US Navy F2H-3 of VF-41 "Black Aces" on USS Bennington, 1956 (Academy 1/72)

[jrlx]

Dear All,

 

Having finished an AZ Model AH-1G Cobra in mid-December, which gave me a fight almost every step of the way, I decided to build something simple and out-of-the-box. I opted for Academy's F2H-3, which seemed quite simple and has been recently re-boxed.

 

Here's a picture of the box art, sprues and decals:

IMAG7109

 

The decal sheet in detail. It's printed by Cartograf, should perform flawlessly:

IMAG7110

 

The decals allow one of seven schemes to be built. On the box side we can see six of these:

IMAG7111

 

However, I'll build the box-art scheme, which is also shown on the top sides of the box:

IMAG7112

 

There's a good picture of this aircraft on the net:

 

There's also a video of flight operations of VF-41 aboard another carrier (USS Forrestal) around the same time:

 

There are two detailed walk-arounds on the net:

https://www.cybermodeler.com/aircraft/f2h/f2h_walk.shtml

http://www.primeportal.net/hangar/bill_spidle2/f2h_126419/

 

I started the build by removing the cockpit parts from the sprues:

IMAG7113

 

The instrument panel and side panels have raised detail to represent the instrumentation but there are no decals for that. The control column is a poor representation of the real thing. The ejection seat needs some scratch built additions to represent the ejection handles.

 

These handles are shown in the following pictures of the real thing: there's one on each side of the seat, in red and yellow stripes,

 

 

There's also a red handle on the top of the seat, visible through the canopy on this picture:

 

I made the handles from 0.2 mm copper wire. The seat was drilled on the proper places and the pre-bent wires were glued in place with CA. Here's the final result:

IMAG7119

 

The ejection mark on the floor of the cockpit tube isn't completely covered by the seat. So, I applied a circular piece of plasticard and a bit of Perfect Plastic Putty (PPP) to make it disappear:

IMAG7115

 

The bulkhead on the back of the cockpit tube was glued in place:

IMAG7117

 

The cockpit parts are ready for painting:

IMAG7120

 

The fuselage and wing parts were also removed from the sprues:

IMAG7114

 

The fit seems to be good. The main and nose wheel wells are very poor: too shallow and with no detail whatsoever. I'll try to improve them somehow. Another problematic area are the air intakes, which lack the inner tubing leading to the compressor faces of the turbines (though these are schematically represented in the kit).

 

Here is a picture of the real thing:

 

Front compressor face and intake tubing

 

Rear compressor face and exhaust tubing:

 

The kit parts for the front compressor faces (bottom of the image) and rear compressor faces (four parts on the top left of the image):

IMAG7122

 

I'll try to make the intake tubing from thin plasticard sheet but it will be complicated. In the meanwhile, I glued in place two parts that represent the vertical sidewalls of the intakes:

IMAG7121

 

I noticed that the openings for the canons on the sides of the front fuselage are simple holes (visible on the left edge of the previous picture), allowing the inside of the model to be seen. To avoid this, I used thin plasticard to create tubings for these openings.

 

Here are they glued in place on the inside of the fuselage halves:

IMAG7123

 

Here's a front view of the result:

IMAG7124

 

Well, so much for my intentions of building the kit OOB...

 

The cockpit parts and the inside walls of the cockpit on the fuselage halves were primed with Alclad Black Primer and Microfiller but I didn't take pictures yet.

 

That's all for now. Thanks for looking.

 

Jaime

 

 

[giemme]

Off to a great start already, Jaime!

I'm in, if you don't mind

 

Ciao 

[Tailspin Turtle]

Some notes here: https://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2009/12/f2h-banshee-modeling-notes.html

 

The most noticeable, sort of, is the nose landing gear difference from the F2H-1/2 Banshees.

 

I failed to mention that in the -3/4s, a large radar scope was added on the right side of the instrument panel. It is missing from the kit’s instrument panel and is one of the less significant but still somewhat visible differences between the -1/2s and the -3/4s.

