing is mostly devoid of panel lines on the leading edge, so not too difficult to do. You'd need to reprofile the ammo door/step area to remove the 6-3 root fillet and make sure that the 'new' wing leading edge doesn't come forward of the aft end of the ammo door/step, but again not too difficult.

 

As Option 3, do the cut-n-shut above and make your own slats. A bit more work but I've done it in 1/72 and others recently have done similar (@72modeller or @Courageous IIRC)

 

My kit bash was to get an F-86A out of a Hasegawa/Eduard F, but the wing part of the build (plus fuselage vent treatments) are the same if you want a Sabre 4. Hasegawa/Eduard kit is the best starting point in 1/48 either way.

 

 

Edited November 3, 2019 by Sabrejet

[guillaume320]

Thanks a lot Sabrejet!!! 

 

I like the first option. I think the F-86K can be found relatively cheap... Most likely cheaper than ordering RedRoo resin.  Also I prefer working with plastic than resin...

 

Thank you !

 

G

[Troy Smith]

2 hours ago, guillaume320 said:

and a ROG rebox of the Hasegawa kit to be turned into a Luftwaffe Sabre (wings need to be shortened on that one)

the kits comes with resin wing tips for the extended wing option. (F86F-40 IIRC) 

59 minutes ago, Sabrejet said:

Hasegawa/Eduard kit is the best starting point in 1/48 either way.

thread drift,  is  the Hase kit much better than the Academy?  And, in what way.  

 

thanks

T

[guillaume320]

23 minutes ago, Troy Smith said:

the kits comes with resin wing tips for the extended wing option. (F86F-40 IIRC) 

Yes correct. I’ve got those but I preferred to rework the original wingtip that was supposed to be binned 😅

[viscount806x]

Guill, the Red Roo sets are excellent if you want to show the slats separately or extended. Trust me, ordering from them, certainly to the UK anyway, is not an issue at all. Not sure about Addis Abbaba though! Ed Russell himself (of Red Roo) is a member of this forum and provides a top fast service.

 

Somebody mentions the Revell/Mono F-86D and this is an option as a wing donor but I believe the wing sweep is a bit out and that might give fit issues. Regarding the others, the Academy kit probably comes at the best price.

 

There were also great resin wing sets from Bill Scobie (Scobie-Doo) but these are long out of production and hard to find on the second hand market.

[Sabrejet]

Wing sweep on the Revell F-86D is the same as the Hasegawa F-86F as near as makes no difference.

[72modeler]

18 minutes ago, Jordi said:

There is about a 3 degree difference actually.  I have measured it

Jordi,

 

On the kits or the real airplane? I seem to recall reading somewhere that the Revell 1/48 F-86D kit had a very slight error regarding the wing sweep, but even if this is so, it shouldn't affect a modeler cutting the slats and slat wells off of the Revell F-86D kit, as the slats are the same on the D and the F, regardless of what wing was fitted. Maybe Duncan was commenting on the sweep of the actual airplanes? (Not my scale, so I will defer to those who are much more informed on the 1/48 kits.)

Mike

 

[guillaume320]

3 hours ago, viscount806x said:

Not sure about Addis Abbaba though

Addis Ababa is just for work... I don’t have a workshop there, yet!! 😅

[Sabrejet]

1 hour ago, 72modeler said:

Jordi,

 

On the kits or the real airplane? I seem to recall reading somewhere that the Revell 1/48 F-86D kit had a very slight error regarding the wing sweep, but even if this is so, it shouldn't affect a modeler cutting the slats and slat wells off of the Revell F-86D kit, as the slats are the same on the D and the F, regardless of what wing was fitted. Maybe Duncan was commenting on the sweep of the actual airplanes? (Not my scale, so I will defer to those who are much more informed on the 1/48 kits.)

Mike

 

See the F-86A conversion: bear in mind also that one wing is 6-3 and the other short-chord, so there will be a difference in sweep when measured at the leading edge (and also gives an effective sweep change too). When I did the F-86A conversion the difference was negligible; you'll see that a small sliver of plastic needed to be added at the wing root, but it matched the F-86F centre section very well whilst retaining the correct sweep. I haven't measured the sweep on either kit wing, so I don't know which kit is correct but I have seen supposedly reliable kit reviews measuring wing sweep at the leading edge (which is not the correct way to do it) and when they don't get 35 degrees, declare a kit as being inaccurate.

 

In any case I doubt anyone would notice a couple of degrees either way on the completed model!

Edited November 3, 2019 by Sabrejet

[Tony Edmundson]

6 hours ago, 72modeler said:

  a modeler cutting the slats and slat wells off of the Revell F-86D kit, as the slats are the same on the D and the F, regardless of what wing was fitted. 

that's what I will do, just reverse the 6-3 mod, just in 1/48 scale.

 

Tony

[72modeler]

6 hours ago, Sabrejet said:

In any case I doubt anyone would notice a couple of degrees either way on the completed model!

Not my preferred scale. but that's what I was thinking as well, Duncan- 3 degrees is pretty insignificant; even less  noticeable with the slats extended.

