Cyber-Hobby SH-3H In-box Review by Jodie Peeler

Courtesy Sprue Brothers, Arguably the Best Online Hobby Retailer

Jodie Peeler previously provided this blog with a detailed build review of the Cyber-Hobby SH-3D: see http://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2013/04/cyber-hobby-sh-3d-build-by-jodie-peeler.html

Herewith her in-box review of the newly released Cyber-Hobby SH-3H kit:

Hi Tommy,

Since we've talked Sea Kings every now and then, over the weekend I
bought the SH-3H issue of the Cyber-Hobby Sea King. The new parts trees
in the kit include not only the new sponsons and some other needed
components for the SH-3H, but also include the operators' consoles, ADF
fairing and other necessities for any SH-3. These parts appear nice
enough to satisfy, and I think the shape of the -3H sponsons is also
decent, though I haven't compared them to drawings yet.

The rest of the kit looks identical to the other SH-3 issues and even
includes the teardrop-shaped sponsons for earlier Sea Kings (since those
parts are molded with some parts you'll need regardless), so this means
the -3H kit becomes the one a builder will want for any SH-3 project.

Unfortunately, numerous inaccuracies remain: no doghouse aft of the
transmission hump, no accurate sling seats for the aft cabin, and still
the holes and slots and electronics box on the fuselage that you must
either remove or leave off, etc. The decal sheet gives an effort at four
hi-vis schemes but looks kind of cartoonish.

That said, unless Airfix's forthcoming new-tool Sea Kings eventually get
into American variants (or at least get close enough to convert), the
Cyber-Hobby kit may be our best hope.

Jodie

For background on the SH-3 configurations, see: http://tailhooktopics.blogspot.com/2013/02/us-navy-asw-sh-3-sea-king-variations.html

Things Under Wings: AN/APS-4

Many Navy carrier-based dive and torpedo bombers in late World War II and for a few years after carried a white pod, the AN/APS-4 radar, on a bomb rack under the wing. (For a summary of underwing radars of this type, see http://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2012/11/things-under-wings-radar.html.) It is sometimes mistaken for a drop tank.

Larry Webster of The Quonset Air Museum (see http://www.quonsetairmuseum.com/) recently provided me an excellent drawing of the AN/APS-4:

In case you can't read the dimensions, the diameter is 17 1/8 inches and the length, 60 13/32 inches.

Larry also hosted me on a visit to the Museum, where I took these pictures of an AN/APS-4 on the wing of a Grumman TBM.

Note that it a more streamlined fairing aft of the strongback than the earlier pod.

Most of the exterior of the pod was a removable forward and aft shell for access to the electronics and radar antenna. An adapter was therefore required to attach the pod to a standard two-hook bomb rack, in this case a Mk 51 Mod 12. (Note that the adapter pictured is somewhat different from the one in the three-view.) A large wire bundle also had to incorporated that resembled a fuel line.

F11F Tiger

The Grumman F11F was one of three day fighters developed for the Navy in the early 1950s, the others being the North American FJ-4 Fury and the Vought F8U-1 Crusader. The Fury was one of the best day fighters that didn't have an afterburner. As a fighter, it was relegated to Marine Corps squadrons; as a nuclear strike aircraft (FJ-4B), it had a relatively brief career with the Navy, mainly procured as such according to some accounts to get Douglas' attention about correcting the A4D's initial shortcomings.

The F11F had an afterburner but it was deficient in every respect to the F8U except for handling qualities, particularly on approach for landing. Which is why, after a brief operational career, it was relegated to the Blue Angels flight display team (about 40 of the 201 built were flown by the Blues at one time or another) and advanced flight training.

Although only 201 were built, there were two different production configurations, the short and long nose.

The short-nose airplanes also had the angle-of-attack sensor on the left side of the forward fuselage (although it was not on early test and production aircraft); the sensor was on the right side of the long-nose F11Fs.

That's pretty straight forward, although care has to be taken with respect to where the change begins in the forward fuselage:

Then there is the problem of sorting out what aspects of the various existing F11Fs on display are bogus. Worse case is the F11F that was formerly on the deck of the Intrepid Air-Sea-Space museum and is now on loan to the MAPS Air Museum at the Ankron-Canton Airport in Ohio. It is painted as Bureau Number 141783, a long-nose F11F, when it served with VF-33. However, it is actually a short-nose F11F, BuNo 138622, that spent its career at Grumman in flight test.


