Memorial Build for a Lost Tracker

[11bee]

Making a bit of progress on the instrument panel. I used the Kinetic PE set which is actually pretty nice. White glue between the panel halves, it will dry to a nice transparent gloss to represent glass over the individual instruments. I also fabricated the autopilot control console and the joystick controller from scrap plastic. Added a couple of strips of thinly cut sheet plastic for the supports and some stretched sprue under the console to represent wiring. Still have to add some additional PE details and a few knobs on the autopilot panel. I'll be adding a section of PE to cover over the opening for the radar screen in the center of the panel. This was done on the real aircraft when it was converted from a sub hunter to a utility transport. Here are a few preliminary pictures. Note that the white glue had not completely cured so the instrument openings are still a bit opaque. This will change in a short time.

I also added rudder pedal control rods from stretch sprue. The ends will be hidden behind instrument panel when everything is assembled. Lastly, the cockpit floor was weathered with some zinc chromate green and full silver.

The seats are still a work in progress. I've started to add the lower support structure to each seat. I also still need to add the tubing at the rear of each seat. It looks a bit crude but keep in mind that the cockpit of the S-2 (even with the upper escape hatches open) doesn't allow detailed inspection. I think it will look just fine when everything is buttoned up. It certainly (IMHO) will look better than the featureless lumps of plastic that came with the kit.

On a side note, I had to pick up a "slip and slide" for a family cookout this weekend. The rental place I booked it from screwed up and rented mine out. The only available one they had was at their Rockland location, on Spring Street. For some reason, I thought Spring St sounded familiar. As I got close to the rental store, I realized that it was located only a few hundred feet from the crash site. I drove right by the woods where 176 went in and could see an opening in the tree line that could very well have been the Tracker's crash path, immediately behind a baseball field. Quite a somber coincidence. It was a beautiful summer morning, probably pretty close to what it was like that day back in 1978. I plan on returning in the near future.

Edited September 22, 2012 by 11bee

[11bee]

Immediately after taking the pictures above, I dropped the cockpit assembly. After a few choice swears, I decided it gave the the chance to tweak a few details. I redid a couple of details on the rear bulkhead, relocated the cockpit "ash-trays" on the sidewalls (they were too far aft originally) and decided to re-do the alignment of the pilot's seats. Both seats are mounted on a section of plastic rod, which will remain hidden once the cockpit is buttoned up. I started on the first seat, also adding the missing seat mounting brackets from scrap plastic and sprue. I only made the inner set of brackets because once completed, the outer set will be invisible. Unlike some other modelers, I don't believe in doing extra work for no reason. If it won't be seen on the completed kit, I don't worry about building it!

Anyway, I still have a long ways to go but here is the first seat tacked in place. The parts count for the seat is now up to 27 and I think I am getting pretty close to finishing them.

The IP, floor and bulkhead are just pressed into place, still have to work on some of the alignments.

Regards,

John

Edited July 26, 2012 by 11bee

[11bee]

Both seats are completed and mounted to the cockpit floor. As mentioned above, I didn't bother with the outboard supports, they won't be visible. I also added some PE bits to the instrument panel and a canteen to the bulkhead behind the pilot. Regarding the bulkhead, I can't figure out if I need to add another circuit breaker panel behind the pilot, similar to the existing one behind the co-pilot. Not many pics out there, a drawing from an old Navy manual shows the pilot's CB in place, but the few pictures I've seen show just a bare bulkhead. Unless I find something else, I'm going to leave that panel off. Maybe it was for all the ASW gear that was deleted when the Tracker was converted to a utility aircraft.

The last items regarding the cockpit will be adding some instruments to the autopilot unit and gluing a square PE cover over the unused instrument panel radar screen. The overhead control panel is still in the queue but that will be later in the build, I'll add that once I cut out the overhead escape hatches.

 

Next up will be hard part, cutting up the fuselage to represent the short-bodied early version tracker.

Edited July 23, 2017 by 11bee

[dekon70]

Looking good!

[mustanger]

Following. Interested in seeing the fuselage mods.

[11bee]

Following. Interested in seeing the fuselage mods.

Somehow I just realized that my kit was missing all the clear pieces. I'm currently waiting for Kinetic to send me the replacements. I don't want to invest any further work on this kit and then find out I can't get the clear pieces. Per the email I received from them, the parts are in process. Once I have them in hand, I'll sharpen up my razor saw and start cutting. The forward cut should be pretty basic, the aft cut is going to be more challenging.

Once I get past this step, I'll go ahead and place orders for the Belcher conversion and the Vector engines. Just don't want to spend all that $ and then mess up the cuts and have the project at a dead end.

