Trumpeter 1:32 F-105G Wild Weasel Build Thread

Thanks guys!

I had all the brass stuff in the shop that I needed for the stand. This includes the I-beam, channel and various tubes and rods.



At first I tried cutting the material with the micro-razor saw, but immediately ran into a jam and was fracturing blades left and right. So I went to plan B, which was a diamond coated wheel in the Dremel with the Flexi-shaft held in my Panavise. I've used this Rube Goldberg lash up before and it works, just barely.

I'm using 3/32" tubing for the legs, and 3/64 rod for the cross bar, with smaller for the angle braces.

All soldering was done on the ceramic pad with the Resistance Unit. I started with a higer temp silver-bearing plumbing solder for crossbar-to-leg joints. This prevented that joint from remelting when I solder on the angle braces.



I ground a notch into the leg and crossbars for the angle piece to sit in, but this might have been overkill. But it did give me a positive location so I would solder the pieces in the same place on both sides. All the parts are held in position (as best as can be) using T-pins into the ceramic. My pad's starting to wear out and it's not holding pins very well.



For the leg/rail junction I'm using 1/8" U-channel. Again, tried cutting it with the micro saw and broke another one, so I put a larger cutoff wheel in th Dremel and cut off four pieces. I then drilled these with the 3/32" so the tubes would have a positive place to be positioned. I then soldered these on. Then I came to the challenge of fastening the channels to the rails. I decided to go with a mechanical joint by squeezing the channel around the rail with a good old fashioned Vice Grip.



One of the channels' legs broke when it got squished so I soldered that one on. When I was trying to tweak one of the legs to square it up, the leg-to-channel joints broke and needed resoldering. Resoldering is always more troubling the first time.

I ran out of time for putting on the longitudinal angle braces. I'll do those tomorrow. I'm going to solder them directly to the rails. There's also some foot pads that I need to add, then cleaning, and painting. Not bad for a one-afternoon project. Being soldered brass, I believe the stand could support many pounds, not just the ounces that the plastic engine will be.

I tried the engine on for size and the engine's lugs sit on the rails perfectly, but the engine is very tail heavy since there's not a couple thousand pounds of rotating machinery inside. I will positively fix the engine in place on some kind of shoes, since adding weights inside the engine is difficult to impossible due to the inlet air guide vanes. Annoylingly, Trumpeter didn't put any compressor front wheel so it's a big hollow tube when you look down inside. I wish I would have built one before getting the vanes in place, but that ship has left the dock, since the vanes snapped behind a lip making it unremovable without destruction.

Great !

Lovely work so far!

Here was the set up to do the big angle braces. One hemostat kept heat away from the other assembly and the other let me hold onto the angle brace without burning my fingers. I first positioned it near the top end and soldered the brace to the rail. I pre-tinned the rail so I wouldn't have to add solder. Then when that was secure, I moved the hemostat to the rail end so it wouldn't remelt.



Then all hell broke when I tried to bend one of the legs a bit since it wasn't quite square. The main cross-brace joint broke. In the process of soldering that back on, the small diagonal brace fell off. That took a bit of doing to get back in place since the leg assembly wasn't sitting nicely on the solder pad, but was pointing up in the air as part of the already-assembled stand. I finally got everything together and reasonablly square.

For the leg bottoms I first was looking at some small screws that I would CA into the legs, but then decided to use some 1/16" solid brass rod, which was a telescoping fit into the leg tubes, along with some 0.020" sheet brass drilled to accept the 1/16" rod.



Notice that I use a drill press table clamp to hold the brass. Brass is notorious for grabbing and spining around and will cut you to shreds if you not careful. Clamping is the answer. That's the old metal shop teacher in me talking here. After drilling I cut them apart with a jeweler's tin snips.

Each of the leg extenders slid into the leg tubes by a different amount, so instead of trying to hold a short piece of extender a specific distance, I cut each extender to the length that would let them extend the amount I wanted, about 1/8". After soldering all the pads I CA'd the leg extenders into the leg tubs while holding the stand firm on a level surface so all four legs touched the ground.

To conpensate for the overbalance of the engine, instead of doing anything elaborate, I just soldered some lugs that would grab the front plastic engine mounts. The right and left mounts are different configurations (so some idiot wouldn't install the engine backwards in the air frame), so the lugs had to be configured differently.



