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1:32 RAF FGR.2 Phantom


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This is the story of a build that has taken place over (currently) 5 years, and 3 Canadian provinces. It's one of those projects that I pull off the shelf from time to time and fiddle with, then something happens in life that forces me to pack it all back up and put it away for a few months or a year. Then I get it out and fiddle some more.

Waaaaayyy back in 2010, when I was living in Lunenburg Nova Scotia, I was able to acquire the really nice Tamiya 1:32 F-4J Phantom kit from an estate sale for a pretty fantastic price (a low 2 figure number!). When I purchased it I had hoped to be able to use it to create a full conversion kit turning the F-4J into a British FGR.2. A similar conversion set had been done by a company called Wild Hare but has been out of production for eons and on those rare occasions you find one on eBay, they're going for a very solid 4 figures.

The box arrives in my shop in Lunenburg, 2010

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Some basic sprue-fondling

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Then that was about it for Lunenburg. The company I was working for out there was running into some very serious financial problems and you don't want to be living in Lunenburg with no work, because there's nothing else to do there. So I took a position with a game publishing company in Montreal and a few months after getting there, unpacking, and settled, I pulled the kit off the shelf again and began slicing up.

I began using the conversion guide created by Frank Mitchell which can be found here: part 1 http://www.largescaleplanes.com/articles/article.php?aid=211 , part 2 http://www.largescaleplanes.com/articles/article.php?aid=212 , part 3 http://www.largescaleplanes.com/articles/article.php?aid=68 , and part 4 http://www.largescaleplanes.com/articles/JetAge/FrankMitchell/fgr4/fgr4.php

This guide gives the reader just about everything they need to know to do to accomplish the conversion. But still, people wanted the conversion set because (obviously) it's far less work.

The intakes were my starting point and they were sliced down the middle and widened with 3/16th plastic strip.

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The intakes widened and parts from the main fuselage were removed to allow for making the intakes seamless (well, more or less)

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Although I don't have pictures, I also widened the fuselage to match the intakes, and had begun to cut up the rear portion of the fuselage and lower wings to accommodate the SPEY exhausts.

Sadly though, that's about as far as I was able to get in Montreal. I had just moved my whole family to the city, got a 2 year lease on a house, and within slightly more than a year the company I moved there to work for, folded. The model sat in that state on the bench for another 6 months while I looked for new work, both in the city and out. Eventually, I found myself moved to Peterborough Ontario (city and province #3 during the build) and starting my own business.

For the next year and a bit, the model sat in the box on the shelf.

Edited by RiderFan
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A couple of months ago, I pulled this kit out off my shelf again and started looking at the project. At this time I had finished widening the fuselage and creating seamless intakes. The aft end of the fuselage had been changed to accept the wider SPEY engines and I had done some experiments to figure out exactly how I was going to go about building those.

I had also contacted several resin casting businesses in the hobby to talk about the project. While some said it couldn't be done, those that were willing to give it a go were quoting me production costs that were well, well outside my budget. It just became no longer practical to consider this a conversion kit due to the costs of casting the parts. So I scuttled that idea and just decided to build up the model as a model of its own. And so, here's this thread.

During the past week or so I've assembled the intakes on to the main fuselage.

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and open up the space for the aux engine door. Does anyone have photos of what is inside this door? The only photos I have the doors are just barely open so nothing can really be seen (which is what the model will be), but is it just a big hole to the engine? Or is there something noticeable inside?

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Outside of the physical modelling I also wanted to find a solution to the SPEY engines. After a few unsatisfactory attempts at building them out of styrene, I finally went back to building them in 3D and sending them off for 3D Printing. This will be my first try at Shapeways and so for an experiment I designed a basic version of the exhaust. It has the correct overall dimensions, but no detail. The parts will be printed using the Frosted Ultra Detail even though there's no real detail. I just want to see how smooth of a finish they can produce.

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I don't have any idea what the final print will be like yet but like I said, it's a bit of an experiment and I can go back and tweak a bit based on results. I should have the prints from Shapeways sometime in the next couple of days so will post photos then.

For the cockpit, I'm just using the out of box parts. The F-4J and FGR.2 have different rear tub layouts, and I'm making a few small changes to the kit plastic to accommodate the most significant differences, but as there's no resin FGR.2 cockpit set, it doesn't make sense for me to use an after market pit. I'll be replacing the seats with resin at some point though.

So that's where I am at the moment. Hopefully I get a bit more accomplished on this build before I need to add a 4th city to the list of 'where was this built'.

David

Edited by RiderFan
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This is great David, I know very well the feeling of having a passion project sit and get little work done over the years so it's encouraging to see you back into it. I'm afraid I can't help with any info about the door and other details - perhaps you could try posting at Britmodeller? I'm sure some folks there could help.

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This is perfect news, as whenever someone takes on such a project usually a new product is announced as soon as all the grunt work is done by he poor fellow tackling the project!

