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Rando
Been cooking up this idea since I got the 1/72 RF-8. My original plan was to build the plane in the cover of the Osprey RF-8 book, flown by Lt Andre Coltrin over Vietnam. With a little help from a 1/72 version of the Furball MiG Master sheet, I will rearrange the nose and tail numbers to make BuNo 146871 as it flew in Vietnam during its 1966 cruise off the USS Oriskany.

I also found an Academy F-8E, which has decals for a VF-111 jet that flew on the same cruise, so decided I will build it as the RF-8's escort, which they often had during their photo runs. I also figured, why not build them together? They will be displayed in flight.

Oleg Bogolei
Nice idea and intersiting projeact. Also have two of them in a stash)

Freak
Great idea for a double build. Following!

Rando
Good to have you gents, looking to start this one soon! I like researching and adding reference photos, so I just added some in the meantime.

Urban Gardini
Now this seems like a build that I've to follow!

Rando
Welcome Urban, happy to have you! "It's only a model!"

Sergej I
Following 🙂 👍

Rando
Hi Sergej! I'm very very excited to get started on this one

Casey Beckett
Following - got 3 of those nice new Sword RF's in the stash.

Jos Jansen
Normally I don't follow 1:72 scale models...for this one I'll make an exception...😅😉, grab myself a seat here! Love those Crusaders...

Patrick Hagelstein
Got intrigued by Rando's comment on Jos' build, so I popped over here. Looks like a very interesting build as well!

Rando
Happy to have you gents here, I'll be getting to this one just as soon as my elaborate P-51 build is done...

Rando
Here we go, double Crusader build. Gonna be comparing the short-run Sword RF-8 with Academy's F-8, which has been the go-to in 1/72. I have extra Academy kits so I'm swapping out the RF-8 kit's nice resin seat, I'll use it for a future open canopy build. The pilots will be obscuring seat detail in a closed canopy anyway.

David Fuller
Following

Rando
Welcome David!

I assembled the PJ pilots and started nipping off parts to assemble the fuselage. Getting the pilots to fit in their seats is tricky so far. Fit on the Academy kit parts is pretty nice. Sword kit is not as easy since there's no locator pins but they align well

Rando
Pilots are fully painted now. The F-8E pilot is based on Dick Schaffert, who was a pilot on this 1966 cruise. While I don't know of any specific plane he flew, F-8 pilots often flew jets that were assigned to others, so he's flying 149180 on this escort mission. In order to accommodate them, I had to remove the rudder pedals and front of the cockpit tub on the F-8E. It won't really be visible when the cockpit is buttoned up anyway.

Rando
I didn't like how the Sundowner helmet turned out so I stripped the paint and airbrushed it this time with tiny wedges of tape, then shaped and touched up everything. Just need to add a black stripe for the visor groove.

J35J
Great attention to details Rando! Following👍🏻

Rando
Thanks and glad to have you J35J! Pilots, seats, ejection handles, and joysticks are all in place. Time soon to start putting the jets together.

Rando
All the interior parts are in, soon time to put the fuselages together 👍

Guy Rump
Looking good, following. 👍

Rando
Hello Guy, welcome 😊

Fuselages are together. Now getting all the panels and gear bay doors to sit flush.

Calvin Gifford
Very nice! How is the Sword kit so far??

Rando
Thanks Calvin! It's quite nice if you remember it's a short run kit and you prep and test fit parts a lot before gluing anything. Has been a far from perfect first effort by me but I like how it goes together. It's shape is pretty accurate too. The Academy kit is very plug-n-play in comparison

Calvin Gifford
👍

S M
Double build! Following!

Rando
Welcome S M! I have been painstakingly installing the gear doors closed. Stuffing blutack in the wheel wells helps with frustration. Both F-8s have tiny aft gear doors on the main bays that took a lot of time to line up. The RF-8's nose doors were also very tricky. Happy to say I'm done getting the gear doors on.

Casey Beckett
Backup RF-8 inbound Rando ! Shipped Friday!

Rando
You the man Casey! Did some scratchbuilding tonight

Casey Beckett
Me too - Bonanza gear struts. God bless Albion Alloys. Great stuff if you've not used any of their items.

Rando
I have not but am always looking to add new things in this hobby, I'll check them out! I actually have an old Minicraft 1/48 Bonanza that I might do something with one of these days.

Rando
Took a big long tour on the clear parts struggle bus this past week. Got glue smudges on a camera window, the windscreen, and canopy on the RF-8, which all had to be buffed out. Hopefully I get the canopies attached snug without issues tomorrow night. Finding that carefully lining the attachment point with Revell Contacta on a toothpick is less risky than TET.

Calvin Gifford
👍

S M
Clear parts look good 👍

Michael Kohl
Like the planes. Like to see them in flighr. Like the effort you put in.
Feel you when putting pilots properly in and closing wheel well doors.
Anxious for the paint job.

