Jump to content

MPC (Airfix) F4D Skyray


Recommended Posts

Finally some pictures from my Skyray. I'm off to my usual glacial start. I had to finish something else and also haven't had a lot ot time.

Obligitory picture of parts and box:

p1010067wh.jpg

It's an old kit, the copyright embossed inside is 1977. It has raised panel lines, I don't usually bother with rescribing but since this kit is very "flat" in form I decided to rescribe it. Also, my wife was up in my secret hideout doing some quilt tying so I needed something to do that didn't involve solvents and other nasty smells. I just scribed over the raised lines not checking for accuracy. The only change I made was to move two lines up near the nose wheel well in order to correct the placement of the TACAN antenna.

The way the kit was molded also left the molded in vents and scoops kind of funny looking because the designer had to allow for the parts ejecting from the molds. It left the interior parts of the scoops shallow and asymetrically shaped. I cut them out and redid them with card. I also added two scoops on the bottom of the fuselage that Airfix left out.

The kit was also missing the cannon so I carved in troughs and added barrels made from .030" rod. I also added the spent cartridge ejection ports.

I cut off the leading edge slats in order to have them extended as they always were on the ground. (Unless they were manually pushed in)

p1010072mp.jpg

p1010077fg.jpg

p1010073te.jpg

p1010078s.jpg

p1010079lx.jpg

p1010080ul.jpg

p1010081im.jpg

Edited by Grey Ghost 531
Link to post
Share on other sites

:D, Nice start there Dave. The Skyray is one aircraft I've always like and built this same kit way back in the late 70s early 80s. Due to lack of easily obtainable info back then I built the kit directly OOB. I'll be watching this one and will probably save your build to favourites becasue I intend to do this one again. I have it somewhere in my stash, now all I have to do is find it. As phantom said, :thumbsup:.

:cheers:,

Ross.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I got some work done Saturday. I used the kit seat and just tarted it up a little with some card, rod and some "C" channel that I drilled holes into for the rails.

The belts are lead foil from a wine bottle and some thin wire. Real lead from back in the day. I have about two and a half bottles worth, it's a good thing I build slow and in 1/72 so it will last a while yet. I bent the wire into sort of buckle shapes and then tapped it with a jewler's hammer on a flat piece of metal to flatten it out a little.

The face curtain handle and the "D" handle on the right side of the seat are made from .010" card, I drilled little holes and then shaped them the way I wanted with a new Xacto blade and then cut around the holes for the outside shape. It worked pretty good. I took the pictures just a minute ago and came across the room here to the computer to upload them. A few seconds later I hear: "snap"...."Clickclickclick". The seat ejected out of the clamp I put it in to take the picture. I thought, "uh-oh", but it only popped a couple of feet, not lost, not broken, I don't have to make another one. Wheew!

p1100096k.jpg

p1100095r.jpg

All I did to the cockpit is add some consoles after filing the edges of the cockpit to an angle, and, I thought the instrument shroud/glare shield extened way too far back. It would have been within a scale foot of the little pilot's chest. What I did was saw off about .050" and then thin down the resulting glare shield edge and then fit the cut-off piece underneath to be the instrument panel.

p1100094q.jpg

p1100093k.jpg

Here's the wings with the structure for the extended slats and the slats taped in place. The trailing edges are thinned down some too.

p1100091z.jpg

p1100092v.jpg

Edited by Grey Ghost 531
Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 1 month later...

Any progress?

Regretably, some, but not enough to have it done by the end of the month. Life issues, you know. My wife cracks the whip on weekends and hitches me up to the garden cart to haul her compost and mulch around. Sometimes she gives me a beer. This coming weekend I'll be at Hamilton watching a Lancaster, B-29, B-17 and hopefully a B-24 flying around. Maybe a few Snowbirds too.

The Skyray is almost ready for fuselage closing. I used milliput and sheet plastic to build intake ducting and it's taken quite a few backs and forths with putty and sandpaper to get those right. It's a pretty tight space. I made some resin copies of the compressor face and turbine outlet from the Tamiya kit and also modified the jet pipe in the kit using the Tamiya kit as a guide.

I'm guessing it will be about ready for paint at the deadline. I'll get some pictures of its current state posted in a day or so.

I know I'm slow, that's why I don't generally join group builds, but I had to throw my hat into this ring!

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 1 year later...

Am I too late for the raffle? YES, it's actually finished. Here's the play by play:

Sanded off raised panel lines and scribed new ones using Airfix's lines as the pattern. They more or less agree with what I see in Ginter's book.

Fixed NACA scoops and outlet vents on fuselage top to correct the misshapen things that Airfix was obliged to give us in order to have the vertically split fuselaga parts eject from the molds.

Added a NACA scoop and outlet vent to the bottom of the fuselage where Airfix chose not to.

Added the gun troughs and barrels, Airfix wasn't incorrect in omitting them, they were often faired over.

Dropped the leading edge slats and raised the trailing edge pitch trimmers to match the normal Skyray ground configuration.

Resin copied the compressor and turbine parts from the Tamiya Skyray and built sheet styrene and Milliput intake ducts and sheet styrene splitter plates. Modified the Airfix jet pipe to look more like Tamiya's.

Tarted up the cockpit using Airfix's parts suitably modified and detailed. Lead foil belts, carved ejector seat handles and seat padding, C-channel rails (drilled out with lightening holes) radar scope on the bottom of the instrument panel...

Scratch built main landing gear. There's about 70 parts in each leg, only the wheel is the kit part. Nose gear largely scratch built, the wheek, yoke and the main part of the strut are kit parts, but all of the detail is from Evergreen packets.

Kit pylons with added bomb rack doo-dads and sway braces added. I only hung the external fuel tanks and the Nav pod as that was the most common configuration in the pictures I've seen.

Paint is Model Master and Alclad. Decals are a mix of Superscale F4D, F-4N and F3D sheets and home brew using scanned decals modified in GIMP. The squadron emblem on the canopy was made using a scanned image of an actual squadron patch. Panel wash is Holbein oils on a gloss surface, thinned with Turpenoid and wiped off after completely drying using a little piece of cloth slightly dampened with Turpenoid. I used a mix that was about neutral gray on the top and something a bit lighter that light gull gray on the bottom, expecpt for control surface hinge lines which were done using almost black.

And now on to the pictures:

0czk.jpg

vuoj.jpg

2wfz.jpg

bfcl.jpg

ruvr.jpg

cwth.jpg

d5xh.jpg

vl3p.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...