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Hello ARC,

I seem to recall talk of issues with the Pave Tack pod included in the 1/72 Hasegawa F-111F kit. It looks to be a bit crude (especially the rotating sensor turret), and the weapons bay doors are incorrect. Is there anything else I'm missing?

 

Does anyone know of an aftermarket replacement for the pod? 

 

Thanks!

Todd

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@ElectroSoldier - by "shape of the nose" are you referring to the Pave Tack pod, or the aircraft? I don't recall any notable criticisms of the nose shape on Hasegawa's Vark family.

 

The only recent aftermarket Pave Tack for the F-111 that I'm aware of was the one produced by Modern Hobbies.  From photos it appeared to be a more detailed update of the Hasegawa version, with the turret possibly based on the part from AMT's F-111F.  Not having seen it "in the flesh" I can't speak to accuracy. And Modern Hobbies is seemingly kaput, so availability is scarce at best.

Modern Hobbies AVQ-26

 

Air Graphics Models, the successor of Model Alliance, does a "full pod" Pave Tack, as carried by a select number of F-4Es and RF-4Cs, as well as the F-15 Strike Eagle demonstrator. Don't know how feasible (or worthwhile) it might be to cut this down for use on a 111.

Air Graphics UK - AVQ-26 Pod

 

Before Hasegawa's F-111 series hit the market, C-Scale did an F-111 weapons set in white metal that included a somewhat crude rendition of the Pave Tack.  This is basically a "half pod" to be applied to the closed bomb bay doors (intended for the Airfix F-111E), with the turret represented in profile as in cruise configuration (vs down and fully deployed as in Hasegawa and AMT's depictions).

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A couple of points:

First, if you go to this link you can download my scale drawing of the F-111 weapons bay that shows the various configurations it had. The full sized drawing is 1/24th scale, at the bottom of the page are scaling factors for the various kit scales. (For 1:72 scale, print at 33.33% or make the drawing 3.33" tall; 1:48 is 50% or 5.00" tall.) 

 

As to this topic, I draw your attention to the box cutout at the back of the cradle. This allowed the PAVE Tack pod turret to rotate about the pod axis. What I'm doing is just cutting out the box from the kit weapon bay. Once the pod is installed, the concave shape of the actual hump (depression) won't be noticeable. I think if you made the cradle completely accurate, you'd also need to cut into the underlying fuselage (a lot of pain and suffering for minimal gain in accuracy in this scale).

 

The kit pod isn't terrible. What I've done is cut the turret from the pod body and inserted a tube to allow the turret to be positioned in more than the 'snowplow' mode. I also added the top part of the turret shroud and it looks pretty good. (I'd show you a picture, but the parts are out being casted.)

 

The other change that is necessary for both the kit pod (and probably the aftermarket pods as well) is the orientation of the pod body. When mounted on the F-4, the access doors opened on the left side and the cooling air intake was on the right side of the pod and that is the assumption Hasegawa made about the F-111 installation. However, on the F-111 the pod body was rotated 90° so that the access doors were on the bottom of the pod and the intake was on the top and fed by internal cooling air. SO, any hints of the intake cutout on the right side of the pod body should be filled. Scribing the doors is up to you, but I personally think that's another bridge too far.

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I have three Air Graphics Pave Tack pods. The forward barrel is noticeably too narrow in diameter. It doesn't look right and comparing it to Jim Rotramel's aka MrVark's beautiful scale drawing confirmed my suspicion which I already addressed when a picture of a pre-production pod was posted on Air Graphics FB page. Furthermore the rotating part is molded onto the optronic head , meaning it only allows the pod mounted with the optronic visible. Which, for most of the time the pod was on the ground is not the correct position. Furthermore it looks more like the prototype swivel head. With all being said, the pod needs a lot of corrective action depending how you want to have it depicted on your model. But the barrel needs to be replaced for sure which is easy and by shortening and sanding the swivel head it is no problem because the new / wider diameter of the barrel then will fit to the fatter portion of the swivel head.

