1/48 CF-100 Mk IV from Hobbycraft

[Sharkmouth]

So I am not alone in sacrificing a kit to make another better! Great work even though I have never seen a shark mouth on the CF-100.

Regards,

 

[Sherman 18]

Way to go Peter!

 

[MrT]

Terry B)

 

[phantom II]

I have never seen one of these built before Keep up the good work.

Cheers, Christian B)

 

[nsmekanik]

Hey cool thanks good to see you're back on this one.
The old man, who was in the RCAF in the fifties not as a pilot, told me that some "hot shot" pilots :snoopy in this plane liked to buzz a certain table :java they used to sit at that happened to be just under a hill they could fly up and over at "extremely low altitude" somewhere on the base at Cold Lake when he was stationed there. He said you couldn't hear them coming but.......
Don't recall if he mentioned anything about pinkies gettin schmacked :smack or not. :drinks

 

[Tankbuilder]

Great details in here Peter, this is going to be interesting to see how you get those speed brakes thinned and fitted.

It'll be a lot easier thinning and fitting those dive brakes than it was thinning and repolishing that canopy. That's the kit canopy and I guess it's about 1/2 as thick now as it was in the kit form. At least the dive brakes can be wet sanded on a flat surface to thin them.

I have a really bad case of AMS on this model. I know that because I'm seriously thinking about making the dive brakes positionable too if I can get them to fit the flush with the wings.

Cheers from Peter

 

[Tankbuilder]

Cool stuff. The Clunk is one of my fav Canadian a/c. I did my ABDR course on them and also did transient servicing on a few. So cool.James

Here's a big chunk of irony for you. Down the road from me there's the Canadian Heritage Museum and they have a CF-100 Mk.V aircraft there. I got a lot of nice detail shots of it a few years ago with my film camera. (I might scan those photos and post them on this forum as a sort of walk-around) I got great views of an Orenda engine on the engine stand. Now for the irony. This is the exact same aircraft that I worked on at Central technical School in Toronto when I was taking aeronautics. Not the same model but the actual exact aircraft. That CF-100 Mk.V at the CHWM is the CF-100 Mk.V formerly used by Central Technical school.

Cheers from Peter

 

[Tankbuilder]

So I am not alone in sacrificing a kit to make another better! Great work even though I have never seen a shark mouth on the CF-100.

Regards,

Years ago when I bought this kit and researched the aircraft I decided to paint the model in the camouflage pattern. I could always do it as a "What If Combat" plane and add a sharkmouth to it or to the wingtip fuel tanks.

I bought and have the after market decals for a number of Canadian variants.

Cheers from Peter

 

[moon puppy]

So I am not alone in sacrificing a kit to make another better! Great work even though I have never seen a shark mouth on the CF-100.

Regards,

Hell it generally takes me two kits to get one right. :facepalm

 

[Tankbuilder]

Continuing with the Dive brakes.

I don't think that I'll ever build another of tthese with open dive brakes! It's tedium extremis!

I actually managed to pretty well finish ONE dive brake. However I'm got a severe case of potential AMS! I say that because I've actually be considering making these 4 dive brakes positionable! HELP! It's bad enought hat I want the landing gear positionable.

Anyhow back to these dive brakes.

I found a very thin metal gear on a thin shaft that I thickened with metal tubing to make it fit my Dremel tool. That speeded up cutting out tthe slots on the dive brakes tthemselves since the gear cuts plastic just like a saw blade. Unfortunately there's no margin for error so tthe cuts must be made extremely slowly. I've also ground down a needle file so that it's much thinner aad I can now it to clean up each slot on the dive brake and also on the wings.

After the dive brakes were slotted I thinned tthem by first sanding with a sanding drum and tthen sanding them with a sanding block. Next I thinned ttheir trailing edges because a scale thickness of the entire brake in plastic is just asking for breakage.

Here are three images of tthe dive brake ready to be permanently attached in tthe open position.

From the front of the wing.




From the inboard side of the wing.




From tthe rear of tthe wing.



Ah after previewing this post I see a bit more cleanup of some slots is needed.Comments are appreciated as well as welcomed.

Cheers from Peter

 

[moon puppy]

Don't you love the digital inspection, always see things you don't see in person. Looks good from here Peter.

 

[Tankbuilder]

Hi there.

I'm still plugging away at those dive brakes and the openings in the wings for them.

I take breaks from the brakes now and then and ponder the other subassemblies that need to be done.

I'm beginning to wonder if ANYTHING in this kit is accurate? The main landing gear struts look nothing like the real thing except that they have 2 wheels on each of them. That's bad enough but when I set a 1/48 scale figure near the plane with one wing and the gear temporarily attached I can see that the main gear struts are way too long.

I'm tempted to say forget the extra work on everything except the cockpit and build this as an in-flight model. Thing is I've invested a lot of time opening up fuselage panels as well as sacrificing that second kit. I'll go ahead with this project as I originally intended.

An interesting subassembly will be the completely scratch-built gun sight because Hobbycraft gives you absolutely zilch for the gun sight that is an extremely prominent fixture on the Mk.IV CF-100 aircraft.

Here are some of the subassemblies I'll be working on soon.

Cockpit because the kit cockpit comes from fantasy land. The big issue is the instrument panels especially the pilot's one because the kit doesn't even give you the wings to the main panel.

The gun sight because the Mk.IV has to have one.

Landing gear because I want them to look like the ones on a CF-100 and I'm going to try and build them moveable. moveable

The landing gear wells need detailing since Hobbycraft has none in them whatsoever.

