1/72 EKA-3B Skywarrior/Whale - DONE! 09/20/2015

I had to scroll back to confirm that this cockpit is 1/72, excellent work, Pawel. I was thinking that it was 1/48 scale at least. I was stationed on Ranger during Vietnam and remember these aircraft well.

Hello!

Thanks a lot for your comments and your kind words, subfixer! Do you remember any squadrons you had on the deck then? What year was it? I'm tempted to do the VAQ-130 tanker with those five black stripes across the tail, but for now I'm still open to other ideas. Thanks again, have a nice day

Paweł

Hey Pawel,

I'm building a whale too, and also recently found the Obscurco cockpit.  You are doing amazing work! I needed a break because I've got so many 'firsts' in my build and am scratching a bunch of stuff way beyond my skill set.  But your 'pit is looking fantastic.

MAgather - Thanks a lot for your comment! You're building an electronic Whale - right? I don't know if the Obscureco cockpit would be good for you in that case. Eduard detail set would be OK, though, with modifications - it even has the correct lower crew hatch for your version. Let me post two links for you, maybe they will help you:

www.navalaviationmuseum.org/.../virtualtour

tailspintopics.blogspot.com/.../mighty-skywarrior.html

Thanks again, have a nice day

Paweł

Pawel,

Yes, I'm doing an EA-3B.  Those are somer great links. I will be using them.  My guess is the cockpit is an A3D-2T aka TA-3B, which would have had the permanent pass through and no position for the 5th EWO. (the old bombardier or tanker operator station). I've got Aerograph 5 by Francillion and Heinemann so if you have a questions or need a picture just let me know what you want and I'll see if I can locate something for you.

Keep up the good work, I'll be watching, and as soon as I finish up a bird for the Dornier 335 GB I'll get back on my project.  I've done quite a bit of work since my last posting in my *** whale thread and I'll get a post up there in the near term.

Best, Marty

Marty - glad I could help you some. That panorama from the museum is definitely captioned EA-3B. That book must be really something - written by the man who designed this aircraft! If you would be so kind, I would as you to post everything that relates directly to the EKA variant here in this thread - that would also be a request for other readers too! Thanks in advance and have a nice day

Paweł

Everything??? That could be a full time job.  But I will certainly post up some helps.  How about a cockpit shot or two?

Hello!

Sorry, I didn't know how extensive the book was. Cockpit shots? I would love 'em! Maybe I can improve a thing or two. Thanks in advance and have a nice day

Paweł

Sorry to take so long to get back to you, Pawel. I was on Ranger from 1972-1975,

subfixer - thanks a lot for the great graphic - where did you get it from? It will help me a lot with other models and the paint scheme for the Whale is also interesting, that will give me something to think about! Thanks again and have a nice day

Paweł

Hello!

I went on with the exit "hallway". It leads from the cockpit to the exit hatch on the underside of the aircraft, and to the bomb bay (the atomic weapon had to be armed in flight). The three doors that are necessary were done fixing the undersize etched Eduard parts to correct sized styrene sheet parts:

I also went on to build the engines. As I read here: http://modelingmadness.com/review/viet/laskodia3.htm , I cut off the intake part of the nacelle, and filled, sanded and painted it separately - otherwise it could be really hard:

Now I'm off to do the second engine and the forward wheel bay. Thanks for reading, have a nice day

Paweł

The Nicknames

F-4J = Rhino

A-7 = S.L.U.F.

S-1 = Stoof (reference to original designation S2F)

E-1 = Stoof with a roof

A-3 = Whale or *** Whale, earlier All Three Dead (original designation A3D)

A-5 = Viggie (also an x-rated name I won't bother to type)

A-6 = Don't remember

H-3 = Don't remember

H-3 - Big M*u*t*h*a! (Nannybot got this one as well!)

But I'm curious, about that other Viggie nickname - maybe code it or sumthin'?

And also A-4 - Scooter

Thanks for your comments, have a nice day!

Paweł

Hello again!

It's been a long time and I got some things done, today I got to photograph it.

First, I built up the engines. The result is rather nice:

The insides of the oil coolers (inside the intakes) are very nicely detailed.

I'm also preparing to close the fuselage:

I installed the cockpit, the "hallway", and the wheel well in the fuselage half. I glued a piece of resin casting block between the cockpit floor and the wheel well roof to prevent the wheel well from falling inside the fuselage. I have determined, that he model doesn't realy need a nose weight, plus there is a lot of space in the forward electronic blisters, so I'm not installing any more in the nose for now. I also put some styrene sheet between the main gear bays to do the tunnel connecting them and blank off the gaping hole that would be there otherwise.

Now I'm going to glue the fuselage halves together, filling the seams will probably be a lot of fun...

Thanks for reading, have a nice day

Paweł

Wow! That is one great job you've got going so far. My eyes are getting too bad for 1/72nd scale stuff. Can hardly wait to see the finished product. Keep up the good modeling!

Thanks a lot, DevilDawg! It will probably take me some time to finish this one, because I build slowly, but I hope it will turn out nice. Thanks again and have a nice day

Paweł

Hello!

It's been a long time, during which the work has been going on steady, although slowly. I glued together the fuselage halves and filled the seams:

It's good to remember to open a slot just before the forward wheel bay for an antenna, that the more modern Whale variants had. I also dry fitted the "anti buffet fence" behind the crew entry hatch - on the bomber it eased the flow of air around the open bomb bay and enabled a clean drop of bombs. On the EKA-3B variant the bomb bay couldn't be opened in flight, and the fence was also deleted - that's what I'm going to do on my model, too. The slots on the sides of the fence are for retractable catapult attachment points. Behind the fence there are the bomb bay doors, dry fitted.