I cleaned up any excess flux and dressed any obviously bad solder joints and primed the stand with Tamiya Gray Primer.



On Monday, I'll finish paint the stand with some Tamiya medium or dark gray, depending on how I feel. I put the engines in the lugs and took two pics. I don't think I'm going to glue the engine in, although I could.



You'll notice that the rear engine mount in this picture is facing in a different direction than the front. This precluded making a similar lug mount for the rear mount since you couldn't get the engine into them. I suppose I could make a reverse-facing mount that would screw into position. After placing the engine, you'd screw the clamp into place making the engine permanently fixed. I have some very small machine screws that I could use for this purpose. Hmmmm... That's one of the good things that comes from posting every day. It actually gives me a chance to re-think problems. Making this stand was an example of that. I was actually going to do the more complicated one with the wheels until I wrote my post and then reconsidered.



I needed to find out just how much the AB extender out of the plane's rear, and since the engine was no longer connected to it, I lost the reference points since the engine, not the AB was attached to the fuselage. To solve the problem, I installed the engine in the front part of the fuze and put the tail cone next to it with the AB inside. The engine pushed the AB out to the proper location, which was further out than I had thought. I then marked that line on the AB with Tamiya tape. I also painted the tail feather actuators and will go back on Monday and air brush with some Tamiya Clear Smoke.



So... happy Friday, I see all y'all on Monday.

Nice work going on here.

Very nice miniature engineering - well done !

That is a really good ALC3100 stand! Here is picture of an engine roll (on a 4000 trailer) showing the engine adapter mounted to the ALC roller adapters. It appears the engine adapters mount to the A/B flange.

The scary part is, from this angle it appears the rollers are right up against the stop-pins.

Thanks guys. I decided against the trailer for two reasons: the wheels and the sort of free-form pressed steel frames. The work stand was much simpler aesthetically.

Happy Monday! Went to the dentist today and had no cavities... thanks to Crest and our Sonicare Electric Toothbrush. My gums and teeth now are better than when I was in my 20s, and I'm 73. Go Figure...

I figured a non-scale, simple method to fasten the other end of the J75 onto the engine stand. As I said, any fixed method would make it impossible to put the engine on since the clamps face in opposite directions. I thought about using a tiny machine screw and then, upon waking yesterday I thought about a sliding clamp. I quickly cut and folded some brass and it works perfectly. The engine is completely removable. I made on one on the side with the fat engine mount. It holds fine.



I gave it a quick prime spray and will paint it with the rest of the stand. I crimped the bottom over with the clip on the rail. It won't come off.

I repainted the AB using several coats of Tamiya Smoke to cut some of the glare on the aluminum painted parts. I then glued the engine into the tail cone. I used medium CA to hold the engine into the bulkhead, since being painted, the solvent cement would have been iffy. I kept adjusting the AB to ensure it was out to the masking taped line and centered. When it was right, I put some accelerator on a small brush and set the still-uncured CA. After it dried I sanded the seams. I don't think they needed fillin.



I went back an dry-brushed the various components to highlight the edges. This gets set aside until the fuze is joined which is several steps down the road.

I then spent some time drilling the rest of the piping holes on the J75 and then inserting little cut pieces of .8mm Albion Tubing. I cut this small stuff on a piece of double-sided Scotch Tape to help captivate the tiny part. I use a new, single-edged razor, and found that if you cut the part with the piece facing you, you can align the razor so you get a nice square cut by aligning the reflection of the tube in the blade with the tube that you're cutting. It's easier to show than write about.



You roll the blade over the brass keeping the alignment. This way you don't start cutting a spiral. If your blade isn't square the cut will spiral. You'll eventually cut through, but the cut will be ragged.

I used a piece of 0.021" phosphor bronze wire to hold and guide the tubing into the small holes on the engine. I then used a tooth pick to apply some thin CA to the base. The last session where I did this, I was dipping the tube end into the CA, and sticking it the hole while holding it with Tweezers. I found that the CA was wicking up inside the tubing and blocking it preventing the piping from going in. I had to drill it out. With this new careful way the tubing remained clear.

After all the tube fittings were in, I airbrushed the engine with flat aluminum. If you look carefully, you can see some of the tube fittings waiting for the solder-wire piping.



