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Made some progress on Hairless Joe today. Still working on the green camo bands and a ton of other things. I'm going to save the cockpit and canopy for last.
Here's how it looks as of quitting time today.
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Thanks, Rex. The painting of this model is a challenge but a lot of fun. I think I’ll finish painting the fuse first, then take on trying to get the canopy power working and do the cockpit. I’m hoping it will turn out great, and fly well, too. I’ll routinely add updates on completing it. Thanks for your interest.
Sorry about your buddy losing his P-47. That part of our hobby SUCKS!
Cheers
davegeeLeave a comment:
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Davegee,
Great news that your canopies have arrived. Now the magic can begin. The paint job is looking great and the turtledeck looks smooth as the real one. Keep the photo's coming.
On a sad note my club member crashed his FMS P-47. He doesn't rebuild them like we do so when I see him next, I might have a new project for the que. Hoping vrosi has a mod. kit available for sale soon.
Keep the progress coming, RexLeave a comment:
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Just started in on the very busy camo pattern on Hairless Joe. I use Tamiya rattlecan paints which are just wonderful!
Cheers
davegee
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I received the two clear plastic canopies/windscreens that James made the plugs and then shipped to a vacuformer company in Michigan. They came out very nice and I have done some rough trimming of excess clear plastic from around the canopy. In the past couple of days, I've been working hard on the mechanism for powering the canopy so I can close or open it as desired. Doing this on a foamie is a lot tougher than ones I have done on larger gasser planes, but hopefully it will work out ok.
Right now I'm painting the basic RAF Ocean Grey color for the fuselage and will add the RAF Dark Green bands at a later time. The cockpit will also come around probably working on it next week, along with the powered canopy. Good to be working on it again with an eye towards finishing it up for test flights late May/early June if all works out.
I'll include a few in-progress shots, nothing great. One shot is taken underneath the cockpit and you can see part of a Actuonix linear servo that I am using to power the canopy movement open and closed. The canopy was a Nexa product that I bought to use as a testbed for fit. The actual canopy that James made is more scale showing all the neat curves that the real P-47 canopy had. Not much to see at this point.
Cheers
Davegee
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See Dan's timely addition. Lucky as you probably know is the plane he got most of his 27 kills in during WWII. At the very tail end of his deployment, he made a deal to try and fly just a few more missions. He got a new P-47D that he named Penrod and Sam. Penrod was the last name of his beloved crew chief, and his (Johnson's) middle name was Samuel, and he frequently preferred to go by "Sam." People of that age were well aware of an adventure book of the same name, Penrod and Sam, about two young English lads who have an eye for adventure and fun. It was a very popular book for that generation.
The airplane Penrod and Sam was used very briefly by Johnson and he got the last two kills in that aircraft, bringing his total score to 27 Johnson was the first American airman in the ETO to beat WWI hero Eddie Rickenbacker's total of 26 kills. Not to be outdone, squadron mate Gabby Gabreski topped him by one kill, bringing his score to 28, one more than Johnson. That stood as the top score for the 8th USAAF in Europe for WWII.
Cheers
DavegeeLeave a comment:
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Although stormy, I took my P-47 Penrod and Sam out to the field for a brief test of the EFlite bomb/tank drop mechanism. I had close to 10 kts of crosswind but I took off anyway, a non event. Flew several passes back and forth my position including a couple aileron rolls to be sure the drop tank would stay in place, and it did. Then I dropped it as it passed my position at about 100 feet altitude. It cleared immediately from the airplane and did a rapid end over end tumble, and into the dirt/sagebrush. No damage.
I think we're supposed to have some winds that might make me pause my final test of the bomb drop system using my other P-47D "Ole Cock." Once I do one or two tests next week with that one, I'll call it good and next time I get to fly Hairless Joe when it gets completed, I can feel comfortable that this drop tank mechanism will work just fine on it, too.
A pic after the test flight today with Penrod and Sam.
quick question, I thought Robert Johnson served with the 61st, which had red cowls and red rudders. Was Pernod and Sam a borrowed p47 from the 62nd? Or perhaps I’m mistaken 😂
Also, where did you find photos of Pernod and Sam? I’ve looked for them but never found any. That’s why I chose to paint my p47 as lucky instead … lots of good reference photos for that.Leave a comment:
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Thanks, Elbee. Really helps to have a much larger airframe to get all this stuff to fit in! Since my fuselage doesn't have any openings to access the things like the linear servo, and since at this point I'd like to avoid cutting out a big hatch in the bottom of the fuse (subject to change if I need to) I'm going to look into putting my linear servo in the front of the canopy instead of pulling/pushing from the rear. There is more room and easier to access the servo if need be just removing the cockpit hatch that the servo is anchored to.davegee
You might find this video helpful.
CARF P-47 Bubble-Top Canopy Slide Build 2026.
Fairly straight forward and nothing new in technique, but a nice reference IMHO.