Regards,

John

[11bee]

Clear pieces have arrived courtesy of Lucky Models / Kinetic. Great customer service!

So no more excuses, the project is back on track. Next up is going to be one of the more difficult aspects - shortening the fuselage to represent an earlier S-2A / B version. At first, the general consensus was that only a 0.29" section was required to be removed from the fuselage, just aft of the cockpit, since in reality, Grumman simply inserted a plug in this area to extend the fuselage when they built the -E model.

After more research and evaluation of the kit fuselage, it was determined that additional work was required. For whatever reason, the Kinetic fuselage was also approx 0.27" too long in the aft section as well. This error applies equally to both long and short fuselage Trackers. Another, more complicate bit of surgery is now required. If you want the specifics, this explains everything in detail:

http://belcherbitsblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/kinetic-tracker-fuselage-modifications.html

So, I've marked up the fuselage and sharpened my knives. Wish me luck.....

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by 11bee

[11bee]

The surgery on the first fuselage half seems to have gone well. I still have a great deal of sanding and test fitting before I will have all 6 sections flying in close formation. I was a bit worried that the cross-sections of the two aft sections might be dissimilar but I think I will be ok.

I'm pondering how I am going to glue everthing together. Should I re-attach all three sections so that I am left with two fuselage halves or should I glue each left and right section together so I have three barrel sections for final assembly? Each method seems to have it's pros and cons.

Anyway, before I get to that point, I'll complete the second half tonight and then I need to start thinking about how I am going to replicate the two passenger windows that the utility version has on the starboard side, aft of the crew entry door. My initial thought was to cut out the window openings and then use clear plastic sheeting that extends just a bit past the edges of the cut. The windows on the actual aircraft were installed in a similar fashion when they went through the US-2 conversion program. They have prominent edges that extend past the clear portion. Here is a great picture from midwaysailors.com that illustrates these details:

Once I have the clear plastic sections affixed in place, I would then mask off the actual window and paint the rest along with the fuselage. I would just need to be very precise with my masking but I think it's a workable solution.

That's it for tonight, thanks for looking.

Edited July 23, 2017 by 11bee

[dekon70]

I love watching this build. I'm a huge fan of the Tracker family of A/C. I would do the windows just like you are thinking of doing them. But that is just my opinion. I'm sure others will chime in.

[titan8251]

John,

Sorry for not responding earlier. I am active duty Navy flying P-3's and I am on deployment in El Salvador. I don't think he has any pics of this bird. i know he did look for some. It is coming along nicely. I myself want to get a tracker kit and I'm looking at one now with the fightertown decals. I think I want to do the VS-30 one off their sheet. i want to fold the wings on mine and may get the wolfpack wing folds for it after my next perdium check goes in lol. I think it would look cool with the wings folded on a carrier deck with tie-down chains hanging from it.

Andy

[11bee]

John,

Sorry for not responding earlier. I am active duty Navy flying P-3's and I am on deployment in El Salvador. I don't think he has any pics of this bird. i know he did look for some. It is coming along nicely. I myself want to get a tracker kit and I'm looking at one now with the fightertown decals. I think I want to do the VS-30 one off their sheet. i want to fold the wings on mine and may get the wolfpack wing folds for it after my next perdium check goes in lol. I think it would look cool with the wings folded on a carrier deck with tie-down chains hanging from it.

Andy

No problem at all. Sounds like an interesting TDY. I knew a couple of guys from the Army that spent some time down there and they liked the place.

If I do another Tracker, I'll definitely be using those decals, they have some very colorful subjects. I'll be building my US-2 with the wings folded (the Wolfpack wing folds are very nice and don't cost that much), not sure it is accurate for a land based Tracker but this bird has a pretty big wingspan and I don't have the shelf space for it with the wings extended.

Enjoy your deployment and stay safe.

[11bee]

All surgery on the fuselage sections is complete. At first glance, it looks pretty decent. Now I will have to tape together all the sections and see how things align.

In the meantime, I also cut out the passenger window openings on the starboard side (see picture above). Just keep in mind that these are just the rough openings and going to be covered with very thin clear sheeting, so they don't have to be perfect. I'll still do a bit more clean up work on them and (probably) add just a bit of the interior that could be seen with the passenger door open. Not much is visible since the view is blocked by the wing and the engine nacelle.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures. I'm glad I did the aft cut on the fuselage, I was on the fence about doing it but it was pretty easy and I think it does make a difference when you compare the kit part to the modified section.

Regards,

John

Edited July 23, 2017 by 11bee

[dekon70]

Looking good. I want to do short fuselage Tracker, but I just can not bring myself to cut up a kit.

