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Czech Model 1/48 Grumman JRF-2 Goose


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Jay: I had the same fit problems as you did and more...looking at the instrument panel position, I think that you will find that it is too far aft and to get the pilots seats right, you will have to reposition the instrument panel further forward...with the face of the panel located at the apex of the V-shaped cutout on the hull.

The cockpit clear section will also cause a problem and you will not only have to remove plastic from the leading edge of the wing, but also add about .040" plastic shim between the left and right sides of the windshield. If you go to my websight http://www.barneysairforce.com and look for the Goose under the "Whats New" button at the top of the page, you'll see how I fixed the problem.

Keep plugging away my friend, it'll make a great model.

Barney

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thanks Barney! you know, i think i checked out your build when i first started planning for this build several months back. excelent work by the way! Between you and Swanny, I have some great points of reference for the typical difficulties in this kit.

I have actually checked the seating position, and I believe that the instructions are incorrect in where they seem to indicate the seats should be, for the whole cabin, not just the cockpit. All the seats are moved back about a half inch, so the seat fronts but against the raised detail on the floor. The rear outside strut of the pilot and copilot seats ends up on top of part of the wheel well, but from cockpit pics i have seen, that looks more correct than what they call for in the instructions.

I have test fitted the wing and windshield and am not looking forward to all the sanding that will be involved. I have notched the back of the wing to line it up with where the wing fairs into the fuse on the fuse halfs. this fixes some of the problem with the windshield but not all. i have already sanded the side window openings and the side windows on the windshield so they fit well, but i have not tackled the fit of the two pieces together yet.

tonight was spent sanding. i sanded the incorrect rear windows on the fuse, the pylons, and the rudder. the horizontal stabilizers are guled and drying. i think i will decal the rudder and leave it off till after painting since it is almost all red white and blue decal.

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Well, I finished the interior and started gluing the fuse together. (gonna do it in a couple steps so that I get it aligned as well as i can) I used the cutting edge flexible resin seatbelts on the pilots seat. its a cool idea but looks too thick to my eye. The resin flash around the belts that you have to painstakingly cut away is more like the right thickness I think. I have another set, but I didnt want to take the time to cut another one out for a cockpit that will barely be seen, especially if they look too thick, so I used a Tamiya decal belt from the spares box. Doesnt look nearly as nice as the resin one, but as i said, not much will be seen and just the fact that there is a belt on the seat will probably be enough.

started the rather lengthy step of sanding the wing. also got the rudder sanded and the horizontal stabs glued together. I will post some pics once the fuse is all glued together. Thanks!

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Pics as promised. Here you can see the two sets of belts. I think I will stick with PE when I can.

seatbelts.jpg

Test fitted and sanded the wing to the fuse as well, still needs a bit more tweaking, but i have more wing and fuse seam sanding to do anyways.

wingtestfittop.jpg

wingtestfitfront.jpg

wingtestfitstarboard.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, its bee a while. I had no time over the hollidays to do any building. Then everyone here got a miserable virus just before new years. so there was another week or so with no build time, just work and sleep. so finally in the last couple days i have been able to work on the Goose. After dry fitting and sanding almost like a vac kit, the fuse halves were joined. the dry fitting paid off. it didnt need any putty along the fuse seam. just a bit of mr. surfacer where i didnt clamp the fuse together quite firmly enough and the tenax along the seam pulled a touch and left a little sink in the seam. not too tough to fix. the panel lines do not extend all the way to the seam, so regardless of any same sanding i did, i am going to have to rescribe the panel lines along the seam. i have lightly cut them in with an old #11 blade, but i need to scribe them out a bit wider to match the panel lines on the rest of the plane. also finished dry fitting and sanding the wing to get it to fit. the wing took a bit more work since, for some reason, it sat a mm or 2 too far forward to match up with the right spot on the fuse. i dremmeled a notch into the back of the wing just where it met the top of the fuse. the length was right and i just needed to sand the sides a bit to make the seams nice and even. glued on nicely then. have a bit of putty to do at the font of the wing because of a slightly off shape to where the fuse joins the wing, but it is a small area and should be no big deal. I have also drilled out the underwing IFF lights and glued in red, green, and amber tinted clear resin. i then puttied around them and sanded and polished it all smooth. i will add drops of future then mask the lights. I was sanding the main canopy to fit and my sandpaper slipped and scuffed right across the front windsheild area. luckily it was futured and the scuff didnt go deeper than the future layer, but now i have to strop and re-future the canopy. thanks for looking!

wingtop.jpg

wingbottom.jpg

iff.jpg

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Thanks. yes, everyone is back on their feet now and feeling better. The drilled section on the underside was there to ease separation for the hull from the water. The step on flying boats was installed to break the water suction and allow the plane to take off. This perforated plate along the step further reduced suction as the plane broke free from the water. The holes were not very evenly molded and will need a bit of touching up, but nothing too major. The area around the IFF lights still needs to be cleaned up a bit, but I am going to install a landing light as well, so I will just do all of that at the same time. I havent been able to get any good shots of the bottom of the starboard wing to see if there are landing lights on both wings, or just the port wing.

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If I could be rich enough to own my own vintage plane, it'd be a Goose (if I could only be half as rich, id want a SeaBee).

Your's is coming along nicely. Are you going to display it wheels up (in flight/on the water) or down?

