There's been a few conversions of normally manned aircraft into UAVs, this is the other way round.......
It started with an article in a recent Airfix Magazine which was a blow-by-blow account of how a guy built the old 'fit the box' scale Revell kit of the Northrop Snark, of all things! I've always liked the Snark, a more weird sign of the strange times we've lived through (well some of us have....) would be difficult to imagine. A very large, subsonic, jet powered, TAIL-LESS cruise type missile that worked out where it was by using a star tracker of all things! Did they think a nuclear war would only be likely to start under clear skies???
Quite why the Snark was tail-less I've never managed to work out, apart from the fact that it was a Northrop product and almost everything that Jack Northrop had a say in dispensed with tails unless he could possibly avoid doing so. I've had a Snark kit for many years now and after reading the article hauled it down from The Loft for a look-see, not that I intended to build it, it's 1/86 scale or something near, too far away from my fave 1/72 scale for military stuff. After being suitably boggled by the bright red plastic, the zillions of rivets and the vast number of sink holes in the moulds I got to thinking what I could make of it.
After a short while a sort of 'Son of PR19' idea surfaced and was developed after a bit of searching on the Net for a suitable time frame and manufacturer, and thus was born the Hawker P.1086, and my thanks are due to kitnut617 for the research for vacant Hawker project numbers. Obviously for a manned PR aircraft the Snark is significantly lacking in such things as a cockpit and landing gear, but with the stuff in my Loft I figured that shouldn't be a problem and so it turned out. An old Frog Hunter FGA9 provided the canopy, drop tanks, tail and spine and the landing gear was donated by an ESCI F-16B that I was never likely to build, F-16s being one of my least fave examples of modern jets. The Snark needed a wholly fuselage mounted landing gear as the wing is on the top of the fuse and it's very thin indeed!
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On looking through the F-16 box I also found the rather basic reheat nozzle and decided to add that onto the rear end of the Snark to replace the somewhat anemic exhaust nozzle provided by Northrop. At the same time a posting on here by The Wooksta provided a suitably powerful engine for the P.1086 in the form of the short lived Rolls-Royce RB106 Thames, thanks Lee.
Naturally the wings needed some extensions and I added on long enough styrene tips to look worthwhile but without having too narrow a tip chord. The F-16 landing gear bays were grafted into the underside of the Snark fuselage with much disc sawing, filing and swearing, but they eventually fitted OK. The Hunter cockpit didn't actually exist from the Frog kit so I just cut a suitably shaped hole to fit the canopy and scratched up a basic instrument panel.
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After sawing out the Hunter's fuselage spine, tail and canopy fairing I did some trial fitting and found to my amazement that the various 'foreign' bits fitted quite well. The front half of the spine and the canopy fairing provided a basis to support the Aeroclub M-B ejector seat and the rear half of the spine and the tail fitted with some scraping and filing. However the fin looked much too small for an aircraft with such a long nose, the extra side area of the tail mounted engine notwithstanding. So I chopped off the fin from its base and built a new, much taller one from styrene while still retaining the classic Hawker shape, much as the designers of the 2 seat Harriers did in the real world.
All the while I was adding bits to the Snark airframe I was also doing vast amounts of PSR work as I added each part, the actual Snark itself needing a huge amount of such work due to the sink marks and mould tags still remaining after all these years. The model needed some nose ballast even though the Aeroclub seat was mounted well forward and so I poured in a dose of fishing shot and topped it off with acrylic resin glue. After painting the seat and the cockpit interior, very basically, and adding the decal panel I glued the seat and spine assembly in place. That left a gap between the two halves of the spine, but then the P.1086 is a lot longer than the Hunter donor kit so I took some Contrail tubing of the same diameter and slit it down the middle. I thought this would be a bitch of a job but it turned out very well, and the spine now ran all the way down the back of the aircraft.