Unfortunately I don't think Edward downscaled their 48 scale pod which I never purchased.

Cheers

Scout

 

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18 hours ago, Quixote74 said:

@ElectroSoldier - by "shape of the nose" are you referring to the Pave Tack pod, or the aircraft? I don't recall any notable criticisms of the nose shape on Hasegawa's Vark family.

 

The only recent aftermarket Pave Tack for the F-111 that I'm aware of was the one produced by Modern Hobbies.  From photos it appeared to be a more detailed update of the Hasegawa version, with the turret possibly based on the part from AMT's F-111F.  Not having seen it "in the flesh" I can't speak to accuracy. And Modern Hobbies is seemingly kaput, so availability is scarce at best.

Modern Hobbies AVQ-26

 

Air Graphics Models, the successor of Model Alliance, does a "full pod" Pave Tack, as carried by a select number of F-4Es and RF-4Cs, as well as the F-15 Strike Eagle demonstrator. Don't know how feasible (or worthwhile) it might be to cut this down for use on a 111.

Air Graphics UK - AVQ-26 Pod

 

Before Hasegawa's F-111 series hit the market, C-Scale did an F-111 weapons set in white metal that included a somewhat crude rendition of the Pave Tack.  This is basically a "half pod" to be applied to the closed bomb bay doors (intended for the Airfix F-111E), with the turret represented in profile as in cruise configuration (vs down and fully deployed as in Hasegawa and AMT's depictions).

 

Been a long time since I saw it, but Im talking about the nose of the aircraft itself not the PAVE tack pod, which also has some problems.

Out the AMT kit and Airfix kits next to a Hasegawa kit and you will see it. And no Im not saying the other two are right and the Hasegawa kit is wrong, its just that I noticed it when they were all together.

 

I used the C-Scale set on the Airfix F-111E kit long before the Hasegawa kit came out, it was nice at the time then the Hasegawa kit came out and smashed it.

Edited by ElectroSoldier
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5 hours ago, mrvark said:

A couple of points:

First, if you go to this link you can download my scale drawing of the F-111 weapons bay that shows the various configurations it had. The full sized drawing is 1/24th scale, at the bottom of the page are scaling factors for the various kit scales. (For 1:72 scale, print at 33.33% or make the drawing 3.33" tall; 1:48 is 50% or 5.00" tall.) 

 

As to this topic, I draw your attention to the box cutout at the back of the cradle. This allowed the PAVE Tack pod turret to rotate about the pod axis. What I'm doing is just cutting out the box from the kit weapon bay. Once the pod is installed, the concave shape of the actual hump (depression) won't be noticeable. I think if you made the cradle completely accurate, you'd also need to cut into the underlying fuselage (a lot of pain and suffering for minimal gain in accuracy in this scale).

 

The kit pod isn't terrible. What I've done is cut the turret from the pod body and inserted a tube to allow the turret to be positioned in more than the 'snowplow' mode. I also added the top part of the turret shroud and it looks pretty good. (I'd show you a picture, but the parts are out being casted.)

 

The other change that is necessary for both the kit pod (and probably the aftermarket pods as well) is the orientation of the pod body. When mounted on the F-4, the access doors opened on the left side and the cooling air intake was on the right side of the pod and that is the assumption Hasegawa made about the F-111 installation. However, on the F-111 the pod body was rotated 90° so that the access doors were on the bottom of the pod and the intake was on the top and fed by internal cooling air. SO, any hints of the intake cutout on the right side of the pod body should be filled. Scribing the doors is up to you, but I personally think that's another bridge too far.

mrvark,

Thank you for the drawing of the weapons bay, and the description... most helpful! I think I've got a way forward now. One question... is the PAVE Tack door insert a single piece that covers up the original bomb bay doors?