Edited by aurora-7
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I am doing this one wheels down. This particular plane was stationed at San Fransisco for several years and then transfered to Port Angeles. All of the pics of her at Port Angeles have her on a tarmac on her wheels, so that is how I will display her. I also didnt want to do a water display with this one because then you wouldnt see the nice big V176 decal on the bottom, and an in flight display wouldnt let me show the polished 2 blade props, which are pretty cool looking.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Bit more progress for you all to see. I have attached the horizontal stabilizers and supports. the stabs just took a few quick dry fits and swipes with some sand paper and they lined up nicely. the supports had pins on either side, supposedly to go into holes on the fuse and stabs. there were indentations on the fuse that i drilled out to take the pins, but nothing on the stabs to indicate where to drill. i decided it was easier to just cut the pins off, glue the other side into the holes i drilled into the fuse with tenax then, while that was still wet, dab some CA on the top of the support and then attach it to the stab. came out decent i think. the canopy, like the side windows, was too big for the opening. better too big than too small, so dry fitting, sanding and filing was the order, for several days, little bit at a time. kinda boring but not hard. the one canopy piece was slightly warped so once installed i need to fill a wee bit and sand the joint with the top of the wing. all the windows are masked too. the floats are ready to go on as well. i have all the rigging attached, and ready to attach to the wing as well. i used ez line, which is good otherwise im sure i would break these several times before the model is done. I need to detail up the engines and attache them and the cowlings next, the attach the floats and off to paint. thanks for looking.

canopyportbottom.jpg

canopynose.jpg

floats.jpg

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Hi all, have some more progress here, slowly getting closer to the paint shop! I added the landing gear. The gear lined up surprisingly well considering the sort of guess work installation of the wheel wells many steps back. the ony adjustments i had to make were to slightly bend the main strut up inside the fuse where you cant see it to get it to mount into the hole in the wheel well yet still sit at the proper angle where it extends from the wheel well. I think I either mounted the wheel wells a bit high, or I should have extended the main strut mounting hole. There should be an aditional A-arm strut support but as I was installing the first one, my tweezers sliped and it launched across the room, never to be seen again (and man did I look for that thing!) I may try to scratch build another, but they aren't really that noticable once the wheels are on, and if I ever do find it, or scratch built one later, it wont be too difficult to add it on later. I have also installed the floats onto the wings and attached the bracing wires. I used a dab of mr surfacer 500 on each connection to simulate the wire connection flanges on the real thing. we'll see if they look the part once painted. I also attached the mooring cleat to the nose and the intake ducts to the nacels. i need to get a drill bit size that i dont have so that i can attach the pushrods to the engines, along with some wiring. then i can attach the engines and cowls to the nacels. a few leads for arials and antenna, then last before paint the stabilzer balance weights, so i dont have as much of a chance to break them off. Thanks for looking.

landinggear.jpg

floatbracing.jpg

cleat.jpg

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I used EZ Line for 2 reasons. 1. I'm a klutz and would break lots of things (wires, floats, the whole model as i test fly it into the wall) if I didnt use the stretchy stuff, and 2. It was easier to get the lines nice and taut after the wing and floats were already assembled. They should hold paint pretty well too.

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Thanks! I have been doing some work on the engines. I added ingnition harness and wiring from solder and copper speaker wire. I then added a brace to the bottom of the engine. i may add the pratt&whitney logo (unless they sue me that is) and make my own decal, but its rather small, im not sure if its worth it. I cut and attached brass rod for the pushrods. of course, i misjudged how much rod it would take and i ran out half way through the second engine. back to the LHS! I painted the hub gray, and the push rods with a silver paint pen. the second pic is dry fitted in the cowl. still needs a wash or two to bring out some detail.

engine.jpg

enginecowl.jpg

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thanks guys. i got more rod and finished the other engine, so I think they are ready to go on now. I painted parts of the wing and stab bottoms alclad aluminum since there are sections that are bare metal. i also painted the leading edges and the anti glare panel aluminum then dabbed on some liquid masking. after i paint the black antiglare and yellow wings, i can remove the masking for some actual paint chips. right now i am masking the bare metal parts of the wings, which is slow going since I am masking around the floats and support lines.

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I do have some progress to post. I have not gotten a whole lot of work done on her lately. My father in law died suddenly last week of a massive heart attack, and I have been busy with the family. I find modeling to be very therapeutic, but I don't have a whole lot of time for it since I am busy supporting my family, and they dont find modeling to be as much of a help as I do. Anyways, the engines are done and attached to the nacels. from pics of the real thing that I have seen, I think they do a decent job of looking the part. Also sprayed the anti-glare flat black on the nose. I was going to chip it up some, and layed down aluminum first, then a little liquid mask, then the black, but when i chipped it, it didnt look right. i figured that i need a more pourous sponge to apply the mask, make it more random and sharp edged, plus, looking at pics again, they kept this bird pretty clean and crisp looking, no chipped paint evident, so i stripped the black and reshot it without the chipping. I have also started masking the NMF aluminum on the bottom of the wings, which is a little slow due to avoiding the floats and brace wires and matching the curve of the wing since the chrome yellow wraps around the leading edge. hopefully i can finish the masking soon and shoot some chrome yellow, then some more masking, though easier that time, and the final silver lacquer and the paint will be done. thanks for looking!

enginesattached.jpg

engineattachedclose.jpg

wingmasking.jpg

Edited by jrallman
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