Mike

[Tony Edmundson]

three pics showing the 3 1/48 Sabre kit wings against the drawings in Larry Milberry's Canadair Sabre book;

 

first pic is the Monogram F-86D wing on the drawing of the Sabre 2 wing(short chord slatted)

 

second pic is the Academy Sabre wing on the drawing of the Sabre 5/6 wing(6-3)

 

 

third pic is the Hasegawa Sabre wing on the same drawing of the 6-3 wing

 

 

comparison made without any pre-conceived ideas and one can draw ones own conclusions from this little exercise, ie info only

 

Cheers, Tony

Edited November 5, 2019 by Tony Edmundson

[Sabrejet]

Nice one! Next time I have all three kits in one piece I'll measure each one to see what's what. A rough-n-ready assessment on my photo app shows a circa 1.3-degree difference between drawing and F-86D wing.

[gingerbob]

I did a comparison of kit parts, but I think it has been Photobucketed.  (It has.)  Here's another comparison, though, of Dog and Academy wings:

 

Whether the difference would be noticeable TO ME on two built models, I can't say, but I like to get to the bottom of these sorts of things!

 

I think I managed to rescue the images from PB purgatory (yep), and while I'm at it, here are the comments from my Hyperscale post:

Quote

Keep in mind that the leading edge sweep should be slightly greater on the 6-3 wing compared to the D wing. I probably should have tried lining up the center... OK, gave it a quick visual. If you line up the wheel wells, the trailing edge fillets seem to both fall at about the same place- there may be differences between F and D Sabres, but I assume that's good. Also, the leading edges (accounting for the 6" extension of the Hase wing) seem about right. However, the gear leg part of the well is swept more on the D wing, just like the rest of the swept wing. The wheel well area is pretty much the same shape.

Note: if you squint really hard, you can just make out the line between aileron and flap on the Hase wing (right side of second photo), while the D wing, as you can see, has separate flaps. Quite a difference in aileron length, no?

 

OK, so the lighter coloured (top) one is the Dog wing, this photo aligned by trailing edge tips:

 

and this one by leading edge at the root:

 

 

 

Edited November 5, 2019 by gingerbob

[72modeler]

Are the wheel bays really that far off from each other? Which kit has it correct? I know the center section contour is different on the D as compared to the F, but that shouldn't affect the location of the bays. What say you, @Sabrejet?

Mike

 

BTW- thanks @gingerbob and @Tony Edmundson for your excellent photos and comments!

[Sabrejet]

I had to look into this in detail to see what's going on here. First off, the oft-stated 35-degree wing sweep of the Sabre wing is the cause of many an incorrect assessment of a kit’s accuracy in this area. Simply put, the 35-degree sweep is measured at 25% chord, and due to the tapered nature of the wing, this means that the sweep at the leading edge will be greater than 35 degrees and at the trailing edge is less than 35. In fact to be fully accurate the actual sweep is 35⁰13’ (35.2167 deg) at 25% chord, since NAA made a number of changes to the wing planform from its initial definition. Aspect Ratio (chord vs span) of the short-chord wing is 4.79.

 

Chord at CL is 10.3 ft (3139.44mm); 25% chord = 784.86mm
Chord at the tip is 5.3 ft (1615.44mm); 25% chord = 403.86mm
Span of the basic wing on an F-86A/E/F is 37.1 ft (11308.08mm) which equals 5654.04mm each side of CL.

 

Plotting that all against the Milberry book's Sabre 2 wing gives this (red is the 25% chord line):

 

So you can see that the Milberry short-chord wing plan is pretty accurate, if possibly a bit too sharply-swept. So it's the R-M F-86D wing which is swept-back a tad too much, but again I doubt most would notice; it certainly looks good to me in my 45 years of looking at Sabres. I'll have a look at F-86D plan vs short-chord in a bit to see where the gear bays should be.

[Sabrejet]

...and here maybe we can see where the R-M Sabre Dog wing came from: trusted Koku Fan F-86D plan imposed over the Milberry Sabre 2 in red:

 

 

In fact, if anything the Koku drawing is a little better than the Milberry regarding sweep, though again, not much in it.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Sabrejet

[mstorin]

On 11/3/2019 at 5:32 AM, guillaume320 said:

Thanks a lot Sabrejet!!! 

 

I like the first option. I think the F-86K can be found relatively cheap... Most likely cheaper than ordering RedRoo resin.  Also I prefer working with plastic than resin...

 

Thank you !

 

G

 

I just thought I'd mention that KASL makes a slat conversion set for the Hasegawa F-86F-40. The48ers has it:

 

https://the48ers.com/f-86f-40-slat-set.html

[Sabrejet]

1 hour ago, mstorin said:

 

I just thought I'd mention that KASL makes a slat conversion set for the Hasegawa F-86F-40. The48ers has it:

 

https://the48ers.com/f-86f-40-slat-set.html

Nice one: that will help a lot. Just need one in 1/72 now....👍

[Julien]

I have the KASL set and its very nice.

[franky boy]

Probably a daft question but would that KASL slat set fit a Sabre mk4 or would they be to long?

 

James

[Tony Edmundson]

9 hours ago, franky boy said:

Probably a daft question but would that KASL slat set fit a Sabre mk4 or would they be to long?

 

James

the actual slat and well are the same length for all Sabres, so it should

 

Tony