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Sabre Mk.5, Boeing chase plane - Airfix 1/48


zebra

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What this GB obviously needs is another Sabre! I was recently given the new Airfix 1/48 F-86F-40 (thanks Mum!) so it would be rude not to build it. I'll be converting it to a Sabre Mk.5. Now I can hear a few of you saying it's got the wrong wing for a Mk.5, but I'll be building it as a Boeing chase plane, N8686F, which was re-winged with a Mk.6 wing. So I suppose that makes it a Mk.5 and a half.

 

Here's the obligatory box shot:

Airfix Sabre

 

Decals will be from Vingtor. It'll require a few small mods - removal of guns, addition of camera fairings to the gun bays, sugar scoops and a large aerial under the cockpit - but nothing too onerous. I've also got an Eduard Look+ set for it, which includes an instrument panel, resin wheels, PE steel seat belts and masks, and CMK resin airbrakes.

 

I've made a start - a bit of minor assembly on some interior pieces, which have been given a coat of primer - but nothing worth photographing yet.

 

more soon

Julian

 

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I've been pressing on with this and forgetting to take photos and post updates!

 

I started with the fuselage halves, adding the inserts for the gun bays (which needed the thinning of the lips of the parts that others have noted to get them to fit flush) and the CMK airbrake inserts. The CMK bits fit well, just needed to make sure enough of the casting blocks was removed to allow the jetpipe to fit in. I also filled the gun troughs at this stage as the aircraft I'm modelling was unarmed.

 

Sabre WIP

 

Cockpit came next. The kit cockpit is a little sparse for 1/48 scale I think. I've added the Eduard Look IP (which is nice, and fits quite well) and seat belts but a resin cockpit and seat wouldn't go amiss. Maybe next time.

 

I decided to use the FOD guards supplied in the kit for the intake and exhaust - mainly out of a bit of laziness (it saves the effort of filling the seams in the intake and painting it) and convenience (with the FOD guard on, the intake is a good place to put some ballast in the nose!).

 

Fuselage has gone together. I think the kit's design has let it down a little here - it could really do with a few more locating pins, it was quite hard to get the fuselage halves and the intake ring lined up nicely and I have ended up with a couple of small steps that will need to be dealt with.

 

Sabre WIP 2

 

Next up: A little bit of 3D printing. I'm going to see if my CAD skills are up to making sugar scoops and replacement inserts for the open panels on the side behind the cockpit - there's a vent in each of these on the Canadair Sabres that's not present on the F-86F-40 and the kit only includes the flat panel for the F-40. The F.4 kit includes the right panel which serves as a good template for the replacement part. The sugar scoops will be a little tricky but should be do-able, I think. I don't have the exact dimensions but I think I can get it approximately right from photos. I also need to make the camera fairings that go on the gun bay panels on this aircraft, and a large aerial to go under the forward fuselage.

 

more soon

Julian

 

 

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Did some CAD work this afternoon, sketched up the side panels and something that looks like it might pass as one of the sugar scoops. Still need to do the camera fairings before I print them.

 

Some actual modelling happened too, I cleaned up the fuselage seams and added the panels in front of the fin, and assembled the wings. This included cutting out the wing tip extensions, refitting the tips, and shaping some milliput to extend the chord of the wingtips. Some cleaning up work to do, including some work with a sanding stick to refine the shape of the milliput bits.

 

Sabre WIP

 

thanks for looking

Julian

 

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Now with wings:

 

Sabre WIP

 

Had to fill a bit of a gap at the wing root - wasn't expecting that, perhaps something I didn't quite get right earlier in the build caused that. Also getting the fit of the panels in front of the wing leading edge is important here - I'll remember that next time.

 

On 8/15/2022 at 4:12 AM, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

If you do get a decent set would you be interested in selling copies ? 

Lets see how they work out first!

 

cheers

Julian

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I've done some 3D printing and assembled the CMK (or was it CMR - I can never remember which is which) airbrakes, which are definitely much nicer than the kit parts.

 

Sabre WIP

 

The printed parts are the replacement panels for the fuselage sides, sugar scoops, camera fairings, VHF aerials and pitots (this aircraft has a long pitot on the port wing and a different pitot from the F-86F-40 on the starboard wing). A few copies of some parts are spares, it seems inevitable that I won't get the pitots off and cleaned up unscathed first time!

 

Since taking this photo I've attached the side panels, camera fairings and sugar scoops. But forgot to take a photo. The side panels were a nice fit, sugar scoops look slightly small but they'll do, and the camera fairings look about right.

 

more soon

Julian

 

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Ready for painting:

 

Sabre WIP

 

The camera fairings came out ok. The sugar scoops look ok to me as well, no idea how accurate they are, I just measured them from a photo. I'm most pleased with the side panels - they were as close to a perfect fit as I could have hoped for, but were just ever so slightly too thick.

 

Time to break out the white paint!

 

thanks for looking

Julian

 

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White paint done. The slats are aluminium, not that it shows up all that well in this photo.

 

Sabre WIP

 

Will probably get at least the black on the upper fuselage done later today.

 

cheers

Julian

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Finished painting and got some decals on this weekend. The decals are nice but take a little time to properly adhere, so they require careful handling, and I'm taking my time and only doing a few at a time, so not quite finished with the decals yet. 

 

Sabre WIP

 

cheers

Julian

 

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Thanks everyone. Couldn't resist this scheme. Will try and get the decals finished this weekend, maybe even get it up on its legs. There are enough decals on the sheet to do this Sabre's predecessor as well - won't have time in this GB but I think it's going to have to put in an appearance some time soon.

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Finally got round to finishing the decals:

 

Sabre WIP

 

Although as I wrote that, I realised there are a couple more decals to do - the pitots need a red stripe spiralling around them.

 

I'm on the home straight now. Should get the undercarriage on tomorrow, will probably be finished in the next few days.

 

cheers

Julian

 

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16 hours ago, Vingtor said:

Good to see. Do the decals fit well to the Airfix kit? They were designed for the Hasegawa kit.

They're a pretty good fit. The main cheat line is ever so slightly short, but as there's a correction sheet for the rearmost section there was some spare decal that I snipped a bit off to extend it. The stripes on the wings are very slightly short for the chord of the Airfix wing but it's barely noticeable. The only bit that's given me any trouble has been getting the stripes on the tanks to sit nicely on the nose, but I put that down to my incompetence, not the decal designer!

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