Weinel's Whale

[David H]

 Well, i resolved to not start any new model projects until i get some from my Shelf of Doom worked off first, plus there's the LOVEBUG.

 

However, in a weird twist of fate i inherited several artifacts from the late, great Tom "Superheat" Weinel. Tom was a  former F8U Crusader pilot with VF-162, A co-owner/ partner of Triple Alliance Hobbies in Seattle...and pretty much acknowledged as the model builder's resident expert on the F8U Crusader.

 

Among the various things i got was a largely-started Hasegawa A3D Skywarrior. It's actually a pretty nice kit as 1/72nd scale goes, but you don't see a huge number of these built up at shows.

I don't know exactly why, because model builders had been pining away for years for a successor to the Rareplanes vacform kit and the ancient, scaled-to-box Revell kit.

It might have to do with paint schemes. By the time the A3D had been seconded to tanker and special missions roles, the paint schemes became if not downright boring, defintely bland in appearance. This only got worse as the A3D entered the twilight of its career in the 1980s.

I had the Rene Francillon/ Aerofax book in my collection, and started looking for a paint scheme that was at least.... tolerable.

And then i found it. Page 62, a pretty good B&W photo of BuAer No. 135431, seen at NAS Moffett in May 1962.

It's not much, but its enough to go on. Gull Grey, Gloss White, and HUGE portions of Day Glo on the nose, tail, and probably the wings as well.

This Speaks to Me!

Plus.... it was based at NAS Whidbey Island. Bonus!!

Once i had an idea about the plane i was gonna do, i  set began by re-working some of the haphazard gluing of the fuselage and wings. The fuselage is not much to write about, mainly sawing and cracking some glue joints open, lining up the fuselage halves better and re gluing them. After that the whole fuselage got a cathartic wet sand overall with 1000 grit Tamiya sanding sponges.

The wing was a more involved matter. As assembled, it sat definitely off-center on the fuselage saddle, and the wing did not sidle up the the fillets molded into the fuselage sides all that great. Therefore, something of a wing leading edge/wing root rework project began...

You will notice the panel lines indicating the inboard slat; The wing evolution on the A3D is a little complicated. Later batches of A3Ds had what was called a CLE (Cambered Leading Edge) mod that broadened the chord of the wing ever so slightly, and slats were added inboard of the engine pylons. Since my model is an early A3D, the panel lines will get filled. Taking back the leading edge to its original configuration is too much work.

With the cleanup and re-profiling of the wing done, the worst of the fit issues was rectified.

The fit on the top of the wing/fuselage is a Nothingburger.

The next challenge was to address the mods needed to backdate this model to an early-configuration A3D.

After reading Tommy Thomason's Excellent A3D blog post, i decided to fish out my limited-edition Hasegawa kit that included resin conversion parts. After spending at least a decade in questionable storage conditions, the decals and instruction sheet were shot. The plastic and resin however, remained okay.

First step was lopping the nose off a perfectly good A3D fuselage...

The fuselage became something of a test case for Starbond, professional grade CA and wood knot filler. Similar to common CA in terms of viscosity, this stuff is infused with some sort of rubber compound which gives it limited flexibility. Just the fact that it's black and i can see it, makes it a benefit.

I glued the nose on with the stuff, and it worked just fine, responding positively to the accelerator i had lying about. The biggest issue was with mismatch of the cross sections where the nose joined the bulkhead line on the fuselage. Tamiya-Like fit, it ain't.

With the nose successfully swapped out, it came time to install the 20MM tail gun installation, which i will cover next time.

Until then, keep your knots up and your powder dry.

[David H]

Installed the 20MM tail turret yesterday.

Since the fuselage halves were already glued together, making the saw cut was a bit more problematical. In the end the cut was pretty good, but i still had one gap bigger than the other side.

Unlike the nose, the mismatch was really not that bad, and my usual sanding and filing tools were able to get the job done.

There is a little bit of surface detail to be restored, but nothing too onerous.

Here's a more broad overview of the back end....

Up next i guess is gonna be the engine nacelles.

Tune again next week

Same Bat-Time

Same Bat-Channel

[David H]

And now.... the engine nacelles.

These come in for three major stages of rework, two of which i'll talk about today:

1) Backdating to an A3D-1 standard,

2) Improving the fit of the nacelles to the wings.

 

First off, the Hasegawa kit represents a late-build A3D-2 configuration. Among other things, they had a fillet between the inboard side of the engine pylon and the wing. This needs to be removed.