Edited by Scooby
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It's a nice build to watch and especially on a scale we don't see it very often.

One question though, why did you widened the air intakes? Did the British Phantoms had different (perhaps bigger) engines than the US Phantoms? Particularly the FGR.2s???

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One heck of a project. I don't know what is in the hole of the real one but in the Hasegawa 1/48 its like two boxes next to each other with a small rod holding the door open. Suggest leaving it blank and barely open.

As for the intake question. The British wanted British content in their American air frames. Make work project for local industry and to keep the opposition parties off the government of the day. The Spey engine needed more air then the standard air intakes could supply. So another compromise to the airframe was to widen the intakes.

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A little more accomplished over the past couple of days.

I've filled in the aux engine door 'Boxes'. Taking a look at some aftermarket resin bits used for the 48 scale Hasegawa kit (and assuming they're accurate?) there's not all that much to see in them anyway. As the doors will be 98% closed on this build, I'm probably just going to add a couple of pipes and paint the whole thing black. But at least it won't just be a hole in the plastics.

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You can also see in the picture below the reworking of the exhaust area for the wider diameter Spey engines. The panel lines need to be rescribed but you can see the upper portion of the engine ring and how the bottom has been re-contoured with putty to work with the new size. Obviously there's still some work to be done around the upper area near those small vents.

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I filled in the F-4J intake panel lines and rescribed FGR.2 ones based on my photo references and the Hasegawa kit. I actually really suck at rescribing and these are a bit rough and too deep. But they also look worse than they are in this photo because you can still see the pencil lines I added as measurement guides. I also went over the whole area with a pin-vise and re-added all the rivets.

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I also rescribed the top panel to replace the stuff lost due to sanding and resizing.

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That's it for today.

thanks

David

Edited by RiderFan
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The panel lines don't look shabby at all. I could imagine what you mean when you think they're too deep, but to me they look spot on. By the time you put paint over them you may have a harder time noticing.

Good luck.

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Some progress on the cockpit over the past few days.

The front pit is pretty much built out of box save for some decals for dials.

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After doing some test fitting I've realized that the side consoles are not wide enough and they don't but up against the fuselage walls like they should. So I'm going to build some side walls and attach them to the forward pit and flesh them out before putting the whole thing in the nose.

The back wall has had a few additional details added just to busy it up. The map holder is scratch built, might be a little large but it works. You can also see in this photo that the cross bar part from the main fuselage (with all the molded on wires and hoses) has been cut out and added to the cockpit. This is because the FGR.2 rear console IP extends way up into the centre canopy frame and later on in the build I'll need to add all those parts. But the redesign required me to adjust how the lower IP fits into the fuselage. It'll all make sense once things are buttoned up and I can flesh out the rear IP and canopy frame.

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That back pit has the most work done on it. As I mentioned before, there are no resin pits for this variant of the Phantom so I've just used what I can of the kit parts and made up something that's a reasonable facsimile. The actual button and switch placement is not correct, but the general layout of the panels is now closer to an FGR.2. The kit provides F-4J panels plus it looks like some of the panels used for their F-4E boxing. So between the two you can get something that looks about right.

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As I said, individual dials and switches don't match, but the general panel layout is pretty close to this photo: http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/9/6/8/0899869.jpg In that photo the centre scope has been folded away, and I have mine folded out, but beyond that I think it's close enough.

edit - Yike! Macro photography really shows off the problems!

Edited by RiderFan
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This is perfect news, as whenever someone takes on such a project usually a new product is announced as soon as all the grunt work is done by he poor fellow tackling the project!

Yes. This always happens.

It's the same sort of Karma force that sees a pro sports player cut or traded away from your favourite team as soon as you pay $180 for a jersey with their name and number on it.

Edited by RiderFan
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When it comes to conversions, one of the areas's that goes forgotten about on the FGR.2 is the location of the underside aux air engine doors. This isn't mentioned in the Frank Mitchell conversion guide and it was missed on the Wild Hare conversion set as well. So even if you had that (really expensive) conversion set, you still needed to make this correction.

Below are two photos of Hasegawa kits. On the right is a standard F-4E in 1:48 scale. On the left is a FGR.2. As you can see the tops of the aux doors on the F4-E line up with the tops of the main landing gear bay. On the FGR.2 they're much further forward. This has also been confirmed via various photo sources as well. You may also notice that the FGR.2 bays/doors are slightly longer than other variants of the Phantom. For this build I've made the conscience decision to not worry about that slight difference (that goes unnoticed unless you point it out). I'm just going to use the parts that come with the kit as is.

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So to make the correction to the 1:32 kit, you need to remove the aux-air bays and move them forward.

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The bays were cut out and appropriate holes opened up forward, then the bays were located in the new location and their previous space filled in with sheet styrene, filled and putted.

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That 'Ouch' that you see is a bit of a mystery. As I mentioned I purchased this kit from an estate sale, and while the kit was complete and 100% un-started, the plastic had been removed from whatever bags they were in. I am not sure if that damage came from the factory or from the previous owner had it too close to a heat source. But in any event it shouldn't be that hard of a fix.