I also started working on the wings - I didn't do much so far, yet there's a lot to write about. You see there were two wings variants on the Whale - basic and the so called CLE wings - in essence widened a bit. My machine should have the basic wing. And the Hasegawa kit shows a curious mix of basic and CLE wing features. The shape is a basic wing, and the details were taken from the CLE wing. Take, for example that little fairing where the wing leading edge and the leading edge of the engine pylon meet:

For a basic wing it shouldn't be there:

More on the differences can be found in this excellent article:

http://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2010/09/mighty-skywarrior.html

It's also already decided, that my model will have the flaps and the slats deployed - the Skywarriors sitting on the ground usually looked like that.

More on the subject in my next posts, please stay tuned, thanks for reading and have a nice day

Paweł

Hello again!

The work on the wings continue. Wing is already cut up, the cut off parts will serve as a base to do the slats, the flaps will have to be scratchbuilt. For now I work to show the slat bays and the wing looks like shown on the photos below:

And now for the opposite side - thanks for reading, have a nice day

Paweł

Hello!

Happy new year, everybody!

That Whale didn't get much attention in the second half of the last year, but hopefully that's about to change now. After I posted last time I was able to glue the wing to the fuselage, and fill and rescribe that joint. Recently I resumed my work on the flaps and slats. The right wing now looks like on the photo below:

I started working on the slat attachment points. While not very accurate, I couldn't come up with a better way to reliably hold the slat to the wing. I'll try to build it like that and see how it turns out:

I hope you like it, thanks for reading and have a nice day

Paweł

Hello!

Today I started detailing the gear bays. I used styrene sheet and thin copper wire. Here's how it looks so far:

Thanks for reading and have a nice day

Paweł

Wow! Great job, Powel! I really like the way the detailing is going in the gear bays. I'll be watching your progress with interest as I plan to build the Air Force version someday.

Cheers,

Russ

Hello!

Russ - thanks a lot for your comment and for your kind words. I plan to build the EB-66 some day too, but there are so many differences! Then again you know way more about the ECM systems - I'm counting on your help here!

Tomorrow I have to go back to work, so to use the break I worked on some details of my models. I moved on with the gear bays - let me show you my favourite before-after shot. Here's the gear bay OOB:

After I tuned it a bit:

I also added a small fuel vent on the horizontal stabilizer, correct for my BuNo, and deleted the large one (kit part E39, on the left side of the fuselage tail):

I also added the roller for the tail skid, that was missing from the kit:

The last thing I managed to do was to add the refuelling drogue (sculpted from Milliput):

Now I'm working to put everything together to paint the underside of the model white. Hope you liked the photos, thanks for reading and have a nice day

Paweł

Very nice work there in 1/72 on a very cool aircraft!

Mike

Hello Mike!

Thanks a lot for your kind words! I also think this machine is cool!

Have a nice day

Paweł

Hello everybody!

I wanted to close up the cockpit, but I realized I'm missing the insides of the so-called dittching hatch - a hatch on top of the Whale cockpit meant to be used to get out of the airplane when the normal way (the hatchway in the belly) couldn't be used - like when landing wheels up or in the water. I read that this hatch was supposed to be open during the carrier takeoff by Navy regulations.

I have only very few references of how this thing should look like. But using what little I had here's what I scratch-built using some styrene sheet, yoghurt can lid (aluminium foil) and some copper sheet and wire on paper backing:

I scribed all of those soundproofing seams, then went on to paint that thing:

After that was doneI glued it inside the canopy:

Now I can finally close that cockpit up and start some serious painting.

Thanks for looking and have a nice day

Paweł

Hello everybody!

Aftera long time I've got a small update. I put some of my trusty Tamiya primer on the model. It still works better with a grey undercoat:

There are two small antennae in front of the triangular opening that will take the tail skid. I've built those little antennae out of thick copper wire that I've flattened with a hammer and then filed to shape and then anchored them in appropriately shaped holes. This is almost more writing than actual work, but it gives me hope to keep them babies from breaking off before getting done.

Before I put the primer on I also glued the canopy on and masked it with thin strips of Tamiya tape and Maskol. Then I sprayed a coat of black to gife the frames their inside colour. On top of the black you can now see some overspray from the subsequent painting. The rear edge of the canoy had to be filled and sanded a little, the seam there was a bit too much for me:

That would be it for now - hope you like it! Thanks for reading and have a nice day

Paweł

Awesome work there Pawel!  I've been looking at these kits in the various versions.  I had never really looked at this aircraft much, until I visited the USS Midway Museum in San Diego last year and got a good look at the Whale they have on the flight deck.  Its amazing that such a large aircraft could land and be launched from a carrier.  Keep up the great work, I'll be watching this build as well.

jelliott523 - thanks a lot for your kind words! Yeah, the Whale is really something special, isn't it? Thanks for your comment and have a nice day!

Paweł

Hello everybody!

Today I finished painting the engines:

The undersides were painted Tamiya white primer, upper surfaces are Humbrol 129 over Humbrol 140 preshading. The red warning stripe is Humbrol 19. The rear of the fairing is a transition between Stainless and Iron from Mr Metal Color, Gunze paints. I picked up some panel lines with a pencil.

Now I'm going to install the engines - painting them after installation would be much harder. Also, there's some filling required where the leading edge of the wing meets the engine pylon.

Thanks for looking and have a nice day

Paweł