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1/32 Czech Models T-33A (CT-133)


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I'm about to start a fun project. A few years ago, Czech Models came out with a 1/32 T-33 model. It has lots of goodies included, which I'll describe soon.

 

I'm building the model as a thank you to Al Pelletier, from Vancouver Island, for his hospitality. Al was an AESOP (Airborne Electronic Sensor Operator) in the Sea King, Argus, and Aurora. His first military jet rides were in the T-33, in Portage la Prairie, back in the 60s. He's busy searching for decal options, and we'll figure out what natural metal scheme he wants. I'll be doing this one just like my CF-104D, in kitchen foil.

The kit has beautiful, colourful instructions.

j5n14A0.jpg

 

Instructions have the same art as the box top. As you can see from page 1, it has colour PE for the instrument panels and some other cockpit parts, as well as resin for the seats, wheels, and other parts.

Yd02LsO.jpg

 

The PE is beautiful.

Lydovxl.jpg

 

Here's a little peek inside, showing the resin parts pouch and other stuff.

6bfMRIK.jpg

 

 

ALF

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Full disclosure. I know the T-33 well from the inside. When holding over for 6 months between phases of my CF-5 training, in the summer of 1986 (yes, when Top Gun first came out), I flew about 300 hours in the mighty T-Bird at Base Flight, Cold Lake, Alberta.

XTVvWKo.jpg

 

It was a quirky old bird, older than I was. The placards all indicated manufacturing dates in the mid 1950s. The instruments were old, including the J-8 attitude indicator, which we called the 'bowling ball.' It was black, and precessed (lost its vertical orientation) constantly. Do a 30-degree banked turn for more than a minute, and it would lean about 5 degrees into the turn after you rolled out. I used the techniques I'd learned from flying from the right seat of the Tutor (as an instructor), to fly partial panel and constantly second-guess the old attitude indicator. The T-Birds in Canadian service underwent some avionics upgrades right before we retired them, which was our usual tactic. Invest millions into an old fleet, then get rid of them shortly afterward.

This one will be the old-style instrument panel, like this one. Note the J-8 attitude indicator, second from right in the top row (next to the engine RPM gauge).

YmW33EE.jpg

Here I've glued the first layer of PE onto the main instrument panels. Still on the PE sheet, you can see the top portions. The keen-eyed among you will notice that the PE is all black, while the Canadian panel is a gull gray colour with black instruments. Given the quality of the PE, I decided to go with it anyway, despite the slight inaccuracy in colour.

LflMMOl.jpg

 

The instructions in this kit, while rich in colour, cite part numbers that are somewhat fictional.

It looks simple enough. Find part EA 21, then glue PE 3 and 12 to it, followed by PE 1 and 11.

Well, the PE has the numbers on it (as you can see from the above picture). The sprues don't.

TeFmzON.jpg

 

First of all, the EA sprue doesn't exist. There are two E sprues, on labelled T-33 (in this pic), and the other one that says F-80 (its sister kit).

kaMPnax.jpg

 

There are no part numbers on the sprues that I could find. Here are the rudder pedals from the T-33 E sprue. Luckily, the parts are unique enough that they're easy to find on each sprue.

FKoX9fO.jpg

 

I'll use the PE, plus some paint, to make the cockpit a relatively close match. You can see in this picture (of the back seat) that the Canadair placard is there. The panel is gull grey (I'm using Tamiya XF-25, same colour as the CF-104 cockpit), while the switches and knobs are black, red, and silver.

Today's ergonomic engineers would have a stroke looking at the layout inside this beast. Figure out the worst place to put a switch, and sure enough that's where it is.

For example, the lever that shuts off the hydraulic power to the ailerons is on the lower left panel, by the pilot's left thigh. It's a simple forward for on, and pull back the handle to shut off the hydraulics. Oh, but be careful - in the same place, just above or below it, is a very similar handle that is used to shut off the high-pressure fuel supply to the engine. Pull it aft, and the engine dies. How many times did a pilot kill his own engine instead of shutting off aileron boost? Probably far more often than the official records would say, because that kind of embarrassing mistake is best remedied by a quick inflight relight, and kept quiet.

dC33M69.jpg

 

The seats will look somewhat like this one. I forget which museum I took this picture in, it's been so long. And yes, the seats are every bit as uncomfortable as they look to be.

nRk1QSK.jpg

 

Progress soon.