This is the corresponding notch in the lower wing plank, designed to take the fillet....

Because of the somewhat unique shape of the notch, it makes sense to use what's available to fill the gap. To that end, we actually salvage some of the fillet from the inboard side of the engine nacelle.

Part of this gets glued into the notch, the excess sawed away and filed flat, and the remaining gaps plugged with sheet styrene and CA.

The resulting cavity that comes from sawing the fillet from the pylon needs to be filled, of course.

Now, i filled the gaps between pylon and wing, before i filled the cavities in the engine pylon and wing, so things are a little out of sequence here.

 

The other rework is to minimize and close up the gaps between the engine pylon and the lower wing skin. The end goal is to have a joint so tight and clean that the pylons can be installed after painting and decaling, requiring only a trace of white glue to close up the remaining gaps.

a piece of bare metal foil is cut and laid on the lower wing plank, where the pylon saddle makes contact. The pylon is then carefully located onto the foil/wing composite, and CA is applied to the 90-degree joint.

When dried, the nacelle is carefully cracked free of the wing, the foil is removed, and the CA/resin composite is filed and sanded away with rigid backed sanding sticks.

Something of a confession to make here: The first time i did this, the engine pylon wanted to rest perpendicular to the lower wing surfaces, giving the nacelle an odd toed-in look. Consultation of 3 view drawings showed that the nacelle pylons should be perpendicular to the ground, so this first nacelle needed to have the gaps re-worked a bit.

Good news is, the re-do was successful.

Now admittedly there is some surface detail that will need to be restored, but the "heavy lifting" of this evolution is done.

 

So there you have it. Lesson learned: do one side at a time, rather than both simultaneously, because otherwise you'll make the same stupid mistake twice.

Up next: The starboard nacelle. After that, time to re-work the inlets.

As always, keep those letters and cards coming.

[Markh-75]

Looking Good! I always liked the clean lines on a Hasegawa, really nice and sharp, hardly any flash (if any at all) and nice to put together!

 

This is gonna look fab when its done!

[Gondor44]

Interesting and informative. I now know what to do with the build I have in the stash.

 

Gondor

[David H]

10 hours ago, Markh-75 said:

Looking Good! I always liked the clean lines on a Hasegawa, really nice and sharp, hardly any flash (if any at all) and nice to put together!

 

This is gonna look fab when its done!

Tommy Thomason says he provided both Rareplanes and Hasegawa with working drawings to make the kits from, and both are pretty accurate. The one thing being some confusion on Hasegawa's part about the later-build A3Ds with the Cambered Leading Edge extension. However, its not really noticeable and it would be time consuming to fix.

The A3D is a plane that looks a lot nicer in-flight than on the ground.

1 hour ago, Gondor44 said:

Interesting and informative. I now know what to do with the build I have in the stash.

 

Gondor

Just don't build the same one as me, okay?

[Gondor44]

On 9/5/2022 at 6:51 PM, David H said:

Just don't build the same one as me, okay?

 

Of course not! The next serial number in line maybe, but not the same one!

 

Gondor

 

 

[David H]

Finishing up the engine nacelles.

The intake "Bullets" are the one part of the Hasegawa kit that just don't look right. The actual bullet has an ogival profile. The Hasegawa ones have a straight, minimally tapered shape, looking more like a narrow thimble.

Fortunately, Tom noticed this...

Now, there is a serious amount of material which needs to be removed to re-shape these things. The struts on the back end get in the way, and make the bullet hard to handle with fingers while filing and sanding on it. When i did up *my* bullet to match, i bored out a small hole in the mounting locator/boss on the back side and friction fit a length of stainless steel tubing to serve as a spindle while i rotated and filed on the bullet. Takes a while to get it to the proper shape, but in my opinion its worth the effort.

Sharp-eyed viewers will note that i sawed the engine inlets off the nacelle at the vertical bulkhead line. I didn't have much choice, since i had to fill the seams on the insides where the halves come together.

After gluing the halves together, i slopped grey Tamiya liquid surface primer on the joints, and when dry, i sanded the seams using 320, 400, and 600 grit sandpaper wrapped around a brass tube, slightly smaller than the inlet diameter.

Once i removed as much filler as i could, i primed the interior with Tamiya white surface primer, and finished with a coat of Mr Color Super White.

The hardest part was masking off the red intake lips. They're pretty good, but not perfect.

As you can see here....overspray city.

So, entering the homestretch, here's what we have...

