Skyknight conversion?

[Unglued]

Besides the decals, what would it take to convert my Sword 1/72 F-3D Skyknight kit to an EF-10B?

[jpk]

According to photos in my Ginter book on the Skyknight there are no external, visual differences between the EF-10B and a standard F-10B.

[Unglued]

11 hours ago, jpk said:

According to photos in my Ginter book on the Skyknight there are no external, visual differences between the EF-10B and a standard F-10B.

 

Thanks, jpk.  I don't have the Ginter book.  I'm wondering about differences in antennas.

Also, did the EF retain its guns?

What about chaff dispensers?  The doors for these would've been visible.

According to Dog Bodkin in his on-line article "Remembering the EF-10B Skyknight," the EFs were capable of carrying two jamming pods (ALQs) on active ECM missions.  It would be cool to hang these on the wings, if I could either build them from scratch or if they were available.  Do you have any photos of them?

As an Air Force radar tech, I used to maintain the Hughes radar on the F-89D Scorpions, an aircraft of the same era.  I get a headache just thinking about all those vacuum tubes.

Thanks for your help!  

[Milo]

Pm sent.

[jpk]

In the Ginter book it is not clear if the guns were retained. In any event, the ports do not appear to have been faired over. I don't believe they had chaff dispensers, at least it wasn't mentioned in any of the copy. There are no photos of the aircraft with ECM pods installed. If you have a version number a google search may pull up a photo for you. The EF-10B's photos show some with antennas on the spine of the fuselage as well as a wire antenna from the tip of the fin to the rear of the cockpit. The antennas were pointy and triangle shaped like the one behind the canopy on A-4's.  Ginter's book on the Skyknight is one of his very early ones, number four. It is not nearly as thick as some of his later books, it was published in 1984. That's thirty six years ago. It is also not nearly as polished as his later books. The focus appears to concentrate on history, early development, markings, colors and units that operated the F3D/F-10 and not so much on armament, later equipment, mods, etc..

[Unglued]

jpk: I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this thing yet, so I'm going to put it on the shelf for a while.  A lot of guys who used to fly in and maintain the Skynights are still alive.  What I'd like to do is find someone who was close to them, maybe someone in armament or a radar tech who took some photos.  This has worked for me on other Vietnam-era birds.  I've even ended up with a few good friends doing research on the Internet.  (I even married one!)  Thanks for your help, and I'll keep you in mind.

Edited September 18, 2017 by Unglued
corrected error

[Unglued]

On 9/16/2017 at 4:07 AM, Milo said:

Pm sent.

I'm holding off doing anything for a while, Milo.  If I don't use the F-3D set of decals, I'll let you know, but I might go ahead and build one.

 

[jpk]

Ug'ed, the Skyknight is a obscure bird. It seemed to always be, detail information wise, on the back waters of post war USN aviation. You can find photos of the aircraft but specific info like you are looking for may be difficult to find because of the relative obscurity of the Skyknight. I might suggest contacting an administrator of the museums that actually have an airframe to see if they may take some photos of the cockpits. Even the Ginter book has no photos of the cockpit relying on the old Douglas drawings which are more of a comic book illustration as opposed to detailed manual style diagrams or photos. Good luck.