• There seems to be an up tick in Political commentary in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site we know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religiours commentary out of the fourms.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politicion will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment amoung members. It is a poison to the community. We apprciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

RFN F-8 Crusader is out!!

What I posted is an early "rough" picture so Sylvain could see how it was developing. The height and slope are based on scale drawings, so I'm confident they are correct. The thickness had not been adjusted to the drawings dimensions yet, which is why it looks a bit "funky" ....... I just wanted to show exactly what pylons I'm talking about.

Navy Chief might be our only hope. Let's see if he can get us some good pictures when he's down at the Naval Aviation Museum.

Keeping fingers crossed!

delta_lima said:
Funny - I was going to post that very plastic scale model picture but I figured that from a research point of view, getting modelling cues from another is a bit unscientific. But I suspect that he rendered that quite well.

I'm kind of holding my nose doing this, but if we're basing off scale models, this build has some good coverage (and 1 good subject matter photo, albeit only of the first 1' of the pylon)

https://scalespot.com/onthebench/f8e-eduard/build.htm

Again, this is kind of "ghetto" to my standards of research, but I'm conceding the dearth of available photography in the orientation and show the detail that's required. I've got mountains of photos of the RF birds, but this one is bleeding me dry. I'm still working so I'll look at home tonight at some of my books.

EDIT - Stu, looked at those axonometric renderings and from my eye and compared to the photo data, the slope appears a bit too steep and the overall pylon height too tall in relation to the length, and too thick. Certainly the "nose"of the pylon has a much larger radius curvature in both the vertical and horizontal axes than what's seen in photos. They were a fair bit "sharper", not as rounded off.

Assuming the easiest dimension for you to derive is the wing chord at the pylon placement location, then I'd extrapolate the correct height and length to get (or at least doublecheck) the overall shape / dimension. Again, gauging absolute side view profiles form an axonometric / isometric type drawing can be deceiving, so I could be wrong, but I'm pretty confident regarding the pylon thickness and the "roundedness."

I just got home and checked against some books/pictures I have and after dinner and a work conference call, I'll digitize and upload. The bad news is no clear photos showing the panel lines, but the grainy photos I can provide roughly corroborate the placement of the panels that the modeler used in the link I provided. They also give decent perspective as to the overall proportions, which I'm hoping will be of assistance.

I'll post the pics later tonight after I'm done my work.

dl
Click to expand...
 
OK - pics as promised. Some more valuable or helpful than others, but there's a few that show panel lines. I was going to curate and explain each one, but I'm beat and need to eat and get my family stuff sorted. They should speak for themselves.

IMG_0926.jpgIMG_0922.jpgIMG_0924.jpgIMG_0927.jpgIMG_0925.jpg
 
More pics. The second is strictly a system photo, and not intended to show panel lines proportionately applied.

IMG_0928.jpgIMG_0929.jpgIMG_0930.jpgIMG_0931.jpg
 
Wow! d_l l’m impressed! You must’ve had a small army surfing the net to find these along with a thesaurus of search terms! I know I searched for a few hours and didn’t come close to these. :encouragement:

Steve
 
I will get down to the museum, once I can gain access. Their website has the following message. I will keep monitoring the site for any changes.....NC

attachment.php
 

Attachments

  • Museum.jpg
    Museum.jpg
    38.1 KB · Views: 38
Actually, Duckie, I think the only two "real" pics I found online that the others hadn't already were the ones on that Eduard plastic model page. I was going to post the pics from the armaments link earlier but someone beat me to it. The link itself is actually worth posting, incidentally, as general weapons information on the F-8:

http://airsoc.com/articles/view/id/51503870c6f8fa1b70000012/a-brief-history-of-f8u-crusader-armament

Contains some good diagrams showing how the placement of the AIM-9 "Y-pylons" were in fact not mirror images of each other on account of having to give clearance for both the RAT (when deployed) on the right side and the refueling probe blister on the left.