You can also see in that above photo the work done on the rear lower fuselage. The lower half of the enlarged exhaust rings are in place and the contours have been modified to suit via plastic strip, a lot of two-part putty, and some bondo auto filler. Clearly there's not been any sanding or rescribing work done but I'll get to that over the next few days.

thanks

David

Edited by RiderFan
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Well, today I received my parts from Shapeways. All things considered, I'm pretty impressed.

This was the first part I'd ever designed for 3D printing and what I submitted didn't actually pass their automated inspection process because I made the outer wall too thin. They have an option to 'Print Anyway' and I figured what the heck. Well they printed just fine. The part is a little faceted but that's the 3D model, not the print. For this first print I didn't spend the time to smooth out the walls. In reality I'd sent a low resolution model though a high resolution printing process. I wasn't expecting the faceted sides to show up on, but hey, shows what they can do. A little light sanding took that away anyway. Dimensionally, they're exactly correct. So that confirms to me that my modelling is sufficient to produce an accurate part, and what I design can be printed. So a good experiment all around.

I guess the other thing I should point out is that I'm using 3D modelling software that is really designed for game development (and movies). It's not a CAD program. I find 3D modelling software far more intuitive to work with, even if I don't have the CAD sized suite of the dimensioning tools. I'm probably not going to be designing working combustion engines with it, but it works well enough for these sorts of jobs.

I had two printed. The one on the right has been lightly sanded to remove the facets and smooth out the exterior, and it's been given a shot of Mr Surfacer 1000. The one on the left is the raw material. It came out a little squashed but that's likely due to the really thin walls. The material is flexible enough that it would round out again if I used it on the model.

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So now that I know what Shapeways can do, I've gone back and reworked the model. I've added the missing petal details and smoothed the outer wall.

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The thinnest part of the model is still above their minimum specifications, but I've also reworked the interior so that it will slide down over the top of the kits exhaust tube. The idea is as pictured below;

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A couple more renderings, this time showing the interior and back. You should be able to figure out how the part slips down over the kit parts.

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This new model will go off to be printed in the next few days. There's no real hurry for them but now at least I know what my solution will be.

So anyway, that's the exciting bit for today.

David

Edited by RiderFan
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Before things progress too far, it should be noted that the Spey exhaust nozzles are not cylindrical. as can be seen below:

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Aires made that mistake with their Hasegawa replacements and they don't look good. In fact they look much worse than the kit nozzles which they were intended to 'improve'.

Also the intakes and vari-ramps are not the same as those on J79 Phantoms. The ramps are both longer in elevation view (with a different perforation pattern)

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and wider in plan view, with a wider, different arrangement to the bleed air outlets both above and below

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As you're probably only ever gonna make the one Spey Phantom, there're some basics to get right.

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Before things progress too far, it should be noted that the Spey exhaust nozzles are not cylindrical. as can be seen below:

Aires made that mistake with their Hasegawa replacements and they don't look good. In fact they look much worse than the kit nozzles which they were intended to 'improve'.

Thanks. Yes, I'm aware that the nozzles have a taper to them. That's reflected on my 3D model and on the prototype print. The dimensions I used came from various photos, drawings, and by looking at other kits.

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Also the intakes and vari-ramps are not the same as those on J79 Phantoms. The ramps are both longer in elevation view (with a different perforation pattern)

{snip}

The intakes will have to remain as they are. That construction work is already done. Based on examining various boxings of Hasegawa Phantom kits (and this assumes they got it right), the overall outside dimensions of the full ramp is the same. Pretty sure that nobody will ever notice, or even know to notice, the perforations being a mildly different pattern.

Thanks

David

Edited by RiderFan
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You're welcome David.

You can't have too much info with a project bordering on scrathbuilt rather than conversion!

One other thing you may want to consider on the undersides is sawing the Sparrow/Skyflash missile wells free

to ahead of the MLG bays, otherwise they'll develop a weird kink when you deepen the rear underfuselage.

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  • 2 months later...

I'm hoping to get back to this in a few days. My business is the hobby, but sadly my business doesn't give me much time to enjoy the hobby :(/>/>

The big challenge I'm running into now is getting the intakes seamless. I've filled and sanded them about eleventy-billion times and there are still noticeable flaws. Small chips and cracks in the filler keep showing up. It's getting to the point where I might just go the cop-out route and put intake covers on it, but I'd really rather not do that.

The other issue is that I just finished a 1:32 scale CF-18 needed for display on my vendor booth at shows. That's taken up the space on the shelf where this Phantom was supposed to go. I wonder if the neighbours would mind if I knocked down this wall...

David

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I've been planning a similar conversion for a good few years too..there have been too many false dawns regarding conversion sets.....main stumbling block has been the Spey cans, but as you've shown 3D printing is the way to go......great work..keep it up!

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