1/32 Brit Phantom FG.1 XV571 conversion from Tamiya and Wild Hare set

[Anthony in NZ]

Studying the photos I might have to go back to 'Plan A' which is use the kit ones and update them and slide the trunking in from Real Model

 

Here I am now correcting the conversion. I have worked out that I needed to take a 2mm slice out of the fuse intake section and epoxy it together...kinda like reversing the conversion. One good thing is that this is still the resin section and boiling water enabled me to manipulate the two ends back together.

This takes some of the coke bottle 'waist' shape out of the conversion.

 

[DonH]

Here's a thought...can you get accurate dimensions of the FOD covers? Would that give you the inside dimensions of the intakes?

[Anthony in NZ]

3 hours ago, DonH said:

Here's a thought...can you get accurate dimensions of the FOD covers? Would that give you the inside dimensions of the intakes?

Thanks Don, I think I am sorted with the intake inside dimensions, or at least around the lip opening.

 

So are we all sick of this yet??

 

Right-O after much deliberation and measuring, staring at photos and fettling plastic card, I have come up with a solution to this whole intake situation.

 

I am going with the kit intake pieces as I am going to loose all the detail on the Real Model ones anyway, I will use the trunking instead.

 

Shimming with 40thou plastic card widens the intake perfectly to the 14mm.  Problem is that there is definitely a trunking  shape difference running back from the intake lip, up across the top (mostly corner I think).  I will look into that further after I get the opening sorted.

 

I cut a slot on the upper corner of the intake as the Tamiya one is slightly too square here...easy fix.  Cut with a thicker saw blade and pinch the two sides together.  This I believe gives the correct lip opening.

I will tidy that up later when I am finishing off the surface details.  You can see here that  have shifted the intake backwards off the ramp, this is how I will shorten the intake length and extend the second section of the ramp back to the intake lip.  The length needs to be taken off the rear of all of this.

 

Now, because I have to set up for the intake reprofile I found myself in all sorts of a mess.  The intake 'shoulder' is up higher on a Spey bird and to do this properly you really need to make a cut along the shoulder and lift it a small amount. this is then where I discovered the intakes on the Tamiya kit are slightly too deep...but this is a good thing!

 

That is because the 'shoulder' is in the correct place for a Brit Phantom!  Hence the intakes are too deep at the front lip (according to Derek's depth measurement he sent me). I shaved a little off the depth when I address the corner and took the file to the splitter top  and bottoms.  It is still slightly too deep but maybe by only 1 mm-ish, which I can live with. Now I have a 'pinched and silly looking forward intake section.  I filled the little recess in the kit intake that locks in the splitter and added a square of 40thou to raise this section back up to the shoulder.

This seems to have instantly set me up to tackle the new contour of the Spey intake....completely by accident, but it looks 'right' to my eye.

 

See below with what I have ended up with.  Still a long way to go but I feel like I made a breakthrough today, phew!

Not perfect, but  feel like I am a long way through dealing with these

 

I am sure none of this made sense so hopefully photo's will as I proceed.  Better get on and do the other side now before I forget all the intricacies of what I did

 

Thanks for tuning in

 

Cheers Anthony 

 

[bigbadbadge]

Great corrective work you are doing and very informative too.  Will the trunking take much work to insert and smooth or is it a good fit ?

Chris

[At Sea]

Wow.

[Anthony in NZ]

9 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

Great corrective work you are doing and very informative too.  Will the trunking take much work to insert and smooth or is it a good fit ?

Chris

Hi Chris, I dont know mate...I am just making this all up as I go LOL

 

3 hours ago, At Sea said:

Wow.

Thanks!

 

There has been some fantastic images and measurements posted up on LSP by another member...definitely worth a look!

[WV908]

I've gone ahead and printed the plans from this link that was supplied in my thread;

 

http://soyuyo.main.jp/f4/f4e-1.html

 

I've only printed the Spey Phantom drawings, but I'll compare them to the Tamiya 'J' this evening. Although you've already done significant work, hopefully I can provide a benchmark for you from these drawings to give you reference points for checking the outer dimensions.