[11bee]

Looking good. I want to do short fuselage Tracker, but I just can not bring myself to cut up a kit.

Took me 20 minutes tops, with a $5.00 X-acto razor saw. Measure twice, cut once and you are good to go.

Of course, I have no doubt that as soon as I finish this project, Kinetic will announce their new line of early version, short fuselage Stoofs :)

[11bee]

Progress has been pretty slow of late. Late nights at work, Daughter's soccer on Saturday and football on Sundays. I was able to make some progress on the nose landing gear well. The kit part is simply a box with some basic detail molded in. The real thing is open on the sides and in some areas, you can see the inside surface of the fuselage. I cut away most of the sidewalls and added some extra details. Painted everything gloss white. Still need to go back and add a wash, pick out some of the detail and run some wires throughout.

I mentioned at the beginning of this thread that the Tracker came down in Rockland, MA. Even though I often am passing through the general area, I never actually tried to locate the actual crash site. This weekend was a beautiful fall day and with a bit of time on my hands, I took my daughters and drove to the site. Based upon information contained in the USN crash report (which includes maps and various diagrams), I was able to come up with an approximate location by comparing these references to Google Earth. Although some of the area has been developed since 1978, it appears that the general vicinity is unchanged.

We started our walk at the Spring Street baseball field complex. According to the crash report, the pilots deliberately overshot these fields and impacted in the woods behind them.

This photo is taken from within the baseball field complex, facing the direction of flight. I believe the crash location is approximately 500' into the woods.

At the edge of the woodline is an overgrown trail. Once into the woods, it opens up and is easily traveled. The report mentions that personnel from the airstation cut an access road through the woods to the crash site to aid in the removal of the aircraft. Not sure if this was the road or not but it certainly is a possibility.

After proceeding approx 500' into the woods, I noted an open clearing. Only a few small diameter trees, as opposed to the large pines that were present everywhere else. It was approx 150' x 50', surrounded by large trees on every side except the base of the trail I was following. I'm fairly certain that this was the impact area.

As the accident report stated that all debris from the crash was removed, I didn't expect to see anything left. I was hoping that there may have been some simple memorial to the crew but this wasn't the case. The only debris present was some garbage left over from generations of kids playing / partying in the area. I took a few minutes to pay my respects, explained the story of the crash to my daughters and left.

After coming out of the woods, I wandered around the vacant baseball complex. Each of the ballfields had a plaque dedicated to a Rockland resident that was killed in the Vietnam war. At the center of the field was a flag pole and a stone marker listing each name.

Pretty nice touch, so many towns don't seem to care about their veterans. It was especially poignant since most of the fields were named after 18 and 19 year old kids who probably played on them prior to shipping out to Vietnam. I still walked away a bit disappointed that there was no mention of CMDR Bailey or LCD Marriott. They seem to be forgotten by pretty much everyone, just a distant memory on some archived newspapers at the local library.

Edited July 23, 2017 by 11bee

[11bee]

Finished up the nose wheel well and cockpit (minus the overhead parts). Painted some details in the wheel well and added a wash to represent some grime.

I've been back and forth on how to re-assemble my 6-piece fuselage. My approach is to glue the forward sections together, then add each half to this section, rather than glue each half together first, resulting in three cylinders. I think it will make the final assembly process a bit less fiddly. The protruding cockpit bulkhead was a bit of good luck, it will add a bit of strength when I glue the next fuselage sections together.

I'm going to add a very small amount of detail aft of the cockpit bulkhead, pretty much just what you would be able to make out through the open crew door. Most of the interior was painted black so you really won't be able to see much. The only other detail I added was a small plastic rectangle mounted under the glare shield. This represents the engine chip detector warning lights that figure prominently in the crash. It doesn't show in the pics below. Indoor lighting is poor, I'll try to take some better pictures this weekend.

Not a great deal to show but at least I am making some progress. Once I am certain that the fuselage will be re-assembled with no issues, I'll pull the trigger on ordering the Vector resin engines and the Belcher backdating set.

[11bee]

Still plodding along. For some reason, I decided to waste most of a morning scratchbuilding the interior aft of the cockpit. Pretty much everything was crude and in some cases, only 2 dimensional. I just wanted to add some items and color to make the inside look "busy" while viewed through the open crew door. I didn't bother with the aft passenger seat at the very rear. With the entry door open, it completely blocks any view in that direction.

The box shaped thing in front of that aft facing passenger seat is a folding seat. I can't find many pictures of this so it may be a bit inaccurate and for all I know, on the civil warbirds out there, this seat may be removed. When it is unfolded, it completely blocks the single entry door and even when it is folded, it still partially obstructs this door. Not a good feature if one has to perform an emergency evacuation of the aircraft!