This is actually the starboard inlet, not the port but the build progression is the same....

So, when the mismatch is leveled out and all the overspray is removed, we get something like this...

Now there will be some work to restore missing panel line detail and double check all the joints and seams, but this constitutes the last of the "Heavy Lifting" for the A3D. Now, its just a matter of bringing the sub assemblies together.

 

Until next time.....

[David H]

And now, we turn to the subject of Day Glo.

Originally implemented by the Navy and Air Force in the late 1950s, its primary intent was to reduce the chance of mid air collisions. These markings were largely (if not always) implemented on aircraft associated with testing (to help with ground and air-to-air photography), and with training (student drivers- do the math). VH-123, the "Pros" had several A3D-1 aircraft assigned to training roles and they carried rather visible markings.

 

Whether they were truly fluorescent or not kind of depends on the individual aircraft and the age/weathering/deterioration of the special orange paint. Looking at good quality photos of my subject aircraft, it was hard to determine if the paint at one time was truly fluorescent, but it did look  orange and showed signs of extreme fading with the white base coat plainly visible in patches.

 

The lucky test subject to re-learn a technique i hadn't done since the '80s are the horizontal tailplanes. Our Story Begins...

 

First of all, the leading and trailing edges were sprayed with silver to inspect for and eradicate mold parting lines. The stabs were then sanded overall with 1000 grit Tamiya sanding sponges, and then primed with my custom mix of Tamiya White surface primer, tinted with yellow green.

 

The next step was to spray the tailplanes overall with flat white and finish with a coat of gloss white. Again, the surface was carefully sanded with wet 4000 grit.

The elevators were then masked off and the undersides were painted with Mr Color H59 Orange, straight from the bottle.

In the photos the undersides of the tailplanes and wings *were* painted with Day Glo, or something, and since sun exposure is minimal there was no need to "treat" the paint.

Next up, the upper surfaces. I wanted to depict seriously faded, but not entirely bleached-out colours.

From discussions with friends, it seems the progression is first the fluorescence would go, leaving the orange behind. Next, the orange would start to go turning first into a light yellow with the white undercoat showing through, ending in almost all traces of yellow gone, leaving the white undercoat behind.

 

So.. first step was to get some orange onto the surface. I wanted Orange to definitely be on the model, but unlike MAC and Lancome, i was not going for 100% flawless coverage. Just get some Orange on the surface. Next, i carefully went back and sprayed more orange along select panel lines, since for some reason it seems to wear off in those places last...

The next step was i applied Tamiya X6 Orange in the center of the major skin panels and expanded carefully outward on a hazy, marbled, random pattern.

Actually i think i could have skipped this step since the X6 didn't seem to change the underlying orange all that much.

The next step was to try again with yellow. In this case Tamiya Flat XF-3 yellow, heavily thinned and again carefully applied in the middle of each skin panel and working progressively outward.

I think i'm satisfied with the end result. Popped the tailplanes in, and here's what you get...

And then, half an hour after i took these photos, as an afterthought i applied corogard to the leading edges. D'Oh!!

So endeth the lesson on Day Glo Orange. Tune in next time, when i begin painting the engine nacelles. i think.

Oh, and uh.... FLY NAVY.

[David H]

We now return to the engine nacelles, already in progress.

 

After the intakes were re attached and cleaned up and all the surface detail was restored, i primed them.

I masked off the hot section of one nacelle, and i applied a base coat of Tamiya white surface primer. When dry, i sanded it with a 3000 grit Tamiya sanding sponge and then i applied a coat of Mr Color Super White. When this was dry, i found particulates had landed on the paint while it was drying, so i carefully wet sanded the finish with wet 4000 micro mesh, and then i added a final coat of Mr Color Insignia white, which i summarily carpet bombed with Mr Leveling Thinner. Then i left this to set up and outgas overnite.

I masked off the separation along the longitudinal panel lines using my preferred method of noodles made from Elmers Adhesive Tack, then i applied my custom mixed  light gull grey, and finally i masked off and painted the outside only of the intake lip with Mr Color Insignia Red.

With the main colours blocked in, i removed the masking from the hot section. I masked along the panel lines from the other side, and wet sanded all the green primer off. I then applied a coat of Tamiya Acrylic semigloss black, as an undercoat for the bare metal.

Hasegawa recommends using Burnt Iron for the high temp stainless steel region. I sprayed on Metalizer Non-Buffing Burnt Iron, and i didn't like it. Way too dark.