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5 hours ago, SCOUT712 said:

I have three Air Graphics Pave Tack pods. The forward barrel is noticeably too narrow in diameter. It doesn't look right and comparing it to Jim Rotramel's aka MrVark's beautiful scale drawing confirmed my suspicion which I already addressed when a picture of a pre-production pod was posted on Air Graphics FB page. Furthermore the rotating part is molded onto the optronic head , meaning it only allows the pod mounted with the optronic visible. Which, for most of the time the pod was on the ground is not the correct position. Furthermore it looks more like the prototype swivel head. With all being said, the pod needs a lot of corrective action depending how you want to have it depicted on your model. But the barrel needs to be replaced for sure which is easy and by shortening and sanding the swivel head it is no problem because the new / wider diameter of the barrel then will fit to the fatter portion of the swivel head.

Unfortunately I don't think Edward downscaled their 48 scale pod which I never purchased.

Cheers

Scout

 

Scout,

Thanks for the run down on the Air Graphics pod. I wish Eduard would scale down their 1/48 pod... it looks nice.

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On 6/10/2020 at 8:42 PM, ElectroSoldier said:

Shape of the nose

Lack of detail in the cockpit

Intakes are not prefect, good but I seem to remember the spike isnt long enough

The engines are a bit over done too

 

Over all its a rather nice kit though, its the best way to build an F-111

ElectroSoldier,

Thanks for pointing out these areas. I have just picked up the ResKit exhaust nozzles, which look to be pretty nice.

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Yeah the ResKit nozzles are nice, a worthy replacement for the woeful kit parts.

 

The Eduard pod is also nice, as is the Flightpath pod. It should be noted that the pods head should usually be rotated so as to be on its side when the jet is on the ground.
Its not impossible for the pod to be in the "in use" position while on the ground, but not usual.

72nd scale is very over looked for the F-111. Nobody for instance does the pod door in the stowed position with only the bluged doors showing so you can fit an AN/ALQ-131 shallow pod on the forward station 

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1 hour ago, TBP1538 said:

mrvark,

Thank you for the drawing of the weapons bay, and the description... most helpful! I think I've got a way forward now. One question... is the PAVE Tack door insert a single piece that covers up the original bomb bay doors?

 

071110-11_f-111f_pave_tack_cradle-front.jpg

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Excellent info from everybody.  A big Thanks (again) to Mr. Vark for the drawing.  If Air Graphics doesn't make a stowed version, I can now give it a shot with the drawing.  Also looks like I'll correct the instrument panel and get a set of those beautiful Res-kit exhausts to finally bring my Aussie F-111C to life!

 

Stay Well,

 

WARDOG

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On 6/11/2020 at 4:21 PM, ElectroSoldier said:

 

Been a long time since I saw it, but Im talking about the nose of the aircraft itself not the PAVE tack pod, which also has some problems.

Out the AMT kit and Airfix kits next to a Hasegawa kit and you will see it. And no Im not saying the other two are right and the Hasegawa kit is wrong, its just that I noticed it when they were all together.

 

Had occasion to reshuffle some of the stash this weekend and compared the Hasegawa nose to ESCI/AMT/Italeri, Revell, Airfix, and Monogram's EF.  I would say the difference between ESCI, Monogram, and Hasegawa is minimal.  If anything, Hasegawa's nose shape is very slightly slimmer (plan and profile), but compared to photos I wouldn't call any of the three inaccurate.  (If I had to speculate, I'd guess Hasegawa used a different set of drawings that may have been more accurate to the 1:1 article, vs  the other kits slightly exaggerating the distinctive but subtle bulge/upsweep of the forward nose). 

 

It's a bit tougher to judge Revell and Airfix compared to the rest as their nosecones are one-piece.  Revell's F-111A nose seems comparable to the other kits, but Airfix has much too gradual a taper, especially in plan view.  I'd liken it to one of the other toolings that's been oversanded in the area around the radome trailing edge.

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I'd like to offer some belated thanks to everyone for their contributions, in particular to Todd for starting an interesting discussion and Jim for his excellent drawings.

