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Hasegawa 1/72 General Dynamic ECM EF-111A Raven AKA Spark Vark with swept wings


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This is the venerable Hasegawa F-111 which has been boxed in virtually every version of the F-111 made. In this case it is the EF-111A Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) version. Every boxing I have seen of this kit shows it with the wings swept forward and the flaps fully extended, Such as with my FB-111A that I built of a few years ago

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but what I have never seen advertised is that Hasegawa engineered this kit to also display it, with only minor surgery, with the wings fully swept back and and the flaps fully retracted. So I decided to show what the process is to pull it off. Also I needed to do it to save display shelf space

 

First on the upper and lower fuselage there are 2 thinned areas of plastic that need to be removed. Here on the upper fuselage:

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and here on the lower:

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and here they are removed

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Once you glue them together the opening will look like this

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Next is the somewhat more complex work on the wings. The front slats have several little tabs that fir into notches on the lower wings

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These need to be extended to the top of the wing

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once this is done the slats will more or less neatly fit into the wing leading edge

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For the flaps the whole extensions of them need to be removes

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Being careful to leave the small stubs that fir into the wing trailing edge

Again once done they will fit into the wings

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Finally there is a tab in the upper fuselage half, hard to see here

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that a slot on the upper wing fits into.

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Slot A is for the fully forward wing and slot B in for the fully swept wing. Note projection C, broken here, will engage with a pin in the upper fuselage in the fully forward position to give it extra strength. We don't need this in the swept position.

 So once all this is done we get this;

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And this is how it looks fully assembled

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So now that that is over we can finish the build. I used the Eduard interior and the Caracal 72101 decal sheet. I chose the "Mistress of Deception" marking because it is such a great name. I have to note that this is the first time I have had issues with Caracal decals. These had a very thin film, which is good, but it was so thin that they were had to position without them  wanting to roll up into a ball.

 

Anyway. Here it is

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Here are my 3 F-111 builds together. From left to right these are F-111E, FB-111A nd EF-111A

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Next up will be the Sword TAV-8A.

 

Enjoy

 

 

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1 hour ago, SafetyDad said:

Beautiful! The streamlined look, together with the grey scheme, make for a very different overall final result.

I have an F-111E in the SEA color scheme that I also swept the wings on and this one just looks sleeker and better.

 

Thanks

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Very nice build, I didn't know that the "Spark Vark" ever came in the camouflage scheme. I built the Hasegawa "E" version a few years ago and have pleasant memories of building it.  

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