Rando
Thanks all, getting closer to painting. A ton of work has gone into smooth out and scribe the lines around the gear bays on both jets, not to mention persistent seams. Also turned my attention to sanding down and rescribing the fictitious bumps on the folding joints, which the RF-8 has as well. The RF-8 also has wedge-shaped plates on the droops, which were only present much later, so those were sanded down as well. There's still a few things I want to try to perfect before I begin painting. I also have to decide if I want to paint the wings separately, in all likelihood I'm going to glue them on first because I want the fuselage section to be flush.

Rando
Alright, wings are on. I feel like this will make masking more complicated, but better for making sure they conform to the fuselage. I am so ready to paint these jets

Calvin Gifford
Whoot!

Nicolas
I missed this one, following. I love these side by side builds.
Great progress so far. 👍

Rando
Hi friends three months later I'm finally painting the damn things. Here's my current take on preshading, blackbasing, what have you. Gave the white areas a white base that I preshaded with dark gull grey. Then mottled the black with white for some variation with the light gull grey. Elsewhere I built the missiles, launch rails, and painting the horizontal stabs.

Thomas Kolb
Coming along nicely! Your blackbasing tedhnique looks very effective, I am curious how they will turn out!

Rando
I've painted the undersides of the CVW-16 birds. Unfortunately I did something stupid, something I even decided against at first--I tried doing a "pour" into the intakes to get them painted. This was a bad idea for the RF-8 in particular. I thought that since they were glued together I could get away with no leaks, but I saw the paint level draining, and I knew the paint would appear inside the camera windows. Lo and behold I saw paint when I peeked under the masks.

Feels horrible that I did this, even if I have some ways I could fix them. I can pop the side windows out and clean the bottom side windows, but putting them back in will be a pain since the side windows are meant to be attached from the inside. UGH. Any clever ideas to fix this mess are welcome, this is definitely one of those "mojo killers."

Rando
Think I fixed the windows. The bottom windows will still be a little smudgy. But I was able to get the sides back in by gluing a toothpick to the mask and rotating it from the inside, then seating it on the frame.

Calvin Gifford
Glad you figured it out!

Rando
After fussing with the white for what seemed like forever, I finally masked to paint the gull grey. Unfortunately this revealed a ghost seam on the spine, so on the plastic putty goes. Hopefully it goes away.

S M
Those ghost seams are so annoying 🙁

Calvin Gifford
^^Yeah, hate those ghost seams!

Rando
Fortunately I was able to defeat them with putty and paint! It's just crazy they'd show up after working on all the seams and surfaces for the past few months. I also removed the ECM blister from the VF-111 jet's tail, since reference photos and instructions showed they didn't have them at the time.

Rando
Fussing a lot with the color of the nose tip. Also very difficult to mask off. Lots of touching up needed. The tip seems either a tan or greyish hue, but I have no photos to base it on.

Guy Rump
Looking great, following. 👍

Freak
Looking good, can't wait for the masks to come off!

Rando
Thanks guys! Cleaned up the paint edges on the nose and feel a lot better about how it looks now. Also painted an anti-glare area in front of the camera fairing. Just gotta paint the tailpipes and it's on to clear coat and decals!

Thomas Kolb
They look really great! I have to say, the F-8 is one fine looking aircraft and your models definitely do them justice. I cannot wait to see them with decals! About ghost seams, I have seen them appearing on my models weeks after they are finished. I guess it's the cement seam cracking a little bit because of tensions in the plastic, but I have long since stopped worrying about it.

Rando
Thanks Thomas! I appreciate that, I'm super anxious to start the decals myself, going to be the most rewarding part of the whole project. Still had some touchups and wanted to paint the leading edges of the flight surfaces with flat aluminum to represent Coroguard. Clear coats go on *I hope* tonight.

Gotta say, building two planes at once sure is a different kind of challenge and test of your patience. It's fortunate that they are mostly the same, but it's still time consuming to do everything twice. I spent at least an hour masking off the leading edges and it took all of five minutes to paint! Probably won't be doing a double build again for quite awhile.

Calvin Gifford
👍

Rando
One side of the decals mostly done. Buncha stencils to do also. I'm super paranoid about breaking the ventral fins so I stood them up on wads of blutack which works pretty well.

Roland Sachsenhofer
These four pictures begin a project that should result in one of the largest models I have ever attempted. Not the biggest - the 1:32 Liberator holds my record here - but close!
However, the impressively large box contains surprisingly little and, also surprisingly, large components such as the fuselage, wings and tailplane are already assembled. Incidentally, these are made of fibreglass and require their own treatment.
These parts are also stable and clean. A bit of filling was required, as the traces of glue and filler on the seams are very rough and show air pockets. This will now be sanded, the cockpit sawn out and the windows drilled - well, modelling a little differently than usual! 🙂

Gergő Takács
This looks like a cool project! Following.

Treehugger
The panel lines look ok I guess. I mean, I would be happy with those panel lines.

Mr D
Like it , nice project.
I'm working on the Beriev Be-6 Armoured Flying boat,
Revisiting a kit after 33yrs.
All the best with yours...😃👍👍

Robert Podkoński
A true behemoth it is. I will surely follow this build with utmost interest!

gorby
Looking forward to seeing this take shape. 🙂
I believe the last Mars had it's final flight two weeks ago.
Youtube Video
Youtube Video

Nathan Dempsey
Oh my another giant. Following 👀

Robert Podkoński
BTW. Do we see the finished Fairchild in the background, Roland?