 

I am not a fan of Hasegawa's Pave Tack pod as offered in the F-111 kit, so I attempted my own improvements a few years ago while building an F-111C (yet to be finished). My approach seems broadly similar to what Jim describes and the photos below show my progress. Most of what you see was achieved by altering the kit parts, but I used pieces from AMT's offering of their F-111F for the pod turret.

 

Here's the basic Pave Tack underside piece prior to cutting, but with corners of the cradle cutout marked/drilled out. There are two pods in t he photo because I imagined that I'd have to combine bits from each (a 'turret end' and a 'pod end') in order to yield a better complete pod - however, it looks as though I didn't need to do this in the end. The bomb bay piece at the top of the photo (with gun fairing yet to be attached) is intended for an F-111D that was underway at the same time.

33469568373_03050dde19_o.jpgPave Tack and bomb bays by Andrew, on Flickr

 

The cutout for the cradle removed and slightly deepened:

33469567713_c214e57ed9_o.jpgPave Tack cradle by Andrew, on Flickr

 

I removed the moulded vents at the rear of the piece and filled the resultant voids - these are not applicable to an F-111C

33895666960_d6898decfa_o.jpgPave Tack cradle i by Andrew, on Flickr

 

The next few shots show slow progress on the turret, its cradle and the separated pod body, as well as some test priming. Thanks to Jim's description, I've learnt about the pod's access doors and intake location - I think by sheer good fortune I've removed traces of the intake and vent as moulded.

34435171175_8ab2d7ac5b_o.jpgP1000513 by Andrew, on Flickr

 

34304495181_1a6a13c7b4_o.jpgP1000518 by Andrew, on Flickr

 

'Ceiling' added to the cutout (not strictly accurate, just added to prevent see-through). To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that the cradle and turret sit exactly as intended in the cutout, but this thread has made me want to dig the build out of storage:

34435170305_c32d438430_o.jpgP1000522 by Andrew, on Flickr

 

This shows plastic removed from the underlying fuselage, as I anticipated impingement from the modified fairing:

34120203354_56411e5450_o.jpgP1000562 by Andrew, on Flickr

 

 and for the really curious, the back of the pod cradle on the real thing (F-111C on display at the Fighterworld Museum at RAAF Williamtown).

 

34149478241_7f4ebff73f_o.jpgPave Tack cradle rear port aft by Andrew, on Flickr

 

A version of the door that depicts the pod completely stowed would be very welcome - I don't imagine that an aftermarket offering will ever be released, so should get to making my own...

 

cheers,

 

Andrew.

 

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On 6/21/2020 at 6:20 PM, Quixote74 said:

 

Had occasion to reshuffle some of the stash this weekend and compared the Hasegawa nose to ESCI/AMT/Italeri, Revell, Airfix, and Monogram's EF.  I would say the difference between ESCI, Monogram, and Hasegawa is minimal.  If anything, Hasegawa's nose shape is very slightly slimmer (plan and profile), but compared to photos I wouldn't call any of the three inaccurate.  (If I had to speculate, I'd guess Hasegawa used a different set of drawings that may have been more accurate to the 1:1 article, vs  the other kits slightly exaggerating the distinctive but subtle bulge/upsweep of the forward nose). 

 

It's a bit tougher to judge Revell and Airfix compared to the rest as their nosecones are one-piece.  Revell's F-111A nose seems comparable to the other kits, but Airfix has much too gradual a taper, especially in plan view.  I'd liken it to one of the other toolings that's been oversanded in the area around the radome trailing edge.

 

The difference is minimal, I didnt say it was very obvious. But having built them and seen it once built and the real thing I would say the AMT nose it the better of the two but the rest of the kit isnt worth it.
Im just saying its there really.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'd like to build one of my F-111Fs (1:48) with fully articulated Pave Tack pod.

I've been playing with various kits to fully understand the movement of all  the components, but I still have a couple of questions;

 

From the 'snow-plow' position, can the optical 'ball' be rotated forward/up to hide the optics, or does the ball have to rotated backwards to do that.

OOB the Edwards ball will only rotate rearwards from the snow-plow position.