No, the above photos I digitized last night from my own collection of books. I've been an F-8 fan since I was a kid, and so over the years collected (almost) every published doc. Those came from an assorted collection of Steve Ginter's 4-part collection from the "Naval Fighters" series. They're mostly black and white, and the images are low quality. But they contain much more "off the beaten path" images of the F-8 and the RF-8. So I hang onto them for obscure fact-checking occasions such as this. :biggrin-new:

I'm not old enough to have consciously lived through much of the Crusader era. But it started when I used to live in Montreal as a kid, and we'd holiday down to the US East Coast. I recall attending an air show down in New Jersey and seeing a static and later flypast of the one plane that truly captivated me. It looked older, somehow, than the F-4s that seemed to get all the attention. Though it looked like an older plane, it had been recently repainted to a subdued grey. Funny square windows along the bottom and underneath that made no sense. Sitting squat on the ground, and with wings tipped backward, it looked almost comical. But when it taxied and took off, I was hooked. Recalling back, I'm guessing it was a recently repainted VFP-206 bird. Wish I could have convinced Dad to take a picture earlier. But with only 1 roll worth 24 shots of 35mm in his old Practika camera, he had already blown through it. An ironic start to an interest in aerial photo-reconnaissance, no? :very_drunk:

And so my love for the Crusader, with the emphasis on the photo birds, began.

Anyway - sorry for my digression. I hope the pylon pics help. They're pretty crappy, but they're all I have.

dl
 
Regarding the great paints by Duckie and DaveQ, and the others, where the IRST housing and seeker were both the black, is there a way to fix these now that the housing and the head itself appear to be two different textures?

Because now the seeker is black and the housing is untextured.

Thanks,

dl
 
delta_lima said:
Regarding the great paints by Duckie and DaveQ, and the others, where the IRST housing and seeker were both the black, is there a way to fix these now that the housing and the head itself appear to be two different textures?

Because now the seeker is black and the housing is untextured.

Thanks,

dl
Click to expand...

The housing is the same color as the anti-glare panel. Not sure what the head was actually made of but its appearance resembled a dark metallic colored glass surface. The texture for that surface in v1.2 is mapped on the fuse1 texture. I’ve tried to capture that look in my last 2 paints but haven’t been very successful thus far.
 
You are right - the sensor tip is essentially glass, much like a sidewinder, Walleye, other special seeker missiles. If you stand in front of these you can see some of the innerds of the particular head.
 
Hi Duckie,

I've narrowed the issue. For some reason your repaints (eg: VMF-212) work fine, but Dave's (eg: eg: VF-24) doesn't. The tubular housing remains greyish/white.

Strange, because his screenshots show the housing itself as the black - like you mention the same colour as the glare shield.

Maybe I'll reach out to him.

dl
 
Last edited:
Repainters, here is where some important tiny bits are located on the "Fuselage1_T" file beginning with the v1.2 paintkit.
:ernaehrung004:
 

Attachments

  • V1.2 Paintkit Details.jpg
    V1.2 Paintkit Details.jpg
    32.2 KB · Views: 30
fsafranek said:
Repainters, here is where some important tiny bits are located on the "Fuselage1_T" file beginning with the v1.2 paintkit.
:ernaehrung004:
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting this Frank. I wasn't at my FS PC or I would have. A picture is worth a lot lot more than I could ever explain! :very_drunk:
 
Working on this VSF-86 F-8 and on from sister squadron VSF-76. Both should be ready in a day or 2.

attachment.php
 

Attachments

  • -2020-may-10-002.jpg
    -2020-may-10-002.jpg
    36.1 KB · Views: 61
Nice Duckie.

The F-8 and A-4 units that flew fighter cover for ASW carriers are not often repaint subjects. Thanks for this.
 
delta_lima said:
Nice Duckie.

The F-8 and A-4 units that flew fighter cover for ASW carriers are not often repaint subjects. Thanks for this.
Click to expand...

Thanks d_l. Photos are hard to come by of these units and I am naturally suspicious of some artists renderings, but I lucked up and found a few decent photos of 76 and 86 birds, good enough to craft repaints of them anyway.

Steve
 
Looking beyond US and French subjects I've starting on the Philippine Air Force.
They flew the F-8H for a decade beginning in 1977 (year I graduated from HS -- so long ago).
This first one is the delivery scheme. Working on the later two-tone gray camo now.
:ernaehrung004:
 

Attachments

  • PAF_1977a.jpg
    PAF_1977a.jpg
    26.8 KB · Views: 30
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top