 

 

Cheers,

 WV908

[Anthony in NZ]

6 hours ago, WV908 said:

I've gone ahead and printed the plans from this link that was supplied in my thread;

 

http://soyuyo.main.jp/f4/f4e-1.html

 

I've only printed the Spey Phantom drawings, but I'll compare them to the Tamiya 'J' this evening. Although you've already done significant work, hopefully I can provide a benchmark for you from these drawings to give you reference points for checking the outer dimensions.

 

 

Cheers,

 WV908

Brilliant... I have been getting some good insights with Derek's measurements he posted also.

 

Keep me posted on what you find

 

Cheers Anthony

[WV908]

@Anthony in NZ Bad news I'm afraid. Those 3D printed burner cans are way, way too small. I've checked multiple drawings to ensure I'm right and they are 3-4m too small in diameter across the board. They should be 34mm at the fuselage and 30mm at the end of the burner.

 

These are 30mm at the fuselage and 27mm at the end of the burner.

 

I'm so gutted by this. It's a 3D designed and printed item. It's sloppy and it's killed my enthusiasm for the project completely. 

 

Edit: To add insult to injury the interior and exterior contours of the burners are wrong too. 

 

Edit 2: As will be read further down the thread, the one thing that saves these and allows them to be fixed is the incorrect interior contour - it is too flat, which allows material to be taken out to widen them.

Edited December 8, 2020 by WV908

[Anthony in NZ]

6 hours ago, WV908 said:

@Anthony in NZ Bad news I'm afraid. Those 3D printed burner cans are way, way too small. I've checked multiple drawings to ensure I'm right and they are 3-4m too small in diameter across the board. They should be 34mm at the fuselage and 30mm at the end of the burner.

 

These are 30mm at the fuselage and 27mm at the end of the burner.

 

I'm so gutted by this. It's a 3D designed and printed item. It's sloppy and it's killed my enthusiasm for the project completely. 

 

Edit: To add insult to injury the interior and exterior contours of the burners are wrong too. 

I know I offered mine up to the kit too and saw they were seriously undersized.  Apparently Jeroen can resize them for us, I guess it means spending more $$??

 

HOWEVER, dont let that stop you mate!  I am going to sort something out there and have been offered by a good mate who does CAD stuff for Barracuda (we have worked together on projects)to make some for me.  Stay tuned.

 

I do however have good news for you on the intakes in my next post.  Make sure you check out LSP as there has been a TON more info posted, quite amazing!

 

Hang in there mate

Anthony

[Anthony in NZ]

Ok, home from work now and all fed....

 

My proof of concept seems to work, I shaved the Real Model intakes down to the ducting and they slide in beautifully, I can also now set the angle inwards to the fan faces to get the correct look when you peer in.

 

Nothing glued yet, just measuring and testing

 

 

Burnout with this project came VERY close a few days ago, but all this new info has restored my mojo!  Phew

 

Cheers Anthony

[WV908]

2 hours ago, Anthony in NZ said:

I know I offered mine up to the kit too and saw they were seriously undersized.  Apparently Jeroen can resize them for us, I guess it means spending more $$??

 

HOWEVER, dont let that stop you mate!  I am going to sort something out there and have been offered by a good mate who does CAD stuff for Barracuda (we have worked together on projects)to make some for me.  Stay tuned.

 

I do however have good news for you on the intakes in my next post.  Make sure you check out LSP as there has been a TON more info posted, quite amazing!

 

Hang in there mate

Anthony

 

Hi Anthony, 

 Not really keen on sinking more money into this but I'll sit on the project for now and see what happens with your developments. I'm about this --- far from just selling both Phantoms because I'm fed up of them. 

 

I've had a look at cladding the burners in 40 thou strip which solves the outside diameter instantly. The problem is re-profiling the inside and getting it to look right as it will visibly curve outwards from the petals. 

 

Cheers,

  WV908

[WV908]

@Anthony in NZ

  Now I've got my head around it, we can still use the burners we have (yippee!) 