I did a little side job. Since Eduard had you lower the two cockpit bulkhead positions to raise the position in the fuze to a more scale position, you also had to adjust the place where the cockpit mounting lugs intersect with the fuze insides. Eduard provides some folded PE parts that raises it the correct amount. You had to modify the fuze plastic lugs to accept these. I used thick CA to hold them in place.



The last thing I did was mask the now-dry engine and start doing the decorating. Again, using that image of a well-used J75, I painted the front ring NATO black. I then masked that and the center insulated section that covers the burners, and shot them with a misting of burnt iron. Lastly, without masking I sprayed the AB burner area with full-throated burnt iron.





The masking kind of messed up the front ring's black so I'll have to go back and fix it. Tomorrow I'll do a bit more engine coloring and then start piping. We're heading out East on Wednesday, so work will cease for a week and a half.

I got all the jet engine piping done today, so I'm leaving for the trip on a high note. Since my images could only view a small section of the engine, where I ran all these pipes was strictly my imagination. I just wanted it to look interesting.

For piping I'm using .5mm (about 0.021") Kester solder. It's easy to conform to almost anything you want to do with it. I made the simulated pipe clamps with some wine bottle foil. To make the foil more glueable with CA, I removed the ink on one side with acetone and glued that side down.

The other side...



Another view...



I added one little tube that connects to the AB burner manifold to the raised plastic pipe that's on the combustion area.



There are some electrical lines on the engines too, and I have a place for them to terminate, but don't know where the other ends will go. So I may just call the engine finished.

So... this is last post until the week after next. Everyone stay safe!

Amazing work

Good work so far!

well… it's been a while. We got back from the trip Friday a week ago, but I also came home with a nasty cold. Today was the first day that I felt that siting in the cold basement would work. The basement gets colder when the weather outside gets warmed since the air conditioning goes on and there's enough leakage into the basement to cool it off.

Finished up some of the front end subassemblies in preparation for putting the fuze halves together. I'm going to build it with the fuel refueling probe in the open position. After the team flew 100 missions over North Vietnam, they land with the probe extended as an exclamation point.

The forward probe door is in the closed position when the probe is extended, so this little piece got glued in. There are no ledges so you just have to glue it in flush as best as you can.

In order to get the front wheel into the brass landing gear fork, I had to spread the fork a tad, put the wheel in and then squeeze them back together. The wheel does role nicely.

I also glued the vulcan in plus the small piece of plastic that forms the business end framing.



The landing lights attach to a 2 peice affair. The glue joint is tenuous at best and I did have to reglue the lights with CA. I painted the back of the clear lights with the Chrome Pen, then, when dry, overcoated the back with a medium gray. I also painted the bezels as best I could with the gray, although the molding is somewhat ambiguous.

This assembly was CD'd to the brass strut. Manhandling that into position was when the lights fell off. I waited until the CA was set and glued the lights back on.

The wheel well went together with five pieces. The small end piece was molded badly and I used thick CA to fill and strengthen it. I used a new method (for me) to add the aluminum paint on the piping. I saw this on a video... I put on a surgical glove and used some AK Interactive "True Metal". It's in a tube and is similar to "Rub-N-Buff" and is buffable. I applied some to the tip of my gloved hand, removed the excess on some toweling, and then lightiy touched the piping. Anywhere that got metal where I didn't want it got touched up with some interior green mix. BTW: I've started sealing my airbrush paint bottles with Stretch-and-Seal food wrap. The foam gaskets in these aftermarket bottles deteriorates almost immediately, and with the gasket, the paint dries out. The Stretch and Seal works well.



Here's the wheel assembly with the lights attached.



I have to find out what color that box is that holds the lights.

Here's that gap in the small end of the wheel well. At first I thought I assembled it wrongly, but after further examination, I saw that the part itself was not formed properly.



I also put in the ammo magazine and the ammo belts. You're supposed to paint the shells brass, but frankly, when the fuze is closed up all this interior stuff is no longer visible and I'm not going to worry about it.



With the front-end work done, the next step will be to join the fuselage halves. That includes installing the cockpit. When the cockpit goes in there's more PE and details that need to be istalled. Onward and upward.

Looking good

Indeed it is.