Canute

I flew with a guy who ejected at a high rate of speed. He was grounded for months, but eventually did get to fly again. Multiple waivers for stuff, like the special boot for one leg shorter than the other. Great guy, too. I forget what he was flying when he bailed out, but I knew him at Eglin, in Phantoms. The MB seat drogue chute was on top of the seat in the F-4 to slow and stabilize the seat. There was a barostat that senses a set altitude and we would separate from the seat with our seat kit and parachute. Think the altitude was 11,500'. Below that altitude, we just separated and the chute deployed. You guys are going to make me drag out my flight manual to check all this stuff.

The right hand picture looks better to my old Mark 1, Mod 1 eyes. The headrest is more brick red, the safety gear looks more correct red and the green gear looks right, too. I can't believe the seat cushion is so fluffy, for lack of a better word. Every seat I ever sat on or looked at in a fighter was pretty hard. The seat kit, dark green box under the cushion, always amazed me how they stuffed a 1 man raft, with a gas inflation bottle, a ruck sack full of gear and an emergency locator beeper radio into it.

I stand corrected then, EG. Too many old war-stories about that jet. Thank you. 😀

The Mr Color is solvent based, so will have an odor. Don't tick off the Admiral spraying this stuff. However, it looks really good; I'm going to give it a try. Rye Field have a number of M1 Abrams kits, too, if you're so inclined.

Nice, Jack. Fire it up!

We had a T-33 seat we were strapped into, when I was in pilot training. It had a ballistic charge to propel us up some rails to about 50 feet or so. Got all hooked up, assumed the position with your helmet pressed into the headrest and pulled the side handle. POW up the rails and get lowered back down. That was it in 1970. I did para sailing, pulled behind a truck for land parachute training and an AF Twin Merc cruiser off an AF LCM in Biscayne Bay for water survival training. We did a lot of other egress training, as it was termed, when we got into the Phantom. Yeah, it's very aircraft specific. Although, nowadays, at least, the ejection seat used by most of our jets is the ACES II. I flew that twice, about 40 years ago. Much easier to strap in due to no leg garters. I'll explain. The Martin Baker seat required a number of connections via straps to the seat. Calf, thigh, butt(seat kit), lap-belt, parachute risers, plus comms, mask and g-suit. The leg stuff kept you from flailing legs, the butt clips were to keep you and the survival kit/one man raft connected. Since the "chute was built into the seat, you needed those. Proper upper body position was via the overhead handle rings or the one between your legs. Preferred was the one 'tween your legs, but on takeoff, that one would be hard to get at with the stick back into your lap. Again you had to assume the position. There is/was always a risk of compression injuries to the back, getting fired out of the cockpit. The seat started with ballistic charges sending you up the rails. A 6' lanyard, attached to the bottom of the seat, fired the rockets to shoot you up and way over the tail. I had one guy get a flail injury to his shoulder, due to his loose helmet coming off, flinging his arm back and chipping the end of his should bone. He was grounded about 3 months. The fatalities were usually due to ejecting outside the seat capability (too fast, too close to the ground in an unusual attitude). The F-104 was designed as a high altitude interceptor and the seat fired down. I think the B-58 did a similar ejection envelope. I believe the first one the Europeans got had these seat and when the need to bail, since they were flying low... The G model they ended up with had a normal upward firing seat.

Cripes, the detailing in this kit is downright superb. What next? And you finish is flawless. 👍👍

All too true, OC, but you must be able to see the goodies. At this and larger scales, we can see them. If you did this at 1/72, your sanity would be questioned.😉

Cool jet, OC. I'm in, too. And your MB seat looks good. It's almost too new, you need to ding it up a tad more with the alu,👍

Nice job on the cockpit rework. Just kill the white Evergreen styrene. It washes out the two shots fitting the cockpit to the fuselage. 👍

Do the tests, Denis. The alternatives are painful and final. That plane looks like a flying corrugated fence. I suspect the thing was just grossly under-powered; the P-38 had counter rotating props and it didn't crash with losing 1 engine. Probably took a lot of rudder to counteract the dead engine/side.

Yes, Denis, the fit of those panels is off. Hope you can patch them.

You mean the "murder holes" for the boiling oil and large rocks? Inside the portcullis /gate. Our barbaric ancestors.

Believe me, it ain't no cushion. It;s a thin piece of cloth, usually nomex these days, over a fiberglass seat bottom. Sit on 1 for 8-10 hours and you're a cripple. Much better seats in the Boeing tanker. Real cushions.

You bet. It's critical to get the best use of these new paints. Your box lid for the set was absolutely no help.

Might try Sprue Brothers.https://store.spruebrothers.com/category_s/2737.htm They carry the line, but I'm not sure about them carrying these paint sets. Here's the Gunze lines with the page covering the sets. http://www.mr-hobby.com/en/itemList.php?cId=7 The applicable sets are about mid page. Here's their English instructions for the Dark Yellow set Craig is using.: http://www.mr-hobby.com/en/itemDetail.php?iId=1917 here's te English instructions for the OD set: http://www.mr-hobby.com/en/itemDetail.php?iId=1916 They cleverly used the same instructions for both.

What I called the seat kit is the part you sit on in an ejection seat bird; you called it the cushion, with 2 options. Nomenclature. The seat kit is the survival gear storage. That real "cushion" is about a foot deep with a 1 man raft and a bag holding all the rest of the gear. All tied to the pilot's harness via a big clasp. You look like you have a jigsaw puzzle going on there, rearranging parts to build the cockpit. Ain't it fun.

They include 2 seat kits for the 1 seat? I'm assuming the dark grey widget is the seat rail or some other cockpit details.

Pulling up a seat. This is a very different build, Denis. This kit was made in Czechoslovakia, before the breakup of the Iron Curtain. Fit doesn't seem too bad. Very blocky appearance (very bad pun intended).

Looking good, Denis. You'd think they had a good marking guide for this a/c, since it survived and came back to the States for bond tour, with all the photos those usually entailed. Oh, well.

Well done and appropriately tricked out. The depth of your research is outstanding. What's next in your armor builds?

Must have been fun, putting in those springs. I'll be following the use of that Mr Color paint kit. Interesting concept with the different shades. And it's lacquer, isn't it?

Be careful bending the stainless parts. Make sure of every bend before you make them. Study the drawings included with the parts. I've busted a few parts, either overbending or bending the wrong way.

These were jump over the side bailouts, with a seat pack parachute. Needed the space. Ejection seat aircraft had pretty hard seat ki (fiberglass box top with a nomex cloth cover), with either backpack or built in parachutes. F-4 and A-7 onwards had built in parachutes. We just wore a harness to clip all the rest of the gear to, along with a personal lowering device built into the back of the harness. Needed that if you got hung up at 100' in the triple canopy jungles in South East Asia.

Don't look now, but the 3D printed parts are looking very good. I just got replacement doors, ends and roof to turn a 40s era refrigerator car into a late 60s era flour loading boxcar. There are also templates to drill holes in the ends for appropriate details. All based on some real good CAD work. The printing sprues are heavy, but cut off easily. The parts do have striations, but sand up fairly easily.