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The Accommodator: F-100D Revell 1/72eme USAF


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Hi Everybody!

 

Another Century icon from the bench: the F-100D "Hun". To pay tribute to the Super Sabre, I built two of them, an ESCI and the Revell (ignoring tha their are the same!), being really disappointed by the Trumpeter kit.

So, first the Revell: As said, the Revell kit is a re-boxing of the old Esci/Italeri kit but, at least, it seems more accurate than the Trumpeter. Dimensions and proportions are overall OK, depending on the drawing you select: For Details & Scale, the fuselage is too long by 3mm and the vertical fin too high by 2mm but if you do the same comparison on the Burindo or Warpaint no4 , this mistake disappears! So, being lazy and not fond of a heavy surgery, I went on the easy way - ignoring D&S!

However, far for being easy to build due to its age, a lot work awaited me, from front to end:

- As usual, riveting, good news the engraved panels are OK;

- Cockpit replaced by the AIRES one, needing a lot of adjustments to be fitted correctly inside the fuselage. The front shroud is scratch built. 

- Front wheel well, re-done with wiring and tubing;

- Inner air intake "tunnel" made from scratch. Not easy because it has a shape of a crushed pipe. On the upper intake lip, a small bump is added for the prehistoric "radar";

- Airbrake well, some tubing is needed here even if you don't see that much when the airbrake itself is fitted;

- The wings: Here, big problem: Revell gives a wing with the leading edge slats retracted, which is not the case when the aircraft is parked and not powered. So, I decided to buy the Obscureco resin wing (very expensive with the shipping😫) offering this option. What a waste of money! these wings are too short, badly moulded with a too thick trailing edge and a lot of bubbles, and finally completely twisted 🤬🤬😤. Frustrated, I decided to cut the inner part of the leading edge slats from Obscureco, and graft to the Revell wing. The slats were glued later...This done, the AIRES resin main wheel well was put in place. Long, not easy but the result is OK.

 spacer.pngThis photo shows the final result with the Obscureco pieces put to the Revell wing and the AIRES WW.

- I did a lot of work also on the landing gears, wheels and doors which are too simplistic and wrong. (Too long to explain)

- Horizontal stabilizers: a thin evergreen plate needs to be added top/below their root.

- Exhaust: From AIRES, simply...

- Canopy: Vacform, all details inside reproduced (thanks to a picture of a real canopy found by a US aviation "archeologist" in the Nevada desert searching for a Super Sabre crash).

-External tanks: I tweaked the long banana-shape to make a 275Gal tank, not given as an option in the box. 

 

Painting was made with a lot of Alclad II shade of NMF. Exceptionally, I chose the marking given by Revell, very attractive to me. It seems that the blue of the fin marking is not dark enough it appears to me after the model was finished. (may be one day I will have the guts to change it).  The USAF  and "US AIR FORCE" letters should be dark blue rather than black. I did a little bit of weathering as the only photo I found of the bird shows a "old warrior" at the end of its operational time.

Definitively not an easy build, but despite its age, this kit deserves the work and time spent on it to have a reasonable version of the Hun. 

The photos:

The real Hun:

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My Hun:

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Next to come is the ESCI and a F-100F... Hope you have enjoyed reading this post! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Nice work, Patrick. I bought a couple of Obscureco wings for the C and D and quickly sold them. They were poorly moulded, warped and short shot :(. Nevertheless you have produced a great ‘100!

 

Martin

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On 3/10/2022 at 6:02 PM, PATRICK FROM THE SANDS said:

Next to come is the ESCI and a F-100F... Hope you have enjoyed reading this post! 

You will need a new canopy for sure. A Taurus one would do fine :)

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8 hours ago, RidgeRunner said:

You will need a new canopy for sure. A Taurus one would do fine :)

Yes this is what I did on all my F-100 models. As usual, the canopy given by the fabricant is too thick. The Revell one gave some distorsions that's why I selected a vacform one.

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Just now, PATRICK FROM THE SANDS said:

Yes this is what I did on all my F-100 models. As usual, the canopy given by the fabricant is too thick. The Revell one gave some distorsions that's why I selected a vacform one.

 

spacer.pngspacer.pngthe kit

spacer.pnga real one found abandoned in US Nevada desert

 

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