Best, LB
It is possible I might use the technique he used on his CARF with the servo behind the cockpit, but I'll play around with it once I get the canopy from James to see which way to go. For the time being, I plan on using a U-shaped wire that attaches the linear servo arm to each side of the sliding canopy in the front. I'll just have to play around with it to see which way works the best.
I had not thought of the idea of cutting a hatch in the bottom of the fuse like he has, but I'll keep that in my mind as one of the ways to do this.
Cheers
davegeeLeave a comment:
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davegee
You might find this video helpful.
CARF P-47 Bubble-Top Canopy Slide Build 2026.
Fairly straight forward and nothing new in technique, but a nice reference IMHO.
Best, LBLeave a comment:
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This is how the bottom frame outline should look per my opinion of all the real p47 images i have seen .i did scribe the lower outline into the plug ,we will see how defined it comes out for Dave soonAttached FilesLeave a comment:
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Davegee,
30-40 years ago I wanted to compete with K Walters, A Johnson, Platt and all you other guys but raising kids and job didn't allow that. Now at my age I enjoy just being involved in the contests and fly-ins. There are a lot of scale meets in our area and it's fun to see if I can at least fly and not make a fool of myself. Scale people are great!
Best Regards, RexLeave a comment:
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Hi Rex: details like your pilot and detailed cockpit might be the ticket for success if you enter the nationals someday in FunFly division. I’d like to see that if you decide to go down that road. I bet it would be fun and interesting. If we had something like that closer to where I live, I’d enter just for the fun of it, if nothing else.
cheers
davegeeLeave a comment:
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Davegee,
Your details will be an eye catcher to anyone that looks at the plane. I was amazed that people couldn't believe I had a complete cockpit and full body pilot in mine. Spent a lot of time answering questions and that made the trip worthwhile.
Best Regards, RexLeave a comment:
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That show looked awesome Rex, wish we had something like that in our neck of the woods.
Off to the annual swap meet tomorrow so I'll see what I can find. Just talked to my buddy Ron who usually teams up with me to go to the event, he just had spine surgery and is down for a couple of months. He's in his 80's now and I originally got him into the hobby several years ago. I'm hoping for a complete recovery for him, life catches up with you.
DanLeave a comment:
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Thanks, Rex. If you go back and look at that entry, I've added a couple more pics how it looks when done. I'm hoping people will be able to make out this detail when the model is all completed and they look at it.
It reminds me of the airliners I used to fly back in the day, at least on the flight deck. They were fully functionable quarters, not much at all embellished. The older airplanes had just the flat grey color, bundles of wires neatly exposed without any aesthetic covers. Newer planes had about the same thing in flat brown and tan.
I'm hoping the final version of the canopy/windscreen will make it to me in the mail soon. I've done most of what I can up to this point without them, but to finish the powered canopy and cockpit detail, I can't do much more until I have them in-hand to work on them. Once I get past this hurdle of the cockpit, I think it will be much easier to finish painting the entire fuse, although it has a very complicated camo pattern that I have to try and replicate. Once it is all complete, I can't wait to take it out to the field to fly it!
Sounds like a great deal on those airplanes. My late step dad flew the PBY in the Pacific during WWII, among other planes like the R4D (DC-3) and R5D (DC-4). Have fun with it and let us know how it flies!
Cheers
Davegee
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Davegee,
Instrument panels looks fantastic. This bubbletop will be outstanding when done. High winds in our area, I'm chomping at the bit to go fly. Trying to get the honey-dos done before good weather. Slowly working on the Phantom and this year at Toledo I didn't spend $200 on planes. Bought a RABID MODELS 68" foam PBY-5a for some fun slow flying at the field this summer ($45 for kit). I have 2 other of these foam kits and they fly great just to fly around.
Best Regards, RexLeave a comment:
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I'm awaiting delivery of our first pull of a clear plastic bubble canopy and windscreen that James developed. A separate service performed the pull to vacuform the part, and I'll get two of them as soon as they ship to me. Assuming they pass muster for appearance and scale fit, I'll take canopy #1 and fit it for a powered canopy using a new linear servo. Canopy #2 will serve as a backup/spare. I don't have it all planned out yet, but once I get the scale canopy/windscreen I can work on it in earnest.
While I wait for that, I am doing some detail work on the control panel. One interesting thing I have found through pictures from WWII is that many of bubbletop P-47s had an open area in the front of the windscreen, exposing the backs of the instruments on the panel, with wires coming out of them. I have done this on an earlier airplane and thought it looked pretty cool, and historically accurate. I am busy doing that now cutting various diameter wood dowels. I'll post a couple of pics as I get started on it. The backside of the control panel will all be visible as you look into the front of the cockpit, below the windscreen. I should have this done in a day or so.
Note: I just added a couple more pics, the last one how it looks after everything is painted. This is a subtle addition of scale, to me it signifies that everything in these warbirds was functional, no glitz or glam. It was at its basic form and function, a killing machine. I think this detail will be visible when the whole model is together, but even if it isn't, I'm glad I added it into this model. Some of the pictures this detail is not very discernible due to everything being matte black, hopefully it shows up better in person to the human eye over a camera.
Cheers
davegee
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