(https://www.whatifmodellers.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg836.imageshack.us%2Fimg836%2F8708%2Fp1086e.jpg&hash=356389f827dcdb432385dda81ea29dba47a3425e)
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All the time when I was waiting for glue or paint to dry I was working on the prospective colour scheme and obtaining decals to suit. As you can read in the backstory elsewhere the last scheme that the P.1086 carried was the famous 'Raspberry Ripple' scheme beloved by Brit and other modellers worldwide, and this seemed suitable for my model. I've never done a 'Raspberry Ripple' model before but I had a couple of Modeldecal sheets which included aircraft pf the genre, plus I had a copy of 'Testing Colours', the bible of 'Raspberry Ripple' modellers. A few evenings work with my scanner and graphics software produced a couple of sheets of decals, one clear backed and one white backed, and I had the whole scheme mapped out in my head, a study in red, white and blue. It turns out this is the first model I've ever built where I've produced all the decals on my laptop, a bit of a landmark for me.
The ex-Frog Hunter FGA9 canopy looked pretty good in position but needed a little packing under its frames to get the fit exactly and some Slaters Microstrip did the job and Kristal Klear ensured the canopy wasn't going anywhere. Just the canopy masking to do and we were ready for the paint.
Well that was the plan....
While masking the canopy with the usual Tamiya tape the canopy came off, so much for the adhesive properties of Kristal Klear! So I masked the canopy off the model and stuck it back on again, held down with some tape. So when I took the tape off the canopy came off AGAIN! For the third attempt I used some acrylic glue as I figured the Kristal Klear had gone off. The first coat of Halfords Grey Primer went on but it need a pretty hefty coat, that bright red plastic took some covering. A little more PSR work followed as some sink holes were still visible here and there.
First colour coat was all over white, not difficult with Halford's Appliance white, guaranteed to give a good result, but then masking up for the dark blue undersides was a BITCH! Getting around the tailplane/fin assembly from the Hunter was a real pain but eventually it got done OK. As my Halford's blue wasn't quite dark enough I gave the underside a gloss black undercoat and then sprayed the blue. Amazingly it worked quite well! The red wing tips, tail and spine were hand painted and then it was time for the decals, one of my favourite parts of building a model.
The long red and white fuselage stripes went on first with the rest following on, but the fuselage roundels need to have two decals applied on top of each other to give enough colour depth. In similar fashion the wing roundels needed a white base roundel as well. Then all the little 'No Step' and ejector seat markings were added and it started to look like my original idea.
At this point the nose probe broke off, for the 2nd or 3rd time, so I left it off while I did the rest of the work. I'd decided that a couple of the Hunter's 100 gal underwing tanks would look quite good and added a Lightning F6 IFR probe onto one of the tanks, just 'cos I liked the idea. The other tank gained a couple of small bump fairings for the same reason....
The landing gear from the ESCI F-16 really didn't want to be removed from the sprues, the gates were larger than some of the struts, and both main gear door retraction struts broke in the process so they were replaced with some styrene tube and brass rod. Worse was to come as on final assembly the aircraft was found to have a hefty starboard wing low stance, presumably due to the difficulty of aligning the F-16 gear bay with the Snark fuselage. The solution was to cut the starboard leg and insert a short plug, much easier written than done! In fact it proved impossible as the ESCI plastic was so brittle the leg broke into many pieces. An attempt to re-build the one leg with rod and tube resulted in the leg refusing to be glued into the correct position and it eventually shot off somewhere in the model room. At that point I gave up and went to think about things as that was the only F-16 kit I had, and nothing else would fit, F-8 Crusader, F-14 Starfighter or anything else with a fuselage mounted landing gear. Luckily our own Gondor here came to the rescue with an offer of a pair of Hasegawa F-16 legs which I eagerly accepted, well done Gondor!
When they arrived I found to my amazement that they were very different to the ESCI legs, being considerably slimmer and also shorter. With the low stance of the rear engine of the P.1086 this would cause problems so I fashioned a second gear bulkhead and attached the legs nearer to the bottom of the fuselage and even then I had to sort out some larger wheels to get the correct height, and I HATE painting wheels! Even so it was still lower than I wanted so I adjusted the backstory to suit....
Detail decals were added in various places but not too many of them, and a few final coats of Klear finished off the job.
The Streak fought me all the way, especially toward the end with the landing gear issues, but I finally got there!
