Official FMS 1500mm P-47D Razorback Thread

[jetfool]

Grossman56,
Very generous offer, unexpected! Not necessary, hate to take your free time. You guys are great, wish we all could meet in person.
Best Regards, Rex

[Grossman56]

Hey Rex, I owe you a few as well, if you want, maybe Dave will print up a pilot and I can paint it for you?

Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

[jetfool]

Davegee,
Yeah, the control stick would be great. Going to mask around the stars and other vinyl and lightly spray matte clear. Will do one star on the bottom to check first. A Scary moment when I do this. Please remember to keep track of your time and costs while doing this for me. Better yet just take a drive first of April and enter one of your models, then I won't have to do all this work.
If you can arrange it a winning POWERBALL ticket would be great! LOL
Best Regards, Rex

[davegee]

Happy to help out a bit. You did all the hard work. We can assess anything else that might be good to add. For instance, maybe a good control stick and hand grip if you don’t have one. I know this one will fit in the pilot’s hand. You can let me know what you need or want.

Great to hear about the “resurrection” of the Cub. I bet it might even fly better than before!!

cheers

davegee

[jetfool]

Davegee,
That looks great. All the OEM cockpit parts are just spot glued for the airplane day at our full-size airport. I'll remove everything to cut the floorboard out. Putting Cub back together so the 47 will soon see the worktable. Thank you so much for the scale items.
Best Regards, Rex

[davegee]

Rex: just completed the Mk II reflector gunsight like the one used on Lucky and many other early P-47s. It should be easy to glue the two flanges on the front of it to the control panel of your plane after you have removed the gunsight that came with the model. Not a great pic but I think it will look much better and more accurate for your contest.

Cheers

Davegee

[davegee]

Looks Beautiful, Dave. Thanks. Almost have the broken Cub painted and back together for NEW YEAR Day fly. A quick repaired job but looks better in Cub Yellow. Then the P-47 gets put on the bench. I did make the retraction struts and if you look closely, you can see it in the photo with both strut covers on. Going to remove the upper strut spring and make an eye-bolt rod. Will look better. I will cut bottom and lower floorboard as you have done.
My stars and numbers seem a little glossy to me. Should I tone them down somehow? Maybe this was how they were then.

Best Regards, Rex

Sounds good, Rex. The Mk II gunsight is coming along well, and I'll include it with the rest of the parts that I'll send.

Regarding the stars and bars and other insignia sheen, they should all be a matte finish, not gloss. These were all painted with stencils with the official matte colors in use at the time, so if they are glossy, if you can put a matte spray on them to tone them down a bit, that would look better and more accurate.

I looked at the pics again and saw your shrinker bars installed. I remember we were talking about these some time ago, and I figured they must already be installed since that conversation back when.

When you start up again on finishing up the P-47 for the contest, let's get a list of what things you want me to print as detail items, and I can send them to you. The pilot figure is finished printing, came out pretty well, and you can paint him to install in the airplane. I'll print out a pilot seat that you can see if that will work for him or not. With the lowered floor, I think he'll fit in there fine and the seat glued to the back wall might help.

Just curious, is there ever an opportunity for the contestants to discuss with the judges the finer points of the models that they built for the show? Or, maybe you just put them on the table where the judges will make their decisions and you go from there? I was thinking you have or will have a number of detail items on your plane that most people would not be aware of, that it would be nice to point out some of your handiwork. Just a wish, I guess, on my part!

Cheers

Dave

[jetfool]

Looks Beautiful, Dave. Thanks. Almost have the broken Cub painted and back together for NEW YEAR Day fly. A quick repaired job but looks better in Cub Yellow. Then the P-47 gets put on the bench. I did make the retraction struts and if you look closely, you can see it in the photo with both strut covers on. Going to remove the upper strut spring and make an eye-bolt rod. Will look better. I will cut bottom and lower floorboard as you have done.
My stars and numbers seem a little glossy to me. Should I tone them down somehow? Maybe this was how they were then.

Best Regards, Rex

[davegee]

Davegee and All,
Today was a photo shoot in the driveway. Several of you are helping with ideas to prepare the P-47 for the Toledo Show. Ther are some routine maint., paint touch-up that I need to do but also looking to make it look as realistic as possible.

Hi Rex: I have enough printed parts to put together a fairly accurate RAF Mk II gunsight of the type that was used on Lucky and many other American P-47s earlier in the air war. I'll put it together and you are welcome to use it. What I did on mine was remove the inaccurate OEM gunsight and put a piece of black plastic or something to cover that area. You can then add the Mk II gunsight that will look Much better than the OEM one.

Regards,

Davegee

[jetfool]

f4uausie,
When I was still working never had time to really spend. So, I bought scale kits at trade shows and hobby shops thru the years and finally have the time to build. them. I learned a lot over the years and these foam planes are a new venture but thanks to Davegee, Elbee and others I'm learning new ways to finish these planes
Our club is small but we started having monthly fly-ins with a club 30 miles from ours, Going on 4 years doing this and we go to other clubs small fly-ins and are having a blast. We live 11/2 hr drive from our National model aviation site so we go there a lot as a group just to fly. So organize a warbird meet, if only a few show you will all still have a great time and the next one will be bigger.
Merry X-Mas, Rex

[f4u ausie]

