T-38A Talon Thunderbird

What about the deeper fuselage profile?

Good question...and one I’m still staring at. the top of the fuselage follows the profile well. The bottom to your point is about 4mm shallow by eye. My current thinking is that i can build this up, shape it, and add inthe panel lines. any thoughts and advice on how best to do it would be valuable!

extending it is most valuable i think if doing wheels down. That’s because the cockpit is too shallow due to gear bay depth. Since mine will be in flight I just removed the bay and plan to drop cockpit onto the floor of fuselage.

Heres a profile pick for those who may be wondering. With the front fuselage  fitted since i took this shot, i found that the top matches better than the bottom in profile. I’m going to try something end-on though using the camera and see if I can be more definitive about what needs addressed to get it right.

This looks like it going to be quite a project. I'm going to be watching this for sure.

BK

John you're a great motivator, like &

I had a few hours before my wife came home tonight and decided to see what the fuselage profile looked like under the cockpit. It appeared to be an even 4mm shallow.

One thing led to another and since I had so much success with the intakes I decided to cut the fuselage in half. It helps that I have 3 of them for sure. The drawings show the sides as really straight so I found a location where I could go straight down the body line and started sawing.

These last 2 show the remaining gap at the bottom. I think I can fill from the back of the air brakes forward to get the shape right and everything will match up pretty clean.

Hmmmm, very interesting...  What's mostly interesting is that the F-5 fuselage should be deeper than the T-38 under the wing especially.  Not shallower.  The F-5 had a heavier  and larger landing gear to fair in.  However, I think you are going to get real close and will not have invested as much as I have in the Collectaire T-38 sitting in my stash.

jeaton01 that is interesting. I went back and checked on the prints and the T-38A vs the F-5A from Belcher Bits match up near perfect. For whatever reason it's only forward of the main gear bays that the difference exists.

Didn't do much except work at my bench today...no laundry, one run out with the kids, ordered dinner, you'd think it was winter out or something.

Where to start, guess we'll take a random order based on stream of consciousness. Once the final front fuselage was cut and reassembled the level of the seats had to be set. 

Lots of little, boring stuff going together lately. I've got the main bay covers on now, the lower wing scribed and sanded the auxiliary intake covers fitted and misc pieces aligned. Yesterday and today I worked on assembing the cockpit so I thought to share progress. 

To keep the shape of the nose I cut almost through it with a razor saw.

Looks like it should be one of those African nose piercings doesn't it?

...and a shot of the IP work I've done so far - just through the mock-up canopy for now to get a feel for how it's going to look.

Slow but steady progress today. This cockpit is going to take another 2 weeks I bet before it's done. Puting the canopies up I found that they weren't square to each other so they didn't quite lay in a straight line. At first I couldn't figure out why, then I remembered neither KH or Hasegawa made a closed canopy, the only option was open. Which made me realize I was missing the loop that separates the two canopies...DUH. So that's what I custom made tonight. Took me 2 tries to get one that fit in nicely. Now I'll have something easy to mount the rearview mirrors to.

The top of a Vallejo 17ml bottle worked great as a backstop to keep from breaking the piece while sanding.

Thats quite a bit of surgery!  Coming along nicely.

keavdog you got that right! I keep hoping I can get it smooth enough that you won’t see allthat once it’s painted. I feel like I’ve been working on this cockpit for a year.

Time for a motivational sidetrack! I drilled and pinned the wings this morning. Put some tape on the tail to hold it in place. Now it’s starting to take shape 

small compromise on the wing position. They’re aft about 2mm due to where the main wheel bays are on the belcher kit. Anything else looked stupid because the gear doors on the wings didn’t line up. 

The cockpit itself is still a mess so no significant shots of it right now. 

Stopped for lunch. It's looking more like a bandai X-Wing fighter at this point...

Character established! I finished up the nose tonight. I've gotta say I think this turned out pretty great. I was limited by the Belcher Bits kit profile which was based on the hasegawa kit so there was only so much thickness I could add without putting a step in the profile starting at the cockpit  

I made up some templates for the horizontal and vertical profiles. Then sanded slowly till the profile matched the template.

All finished with the major profile changes for the front fuselage. Canopies are all fitted and lay down pretty nice with a uniform gap between the cockpits. Now it's time to fill it with foam and tape it up until all the fine putty work is done and sanded. I'm hopeful those big spacers down the side will cover nicely and not show through the body-work.

Your attention to detail is phenomena.