Roland Sachsenhofer
I am very happy about all your interest! In fact, I also started this project because of its topicality; the pictures of the last flight of Hawai Mars are always a heart-warming pleasure; this one in particular, thanks Gorby for posting it!

Today I drilled the openings for the windows in the fuselage; I determined the diameter of the holes from kit glass parts. They seem a bit big to me, but we'll see. As I'm not going to use the clear parts from the kit, but want to make them with Klearfix, I could reduce the diameter quite a bit.
The next steps will be to finish sanding the fuselage seams - now only the top side has to be done - and then to glue the wings and stabilisers to the fuselage. To do this, I'm cutting solid steel rods to length, which I'll glue in place with a two-component adhesive.
The Mars should be ready by mid-October: I want to take it to the Euromodel in Ried, Upper Austria.

And yes, In fact, the more or less finished Fairchild F.91 had to serve as a scale model in the background! 🙂

Thomas Mayer
Du bist echt eine Bau-Maschine, Roland! Und immer kommt etwas sehr schönes raus! 👍

Roland Sachsenhofer
Danke für die Einschätzung, Thomas! 🙂

Roland Sachsenhofer
The construction of Mars is progressing: I'll show you a few construction steps in a little 'time lapse'. Attaching the wings and tailplane with 2k glue worked well; the materials could be sanded smooth and fine afterwards. However, the brittleness of the fibreglass caused some difficulties; parts kept splintering off and had to be filled, sanded and re-engraved. As I always do the whole thing standing up, wearing a mask and under running water, this always turns into an almost athletic exercise 🙂 But now it seems to be over and the Mars is ready for its first encounter with colour... I took the two crew members under the cockpit canopy to make the proportions clear and to keep my options open for presenting the finished aircraft - who knows, maybe it will take off or fly?

gorby
It's a bit of a monster! 😮
Doesn't look like an easy build but you seem to be beating it into shape. 🙂

Robert Podkoński
You're the brave man, Roland, not me...

DerMattes
Das schau ich mir weiter an 🙂

Mr D
Looking good Roland 👌
Be a nice bird when she done, pilots look smart 👍👍

Cuajete
Wow... an unusual and gigant model... It seems like fiberglass is difficult to handle.
Great job so far, Roland!

Michael Kohl
Na, da hab ich doch auch nen Blick drauf

Roland Sachsenhofer
Thank you very much for your motivating feedback and your interest, mates!

Łukasz Gliński
I have to follow that behemoth 👍 I don't think I'll ever find enough space to build one myself 😄

Thomas Kolb
My goodness, your models are just getting bigger and bigger! I cannot wait to see it finished!

Finn
Looking interesting, I'm in

Ray Loch
Following as well. Just saw its retirement flyby and landing in Pat Bay, Its Huge.

Roland Sachsenhofer
Fortunately, the Martin Mars has reached the stage where the colouring and surface design will be the main thing; so far I've been 'plugging holes' again and again: the fibreglass surface proves to be quite brittle, damage is difficult to putty, and when re-engraving the lost panel lines it quickly happens that it cracks again under the carefully guided scalpel blade - and a new hole has already appeared. The new pictures show a few such construction sites, for example at the bow under the cockpit glazing or on the back of the fuselage between the wings.
But, all in all, in retrospect it's all half as bad, now I'm looking forward to the paintwork!

Thank you, mates, for your interest and feedback! Ray, I would have liked to have experienced that too!

István Szücs
I've got this kit in Lindberg box, I'm watching!

Martin Oostrom
That's an interesting car

István Szücs
Nice progress!

István Szücs
Still looks good, the body will be yellow?

Neuling
Top gun! Very well built, painted and presented. A beautiful plane!

Luis
Thanks!

Roberto Rocat
Very good work here, lovely Armada aircraft.

Erik Leijdens
Nice 🙂. Great job Luis. A not often seen livery.

Luis
Thank mates!

Spanjaard
nice!

Cuajete
Fantastic result. Very nice painting scheme. Top job!
Congrats!

Roland Sachsenhofer
These pictures are the start of a model project that I had long shied away from with respect: the kit parts promised a lot of fun and a highly interesting aircraft as a result, but also a lot of 'toil and trouble'. On the other hand: the adventure simply beckons.... 🙂
Here you can see the parts in almost raw condition, I only started to detail a little with round and flat wire. The tricky question was how to treat the sensitive and already somewhat battered transparent part of the unusual cockpit glazing. I decided to cut off the two side parts, mask the inside and outside of the windows and only attach the central clear part at the very end. I like the pictures with the over-designed radial engine: what a power-to-weight ratio for these racing machines!
The last two pictures show the current state of construction and detailing.... Well, we'll see...

Robert Podkoński
Taking a first row seat!

Roland Sachsenhofer
Feel very welcome of course! 🙂