ALF

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NICE details for my next build! Lets see, Top Gun, summer of 86..... Nothing as fun as what you got to do. I was a freshly promoted too quickly Master Corporal living in the bomb shelter at CFB Shilo Manitoba doing medic stuff.

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On 6/7/2022 at 5:10 PM, phantom said:

NICE details for my next build! Lets see, Top Gun, summer of 86..... Nothing as fun as what you got to do. I was a freshly promoted too quickly Master Corporal living in the bomb shelter at CFB Shilo Manitoba doing medic stuff.

The details of what happened at Miramar (home of Top Gun at the time) in the summer of '86, when my trusty T-33 took me to a few NORAD exercises are highly classified. I was young and single, and thankfully NOT living in Shilo. 🙂  The women had no 'need to know' that we were driving T-Birds, and not fighters - the mask marks were enough.

To quote one of my buddies: ''The pickings in the O Club were so good, even the single guys got lucky.'' Thank you Maverick, for 'inspiring' some of the lovely ladies of San Diego for us.

Oops. Too much classified information...

ALF

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Nice project. I have this kit that I want to build but I keep forgetting I have it lol. Looking at yours just reminded me that I need to get moving and build it. It’s a great jet.


Few years back, i was at Beale air show and I meat an old ATC guy out of LA and he had purchased one of your T-33 for $80k. I could not believe one could purchase a jet for under $100k and let alone a military jet. Granted it’s an old trainer but it’s still cooler then my ride. 😳 And that bird was nice and clean for retired Canadian jet. He let me climbed all over it and I had to bang on it few time as it looked solid and it was…like my dad old 1970s car.  It was not like the “solid” tin can Cessna I fly around. 😆 You can punch a whole in it if you bang on its side hard enough 😅

 

From the most online builds of this kit I have seen one thing I noticed is to take your time when installing the intakes. It can be bit tricky. So, dry fit plenty before gluing them in.  
 

I will follow along as usual. Kee up the good work.

 

Mike

Edited by Youngtiger1
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9 hours ago, Youngtiger1 said:

Nice project. I have this kit that I want to build but I keep forgetting I have it lol. Looking at yours just reminded me that I need to get moving and build it. It’s a great jet.


Few years back, i was at Beale air show and I meat an old ATC guy out of LA and he had purchased one of your T-33 for $80k. I could not believe one could purchase a jet for under $100k and let alone a military jet. Granted it’s an old trainer but it’s still cooler then my ride. 😳 And that bird was nice and clean for retired Canadian jet. He let me climbed all over it and I had to bang on it few time as it looked solid and it was…like my dad old 1970s car.  It was not like the “solid” tin can Cessna I fly around. 😆 You can punch a whole in it if you bang on its side hard enough 😅

 

From the most online builds of this kit I have seen one thing I noticed is to take your time when installing the intakes. It can be bit tricky. So, dry fit plenty before gluing them in.  
 

I will follow along as usual. Kee up the good work.

 

Mike

Hi Mike

Nice to have you follow along. Indeed, the intakes look like something to be careful of. I know what you mean about the difference between a light plane and military trainers built in the 60s and 70s. When I did my primary flight training on the Beechcraft Musketeer, I remember the skin being thin and easy to push in with a finger. It made an unnerving metallic sound when released, as it vibrated back to its original shape. One night a Tutor stayed overnight in the hangar where I was practising my checks in a Musketeer at night. I pushed at the side - ZERO give. I knocked, and it was completely solid aluminum. The T-Bird is the same, and I always thought of it as being built like a tank. The comparison to an old car is bang on. Lots of metal. Solid. 🙂

I hope to do a better job on this one than on my first attempt. This kit is not for the faint of heart! A couple pics of my previous build, showing what you mean about the intakes.

ALF

P1090558.JPG

P1090567.JPG

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Cockpit coming along. I've put together a lot of the PE on the side walls, and chopped the resin canopy lock/unlock assembly from its blocks.

9Ud6XbF.jpg

 

I used Lumocolor permanent markers for the black colour of the toggle switches, the red of the guarded switches, and a Pilot brand metallic silver pen for the silver switches and buttons. I bent the PE for the map cases a bit open, to enhance their 3D appearance. 

UoRnqdp.jpg

 

Here's the canopy lock/unlock assembly. Only the front seater can lock and unlock the canopy, which is a good thing.