(It also doesn't have the wing fillets of the long-nose configuration.)

Even the best preserved example, BuNo 141828, shown here with Don Hinton at the National Museum of Naval Aviation, has a few (but minor) configuration issues.

(Don has photographed every square inch of this airplane, which provides a treasure trove of detail information for kit manufacturers and model builders; see http://www.philsaeronauticalstuff.com/f11f/f11f.html.)

Many of the F11Fs on display are in Blue Angels markings. However, most of these are not in the Blue Angel configuration:

The long-nose Blue Angels F11Fs had the same modifications. See the Phil Juvet photos here: http://www.philsaeronauticalstuff.com/f11f/f11f.html. They don't show the gun-bay doors but pictures on the Combat Air Museum do as do other photos of this airplane that can be found with a search.

There is a minor difference in the presence or absence of the antenna under the aft end of the canopy.

 The NMNA F11F does not have the antenna, probably because it came to the museum from a VT squadron. However, here is a picture of a pair of fleet F11Fs, one with (211) and the other without (206) the antenna...

For some notes on the 1/72nd Hasegawa kit and other stuff, see http://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2010/11/f11f-tiger.html

For a discussion of the F11F's unique tailhook installation, see https://thanlont.blogspot.com/2009/09/tail-hook.html

F-111 Auxiliary Flaps

7 September 2022: Updated with pictures of the auxiliary flaps. Also see this subsequent post: https://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-f-111b-auxiliary-flap.html

One of the fixes required of the F-111B for Navy acceptance was restoration of the requisite over-the-nose visibility for carrier landings. It had been accounted for, of course, in the original design.

Yes, that is an Essex-class carrier.  The A3D Skywarrior, aka the Whale, was of a similar size/weight and routinely deployed on Essex-class carriers.

However, as the overly optimistic empty-weight prediction began to be exceeded, the angle of attack on approach increased and the carrier deck began to be less and less visible to the F-111B pilot. There are three basic ways to restore the required sight picture without going faster on approach: lowering the nose/raising the cockpit, reducing the weight, and increasing lift. All were employed (weight reduction being the hardest to achieve), with the production airplanes after the first two to have a raised cockpit.

 

Most of the wing-lift changes were introduced in production with F-111A #12 and F-111B #4. (An F-111B span, five-segment flap version of the new wing was evaluated on F-111A #4.) The most obvious was the so-called rotating glove on the inboard fixed section of the wing, shown here on F-111A #4 while it was "armed" with dummy Phoenixes during aerodynamic evaluation of the new wing.

One last lift change was also reportedly introduced on the first two production F-111Bs, the six and seventh built. This was the auxiliary flap, which was located inboard of the existing flaps.

These little flaps were intended to squeeze the last bit of lift out of the existing wing planform. They were electrically driven and controlled by the flap handle. If the pilot selected more than 28 degrees of flap and the wings were swept 16 degrees or less and the wing-sweep handle was set at 16 degrees or less, then the auxiliary flaps would lower. (The 16-degree sweep limitation was driven by the need for clearance of the inboard edge of the auxiliary flap from the side of the fuselage.)

These were reportedly incorporated on the USAF  F-111s (its function is described in the F-111A flight manual) and FB-111s as well as the Australian F-111C.

 FB-111A photographed by Ron VanDerwarker

This is an inflight picture from below of an Australian F-111 with the auxiliary flap not yet extended (or perhaps locked up).

 I've never seen a picture of them on F-111Bs, not even the early production 152714 and 5, but it seems likely that they would have been incorporated on the subsequent F-111Bs along with the raised canopy.

However, on most if not all of the USAF and Australian F-111s (the FB-111A may be an exception) the auxiliary-flap function was reportedly disabled fairly early as being a maintenance burden and not being very effective from a lift standpoint for shore-based operations.