 

 

 

As you can see, the burners have a slight lip at the end, with the pronounced, hard edge on the outside, but nothing on the inside. Looking at photos of Speys I have determined that this lip exists both inside and outside on the real thing, meaning there is a natural step inside. 

 

Next thing is the geometry inside these cans is way off - on the real burner there is a curve, which butts up to the petal rollers, humps and rolls outwards to meet the step at the lip (Have I lost anyone yet? 🤪 ). The benefit of this is that in sanding the curve, I pretty much remove the lip as supplied and can then fashion a new one out of brass, which will be scale thickness and will be attached to what is currently the outside face of the burner. I can then clad this all in 40 thou strip and be away.

 

The one downside to this which I cannot correct is the petals as they should be about 1mm wider in diameter which means when I sand this curve on the interior of the burner, I cannot replicate it's leading edge and will essentially start at the 'hump' of it's shape and work down. To be fair though, the hump was never there in the first place on these prints so a scaled up print would not fix this anyway.

 

The photos on the jet art website show this best. 

 

 

TLDR: These burners can be modified to the correct diameter, with just a little compromise regarding the petals.

 

Phew,

   WV908

 

 

 

[Antti_K]

Hello Anthony & Co.,

 

More brilliant work Anthony!

 

I found the measurement pictures! A guy called "warriormcv" originally measured the Phantom at Duxford(?) and published the results and photos on LSP. I simply collected the data and put it on photographs of my FG.1. The arrows are placed on those exact spots where the measurements were taken.

 

Here we go

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, a head-on shot of an FGR.2

 

The numbers already show that the Hasegawa/Revell 1/48 scale FG.1 isn't very accurate around the intakes.

 

Hope these help.

 

Cheers,

Antti

[WV908]

Thanks @Antti_K Those are brilliant and confirm that I've scaled the drawings correctly and have my measurements correct.

 

Now I'm over the doom and gloom with the burners and can fix them, I want to make a few points regarding the drawings and the two kits, without providing definite dimensions at this point as I need to find my calipers.

 

So. Point one. The Tamiya kit is too short. By *drumroll* 2mm. It loses these at fuselage stations 46.68 and 515. The first is right at the rear of the radome so can be shimmed or replaced with the flightpath item. The second is smack on where the arrestor hook attaches, which explains why others have noted that the arrestor hook on the Tamiya kit is short.

 

Point two. The Revell kit is spot on in length and after viewing that you can then bin it as it's a real mess. It's lots of small details but the top line of the tail is sloped where it should be straight and the trailing edge of the rudder is straight where it should be sloped. A lot (too many) of the vertical panel lines are off by 1-2mm, meaning that measuring and sorting the intakes will be a PITA with one. 

 

The trailing underside edge of the heat shields mainly around the arrestor hook is just wrong. So wrong that you'll go straight through the plastic correcting it.

 

Here are some images of the Tamiya fuselage on the FG.1 drawings;

 

I am using fuselage station 249.65 (cockpit to fuse join) as my datum

 

 

 

And the issue with the burners which, as above can be fixed as in my previous post;

 

 

Cheers,

  WV908

 

 

 

[Antti_K]

Excellent info WV908, thank You for sharing🙂

 

A comment on Point 1: I measured the Tamiya kit to build an F-4J using the Fuselage Station Number drawing found in the Plane Captain's Manual. For an F-4J the fuselage is 6 mm too short between mid spine (where the small blade antenna sits) and the rear fuselage attachment (can't recall the fuselage station numbers now). I think that this missing length is one of the main reasons for too "box-like" rear fuselage and too small afterburners. Revell got them spot on. But is the information in Plane Captain's Manual accurate?

 

Your drawing beautifully shows the wider engine air intake funnel (larger cross section for greater volume of air). It looks like the intake lip is roughly the same size with F-4B and F-4J. It is also nice to see a drawing where wing Buttock Lines make sense; compare the figures with Phantom A.P. and you'll immediately notice the discrepancy.