YAyeyBp.jpg

 

Now for the long, painful task of chopping the resin ejection off their moulding blocks without damaging them. Much as I love the detail of resin, I hate chopping off the moulding blocks.

ALF

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Well, with a small hacksaw, I managed to rid the seats of their blocks fairly easily. I did manage to knock off one of the ejection handles, though, so I'll have to scratch-build one.

dadM6jG.jpg

 

There are a lot of black parts in this bird.

h1A9QXc.jpg

 

ALF

 

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Coming along nice. Yes, it’s a good design when only pilot can lock or unlock canopy. I have heard and read stories where the gib engaged a ejection sequence while pilot had everything under control. 
 

Looks like you are already on the ball with intake issues. Like everything plastic, little patience gives good results. 

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Fixed the problem with the snapped-off ejection handle. I used some small-gauge wire. My first attempt, I cut off a small length of the wire, then started to bend it. I realized that I needed tools to do that, so I got some small tweezers, squeezed... and the little bit of wire flew away somewhere, and probably will only be found when I'm done this model.

NPBrpOo.jpg

 

My second attempt, I did the bending while the wire was attached to the spool, compared the radius of curve and length with the existing part, then chopped.

WCvWn1a.jpg

 

A little CA glue, and the seat was ready to be finished off.

Q2dAEJc.jpg

 

Only some small touch-ups required, including the silver on the belt buckles.

intpINs.jpg

 

More soon.

ALF

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This is one part where I have to be patient. I did some dry-fitting of the seats into the rail assemblies. Those assemblies (you can see them on the cockpit floor, with the solid backs) are tricky because there is no clear guide for where to glue them. That is true for much of this kit. No such thing as locating pins, and sometimes not even a ridge to give a clue. The instructions are not super clear either.

I've assembled the nose gear well (top left), painted the wheels (background), and finished the pre-assembly of the side panels (left and top right).

Why the patience? Because I have to glue one thing in place, wait for it to dry solidly, then do the next step. Otherwise, it falls apart like a house of cards.

Right after this picture, I glued the left sidewall into place, and started to fiddle with the seats. When I did that with the rear seat, I found that the silver part at the bottom of the left side wall interfered with the seat. I jiggled it into place, and promptly broke the seal on the glue holding the two rear rails in place. Grr. Those silver parts look like they're supposed to be the landing gear handles. Yes, one of the worst possible places for a landing gear handle ever. To add to the problem, the gear sometimes had a nasty habit of collapsing if the handle was not clicked properly into place in the down position. 

That's why, after selecting gear down, it was standard procedure to do a 'shake test' by jiggling the landing gear handle to make sure it didn't pop up and out of the down position. 

RMeJ1j1.jpg

 

More soon, as things dry and become more solid. My biggest concern right now is how will the tub assembly fit into the fuselage. I see some ridges as guides, but the width of the tub will be important. If it is too wide or too narrow (i.e. if I've installed the side panels slightly wrong), then it won't hold or might cause the fuselage not to close properly.

ALF

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Here the left-hand cockpit wall is installed. You can see that the front silver thingie (technical term) on the lower wall has its rear half broken off. Brittle resin, of course. It's also clear how the rear seat rails have come loose.

SU3RVbh.jpg

 

When dry-fitting the front seat, I noted that the gear handle assembly interferes with the seat. It's actually a good thing that the rear portion of it has snapped off.

eHNgWFr.jpg

 

C35OcFx.jpg

 

Now to add the resin footrests to the fronts of the seats.

cgJDlZU.jpg

 

More waiting for things to dry and solidify. More soon.

ALF

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Okay, so one image and text at a time is working... if this keeps up, it will become annoying to post anything here.

