Airfix North American F-86F-40 Sabre (A08110) 1:48

[Mike]

North American F-86F-40 Sabre (A08110)

1:48 Airfix

 

 

The North American F-86 Sabre was a first-generation swept-wing jet that saw active service in Korea and beyond in US service, and was also license-built by Canadair in a number of variants.  It was a spiritual successor to their own P-51D Mustang, and entered service with American squadrons in 1949 and stayed on-strength for many years, latterly in their Air National Guard as well as with overseas operators.  The F-40 variant was considered the definitive version of the Sabre, as it was a later version that benefited from the hard-won lessons of earlier marks.  It used the larger so-called 6-3 wing, but added improved leading-edge slats that gave it better manoeuvrability, as well as a lower landing speed that wasn’t quite so scary for the pilot, especially if the aircraft had taken some damage before reaching home base.

 

The improved General Electric J47-GE-27 engine also gave the type additional power, plus the streamlining of production made it a cost-effective fighter that became more affordable to overseas customers, and a total of over 2,200 were built of the F-model by the time that the nuclear-capable H-model went into production.

 

 

The Kit

This is a partial re-tooling of the initial Canadair built Sabre Mk.4 from Airfix, and there was plenty of excitement in the run-up to that release, but this one has its own buzz.  After the initial release there was some chatter about various relatively minor issues, and as no kit is perfect that’s not surprising, but they’re pretty easy to fix once you’ve got your head around them.  This boxing includes one different sprue that contains the new parts for the wing, which differs greatly from the initial tooling, although there are very often plenty of caveats when building models of aircraft that went through so many variations during their service.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Construction begins in an unusual place for a change, the intake trunking.  It is split horizontally, and has alignment pegs on the outer edges, plus a rectangle of four pegs on the topside to which the cockpit tub is fixed.   The rear deck is moulded into the tub, and here is one of the first areas where a little work might be on the cards if it perturbs you, as it hasn’t changed from the initial release.  The details here are a little simplified, and if you’re detail focused there are some minor changes you can make.  You have a choice of two types of seat, both of which are put together from the L-shaped base, two side supports and the headbox cushion, the more modern-looking seat having olive drab cushions, while the “commode” looking seat has a bright red head rest.  Your choice of seat is inserted into the cockpit tub, and a pair of decals are supplied for the side consoles, and another is there for the instrument panel that slots into the front of the tub.  The decals have a clear background, so you’ll be able to paint the panel in the correct colours, which incidentally should be black, as mentioned in the instructions.  A very dark grey with some lighter highlights, followed by a black wash should achieve the desired effect.  The control column has a gaiter at the bottom that has a separate section added to one side to give it the appropriate width and shape.  The cockpit/intake assembly has a set of stator blades fitted to the rear along with a two-part curved intake bullet, and at the front you have a choice of either the hollow intake lip, or the same part with a FOD guard inserted into the trunk first, blocking off the intake for a ground-side aircraft.  Airfix have helpfully provided a pilot figure in their traditional “hands on lap” pose, and apart from the slightly passive posture, the moulding and detail is good.  Flipping over the trunking, there are some ribs and equipment moulded into the underside for the nose-bay roof, which is boxed-in by a two-part C-shaped wall, and should be painted interior green, while the doors should be silver.

 

 

 

 

The fuselage has a couple of holes in the forward end to accept inserts, including the gun bay doors that can be closed up, or left open to show off the gun bays.  The bays are a single curved box, into which the breeches of the guns fit at an angle, with the help of scrap diagrams showing the correct orientation as each one is glued into position.  The magazines are inserted into the lower section of the bay, and have their ammo feeds glued to the top, leading to the gun breeches.  The same process is carried out in mirror image on the other side of the fuselage, then the bays are glued in place from the inside, correctly marked as painted in silver.  The airbrakes on the rear fuselage sides can also be posed open or closed by inserting a closed bay door with supporting ledges that should allow you to glue them flush to the outer skin (possibly after some fettling, so test fitting is essential), or the open bay with the bay doors fitted in the open position later, with the back of the panel painted interior green.  A small section on the rear spine of the fuselage has an area removed as per a couple of scrap diagrams that are marked out in green to accommodate a different tail-fillet shape later.  In order to close up the fuselage you need to make up the exhaust trunk, which has the rear engine face inserted in the wider forward end, and an optional circular FOD cover over the hot end.  There are two supports for the forward end that fix into sockets on the inside of the port fuselage, and a moulded-in lip near the aft end that slots into a corresponding groove inside the rear, ensuring correct positioning.  You are advised to put 10g of nose weight in the gap between the cockpit and intake lip, but a little more probably wouldn’t hurt, as there’s plenty of space.  The cockpit & intake are also inserted into the left fuselage with the aid of sockets to hold them secure, then a long insert is placed in the area between the tail and the exhaust trunk, which also makes up the lower side of the tail pen-nib fairing.  If you are modelling your Sabre in-flight, you need to put in the single nose bay door insert in now, and this too has ledges to help with fitting, then you can close up the fuselage and set it aside to cure while you make up the new slatted wings.