I re-masked and sprayed on a 50-50 mix of Tamiya LP-11 Silver and LP-61 Metallic Grey, which went onto the model nicely and IMHO looked a lot better.

Here's the final result...

The locating pins will be replaced with brass rod, to make a much more rigid installation capable of taking side loads.

There are a couple of places that require some minor paint touchups, but my curiosity has been satisfied. Mainly, to see how all the colours looked juxtaposed onto the model.

Most of my ideas worked. With that done, its time to get ready to mount the wing to the fuselage. Then at some point i'll paint up the other engine nacelle.

Until next time, kids...

[Ad-4N]

I love Whales.  

[David H]

3 hours ago, Ad-4N said:

I love Whales.  

You can do a lot with em, if you're not all that picky about paint schemes.

[Corey in Colorado]

@David H your metallic mix looks fantastic!  I’m writing that down!

[David H]

Well, we've reached another significant construction milestone.

Wing-Fuselage mate.

I could have done it earlier, but at the last minute i noticed i hadn't closed out some of the voids inboard of the engine nacelles, so i had to patch those up with my filler de jour again, CA mixed with dental free flow powder.

Then, while the wing was still off, i decided to restore all the missing detail on the fuselage. Mainly located in proximity to the resin radome and 20MM tail gun installation.

 

Now while this sets up, i think i'll work on my second Buccaneer some more.

 

[David H]

Hello again, frustrated would-be Naval Aviators!

It's been a while since my last update, but the wing has been cleaned up, and the first iteration of primer was applied and most of the surface defects have been rectified.

The most annoying fixes were located along the wing leading edges near the wing roots, largely on account of the shimming i needed to do to get the cross section wide enough to play well with the wing-fuselage fillets on the undersides.

Another thing i learned after getting this far, is Hasegawa patterned their model after a late build A3D-2, and there's a few mods that need to be done to backdate the model to the earlier A3D-1 standard.

The anticollision beacons need to be removed, top and bottom...

Another thing i learned along the way is, the round, domed antenna on the lower fuselage is actually a TACAN antenna and is supposed to be perfectly flat...

Just as well. I was having problems filling the seams around it anyway.

I've installed the canopy, and right now i'm engaged in a struggle to more or less fair it in with the surrounding fuselage. Pictures to come when i declare victory.

 

-d-

[David H]

Well, it's time to grapple with the one thing i dreaded- the canopy.

It fits onto the fuselage okay, but if it fits well in one place, it fits kind of poorly elsewhere.

First step was to get the canopy onto the fuselage and aligned properly. I actually pulled the canopy off once before i got it right in the second attempt.

The canopy was glued on with MiG AMMO white acrylic glue, taped down in the back to keep it from shifting, and i tried to rinse as much of the excess glue away as i could with water and a wet paintbrush. What doesn't rinse away flows into the gap between the canopy and the fuselage, which is definitely a bonus- if you can keep it under control.

I also put bits of Tamiya tape on the canopy so i could maneuver it around with my fingers, without accidentally tracking wet glue onto the clear parts.

What you see here is the canopy glue in a semi-liquified state, while i'm rinsing away the excess.

In this photo, the canopy glue has dried, and i've gone back with Tamiya sanding sponges to sand away some glue blobs.

Aside from the intake bullets, the other nagging shape issue with the Hasegawa A3D is the canopy.

On the real aircraft, the canopy framework was carefully integrated into the surrounding sheet metal, lending it a fluid, seamless appearance. On the Hasegawa kit, it's treated like a bubble canopy like you would find on something like an F-86 Sabre. It gives the appearance of being plopped on top of the fuselage as an expedient, almost an afterthought.

What followed were several rounds of filling, sanding, checking, and re-filling to carefully blend the canopy base into the surrounding fuselage.

My fillers of choice were Mr. Dissolved Putty, and Mr Surfacer 500, which over time has thickened and now more closely resembles Mr Surfacer 100.... if such a thing existed.

In this photo, i sanded the layers of filler (3 so far) to blend the aft canopy into the upper rear fuselage. I had to remove the tape and sand around the edges of the canopy some. Here, i've sanded the canopy up through 12000 grit using micro mesh, but i have not yet polished it.

The canopy *may* require one more layer of filler on the rear end, but i want to mask off the canopy frames and re-prime the area before i do that.

In these 2 profile photos, hopefully you can see how the filler transition on the back end makes the canopy look more like a "fastback", and less like a "bubble top".