The removable belly gun pack with the eight .50 caliber machine guns.

I'm going to make one of the wingtip 19 rockets pods with a removable front cap to show the rocket heads. I was able to get the rocket ends from another model kit. The was a 7 rockets practice pod also used on the wingtip and fortunately the ones from the old 1/48 scale Monogram Huey Hog Gunship are perfect. The kit supplied wingtip fuel tanks look pretty good and will also be fixed so they can be removed. One thing is that Hobbycraft molded the mounting section to the wing instead of the wingtip fuel tank. I've already cut those pieces off of the wings.

Somewhere on the web I saw and i saved an image of an aftermarket resin kit for the CF-100 that includes a new cockpit tub, seats and wheels. I have no idea who makes/made it or if it's still available but I recommend trying to find one if you want any reasonably accurate detail in your CF-100 cockpit.

Oh yeah! I almost forgot. i have to figure out a way to reinforce the main wings to fuselage assemble as the Hobbycraft kit has only two very small stepped square lugs on the wings to align those wings. With their size i can just see bumping it and having the wing joint crack or fail.

More images and updates as things progress.

Addendum. Just found the CF-100 update set online. It's GBP 19.99 and can be seen here:

http://www.mastercasters.co.uk/3.html

Image here: http://www.mastercasters.co.uk/resources/MST48006_850.jpg

Site says a CF-100 Exterior Detail set is coming soon.

Cheers from Peter

 

[phantom II]

Nice looking upgrade !

Cheers, Christian B)

 

[Tankbuilder]

Nice looking upgrade !

Cheers, Christian B)

I enlarged the images and it looks really good. I emailed them and asked if it's still available and also if it has the gunsight for the Mk.IV version. All they need now is for Hobbycraft to release those kits again.

I have a bunch of spare CF-100 kit parts that I'm now reassembling into an in-flight Mk.V version.

NO! I'm not deploying the dive brakes on the mk.V one!

I'm using it to measure some of the landing gear stuff.

Cheers from Peter

 

[Tankbuilder]

Hi there.

I'm waiting for my CF-100 Cockpit Update Set to arrive from the United Kingdom. Whilst that's on its way I'm fiddling with some other parts.

I've been reassembling leftover pieces from two other kits to make a CF-100 Mk.V variant. This was the high-Altitude variant of the CF-100 "CLUNK".

The Mk.V. was very similar in external appearance to the Mk.IV but had straight extensions on the main wings and on the horizontal tail plane.
you can see the longer Mk.V parts in this image:




This image shows the Mk.IV forward fuselage (top) and the Mk.V fuselage (lower). Two other differences between the Mk.IV and the Mk.V are the lack of the eight .50 caliber machine guns and the gunsight on the Mk.V which instead of the gun belly pack has a fairing in its place.




Back to the Mk.IV build.

I'm very seriously considering building movable landing gear for this model.
here is a rough trial of one of the main gear legs and wheels.

Lowered position:



Semi-retracted:




I think the hardest part for me to build on this CF-100 Mk.IV version will be the gunsight. That's because I have yet to find really good images of it. I do have a couple of line drawings of it but not a three dimensional one yet.

I have a couple more books on the CF-100 coming and hopefully they'll show good shots of this very prominent gunsight.

As always comments are encouraged and welcomed.

Would anyone be interested in me posting a step by step photo essay on how I built the sliding canopy?

Cheers from Peter

 

[jknaus]

Very very cool
James

 

[Tankbuilder]

CF-100 Mk.IV "CLUNK" Elevators.

Looking at images of parked CF-100 "CLUNKS" I saw that in most cases the elevators as well as the wing flaps droop. So, out with the cutters, saws and files and voila! separate elevators for the model. Definitely a case where it's nice to have a donor kit for parts.


Elevators separated.




Elevators in position for level flight.




Elevators deployed.



A bit of filling and sanding and they'll be ready to go on.

Thanks for watching. Comments are really welcomed and appreciated.

Cheers from Peter

 

[Tankbuilder]

EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED!

I got this cockpit update set

www.mastercasters.co.uk/resources/MST48006_850.jpg

I'm very disappointed because the canopy rail was very badly warped in the longitudinal plane. Recently, after contacting them a few times, I tried to remove the seats from their pour blocks. One of the blocks was so softthat I was able to bwend it almost 90 degrees. The other one was your typical solid and unbending resin that has to be cut. I thinmk I now know what happened to that cockpit canopy part. I think that not enough hardner was added to the resin and the parts were still not cure fully when packaged.

The guy said he'd send replacement parts but I have heard nothing further from him since then despite atwo emails from me to him asking if he'd sent the parts.

Based on this experience thus far, I won't be dealing with him again.

Cheers

 

[Tankbuilder]

Nice looking upgrade !

Cheers, Christian B)

Unfortunately mine arrived here with a warped canopy rail and at least one part with uncured resin. That was the seat.

They said on November 1 they'd send replacement parts. Now November 21 and late in tthe UK. No parts here yet nor any reply to THREE emails asking if the parts were sent.

I won't deal with them again nor will I recommend them to anyone else.

I do hope that the cockpit tub is cured and that I can use the seat that's not fully cured. Otherwise it's $35.00 and all the time waiting down tthe drain.

Cheers from Peter

 

[phantom II]

Unfortunate about the poor quality of the resin :S

I for one am getting tired that they are generally never the dimensions they need to be . :vmad

I wonder If Chuck might offer a clue as to how to make it cure . I have none to offer myself.

Cheers, Christian B)