 

Airfix have moulded the lower wing as a full-width part again, but this version has the necessary shape for the 6-3 slatted wing.  Again, if you’re going for wheels-up, the single main gear bay door insert should be fitted now, as this too has ledges around the edge to help with alignment.  A pair of pylon holes should be drilled in each wing if you are fitting them (see my note later about positioning), and the bay walls are made up from narrow parts around the rear edge, plus a more substantial front wall that will need a pair of blocks removing if you are depicting your Sabre with the inner doors dropped open, as these are only useful when the doors are closed, again to stop them from dropping inside the bay during fitting.  There’s another nubbin under each door on the front bulkhead, so treat that the same if you’re dropping all the doors.  The bay roof has two depressions moulded-in to accommodate the wheels, and this assembly is fitted into the lower wing, with additional parts installed in the outboard section, and don’t forget to give the upper wing interior a quick squirt of the same interior green, as there is roof detail moulded-in there too.  If you took the decision to open up the gun bays, the very tips of the wing roots should be cut off the wing leading edge uppers along the panel line, as that section is integral to the bay door and is supplied as part of the open door parts as well as the tips of the leading-edge slats.  A scrap diagram holds your hand through all of this, then you can join the wing halves and fit the leading-edge slats in either open or closed position by using appropriate parts, with their chopped off tips if appropriate.  Another hole may be needed for the drop-tanks too.  Before you can join the wings to the fuselage, there are two intakes under the fuselage that are moulded as holes in the lower wing that are installed from the inside, so fitting them later would be horrible.  With that, the two-part insert in front of the tail fin is fitted into the upper fuselage, and the wings are attached beneath, adding the L-shaped wingtip and aileron insert to the trailing edge of the outer wing as you go.  The elevators are both single parts and attach with the usual slot and tab method, while the rudder is separate and can be glued deflected as you wish, but don’t forget to offset the control column to save yourself from the purists.  They’re watching you.

 

 

There are inserts to be added above the wing root trailing edge, then it’s gear and bay doors.  If you have elected to pose your model gear up, you can skip this part, but even with the gear down you still have choices.  The main bay inner doors can be posed closed by using one part, or down by joining two different parts in a very sharp inverted V-shape, remembering that the short section of bay wall should be interior green, but the door should be silver.  They’re supported by a short jack in the front of the bay, then the main gear leg and its captive door can be joined and inserted.  Here you’ll need to remove the tiny dog-bone link that has been included in error because Airfix scanned a museum airframe that either didn’t have any pressure in the strut, or was being supported to prevent sag.  Some careful trimming and sanding will have it looking correct in no time, and you can carry on with putting the main wheels on, which will line up the flat-spot with the ground automatically thanks to the axles and hubs having a keyed fitting.  Moving to the nose gear, there are a pair of flip-down landing lights just in front of the bay, and you can depict these in the flush position by using a clear part and masking off the circular lights, painting the rear silver before you install it, or you can use the styrene part and fit the deployed clear lights later in the build.  The nose gear leg is a single part, and fits into a keyed slot in the front of the bay, and has a smaller two-part wheel slipped onto another keyed axle.  A retraction jack fixes to the back of the strut, and the folded front door clips in place either side of the wheel, with a scrap diagram showing the correct location and where it links to the strut.  The rear door can be posed closed or dropped sideways with a strut holding it at an angle, with that and the open lower gun bay doors shown in place on a frontal diagram for your reference, but the upper gun bay panels aren’t mentioned again, so you’ll either have to severely thin the unused closed-up inserts, or tell everyone some erk wandered off with them.  The open air-brakes glue into the fuselage with their stays holding them to the correct angle, and slightly further forward next to the intakes under the fuselage you are given two small parts to locate on tiny depressions between fairing panels.  These are jacking points, and were only fitted during maintenance, so unless you are planning a diorama that involves jacks, leave them in the box and if you can see the depressions, pop a tiny amount of filler in there to make them disappear.  Under the tail there is a small blade to fit into another small depression, which is best left off until after main painting.