The "blending" of the canopy framework on the A3D is most evident directly abeam the 2 forward facing crew members along the base of the canopy and especially on the back end.

In my view, it's something worth fixing.

Once i got the canopy blending and the shape more or less into the ballpark, i returned to the engine nacelles, where i went back and cleaned up a few areas on Number 2 engine, and painted up Number 1 engine.

The nacelles will probably come more to life once the weathering stage begins, but this is as far as we're going on them, for now.

I'm presently waiting on canopy masks, so at least for a little while, i'm gonna be tinkering with this...

Yeah, it's another Buccaneer.

That's all for now. Keep those letters and cards coming, and thanks for shopping!

[Bell209]

Some lovely work going on here!

[RidgeRunner]

Your A3D is looking fabulous, mate!!!! It isn'tshown on any RFI very often and so it is a real pleasure to watch a master grapple with it.

 

Martin

 

 

[David H]

5 hours ago, RidgeRunner said:

Your A3D is looking fabulous, mate!!!! It isn'tshown on any RFI very often and so it is a real pleasure to watch a master grapple with it.

 

Martin

 

 

For some odd reason, you don't see many Hasegawa A3D Skywarriors or AD Skyraiders built up. I don't have a good explanation for this, since they're fundamentally solid kits that look good when built up. It's a shame because you can really do a lot with these kits when you let your imagination take over.

[RidgeRunner]

1 hour ago, David H said:

It's a shame because you can really do a lot with these kits when you let your imagination take over.

You certainly can

 

You certainly can, David

[David H]

34 minutes ago, RidgeRunner said:

You certainly can

 

You certainly can, David

And there you go! Neat choice of markings.

[David H]

For those of you that were wondering what became of the A3D, short answer is i was waiting for canopy masks to arrive.

 

If you're a student of the Skywarrior, you probably know that the windows on the canopy are.....complicated. There's just no way that i could mask and paint the frames by hand and be truly satisfied with it.

Fortunately, the folks at KV Models have filled this need, with some very nice vinyl masks.

The good news is, for the most part they fit pretty good.

 Some of the masks are slightly too long in one direction but not the other...so some selective slicing and overlapping in places is called for...but nothing too difficult.

The masks are cleanly cut, and the hardest part is getting them lined up correctly. Hasegawa depicted most of the canopy windows with parallel, double panel lines (maybe to depict the sealant?), and you need to be careful to align the masks with the inside set of incised lines.

Now, the bad news has not so much to do with the masks as the circumstances.

KV Models is Russian, and right now i have decidedly ambivalent feelings about buying stuff from these guys. However, i bought the masks from a Polish online hobby shop, and the proceeds from my purchase of the masks have been diverted to provide aid for Ukrainian charities...so, at least there's that.

 

In any event, the canopy on the A3D is a bugger, and this tool is helping me keep the project moving forward.

Compared to masking the windows, fairing in the canopy is comparatively easy.  So, moving forward we're gonna be quality checking that and troubleshooting the filler work before we begin painting.

 

So, until next time keep those letters and cards coming.

FLY NAVY.

[David H]

Well, time for another update.

Along the lines of having to eat my vegetables before i can have the cookies and ice cream, I primed the canopy framework with Mr Surfacer 1500 Black- The Samuel L. Jackson of primers.

Next, i primed over this with my YZC primer to serve as a base for the light gull grey that will come later.

The filling and blending job did not turn out too bad, but unfortunately i need to do some more filling and blending of the back end of the canopy into the fuselage deck.

Damn indeed, Captain O'Hara. Damn indeed.

So, while i wait for the fourth layer of filler to set up, i flipped the model over and started laying down white primer on the undersides....

This is just my standard shtick of Tamiya white surface primer (square bottle- i'm trying to use it up), thinned with MLT, sprayed on, carpet bombed with more MLT, allowed to dry and then carefully wet sanded with 3000 and 4000 grit. A few more problem areas were found... mainly some gaps along one of the bomb bay doors.

So, as much as i was hoping to be into the cookies and ice cream part, looks like i'm still working on the vegetables. Ugh....

 

Until next time.....

[cpoud117]

Great job so far and very interesting thread. Definitely considering getting one of these if I come across a decent deal.

[David H]

7 hours ago, cpoud117 said:

Great job so far and very interesting thread. Definitely considering getting one of these if I come across a decent deal.

It's a solid kit, but like many of the good Hasegawa ones, surprisingly difficult to find when you want one. Perhaps Hobby 2000 will re release it at some point.