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Backstory is here :- http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,36797.msg593115.html#msg593115
A well written back story about a well done aircraft Kit. :bow: I loved the build and the model just shows the worse junk out there can be put to good use by a skilled modeler with an active imagination.
Lovely Kit. Love the Raspberry Ripple. Looks just like a bought one! :thumbsup:
Grea work kit....!!! Are those wings long enough.....? ;)
OMG :o
Wonderful idea and execution - and I can see that the Presto putty did good work for you... ;D
Very nice!
Yes Thomas, about 1/3 of the shape of the P.1086 is down to Presto, thanks yet again, it's TERRIFIC stuff! :thumbsup:
I doubt I could get the wings any longer Hank, they taper almost down to a point now! :o
This was a Superb Build,Kit :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :bow: Hope you won't take this wrong but, that Model Almost looks like it could've been Featured in an Episode of Thunderbirds! Keep up the Superb Work :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: Dan
it was subsonic because the wings are too long :lol:
Quote from: eatthis on March 13, 2013, 01:24:35 AM
it was subsonic because the wings are too long :lol:
If you read the backstory it wasn't...............
And I did have a bit of Thunderbirdism in my head while I built it Dan, so I'm glad it came out like that. The Raspberry Ripple scheme helps of course.
Oooooh! :bow:
Looks good.
A very elegant aeroplane! The appearance screams "Hawker" at you...............and of course Raspberry Ripple suits it admirably. A most impressive build and backstory.
What a super looking Aircraft :bow:
It looks every inch a Hawker product.
Impressive back story too :thumbsup:
What is this presto putty? can one obtain it in Germany?
As for raspberry ripple; as an Ice cream O.K. but as a colour scheme for Aeroplanes.....
Still each to their own :cheers:
Regards
Keith
That's awesome! :thumbsup:
Alvis Pi
Tremendous build Kit :bow:
Very nice paint job. I like how the paint scheme really works well for it. Also enjoy it for it's sort of Sci-fi looks. :thumbsup:
lovely looking Kit :thumbsup:
I do like that Kit, and I hope you are going to get it copied in resin as I would certainly buy one :wub:
Chris
Cor! :wub: :wub: :wub: Outstanding!
Beautiful work mate - I love it!!
A wonderful build Kit :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Gondor
Superb! :wub: :bow: Now we have to show this to the chap who's always saying "Any aircraft can be improved by fitting longer wings", he'll just love... Oh, never mind. ;D
Great job! Like the wheel wells especially. Nicely done.
I want one!
:thumbsup:
Quote from: TallEng on March 13, 2013, 05:45:59 AM
What is this presto putty? can one obtain it in Germany?
Yes indeed, it's made there. What you can't do is buy it in UK! I bought a tube in Berlin or somewhere a few years ago, used it on quite a few models (it comes in BIG tubes) and loved it, but when it ran out I couldn't find it anywhere here. I emailed the manufacturer but they never replied and then our own Dizzyfugu said he used it too and offered to get me some. :thumbsup:
Apparently it's sold in motor accesory shops in Germany, equivalent to Halfords in UK, and is very common there. It's wonderful stuff, dries fast, sands SUPERBLY when you do it wet and is by far the best putty I've ever used.
Thanks VERY much to everyone for your enthusiastic response to the P.1086 Streak, I'm well flattered. ;D
And the thought of copying it in resin HORRIFIES me Chris! :o I'm not saying it's impossible, one of our resdent resinmeisters would know better, but I'd have to build another one to make the master!
Quick intermission: From a conversation on FlickR, Presto seems to be known in Canada, too!
It's the best nitrous compound putty I have tried so far - and I used many things, not only from the model kit realm. Presto putty actually is used for car bodies, for the final finish before primer and paint is applied. You get it in cans (500gr), but in some specialty stores also in more handy tubes.