Your friend, Toshi

Thanks Toshi! Some of this can get boring I'm sure. Glad you enjoy the details of an extended build :-)

I love that moment when you put a coat of primer on your model and like magic all the rough spots, sanding marks, and lumps and bumps show up clear as day! Where were they before? It sure felt smooth to me :-) 

I worked some putty around the nose pitot and I used Mr Surfacer 500 to round out the fairing and blend it into the nose.

You know these little models are nothing like their full size partners. When I need to figure out if I have the bodywork smooth on a car I lay a paper towel on the surface, lay my hand flat on it, and then slide it across the new bodywork. It's amazing how if you take your eyes out of the process and just use feel how well you can tell of the surface is flat. Not here! So I initially did some sanding on the offending parts shown above and I ended up with a step down in the bondo. Not what I wanted 

Obviously the right side is lower than the left, so I need to add putty. 

Lots of little stuff this weekend is starting to come together. I had to fill and rescribe most of the wings. I only left the hinge joints alone. Along the top of the fuselage those panel lines were part of the resin part, the rest I did. They are a bit deep and wide now that i see them in primer so i will have to try and minimize them as I’d rather not fill and rescribe if I don’t have to. Later this week I’ll scribe the front fuselage and then it’s time to join the halves together!

not seen are the stabilators. I drilled and pinned them so they will rotate like they should when in the fuselage. The vertical tail is pinned and sanded. Once i do the lights in it I’ll glue it on. I wouldn’t do that yet but it needs filler and the scribed lines have to cross from the tail onto the fuselage so I’m stuck there.

Stellar week here - I got a personal tour of the AT-38B Thunderbird at the Aviation Museum of Kentucky! In all my searches it’s never come up, until last week. I called and they had the team working on projects there set me up with a ladder so I could grab shots of both cockpits. It’s hard to find walkaround pics of these planes for some reason. I swept the floor for them basically while taking pictures under the plane as well as all around it. Have the last details needed to finish the cockpit. I’ll detail things out as i go forward. Here’s a few shots from the trip.

Limited bench time during the week for me. Decided to work on the pilot since I could do alot in a short time. This is the 1980 season uniform.

I primered him in Vallejo black primer this time. I tried white and grey on past pilots. White was not my favorite as the colors washed out...read red was a little pink 

Working on both ends this weekend. Trying hard to get to a point where i can prime it all 1 color. 

There were gaps at the exhaust. The Belcher bit kit instructions said to expect it to be rough and that it should be sanded down. To keep the overall length and avoid trying to square everything up i decided to add a spacer. Turned out to be perfect because now there’s a slight gap between the nozzles whereas before they touched at the base of them.

on the nose I worked to scribe the new panel lines. Started with a template to sketch it out in pencil. 

the big panels were scribed. While i was looking at Archer Rivets I discovered they have a sheet of miscellaneous panels and fuel doors. They all have rivets...wow just what i need for this plane under the cockpit. 

and then last i worked on the light for the landing gear. This thing is 5.5mm in diameter. Not enough spares for me in my short modeling career to have this. I was able to make one though out of the main runner from a clear parts sprue! Sanded some curvature on it using a special sanding block for pool cues. It’s shaped just like the face of a light. Some sanding and polishing and POOF 1 light. Covered the surface with blue tape and cut it off.

Traveling for a few days, so till next weekend happy modeling!

Time to force myself to take a break and let some glue dry. I've got the fuselage halves together. Originally I thought I would use putty to build up the belly but looking at it yesterday it just seemed like too much. I am afraid it will crack in the future. Thought about it overnight and didn't really have a good solution until just a little bit ago. I cut out the shape I wanted from some styrene sheet and then used my heat gun to soften it and shape it. Now I need some thin sheet along the side and it will take just a little bit of putty to taper all the edges into the fuselage.

Tonight I had some time while the wife was talking to her mom...can you say 2 hours lol.

I made a splitter plate for between the intake and the fuselage. Dang this is small. It's 0.010 styrene. 

This build is coming a long just nicely.  Fantastic work!

Your friend, Toshi

You've got a lot more patience than I have with all that insert, filling sanding etc, but in the end, it'll all be worth it. Can't wait to see the end result!

Cheers

Thanks Toshi and UKguy!

You know without KittyHawks new F-5F this baby would have sat for a long time as the canopy was kicking my butt. I’m putting all those filling and sanding skill from too many Revel models as a kid to use now lol Probably on a lull for a week or so while i get her ready for a final prime. Plus I’m losing Saturday this weekend, going to Blizzcon, the model club show up in Columbus Ohio. Will post up next once the wings are on. 

Sir, you work here is nothing short of incredible. My jaw is on the floor with each step you take. You are an ambitious man, keep it coming.

BK