 

Cheers,

Antti

[Cees Broere]

Good work chaps,

 

Just for your information. The burner cans on Shapeways  (upscaled from the Japanese rendering) were specifically done for my 1/32 project  which is a frankentoom consiting of a Tamiya fuselage with the tail sawed off and replaced by a Revell F-4F tailsection

as I think that better represents an FGR-2's bum. they are undersized because of that. If I had to adjust the Revell parts it would look comical (hey ma, look at my big a.....) so had to improvise. I am no perfectionist as long as it looks reasonably accurate without

a tapemeasure nearby.

 

Cees

[WV908]

48 minutes ago, Antti_K said:

Excellent info WV908, thank You for sharing🙂

 

A comment on Point 1: I measured the Tamiya kit to build an F-4J using the Fuselage Station Number drawing found in the Plane Captain's Manual. For an F-4J the fuselage is 6 mm too short between mid spine (where the small blade antenna sits) and the rear fuselage attachment (can't recall the fuselage station numbers now)

 

Cheers,

Antti

6? Ouch. I'll have to give that another look. For now I'll say at least 2mm then haha and will have to observe more closely where the panel lines are. I need to bear in mind that I had neither the nose or tail cones fitted so was using purely the fuselage itself.

 

Interestingly both the set and rake of the vertical stabs seems to be wrong - too shallow on both accounts.

 

@Cees Broere Thanks for clearing that up regarding the burners. I'm going to have a look at mine tonight and make some paper templates before cutting the cladding. Luckily the way that these have been designed the petals look to be almost the right diameter - it's just the pipe around them that's wrong in being almost parallel on I/D, but that works for correcting them as the inside should slope away towards the outer diameter and there is just enough material in the burners to do this

 

Rather than moan about the O/D of the prints I guess I should be thankful that they were drawn up in the first place

 

 

 

Cheers,

  WV908

 

 

 

[Antti_K]

Hello guys,

 

I checked all the measurements for an F-4J starting from the nose using the Stations Diagram. They are accurate up until FS 389,16. The measurements again match the drawing aft of FS 515. So 6 mm:s missing between these two locations. The British Phantom and an F-4J should be the same from the nose up to FS 249,65 (just aft of the rear cockpit). Note that the "doors" around the nose and cockpit are rather for an F-4B than F-4J.

 

Cheers,

Antti

[Antti_K]

And one more...

 

Cheers,

Antti

[Anthony in NZ]

Brilliant information chaps...I have just go to digest all of this and see what and where I go next.

 

I am ever grateful for you both sharing your vast knowledge to someone who is struggling to make sense of it all.

 

Cheers Anthony

[WV908]

20 minutes ago, Anthony in NZ said:

Brilliant information chaps...I have just go to digest all of this and see what and where I go next.

 

I am ever grateful for you both sharing your vast knowledge to someone who is struggling to make sense of it all.

 

Cheers Anthony

 

As am I with you all haha - it's a massive learning curve with any subject and the Phantom just takes it to another level. I've looked again at the burners since getting home and it's not quite as simple as I planned, but I know it will work, with some finess applied. 

 

I have wrapped a strip of 40 thou around the tightest radius on the burners and it just conforms, but not comfortably, so I've ordered some 10 and 20 thou which will work much happier than the 40.

 

Whilst I wait for that to arrive I have another new arrival to keep me occupied... 

 

 

Box is battered but it's perfect inside - no yellow on the decals either. How on Earth this didn't bid higher than £30 is beyond me. Come to think of it I picked up my XT597 and F-4J (UK) boxings for about the same 🤨 Anyway, happy 'Tooming! 

 

Cheers,

  WV908 

[Serkan Sen]

Excellent work so far. I will follow this build with great interest.

Serkan

[canberra kid]

Some fab work going on with this Phantom, if I can help with some more drawings just shout.

John

[Anthony in NZ]

13 hours ago, Serkan Sen said:

Excellent work so far. I will follow this build with great interest.

Serkan

Thanks Serkan, I hope you enjoy it very much like I am!

 

12 hours ago, canberra kid said:

Some fab work going on with this Phantom, if I can help with some more drawings just shout.

John

John thanks so much for all you have already done!  You are instrumental in the success of this too.  I will let you know if i get stuck

 

Kind regards

Anthony