The stuff has a bad stench, but it bonds VERY well with styrene, holds onto resin and even vinyl. Dries pretty quickly, and it can be easily (wet) sanded. You can even sculpt with it to a certain degree. Shrink is almost zero. I love it! :wub:
Here's a tube, accidently caught in a WiP picture:
(https://www.whatifmodellers.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm9.staticflickr.com%2F8245%2F8548849781_d625b1c3b9.jpg&hash=8b6be48ba36e1a15397d3d3cc29f2e9d59d3df33) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dizzyfugu/8548849781/)
Project 'Kodiak' - WiP (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dizzyfugu/8548849781/) by dizzyfugu (http://www.flickr.com/people/dizzyfugu/), on Flickr
Back to the main program... :rolleyes:
As far as the P.1086 is concerned, the Presto IS part of the main programme! ;D
That Snark kit has so many sink marks and mould pin marks a good filler is absolutely essential! Thanks for finding it Thomas, it's worth its weight in gold. :thumbsup:
Yup! ;D
Love it!!! Totally unique and imaginative and very well executed!! :thumbsup:
Looking at the problems you had with the undercarriage (re the clearance), I personally would have turned the whole fuselage the other way up, putting the intake on top......
But then again, I would never have come up with such an idea in the first place :bow:
Quote from: Devilfish on March 14, 2013, 02:28:37 AM
Love it!!! Totally unique and imaginative and very well executed!! :thumbsup:
Could not have put it better.
Fantastic build mate. :thumbsup: :bow:
Wow, Kit. With one good shot of reheat and a strong tailwind, she could make it from there to my doorstep without using internal fuel!
PR19_Kit,
Nicely done! Very nicely done!
Quote from: Devilfish on March 14, 2013, 02:28:37 AMLove it!!! Totally unique and imaginative and very well executed!! :thumbsup:
Absolutely ! :bow:
Ian
Lovely job Kit - I was eying up that Snark build and wondering what could be done with it too.... ;D :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Looks like something right out of BSP Kit :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Belated congratulations! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Quote from: kitnut617 on March 20, 2013, 05:59:28 AM
Looks like something right out of BSP Kit :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Hehe, that had me sniggering Robert, perhaps I should suggest that they do a re-write? ;)
Glad you like it gentlemen, it gave me great pleasure to have it finished as it ended up pretty well as I imagined it originally, even though it needed TWO re-writes of the backstory!
So if anyone tries to find this aircraft tucked away in some forgotten corner of a hanger their search could be called "The Hunting of The Snark"?
Gondor
I'm just waiting to see what happens with the P.1081 you've got...
Quote from: The Wooksta! on March 21, 2013, 02:05:22 PM
I'm just waiting to see what happens with the P.1081 you've got...
Hehehe, it's a magic shape, isn't it? I'm sorely tempted to build it stock but to do an Ian-the-Kiwi-Herder on the colour scheme. On the other it would look good with a tad longer wings.............. ;)
Quote from: Gondor on March 21, 2013, 12:29:26 PM
So if anyone tries to find this aircraft tucked away in some forgotten corner of a hanger their search could be called "The Hunting of The Snark"?
Gondor
A hint from Lewis Carroll---It's likely to be well camouflaged " It had slowly and silently vanished away, For the Snark was a Boojum, you see"
Late to the party as usual.
Very nicely done Kit. A similar idea to one I have been kicking around regarding the base kit (though think mine would be a fast attack bomber but who knows).
The model in the Airfix Magazine was done by Mike Grant (you all may have heard of him) and an impressive job he did getting that old kit to look like what it is supposed to be.
But you have Whiffed this one to the max.
And am I the only one that looks at it and thinks it may have been easier to start with a Hunter, add the shoulder stretched wings and under fuselage intake?
Definitely Whiffy worthy as is the backstory.
Quote from: philp on June 23, 2013, 04:31:09 PM
And am I the only one that looks at it and thinks it may have been easier to start with a Hunter, add the shoulder stretched wings and under fuselage intake?
Definitely Whiffy worthy as is the backstory.
Heheh, you could well be right there, but I started with that pile of very
RED plastic and it just sort of grew on me from there.
I'd have needed two Hunters to get the length though. What did surprise me was how similar the nose shapes were, once the canopy was in the correct place it just screamed 'HUNTER' at me. Sadly the Snark's red nose probe vanished into one of my carrying boxes and has been replaced with a shorter and thinner white one for the present.