After spending the time, I glued the mid-section fuselage halves together and have come to the conclusion that most of the basic interior I added will probably not be visible :)

I've already addressed the raised floor section that is above the threshold of the door in the pic above. On the real thing, the cabin floor is 6" or so below the threshold.

Anyway, I've got 2/3rds of the fuselage together. Still have to get the tail on and then have a great deal of sanding and re-scribing to do. At least I'm making a bit of progress.

Regards,

John

Edited July 23, 2017 by 11bee

[titan8251]

Looking good John. I am almost done with this deployment then ill be back at the bench. Think I am gonna do my tracker with the big Ed set and do it in VS-30 markings

Andy

[11bee]

Thanks for the complement Andy, I think you might be the only person reading this thread :) I thought about using the Big E PE set, seemed a bit too expensive for my budget. I'll see what I can accomplish by scratchbuilding some of the exterior details.

Anyway, the fuselage is complete. In retrospect, it wasn't as bad as I had feared. As suggested by the kind gentleman from Belcher Bits, I added some sheet plastic tabs inside of each section to give the joint a bit more strength. After that, it just took some putty and sanding to get a nice smooth finish.

Although not required for the S-2E version, the Kinetic kit also includes a few extra bits that make life easier. These include a blanking plate for the under-fuselage radar (all ASW equipment was removed from the US-2 utility versions) and the earlier (S-2A) version nose piece. Both parts went on with no issues. Here are some pics of my progress. Note the black areas on the aft joint are just residual sharpie markings from when I cut the fuselage apart. The actual joint is nice and smooth (or so I think - we'll know for sure when I hit everything with primer). Next up is to re-scribe the bomb bay doors and some panels that got lost during the sanding process.

Edited July 23, 2017 by 11bee

[dekon70]

Looking good. Funny, I was just going to ask you if you had an update on this build.

[titan8251]

John,

I will be to show pics when I start on mine, still on deployment for a few more weeks

Andy

[Skinny_Mike]

Looking good! I always cringe at major surgery, glad you got it back in one piece without any issues.

[11bee]

Small updated, this concerns the back end of the Tracker. First off is the arrestor hook. The kit's hook is very basic and doesn't have the correct contour on the hook itself:

I added some scrap plastic and re-contoured the hook, also scribed out a channel on either side of the shaft.

Staying in this area, I drilled out a series of lightening holes on the interior of the hook housing enclosure. This was a bit difficult to do with fuselage glued together, I wish I had caught this earlier. The real holes are larger but in my case, it is what it is. I also drilled out two circular access ports (not sure what purposed they serve on the real thing) just forward of the arrestor hook housing. Note that the furthest forward opening is just a shallow indent that is already present on the fuselage. No idea why it is there, my guess is that it replicates a tie down point which is present on the real aircraft in this location. I'll touch this up a bit in the near future.

Next up was to replicate the aerodynamic cover over the opening for the MAD (Magnetic Anomaly Detector) unit. As previously noted, during the US-2 conversion process, all ASW equipment was removed. The MAD unit was pulled and the opening replaced with a simple aerodynamic cover. I used the kit MAD head, re-profiled and faired in with some putty.

Final step was to hollow out the large rudder actuator housing on the port side of the tail. The kit's version is just a solid lump. I cut off the aft section, drilled out the housing which is completely hollow on the real thing and will be adding the actuator next.

While I had my x-acto knife handy, I re-scribed the rudder. On the kit, this is just a very faint line, looks the same as a regular panel line.

Anyway, here are a few pics to illustrate all of this, thanks for looking.

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by 11bee

[11bee]

A bit more progress -

The tail wheel in the kit is also pretty basic. That seems to sum up the early Kinetic products. Nice outline and detailing on some parts, most of the smaller components are very basic.

In this case, the tail wheel is also molded in the semi-retracted position. This would be appropriate for an aircraft taxiing but for a parked aircraft (such as my model will be), it is usually in the full down position since apparently with no crew on board, the center of gravity is pretty far aft and it would not take much to tip the aircraft onto it's tail.

Anyway, here is the Kinetic part:

I hollowed out the retraction strut receptacle, drilled a few holes using my pin vice and added a smaller fitting to the forward, upper section. I also repositioned the new strut at the correct angle for the full-down position.

Here is the updated part:

And here is the updated part installed:

Lastly, I built the rudder actuator housing from a couple of tiny bits of styrene and glued in place. This was simply an aerodynamic cover over the hydraulic piston that moved the rudder.

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by 11bee

[xavi84]

Your surgery skill are awesome Keep up the great work!