Here I've added the instrument panels. I still have to paint the tops and backs of those panels black. Control sticks are installed. The hand grips look a bit odd, but they're close enough. Not the same as the Canadian ones.

image.thumb.png.ffc6b8e447fae55e96ec0756b35aaaa6.png

 

Sorry for the fuzzy pictures. It's a very grey day here, and natural light is very muted. Dry-fitting of the cockpit into the right-hand fuselage half. Yes, the seats are buried rather deep into the fuselage. In reality, they can be raised a bit more, but in the T-33 I always felt like I was inside a deep pit. Visibility from the back seat forward was almost nil. Landing from the back seat was difficult, requiring me to look out the sides in the final stages with the nose raised in the air.

image.thumb.png.554f0dfbe33aff63a4f23d664f0218af.png

 

Let's see if this post works without a server error

ALF

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Here's the small ridge that the cockpit sidewall sits on. Putting together this whole tub was a bit of guess-work, because there was no definitive angle to set the rear wall (no locating pins or grooves). Looks like I got lucky with the angle I chose. Rear view.

image.thumb.png.76066d4a3ee22ada2e0eeee32750bcff.png

 

Front portion.

image.thumb.png.f092a39da4c78cd3fe9f696b2da9991d.png

 

Now to paint the black on the back of the instrument panels, and assemble the tail pipe and paint the nose gear bay.

ALF

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The tail pipe. Ugh. I mentioned earlier that this kit has no locating pins, and that fit is not ideal in some areas (as you've heard from at least one follower of this thread as well, so it's not just me). I did some dry-fitting with the tailpipe assembly, and found that it caused the rear fuselage to have a gap at the bottom. I chopped off some of the thick ridge around the front-most portion of the tailpipe, and here's what it looked like. Careful scrutiny will show that there is still a too-tight fit at the rear end, due to the thickness of that ring at the back part.

4L6MZyZ.jpg

 

I did even more chopping, and found that it finally fit in place without spreading the rear fuselage apart.

nUsZtI2.jpg

 

This is definitely NOT a Tamiya kit, but I love the way it can be built into a nice, big, T-Bird if done carefully.

ALF

 

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Next troublesome fit - the nose wheel well. The kit's plastic is somewhat recessed, giving a possible clue as to where exactly the wheel bay should go.

TknQXKk.jpg

 

The problem is that it doesn't fit snugly into these recesses, and could be glued in at multiple angles and in many little variations of positioning. Dry fitting to see...

WVu48Kr.jpg

 

cNviz3o.jpg

 

I finally applied some glue, and will try this. Next step, after it solidifies, is to see if the two fuselage halves fit nicely with this part in this position. If not, I'll use more Tamiya Extra-Thin glue to unseat it and correct the positioning. That's one thing I like about that glue. It can be used to undo a small mistake.

I4DuXG5.jpg

 

ALF

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Small hijack of my own thread. I did some searching for other in-progress threads, to see how other people addressed some of the problems with this kit's assembly. I stumbled on this one, which I will read more carefully. https://www.hyperscale.com/2010/features/t3332mm_1.htm#:~:text=The T-33 was built,schemes were just about endless.

Of particular interest to me is the part about the intake assembly, since I know this is a problem in this kit.

ALF

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Now that the cockpit is in place, I decided to work a bit on the intakes before gluing the fuselage together.

DX9f8tP.jpg

 

Remember I mentioned that the kit parts are not numbered? Well, I noticed that there were two very similar parts. The upper one, dry-fit on the fuselage, is the one for the T-33. The lower one is for the F-80. You can see that the T-33's is longer, the extra length for the rear seat. I tossed the two short parts into the bin. BTW, both the T-33 and F-80 parts fit very poorly into the fuselage side.

Q1ffp5w.jpg

 

Taking Mike Millette's advice from his Hobby Scale build thread, I glued the front and back of the outer inlet trunk together, then glued the outer parts to the inner piece.

D4xcPPr.jpg

 

wptkj8B.jpg

 

Then I did a bunch of dry-fitting, and chopping, of the outer intake covers without the trunking. Dang, they fit poorly!

h0RGAYa.jpg

 

wMHbNZL.jpg

 

When I install the intake tubing, then try to dry-fit the outer parts over top, the fit is truly atrocious. I'm going to glue the fuselage halves together first, then play with this some more. I'm starting to lose sleep over the poor fit.

ALF

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Before I glued the fuselage halves together, I had an overnight flash. Some people obssess about their lives and relationships at 3 am... I think about my latest model.

Here is what I thought about. This is the nose gear bay, assembled according to the kit instructions. Have a good look at the little sockets at bottom left.

AdcM6pk.jpg

 

I had a dim memory of something being not quite right when I built this kit the first time, several years ago, but at 3 am it kept evading me, until I remembered. The little sockets were intended to receive the side tabs on the nose gear strut! Here is what the strut assembly looks like. The little horizontal tabs at the top of E10 are what is supposed to go into the little holes in the wheel well as shown above.

