Sikorsky JRS-1 by Landlubber Mike - Eduard - 1/72

[Landlubber Mike]

I decided to join the current "twins" (as in two propulsion units) group build on LSM, so thought I'd post a parallel log here.  Not like I don't have enough projects going at the moment, but this one shouldn't be too bad.

 

The Sikorsky S-43 or "Baby Clipper" was a smaller version of the S-42 Clipper and first flew in 1935.  The US Navy began buying the plane beginning in 1937, and redesignated the military version as the JRS-1.

 

I'm building the Eduard kit, which is a limited edition repop that came out in 2016 of an older Sword kit from 2003.  Special Hobby had also re-released the same kit in 2005.  Nice thing about the Eduard release is the addition of PE and resin improvements to the old kit.  In addition, Eduard released a separate PE aftermarket set, and I luckily somehow managed to find the old discontinued CMK set which has a lot of helpful improvements like wheels, control surfaces, etc.

 

 

Kit contents:

 

 

The kit has a large color instruction manual, as well as a really nice color pamphlet with lots of info on and pictures of the JRS-1 to help build the model:

 

 

Last night I gave the sprues and resin parts a bath.  Here you can see all the resin parts between the kit (in gray) and the CMK set (in yellow).  A blade from each prop was broken off, so I'll need to reattach them.

 

 

Lots of color schemes are included in this kit.  I'll probably do the kit as one of the multi-colored yellow wings.  I'm leaning towards the blue-banded 1193, but the red-banded 1063 is probably the more famous plane as I believe it is at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (near me, I'll have to see if it's on exhibition).

 

 

 

Thanks for looking in!

Edited February 2 by Landlubber Mike

[king derelict]

What a great subject. I'll be following with interest. Always liked seaplanes

Alan

[Canute]

Flying boats are cool. I'm in.

[Javlin]

Well I'm in Mike but seeing how you like these"honey I shrunk the kids" Kits I am sure you will pull off a very Nice Rendition of the plane Mike!

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks guys!  I've always had a thing for seaplanes - or are they flying boats?  Should be a fun build anyway.

[CDW]

Hey Mike, I like this project. Can't wait to see your magic on it.

[Egilman]

7 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

I've always had a thing for seaplanes - or are they flying boats?

These were built well into the Seaplane era, but were considered flying boats by most... The difference was in the eye of the beholder type thing... The closest technical delineation I can find is a Flying Boat was one that was not designed to land on the open ocean, where a Seaplane was.... The Navy had a lot of both types.... Especially in the yellow wing era...

 

The JRS-1 was one of the last Flying Boats.... They were mainly used as station craft, (base to base transports where they had a relatively smooth place to land like a bay) and as early warning patrol craft, no active combat role...

 

Seaplanes could land on the open ocean....

 

You know I'm down for this one brother, I love a well done yellow wing....

Edited February 3 by Egilman

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks Craig and Elmer, looking forward to getting started on it!  I had been itching to work on it for a while now but wanted to wait to see if I could find the discontinued CMK set.  Took a while, but it fortunately turned up on eBay.  The aftermarket control surfaces make it so much easier to show them in various positions, rather than cutting them out and then trying to rebuild them because of the saw's kerf, etc.

[realworkingsailor]

5 hours ago, Egilman said:

These were built well into the Seaplane era, but were considered flying boats by most... The difference was in the eye of the beholder type thing... The closest technical delineation I can find is a Flying Boat was one that was not designed to land on the open ocean, where a Seaplane was.... The Navy had a lot of both types.... Especially in the yellow wing era...

 

The JRS-1 was one of the last Flying Boats.... They were mainly used as station craft, (base to base transports where they had a relatively smooth place to land like a bay) and as early warning patrol craft, no active combat role...

 

Seaplanes could land on the open ocean....

 

 

Don’t quote me on this as I’m really no expert, but I don’t know of any amphibious aircraft that are fully capable of landing on the open ocean in anything more than almost calm conditions.

 

From what I’ve read, a seaplane is a catch all term for any type of water capable airplane. A flying boat is a seaplane in which the fuselage is boat shaped and provides the primary floatation. A float plane being the other option.

 

Andy

[Egilman]

16 hours ago, realworkingsailor said:

Don’t quote me on this as I’m really no expert, but I don’t know of any amphibious aircraft that are fully capable of landing on the open ocean in anything more than almost calm conditions.