Rex all that hard work (rubbing priming.. rubbing priming). Paid off. The finish is just awesome 👍.. I'm not as up to date. As U Dave and of course Steve... But always learning.. still few years b4 retirement so not enuf time .. my new club 12 months now. I'm told has a few warbird guys. One last week when I got my wings. Yippy.. the instructer was very keen on the 1600 spit. Got me to do a few maneuvers ,,and was happy to see the s turns,, going out to take off.....
Anyway. Want to organise a warbird day if possible.. our Anzac Day next April would b perfect... Wish I could see all of your(3 of U) warbirds for real.. I no U will post more as U get closer to Toledo. Bsafe. By 4 now

[davegee]

Hi Rex: thanks for the pics. I like that you put a brake line on the main gear struts going down to the brakes. That is good detail. You might want to add the shrinker bars that go from the top of the wheel well to near the axle of each main gear. I used two parts on each, one a wire rod, that slides into a slightly larger aluminum tube. When the oleo strut compresses during takeoff or landing, the wire rod will slide up and down inside the aluminum tube and hopefully not break anything off You can look at some of your pics and figure it out if you want to give it a go. Very few models will have details like these on P-47 entries!

For the cockpit, you have most of the stuff in place on the sidewalls. One thing that I would remove would be the totally non scale and non historical accurate K-14 gunsight that is shown on the model. I would remove that, and hopefully we can find you a period accurate N8 reflecting gunsight that was used at the time of this airplane's service.

You probably have them, but be sure to add the sway bars for the receptacles that go on the belly on either side of the drop tank. This airplane did not have any other underwing improvements, so just leave them bare, otherwise.

Regarding modiflying the sliding canopy, I would heartlily endorse doing that for your model I can help you along with that if you decide to do this scale detail. It will definitely open up the cockpit for viewing all the details that you would not see if the canopy was closed. I think this would earn you scale points.

I have printed up the pilot, and you can paint him up for scale detailing. To fit a full body pilot into the cockpit, you have to do a few things.

1) cut out the bottom of the floor for the cockpit.
2) add a 1/2"balsa frame around the bottom of the open area of floor that you cut out. Then glue a piece of plastic sheet, paint it the cockpit color, and the pilot should fit in there without surgery and should stay clear of any other parts of the model. You might have to move things around slightly, but this would be a good look over cutting the feet/legs off.

Other details like a bulletproof trapezoid shaped frame for the front windshield should not be too difficult to do and a good scale add-on.

We can discuss other things as you proceed with accessorizing and detailing your model for the Toledo show.

P.S. I did happen to find a source I need to replace the damaged B-17 electric motor. It wasn't on HK website anywhere, but happened to luck onto parts like the motors on some other website. So, there is hope.

Cheers

Merry Christmas!


Dave

[jetfool]

Davegee and All,
Today was a photo shoot in the driveway. Several of you are helping with ideas to prepare the P-47 for the Toledo Show. Ther are some routine maint., paint touch-up that I need to do but also looking to make it look as realistic as possible.

[jetfool]

Davegee and All,
Today was a photo shoot in the driveway. Several of you are helping with ideas to prepare the P-47 for the Toledo Show. Ther are some routine maint., paint touch-up that I need to do but also looking to make it look as realistic as possible.

[davegee]

Good video! Thanks for posting it. The paddle blade prop really enhanced the performance of the P-47 in WWII. Good thing we came up with it back then!

Cheers

Davegee

[f4u ausie]

Ha ha my son walked past at last minute. He put the link

[f4u ausie]

Hey Dave and anyone else that's interested. ..hope U r well.. U may have watched already.. but. If not. It's about the development of the p47 paddle blade.. very cool.. and since the dumb Ozzy. Isn't sure how to put the link here... Just a pic.. sure U will find it.

[davegee]

Thank you both! I'll take both of your advice and also do my maiden with the stock propeller. I'll attach photos from my maiden whenever I get enough time and courage to do it!

Thanks again,
Eagle15

Sounds like a good plan! I had a FMS P-47D back in 2019 and flew it solely on the stock propeller. Flew great! I didn't even think seriously about working on a larger more scale prop until just a couple of years ago. I traded notes with f4uaussie who is a frequent contributor to Hobby Squawk and we both came up with a flyable larger propeller for this aircraft. I'm sure there were others too, that did this.

I think you'll find the FMS jug to be a real pleasure to fly, just like the pilots of the real ones did. With its very wide wheel stance, it is very stable and tracks beautifully down the runway. Please keep us in the loop how finishing this plane goes and how the maiden goes whenever you do it down the road. Check in with Callie Graphics, she'll fix you up with great stickers to do your Gabreski P-47.

Cheers

Davegee

[Eagle15]

Thank you both! I'll take both of your advice and also do my maiden with the stock propeller. I'll attach photos from my maiden whenever I get enough time and courage to do it!

Thanks again,
Eagle15

[davegee]

I second LB’s recommendation. Callie would be very familiar with famous planes like Gabreski’s. Or, you can just come up with Something to give her a start, and she’ll fix you up!

Go over to FMS website and get the parts for the 1700mm V3 Corsair.

You’ll need the larger aluminum prop shaft (interchangeable with the stock one that comes with the kit.)

Four V3 Corsair propellers. If you can afford it, get two packs because it is very easy to scrape or break a prop that is much larger, though more scale.

V3 prop hub that you’ll use to mount the props after they are slimmed down a bit to fit. You can use the stubbier Ham Stand prop dome or I probably have an extra Curtiss printed dome you can have. Most P-47s had the electric props and pointy prop domes although some blocks had the HS stubbier, fatter prop domes.

I think you’ll be back on the right track with the above recommendations. Let me know how it goes or any questions.

Cheers

davegee