JfnzvnE.jpg

 

Then, still at 3 am, I remembered that I had to chop off the lower halves of those receptacles to receive the horizontal tabs. The instructions make no sense, having the modeller install the gear struts after everything else is assembled, in this step.

87P2G7x.jpg

 

There is no way the little tabs could be forced into the slots after the whole thing is assembled. I thought about it some more, and came up with a solution. Here is the offending area. The sides of the wheel well are glued onto the centre part, so all I had to do was undo the front of one side, slip the strut (not assembled yet, just part E10) into the slots, then glue the side back in place, being careful not to get any glue in the holes for the wheel strut. Then, I could rotate the strut up into the wheel well while I assembled the rest of the model, and finally glue it all in place at the very end.

V42erDi.jpg

 

A little Tamiya Extra Thin glue softened up the join, and I was able to pry it open.

XcOx5KS.jpg

 

In went the gear part, and I reglued the side join and clamped until it set.

7WK2F7n.jpg

 

Now I had a gear strut installed, but movable. I extended it to make sure that when I glued the gear bay back in place, the strut was sticking out straight down. For good measure, I also added a bit of plasticene as weight. I don't think this is a tail-sitter, but I'm taking no chances.

8nP2NP1.jpg

 

Then, I tucked the strut safely away, so I won't snap it off. The strut is quite fragile, as it is in all scales of this jet. Note that I also chopped off most of the tab that enters the nosewheel. The resin wheel has a tiny hole, so the kit part is far too long to fit inside.

eJp74uW.jpg

 

More progress soon.

ALF

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On 6/22/2022 at 4:13 PM, phantom said:

Good fix, dont worry about the nose weight. Built it 5 times now. Not a tail sitter

Thanks Shawn for the confirmation.

I've been struggling with the fuselage joins now. Got out my CA glue, and glued the front/top of the nose section.

j75BUIr.jpg

 

Underneath, this is what happens.

6wUxWDz.jpg

 

After the front set, I attacked the portion just aft of the cockpit.

JVCQSIY.jpg

 

Hopefully that will set nicely, and I can continue later.

Now, to head to the apartment complex's pool! It's 31C, feels like 37. Perfect pool weather.

ALF

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  • 2 weeks later...

Some of the gaps are incredible on this beast. I will try to clamp, etc, to minimize this one.

pWak8j0.jpg

 

In the meantime, I am working on those intakes. Looks to me like the trunking causes the outer covers to fail to seat properly. I am not a trunking fan, given that these intakes on the real thing just kind of terminate in a large screen that keeps the rocks out of the huge vacuum-cleaner style impeller (for the centrifugal-flow engine, not axial-flow like modern jets). Notice that I don't care about the mould leftovers much either. Here, I've chopped up that large assembly that was causing me troubles. I am now in the process of trimming and dry-fitting the inner trunking, to see if I can get the whole thing to sit flush.

Dp7avtq.jpg

 

Even the outer portion of the inner trunking is to fault. On the right side, you can see where I started to trim off a large ridge at the join between the front and back sections of the trunking. This large ridge prevented the outer intake from sitting flush.

Cf3thrA.jpg

 

Here you can see how the inner trunking sits before trimming. I removed all the ridging around the front/back join, and also chopped off some of the lower parts to make the whole assembly slimmer.

0kzHGMt.jpg

 

Another view. Here I've trimmed some of the surface that mates with the fuselage - you can see that the little notch is gone. I got rid of that all around.

5VSbbha.jpg

 

This is what I mean by the ridges that I trimmed off.

O7bCEbZ.jpg

 

Here is the kind of dry-fit result I was getting. It took days to finally get it right, and the model is lucky it didn't get pitched out the window to see if it would fly from the 4th floor.

GMT5NPS.jpg

 

When it finally started to dry-fit like this, I called that good enough.

TRpgJ4l.jpg

 

Next step was to apply foil to the interior of the intakes.

gT4wOjb.jpg

 

BgsgONb.jpg

 

Some tape, and a bit of elbow grease and CA glue, and they were in place.

nVVzyy5.jpg

 

Here's how they fit at the end of the day. I'm hiding all the ugly stuff on the bottom of the model.

iQ7qg8h.jpg

 

More soon.

ALF

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