 

Note: I’ve just modified that post to add an illustration of the -3/4 instrument panel and one of the fillet added to the inboard leading edge of the horizontal stabilizer. 

Edited January 9, 2021 by Tailspin Turtle
Correct typo

[David H]

Nice to see the -3 "Bigger Banjo" getting some love. It wasn't what one would call a flashy performer, but it proved very dependable and it provided McDonnell with enough cash to go on to bigger and better things.

 

-d-

[jrlx]

16 hours ago, giemme said:

Off to a great start already, Jaime!

I'm in, if you don't mind

 

Ciao 

 

Hi Giorgio! It's always a pleasure to have you on board! I hope I won't disapoint!

 

 

10 hours ago, Tailspin Turtle said:

Some notes here: https://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2009/12/f2h-banshee-modeling-notes.html

 

The most noticeable, sort of, is the nose landing gear difference from the F2H-1/2 Banshees.

 

I failed to mention that in the -3/4s, a large radar scope was added on the right side of the instrument panel. It is missing from the kit’s instrument panel and is one of the less significant but still somewhat visible differences between the -1/2s and the -3/4s.

 

Note: I’ve just modified that post to add an illustration of the -3/4 instrument panel and one of the bit fillet added to the horizontal stabilizer. 

 

Thank you very much for the link: very interesting and useful.

 

 

7 hours ago, David H said:

Nice to see the -3 "Bigger Banjo" getting some love. It wasn't what one would call a flashy performer, but it proved very dependable and it provided McDonnell with enough cash to go on to bigger and better things.

 

-d-

 

I find these 50's jets quite interesting and have a few different types in my stash.

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

 

[jrlx]

Hi again,

 

a small update with some recent progress.

 

I applied Alclad Black Primer & Microfiller to the cockpit parts:

IMAG7125

 

and to the inner cockpit walls:

IMAG7126

 

Since the side panels are black, I masked them on the cockpit tube before painting the interior colour:

IMAG7127

 

The front and back coamings of the cockpit were also masked:

IMAG7128

 

After painting the interior grey (Gunze H317 Dark Gull Grey), the masking was removed:

IMAG7130

 

I'll dry brush the instruments latter with grey and silver to make them stand out.

 

IMAG7133

 

The other colours on the small parts were brush painted. The ejection handles of the seat were first white based:

IMAG7129

 

Next, I painted the yellow handles:

IMAG7131

 

Finally, I painted the red handle and the red stipes on the yellow handles:

IMAG7132

 

I'll add seatbelts from a spare PE set.

 

I'm now trying to make the intake tubings from plasticard but I've been a bit stuck on this task. I'll report latter, when I manage to finish them.

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

[giemme]

Lovely job on the interiors,  Jaime

 

Ciao 

[jrlx]

Hi again,

 

As I said before, due to some inaccuracies of this kit, this project won't be an OOB build. One of the areas which I want to improve is the intakes, for which I decided to scratch-build the intake tubing. For that, I started trying to create a template out of paper, from which a plasticard piece would be made and bent to proper shape. After several tries with paper cuts, I was convince I had managed to create a proper template and cut the corresponding pieces in plastic from a 0.13mm plasticard sheet.

 

This picture shows the paper template on top (the one on the right is already bent) and the plasticard templates on the bottom:

IMAG7134

 

Unfortunately, after several tries, I didn't manage to get properly shaped intakes by bending the plastic templates. This is due to the complex variation of the tubing from front to back. I decided to put this task to rest and move to other areas of the build, while thinking on a better way to build the intakes (possibly with two pieces of plastic per intake, but we'll see).