 

There are two types of drop-tanks supplied on the sprue, a pair with two simple fins, and another pair with larger fins plus a perpendicular stabiliser on each tip.  They fit to the lower wing on quite stout pins, so when the instructions tell you to make 2.3mm holes, don’t skimp on the size.  Both sets of tanks have stabilising struts fitted between the body and the smaller 0.8mm hole in the leading-edge underside panel.  We understand that the positioning of the tanks is slightly adrift, and should actually be 52.33mm from the centre line, so if you want to get the look dead-on, you’d better get out your callipers before you drill out the mounting holes.

 

The model is finished off by adding the straight pitot at the tip of the starboard wing, the optional popped-out lights under the nose, a clear gunsight, and the canopy.  The windscreen is separate from the sliding canopy, and there is an insert that fits inside with a clear “lamp” at the midpoint, which is actually the radio compass loop antenna.  This is a simplification of what is there, and could have been a little better, but it would have required more parts, and those details cost time and money.  As it is, you have a reasonable approximation of the parts in the area, but if you have gone to the trouble of detailing the deck behind the pilot, you’ll probably want to do something similar here, detailing the support cross-member and the cockpit pressure regulator in the very rear.  Once you are satisfied, the canopy can be posed open or closed to suit you.

 

 

Markings

There are two decal options on the sheet, and as mentioned earlier, thanks to export sales, they’re overseas operator airframes, namely Norway and Japan.  Each aircraft is shown in four views on a glossy, folded A3 sheet, and empty space around the profiles is taken up with research notes and drawings of the drop tanks and their stencil locations.  A separate single-sided sheet shows the locations of the many stencils around the airframe to avoid repetition and cluttering the pages with too many lines.

 

From the box you can build one of the following:

 

• The Flying Jokers Aerobatic Team, No.332 Sqn., Royal Norwegian Air Force, Rygge Air Station, Norway, 2nd June 1962
• 1st Air Wing, Japan Air Self-Defence Force, Hamamatsu Air Base, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, December 1975

 

 

 

Decals are by Cartograf, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin gloss carrier film cut close to the printed areas.

 

 

Conclusion

This is possibly the edition that the Sabre-fans have been waiting for, but everyone seems to have a different favourite amongst the many versions that were around.  It’s a good-looking kit with interesting decal choices, and apart from those minor niggles concerning a few of the details, it’s a new tool of the Sabre that’s well-worth having.

 

Highly recommended.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of

 

[Julien]

Would have been nice if they could have included the larger tank used by the JASDF

[Sabrejet]

5 hours ago, Julien said:

Would have been nice if they could have included the larger tank used by the JASDF

 

That finless, 200-gal, forced-ejection tank was also used by USAF units later in service as well as most of the foreign recipients of F-86Fs. The smaller 120-gal tank isn't incorrect fro JASDF - they did use them - but not as common.

[BerndM]

This one has made it on top of my to buy list.

Great choices of markings and open slats 😊

[Ad-4N]

The larger tanks would have been a nice addition from Airfix; however, they did their research correctly and this particular JASDF bird is documented with the smaller tanks.  

 

[anj4de]

They should do an -A version! No one so far has done one in 1/48...

 

cheers

Uwe

[Red Dot]

As a basic rule of thumb, the smaller tanks were used by training squadrons in the JASDF,  of which 1 squadron was one (the Airfix markings) and the larger tanks were used by front line units,

 

Andy

[Julien]

On 31/05/2022 at 17:13, Ad-4N said:

The larger tanks would have been a nice addition from Airfix; however, they did their research correctly and this particular JASDF bird is documented with the smaller tanks.  

 

interesting to see still traces of red paint on the wing tips as its wearing off, do the tanks have red fins?