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1/72 Sword P-80A Shooting Star - Corrected


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Hello again.

 

After taking  a few days off for the Holidays, here we go again!   After completing the XP-80 last year, I determined that I needed a P-80A to round out the collection.  So, I picked up a Sword P-80 A/B kit like so:

 

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A relatively new tool kit, optional parts for A vs B model --  good to go, right?  Not so fast.

 

While researching the build, once again, the Spectre of Tommy Thomason's Tailhook Topics blog reaches out to crush simplicity.  See the link HERE

 

In it is various quite useful information, along with one single "Dag Nab It!";  the cockpit for the A model is in the same location as on the XP-80, which means that the windscreen (not the whole cockpit) needs to be moved back around 1/8 inch, and the canopy needs shortening by a scale 6 - 7 inched, or a tad less than 1/8 inch.  There goes the easy day, so let's get on with it.

 

Below, the red lines indicate where the cuts need ti be made in each fuselage half:

 

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Above right, the cackpit wall is moved aft and glued onto the fuselage side in it's new position.  It seemed a lot more simple to shorten here, since all the parts fit well.

 

The mods being done on the fuse, the next step is to paint all needed interior parts with Interior Green (FS 34151), and add around 3 grams lead weight to the nose.  The nose gear well fit to the fuselage is really poor, so a LOT of sanding and test fitting is required here:

 

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Above right, the intakes are fitted before the fuselage is closed up.  The drill here is to try and get the best seam possible at the leading edge of the splitter plate (shiny white spot). Additional sanding will be needed at the rear as well as the splitter plate, which I will show later on.  Meanwhile, the cockpit is painted.  Fortunately the cockpit can be inserted from the bottom, after the fuselage halves are assembled, which makes life much easier:

 

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Above right, note that the cockpit has not yet been inserted.  The gap in front of the windscreen is filled with scrap plastic sheet, which is much easier to manage than filler, and also adds strength to the structure.  I use Weld-ON #3 for the construction.  User's of other types of glue may have their mileage vary.

 

While this dries, I'll step away and ponder steps to follow.

 

Be well,

 

Ed,

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11 minutes ago, billn53 said:

Dang it! There’s always something, isn’t there?

 

(I’m pretty sure I have this kit in my stash, so I guess I had better pay attention!)

Yeah, Bill --  I hate it when modeling tries to imitate life!

 

Ed

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Ed, tagging along if you don’t mind—if this is anything like your other rescues, there will be much to learn about the aircraft and how to accuracizie the kit—speaking of which, do you have any info on how Sword’s kit compares to the classic Airfix?  I thought had heard the lines were generally accurate, but the details were wanting—looking forward to this—Erwin

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I've got this one in my in-box, too.  I'm disappointed to hear it will need surgery, but I'm looking forward to another Mr. Ed build.  😎

 

I recall Finescale Modeler (sic) ran a P-80A conversion article some decades ago, the 1/48 Monogram kit was the starting point.  Might be worth a look?

 

Just gave the stash a quick look and it seems I'm in possession of a Sword P-80A/B and a "P-80C" in Korean Conflict markings.  Might Sword have followed the path of least resistance and simply reboxed the -C model with new markings as a P-80A?

 

ETA: I now realise I could've simply opened the boxes and had a look at the sprues and had something definite to share with the class.  🤔

 

Findings: Sprues are very much Not The Same.  Fuselages are different but appear to get to the same shape via different parts breakdown:, the windscreen on both is in the F-80C location.  This saddens and hurts me, as moving the windscreen aft was the one big takeaway detail from Bob Steinbrunn's January 1989 P-80A article mentioned above.  That was thirty-plus years ago now, shame on Sword for missing the needful.  Also, the "P-80C" kit came packed with an Ilyushin 10 which I will never build, if anyone can offer a 1/72 Il-10 a good home please speak up and it's yours.

 

 

 

Edited by Jackson Duvalier
Visual inspection yielded marginally relevant information.
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18 hours ago, VT Red Sox Fan said:

Ed, tagging along if you don’t mind—if this is anything like your other rescues, there will be much to learn about the aircraft and how to accuracizie the kit—speaking of which, do you have any info on how Sword’s kit compares to the classic Airfix?  I thought had heard the lines were generally accurate, but the details were wanting—looking forward to this—Erwin

The Airfix one that I built years ago does i fact seem accurate for a "C" version, but did lack some of the detail.  It still is a great kit.

 

Ed

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Yup Jackson, Sword took a dive on the P-80 A/B kit, trying to save a buck, I suppose.  Fortunately, it's not areal hard conversion.

 

Welcome aboard Steve, but before you start one of these, don't forget you owe us a build on a certain Republic model...

 

Ed

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Back again, with more YP-80A...

 

Earlier, I had indicated that more sanding would be necessary.  This is due to the fact that the lower fuse/bottom wing part is moulded 1-2 mm too long at the center section, fore-and-aft.  Therefore, it is impossible to mate to the fuselage without a lot of fitting:

 

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Above left, the rear front gear well bulkhead must be cut down (A);  the bottoms of the intakes proper (as well as the intake splitters) must be shortened (B); the rear ends of the intake pieces must be thinned (C).  Also, the rear of the fuselage opening must be sanded off a bit (D).  Careful here, as the entire goal is to make the front edge of the intake join lines (between the top and bottom fuselage parts) line up properly fore-and-aft (Above right).  The trick here is slow and steady, constantly checking the fit everywhere, which if done properly, will result in just tiny gaps at (A) and (B) above right.  The wing edges at the fuse will be a little off, but that's not too much of a bother...

