I spy a recon Sabre Skin grafts add camera bays to Academy’s F-86F
T
he Korean RF-86F started life as a late F-86F-30 with a “6-3” hard wing and fences. By the time it was dressed in camo, the airframe had been converted to a recon bird and itted with a new extended F-40 wing with slats. he only 1/72 scale kit I’m aware of that has the option of drooped slats is Academy’s F-86E El Diablo (No. 1681). I needed to add camera bays and “chipmunk cheeks” for the reconnaissance reassignment.
1 The recon Sabre needed two symmetrical bulges on either side of the cockpit that I was leery of scratchbuilding because they should be the same shape. While pondering this challenge, I spotted the jet pods in a 1/144 Roden C-119 kit. A bit of reprofiling and thinning and they would do nicely. 28 FineScale Modeler April 2018
2 After removing the pylon and a little sanding and reshaping, I attached the engine halves to the fuselage. They are a tad too big, but look the part. I used styrene rod to fill the gun ports, then blended the panels with putty and sanding.
3 Using a copier, I scaled drawings of the undernose camera bays in The Modelers’ Guide to the Sabre and Fury by Jay Sherlock (Aero Research, ISBN 978-0-9851154-0-1). I transferred the shapes to thin, clear plastic to serve as the bottom plates; gloss black on the fuselage keeps the bays dark under masks.