 

Another area to improve is the compressor faces of the jet engines. The front face is open and needs to be closed by a piece of plasticard. On these pieces I scribed radial lines to simulate the compressor face blades. This picture shows the piece on the left ready:

IMAG7135

 

This is how they look after glueing in place. Hopefully, a coat of steel paint will make them look ok. The ejector marks on the parts shouldn't be visible after installing the intake ducts, so I didn't remove them:

IMAG7136

 

I also scribed radial lines on the exhaust ends of the jet engines:

IMAG7137

 

End result, ready for painting:

IMAG7138

 

Next, I decided to scribe several panel lines that are missing on the underside of the wings. The most prominent are those of the wheel well door which covers the well. It is shown on the painting scheme of the kit, so I decided to scale the scheme in the photocopier to the size of the wing part and cut a paper template for scribing these panel lines. However, the scheme is not dimensionally correct: the inner part of the wing is wider than the corresponding section of the plastic part. I opted for scaling so that the outer part of the wing in the scheme would correspond to the real size of the same section of the wing part. A scaling of 226% was applied. Using the resulting paper template, I scribed the wheel door on one of the wings, as shown in this picture:

IMAG7139

 

There are other lines that must be scribed on the control surfaces (trim tabs) and some lines are missing or incorrect. While searching the net for blueprints and pictures showing these details, I found that the wheel door already scribed wasn't exactly correct: the top and bottom edges shouldn't be parallel but slightly angled towards one another. I'll have to rectify that.

 

Right now I'm figuring out the proper placement of the additional lines to scribe. This is not so easy, because the available blueprints are not very detailed or consistent with the pictures of the walk-arounds. More on this latter.

 

Thanks for looking

 

Jaime

 

 

 

 

 

[Pax_1601]

Love the modifications to the seats and the engine, very good start indeed imho

[Robin-42]

Looks great so far. Detail and Scale is coming out with a new book on the later Banshees, one of the errors they point out on the kit is the step on the tailplanes is way too abrupt. One look at a picture shows it. Of course I missed it! I built this years ago, I finished the intakes with milliput and a wet qtip. No sanding and no seams. I think I just held some plastic tubing over the compressor faces while I pushed the milliput around them. 

Edited January 9, 2021 by Robin-42

[Bejay53]

On 12/26/2020 at 8:36 PM, jrlx said:

 

 

 

I find these 50's jets quite interesting and have a few different types in my stash.

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

 

I have an old hobby craft kit in the stash if you want to talk about simple!

Edited January 9, 2021 by Bejay53

[Robin-42]

2 hours ago, Bejay53 said:

I have an old hobby craft kit in the stash if you want to talk about simple!

The Academy kit is the Hobbycraft kit re-boxed. Only difference is useable decals.

[giemme]

Nice progress, Jaime 

 

For the intakes: I used a template made from an eraser gum (Staedler works very well) in a couple of builds. It's very easy to carve and sand/shape, and strong enough to hold vacforming/plounge moulding. HTH

 

Ciao 

[Tailspin Turtle]

Strictly speaking, those red and yellow “handles” on the sides of the ejection seat were there to keep the pilot’s legs from flailing when he came out of the cockpit into the free stream air. The pilot was supposed to put his feet into something like pans on the front edge of the bottom of the seat and pull those handles into a vertical position (the early seats required a separate action to arm the seat and accomplish some preliminary functions before the face curtain was pulled). The “handles” should therefore be angled forward out of the way of the side consoles normally. Also see https://images.app.goo.gl/haFZu7FhKGgn2JwJ8 

 

Note that the illustration is misleading in that the seat would normally have a seat cushion/survival kit in the bucket and a back-pack parachute in it (these were standard GFE and often left out of the aircraft manufacturer’s illustrations).

Edited January 10, 2021 by Tailspin Turtle

[Shalako]

Any progress?

[jrlx]

2 minutes ago, Shalako said:

Any progress?

 

Hello @Shalako, thanks for your interest. I did progress a bit but didn't have the time to update the thread yet. I still have to solve the problem of how to create acceptable intake tubing.