 

Is there anything available in 1:48, either aftermarket or in other kits, to provide and accurate ECM pod mount on the Pave Tack cradle ? 

 

Finally, could the cradle still be rotated with an ECM pod mounted ?

 

 

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3 hours ago, Piker38 said:

I'd like to build one of my F-111Fs (1:48) with fully articulated Pave Tack pod.

I've been playing with various kits to fully understand the movement of all  the components, but I still have a couple of questions;

 

From the 'snow-plow' position, can the optical 'ball' be rotated forward/up to hide the optics, or does the ball have to rotated backwards to do that.

OOB the Edwards ball will only rotate rearwards from the snow-plow position.

 

Is there anything available in 1:48, either aftermarket or in other kits, to provide and accurate ECM pod mount on the Pave Tack cradle ? 

 

Finally, could the cradle still be rotated with an ECM pod mounted ?

 

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "fully articulated". However, I've attached a pic of what the pod looked like on the ground. The weapon bay doors were open with the pod in the 'standby extend' position, where the turret head rotated backwards protect the window from being hit by FOD. If you were to stand behind the weapon bay, the pod cradle would rotate clockwise to retract and counter clockwise to extend.

 

No one is interested in doing aftermarket for the F-111 kits with the exception of ResKit, who did the engines. I've approached Dmitryi about doing the ECM pod adapter, but so far nothing has come of it. However, it isn't too hard to scratch build one.

 

The only time the ECM adapter was needed on the cradle was when GBU-15s (or AGM-130s post Desert Storm) were being used and the AN/AXQ-14 data link pod took up the aft station. I was not a GBU-15 guy (Thank God--what a pain in the you-know-what that thing was!), so I don't know for sure. I THINK the cradle could be physically rotated open with the adapter on it as long as no pod was affixed to it. But if you were doing the GBU-15 mission, you didn't really need to carry the PAVE Tack pod. So, the only time this would be an issue was if you didn't have time to remove the adapter and needed to use the pod for an LGB mission. I wasn't there for Desert Storm, so can't say for sure but do know that there were a small number of jets that were used for GBU-15 missions (all yellow tails) and a small number of qualified crews with that weapon.

 

890300-f111f_pt_fm_front_l2.jpg

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Thanks for the extra info re the GBU-15 configuration etc.  Got it!

 

I sometimes use Nb magnets to mount ordnance, pods etc., so in theory I could add the ECM pod adaptor that way to cover all configurations.

 

I can see how to modify the Eduards pod to allow both the whole head and the turret ball to rotate independently, so I can start that part of the project.

I intend to mount the pod on a scratch/modified cradle and would also like to have the cradle able to rotate so the model can be displayed with the Pave Tack equipment in all possible positions.  I won't be trying to get the bay doors to hinge open though - too fiddly for my big paws !

 

I just wish I paid more attention to the details of actual aircraft during the many years I spent watching the aircraft from outside the base, on static display at airshows and during base visits. Although I'm not sure that security would have been too keen on having all the intimate  details of the operational Pave Tack and ECM pods being too closely photographed. 

 

Thanks for that extra info.  Much appreciated.

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Sorry to ask, but did I understand correctly that you could have both the Pave Tack and an ECM-pod (ALQ-131?) on the front center position of the F-111?

 

 

HAJO

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1 hour ago, Hajo L. said:

Sorry to ask, but did I understand correctly that you could have both the Pave Tack and an ECM-pod (ALQ-131?) on the front center position of the F-111?

 

 

HAJO

If it could be done, and I don't know that it could be, the PAVE Tack pod would be stowed and unusable.ere is what it looked like when the AN/ALQ-131 was on the front station and the AN/AXQ-14 was on the rear station.

 

8509_f-111f_fwd_alq-131.jpg

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If you  plan to buy a set of ResKit wheels, they are presently mis-labeled on the website, but that is being fixed. They should read:

 

Kits RS48/72-69 go to F-111C/G & FB-111A

Kits RS48/72-70 go to F-111A/B/D/E/F & EF-111A

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