F-111B Envelope Expansion Wing

One of the remaining mysteries to me about the F-111B program was the presence of the four-segment flap wing (i.e. the F-111A wing) on F-111Bs #1 and 4. I didn't even notice it in the picture of #1 on the cover of my F-111B monograph until someone eventually pointed it out.

Note that the wings have the ferry tips so that the span is that of the F-111B.

This is the F-111B early five-segment flap wing.

Tim Lent pointed out that F-111B #4 also had a four-segment flap wing at one point.

(You can take my word for it - a lightened version of a high-resolution scan of a pretty good photograph shows that the fifth flap segment is not present.)

The reason for Tim's search for evidence of this wing on #4 was the desire to identify the third F-111B in this photo, the one with its back to the camera.

 I was pretty sure that it was #4 because it appeared to have the rotating glove flap on the fixed portion of the wing and did not have the pod on the fin tip. However, Tim noted that it had a four-segment flap with the ferry tip.

My speculation is that this set of wings was specifically instrumented for high-speed envelope expansion and the use of the ferry tips allowed it to be used by both General Dynamics on an F-111A and Grumman on an F-111B. In fact, #4 was used for flutter/envelope expansion in late 1966 and early 1967. After its crash, #1 was used for flutter/envelope expansion at Edwards in the fall of 1967, which is likely when the monograph cover picture was taken.

North American FJ-3 Redux

One of the topics of conversation at the excellent IPMS National (U.S.) Convention this year, at least among the folks I talk with, was the ongoing lack of a good injection-molded 1/72 (or any scale, for that matter) FJ-3. Note: I have provided material on it whenever asked and a previous post, http://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2011/04/fj23-fury-redux.html, illustrates a lot of the detail differences in its configuration over time.

Since there is a pretty good 1/72 F-86H kit available and it has a bigger inlet like the FJ-3 (it had a more powerful engine), there has recently been a discussion as to whether it would be a suitable basis for conversion. Suitable, of course, varies by individual, ranging from minor alterations to, as the late, great Bondo said, "practice bleeding".

Herewith an illustration of the basic differences (the F-86H has the wing-tip extension and many detail differences but that's no hill for a stepper; the basic empennage is pretty close):

So far, so good. A comparison of the North American drawings illustrates some of the shape and size differences in profile. The FJ-3 lines are in general less dark; I didn't bother to determine if either drawing needed to be resized vertically for accuracy. However, it's pretty clear that the F-86H has a deeper fuselage in addition to being longer.

Vertical fin overlay:

Wing root overlay:

Windscreen overlay:

The consensus was that if you just had to have an FJ-3 now, the Falcon conversion (which is still available) is the better bet; it consists of fuselage halves and a pretty good canopy but no decals. This R.J. Tucker's build combining it with an Academy F-86. Note that the F-86 horizontal tail might be too small. See more photos and a summary of the build here:http://www.arcair.com/Gal1/101-200/gal142-FJ3M-Fury-Tucker/00.shtm

Print Scale put a couple of FJ-3 schemes on an FJ-4 sheet: http://www.internetmodeler.com/scalemodels/nraviation/Print-Scale-1-72-FJ-Fury-Decals.php

As of this writing, the Falcon conversion is available from Hannants and Falcon (click HERE). I couldn't find it on the Squadron or Sprue Brothers website.

The best single reference is Ginter's monograph Naval Fighters Number Eight-Eight:

Draft Tailhook Topics

In addition to this blog and one on Naval Aviation History (http://thanlont.blogspot.com/), I also occasionally post articles on my Draft Tailhook Topics blog (http://tailhooktopics.blogspot.com/). My original intention was to create articles there and then when they were ready for prime time, post them here. It didn't work out that way. For one thing, copying and pasting into Blogger using a Mac sometimes (often?) resulted in a string of format instructions, visible only in HTML, that caused Windows operating systems to hang at that point, a condition that I would be unaware of until one of my more diligent readers brought it to my attention. As a result, I usually just link to a post there when it provides more information about the subject of a post here.

So if you find interesting things here, you might find more there. In some cases, it was just a convenient place to post answers to questions that were raised on modeling websites, like F9F Panther and Cougar ejection seats, http://tailhooktopics.blogspot.com/2014/07/grumman-f9ff-9-panther-and-cougar.html.