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

 

[jrlx]

On 10/01/2021 at 16:06, Tailspin Turtle said:

Strictly speaking, those red and yellow “handles” on the sides of the ejection seat were there to keep the pilot’s legs from flailing when he came out of the cockpit into the free stream air. The pilot was supposed to put his feet into something like pans on the front edge of the bottom of the seat and pull those handles into a vertical position (the early seats required a separate action to arm the seat and accomplish some preliminary functions before the face curtain was pulled). The “handles” should therefore be angled forward out of the way of the side consoles normally. Also see https://images.app.goo.gl/haFZu7FhKGgn2JwJ8 

 

Note that the illustration is misleading in that the seat would normally have a seat cushion/survival kit in the bucket and a back-pack parachute in it (these were standard GFE and often left out of the aircraft manufacturer’s illustrations).

 

Thank you for the explanation. I wasn't aware of these details and followed the pictures of the cockpit which I inserted in my first post of this thread. In the museum aircraft, the handles are positioned vertically and so did I in my scratch building. I'm afraid the fuselage was already closed when I read your explanation, and there was no way to modify the position of the handles (I still have to post those pictures, though).

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

 

[jrlx]

Hi again,

 

After a long period away from this build, I've finally made some progress last week in making air-intakes for the jet engines, which was scaring me away from the build.

 

However, I still must update the build log with work done earlier this year, from January to March.

 

First, I decided to complete seat with the foot-rests protruding in front of the seat. These were done with 0.13 mm-think plasticard:

IMAG7154

 

The foot-rests were painted by paintbrush:

IMAG7155

 

The raised detail on the instrument panel and side panels was highlighted by dry-brushing:

IMAG7156

 

IMAG7157

 

The next step was applying a dark wash to the cockpit parts, after gloss-coating these parts. I used Vallejo's greased earth acrylic wash:

IMAG7159

 

A detail of the gloss-coated cockpit parts before applying the wash:

IMAG7160

 

After the wash, a matt coat was applied, resulting in this:

IMAG7163

 

The cockpit walls turned out very dark because I didn't remove the excess wash:

IMAG7164

 

I used some spare PE seat belts from a Cobra helicopter for this build, as they look very similar to the seat belts used in this aircraft. The seat belts were painted still in the PE fret:

IMAG7158

 

I decided to try a recently acquired liquid chrome marker to paint the buckles:

IMAG7165

 

Here's the result:

IMAG7166

 

The seat belts were cut off the fret:

IMAG7174

 

... applied to the seat:

IMAG7175

 

The seat was glued to the cockpit base:

IMAG7176

 

The cockpit base was glued to the port fuselage half:

IMAG7180

 

The model needs some weight on the nose to avoid becoming a tail seater. I used miliput to glue lead balls in place:

IMAG7181

 

I had to close the front of the cockpit base in order to avoid seeing the lead in the nose:

IMAG7189

 

The fuselage halves were glued together:

IMAG7190

 

IMAG7194

 

I applied tiny drops of Aqua Gloss on the instrument faces to simulate the glass covers:

IMAG7171

 

Finally, the instrument panel was glued in place:

IMAG7221

 

Thanks for looking

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

[giemme]

Lovely detailing and painting in the cockpit, Jaime - way to get the best out of an OOB build  

 

Ciao

[jrlx]

1 hour ago, giemme said:

Lovely detailing and painting in the cockpit, Jaime - way to get the best out of an OOB build  

 

Ciao

Thanks Giorgio!

[RC Boater Bill]

Any progress?   I just found this thread- I just acquired this kit last week!  I’ve already learned a lot from your progress so far…..

 

 

[jrlx]

On 16/04/2022 at 04:36, RC Boater Bill said:

Any progress?   I just found this thread- I just acquired this kit last week!  I’ve already learned a lot from your progress so far…..

 

 

 

Thanks a lot for your interest! I managed to solve the problem of how to create acceptable intake tubings and already glued the wings to the fuselage. I have several new pictures but haven't found the time to update the thread yet. I'll try to do it soon.

 

However, the build is on hold right now because I'm doing builds for the Matchbox GB and the Bomber/Strike/Ground Attack GB.