 

Next, before the lower wing is joined to the fuselage, the cockpit assembly is glued into place.  Unlike the XP-80, THIS time, I glued the seat, belts, etc. all into place before installing the cockpit:

 

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Above left, I filled the tiny area under the windscreen with white glue (painted flat black after it had dried), because the kit part was never going to come even close to fitting now.  The plastic card filling the front gap on the fuse has been sanded smooth. Above center, this is what the bucket seat (NOT THE EJECTION SEAT!) looked like before installation.  The seat belts are tiny strips of aluminum foil, painted off-white on the shiny side, with the tip ends bent over to replicate buckles on the free end.  These are glued to the seat with CA and then bent down into final shapes/positioned when dry.  I could have added tiny squares to the shoulder harnesses, but I was too lazy...    

 

Above right, the gun sight has been added, along with it's leather pad, and the windscreen glued into place ( I recommend G-S watch cement for this. The filler piece aft of the armour plate has been tested to make certain it fits the canopy in the closed position.  Had I chosen to model the canopy open, then this piece needs to be attached to the inside of the rear canopy, which when slid back, would reveal a big squarish empty hole behind the armour plating and seat, looking down into the fuselage.  Again, too lazy.

 

Also, not shown here, a tiny leather headrest was added to the front of the seat armour plating, made up of shaped sprue suitably painted.

 

Below, the wing and horizontal stabilizer have been added, as well as the main canopy section.  THIS time, I elected to sand the canopy to final length, removing more-or-less a scale 6-7 inches from the front end, rather than take the chance of shattering the small canopy by sawing it in two, as happened on my XP-80 build:

 

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Above right, the carefully sanded and fitted canopy is glued into place.  The white areas are Vallejo filler.  At the end of the day, not much was needed, to or bottom --- BUT this was only due to MUCH careful sanding and fitting.  While the kit looks great, the fit is not great overall, and the lack of locating pins anywhere is a PITA.

 

The last thing of note here is that the bottom wings are squared off, while the top wing is rounded.  The ends of the squared-off lower wing need to be sanded a bit, to close the top wing to fuselage joint as much as possible.  Oddly, one side is a hair longer than the other -- note the seam on the bottom of the lower right wingtip, which will need some filling also.

 

Well, a little priming sanding and final checks, and she'll be off to the paint booth.  Back later,

 

Ed

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hello again.

 

Since there wasn't much of particular interest going on, I took few pictures of the painting process.  It was the usual prime coat of Alclad II Gray Primer, followed by a coat of MM FS 36492 gray, which Dana Bell believes is a very close match for he color used.  Actually, he called for 16492, which is Gloss, but I had to use the flat version and the gloss coat it myself before adding the decals, using Alclad II Aqua Gloss clear.

 

The decals were a bit more tricky.  The kit decals were printed by Techmod, and are very sharp -- and very thin.  The larger ones, like the wing roundels, weren't too bad (one split in half, but no large problem.  All the smaller decals were problematic, very prone to fold over upon themselves, etc.  Also, when I tried to apply the smaller ones using Micro Set, they didn't like to move around after the first few seconds.  I ended up using water to float them on, and they did a little better.  If I were to use the kit decals again, I might first give them a coat of Micro Superfilm first.  Fortunately however, the kit decals give me all the needed decals for the aircraft I chose to build -- one of the two YP-80A's sent to Italy in 1945.

 

 Two were sent to England, but one crashed early on; the other was lent to the British for engine testing.  Of the two that went to Italy, both survived, but neither is known to have engaged an enemy aircraft during WWII.  The YP-80A's in Italy were sent to the 94th Fighter Squadron there, but while they were flown by USAAC pilots from the 94th, all the maintenance personnel were civilians -  the Army wasn't allowed anywhere close to the super secret aircraft!

 

Anyway, the kit decals had all I needed for the aircraft I chose, s/n 44-83028, by simply re-arranging provided serial numbers:

 

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It was possible, by manipulating the above picture in Photoshop, to see that at least some stenciling was applied.  I have no idea rather the flap warning lines atop the wings were there on these aircraft, or not, so I just took a shot, figuring what the heck, they add a little color...

 

The next minor irritation was with the landing gear.  This limited-run kit  had a fair amount of flash on the LG, and all of the holes in the wheels, as well as the gear leg mounting holes in the fuselage had to be drilled out.  Not fatal, but annoying.  All in all, this kit from Sword is sort of a love-hate thing.  The added parts given to distinguish between the A and B models (such as bucket seat vs election seat) ALMOST makes up for their taking the financial dive to not issue a separate kit for the "A" version (with maybe the parts for the XP-80?).  In fact, my "B" version(shown later for comparison) was actually made from their "C" kit, a few years back.

 

Long story short, I'm glad they made the kit, but even if you build it stock, AND build it as a "B" model, it's not gonna be a walk in the park...

 

The landing gear added:

 

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Above right, she's done at last.  Since this wasn't a real major correction build, there will be no RFI pics.  I'll simply give you a couple more pics here:

 

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Above right, a comparison with my P-80B (as stated earlier, actually made from the Sword P-80C kit).  The only real difference is the point at which the windscreen sits, relative to the engine intakes.

 

Below, my P-80 line-up so far:

 

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From the front, XP-80, YP-80A, P-80B, F-80C (I think the old Airfix kit, but not sure -- too many years ago!)

 

Well, there you have it, my latest adventure in modeling.  Were it not for the limited-run difficulties of the kit, I would probably recommend this as a first conversion attempt.  But, your mileage may vary...

 

Thanks for looking in.  See you all next time around!

 

Ed

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Ed, so sorry I have been busy—meant to comment earlier—with Airfix re-releasing their F-80C this year,(at least that what I thought I heard)  I will be turning to this build for inspiration and knowledge on the later version.  In the meantime, well done—that grey looks slick and accurate!  Best, Erwin

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