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

[jrlx]

Hi again,

 

I've been away from BM as an active contributor for a long time now because I haven't done any modelling for a while. I intend to resume work on my shelf of doom in January but I still have some updating to do on a few WIP threads. This is one of them.

 

The work below was done back in Jan-Mar. 2021.

 

As said in a previous post, the intake tubing was a blocking point in the build. While I was thinking about a possible solution, I went on with the build doing other things.

 

I removed the canopy parts from the sprues:

IMAG7162

 

Next, I scribed missing panel lines on the wings' undersurfaces:

IMAG7188

 

I also looked for and found a PE replacement for an antenna that will be installed on the underside of the fuselage:

IMAG7218

 

The main landing gear wheels were removed from the sprues:

IMAG7219

 

To make the ejection marks disappear, I first glued pieces of plastic rods in the marks:

IMAG7262

 

The main landing gear legs were test-fitted to check if there was enough space to add some detail to the wheel wells. Available space is limited but I'll try to add something anyway:

IMAG7220

 

Small parts removed from the sprues:

IMAG7239

 

The rockets were glued to their pylons:

IMAG7241

 

The fuel tanks were assembled and the horizontal stabiliser parts were also removed from the sprues:

IMAG7242

 

Next, it was time to install the exhaust parts in the wings:

IMAG7243

 

Since there would be big seams inside the exhaust tubing, I decided to glue pieces of thin plasticard along the joins of the wing halves before glueing these halves together. Here are the lower halves of both wings with the pieces of plasticard glued in place:

IMAG7261

 

I used a piece of sandpaper glued to a toothpick to blend the plasticard pieces with the interior surface of the exhaust tubing. This was done for the lower edge of the pieces before glueing the wing halves together and repeated for the top edges after, which was more difficult due to space limitations.

IMAG7263

 

Wing halves glued together:

IMAG7264

 

In the next post I'll show how I did the intake tubing and I'll finish updating the thread.

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jrlx]

Hi again,

 

This is the remaining post for bringing the thread up to date. It shows work done in Nov.-Dec.2021.

 

I devised a solution for the intake tubing, comprising two pieces of 0,13mm-thick plasticard.

 

The first piece is shown below for the port wing and makes up the outboard side of the tubing:

IMAG7502

 

The following pictures show the installation of the outboard tubing on the starboard wing (I didn't take a picture of the installation of the equivalent piece on the port wing):

IMAG7500

 

IMAG7501

 

Next, I installed the inboard piece of the tubing:

IMAG7503

 

IMAG7504

 

The inboard piece of plastic will be adjusted after glueing the wings to the fuselage.

 

Wings on:

IMAG7505

 

IMAG7506

 

After glueing the wings, the intake tubing was finally adjusted:

IMAG7508

 

IMAG7510

 

IMAG7511

 

With the most difficult phase of the build behind, I glued the horizontal stabilisers in place:

IMAG7532

 

IMAG7533

 

One of the worst points of the kit is the detail-less shallow wheel wells. There's a lot of detail visible in the walkaround pictures in primeportal (unfortunately, unreachable right now). I tried to add some detail using pieces of plastic and copper wire.

 

Starting with the nose wheel well, there's a nasty seam along the fuselage halves:

IMAG7535

 

First, I glued in place a piece of plasticard:

IMAG7536

 

The locating holes for the nose gear were drilled out and pieces of copper wire were glued in place, bent and with pieces of masking tape wound up in order to simulate some of the detail that can be seen in the walkaround pictures:

IMAG7538

 

Detail was also added to the main gear wells in a similar manner:

IMAG7543

 

That's all for now. Hopefully, I'll be able to carry on with this build in a couple of months.

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Rabbit Leader]

Having just acquired this kit to potentially build in the upcoming Salty Sea Dog Group Build, I’m amazed how much work you’ve put into it to get it looking so good so far. I’ll have to go back and revisit the earlier posts, however this is all looking really good so far. I do hope you maintain the momentum and dedication to finish her off, all that great work really deserves it. 
Cheers.. Dave