 

From what I’ve read, a seaplane is a catch all term for any type of water capable airplane. A flying boat is a seaplane in which the fuselage is boat shaped and provides the primary floatation.

As I said brother it's an eye of the beholder term.... to some they are all seaplanes, to others flying boats.... but there is an engineering genesis to both terms... (there usually is)

 

The JRS I would categorize as a flying boat, the Kingfisher I would categorize as a seaplane.... (and yes there are many documented occasions where a kingfisher landed in a sea state 4 condition, pretty typical on the open ocean)

The Catalina I would classify as a seaplane when actually it was amphibious, could land on either, (and has a sea state 6 landing to it's credit) the Martin Mariner was a seaplane, The Consolidated Coronado, a B-24 redesigned to land on water....

The JRS was the last of a long line of flying boats whos design history stems from putting wings and a tail on a boat hull....

By the '30's the differences became moot... The Kingfisher was an airplane first with water landing floats added to it...

Normally, the Kingfisher would land in the lee of the ship it was stationed on to give it the smoothest water possible, but there were several open ocean landings documented....

 

Today in engineering terms they are all seaplanes like you say, very few flying boats left in the world....

 

Edited February 4 by Egilman

[Dave_E]

I’m in. 🥤🍿👍

[Danstream]

Very cool plane, I love airplanes from this era. Following along.

 

12 hours ago, Egilman said:

Today in engineering terms they are all seaplanes like you say, very few flying boats left in the world....

One of the very few built in modern time (well, it is already 30 years ago):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Seastar

 

Cheers,

Dan

[Landlubber Mike]

On 2/4/2024 at 5:31 AM, Danstream said:

Very cool plane, I love airplanes from this era. Following along.

 

One of the very few built in modern time (well, it is already 30 years ago):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Seastar

 

Cheers,

Dan

Thanks Dan, great to have you along for the ride.  I've got a bunch of pre-WW2 planes in the stash as I love the yellow wings scheme.

[Landlubber Mike]

This kit is a short run kit from the early Sword kit from 20+ years ago.  Some work to do on parts clean up, addressing fit issues, etc.  I did start some building this week building the cockpit bulkhead with pilot seats.  I went with the CMK bulkhead, which had a little more detail than the kit, and built up the pilot seats from the Eduard standalone PE set which I thought looked better than the kit seats.

[Landlubber Mike]

Made some progress on the JRS-1 over the last couple of days.  First, put together the floor board for the cockpit.  Not too much there, and probably won't able to see any of it given the scale and the size of the canopy windows:

 

 

Next, had to do a little surgery to the starboard side fuselage half to change the windows line-up:  (1) fill the two forward-most large windows, (2) add a new small window just in front of the two large windows that were filled, and (3) open up a new large window in the panel between the two rear-most large windows.  Sounds fairly simple, but was a couple of hours of work.  Opening the windows, particularly the rear large window, was a little nerve-wracking.  The rear-most window really had to be placed perfectly or it would stick out like a sore thumb if it interrupted the flow of the windows.  I started with a 1mm drill, and slowly opened up the windows in 0.5mm increments, checking the measurements in between each drilling to make sure I wasn't drifting.  I was pretty happy with how things turned out in the end.  If you are building this kit, the small windows are slightly larger than 3.5mm, and the large hole slightly larger than 5.5mm.  The kit porthole windows are pushed into the openings from the interior, where the window has a slight chamfer (one side of the windows is larger, the other slightly smaller, to ensure a tight fit).

 

Filling the two holes at the front wasn't too bad.  I really like the Dspiae circle cutter.  It's a perfect tool to cut plastic filler circles for cases like this.  Much easier than trying to fill the holes with putty.  The time consuming part was sanding the circles flush with the fuselage, as on the outside, there is some fine detail you don't want to accidentally remove.

 

 

Thanks for looking in!

[king derelict]

Mike

The circle cutter looks like a handy tool to have. Do you have a few more details or a picture?

Thanks

alan

[Landlubber Mike]

Hey Alan @king derelict, this is the one I have with the center locating tool.  I have a few of the Dspiae products, and they are very impressive.  Heavy, well-made, aluminum - not what one usually expects from Chinese tools.  

 

 

 

 

Edited February 13 by Landlubber Mike

[king derelict]

Thanks very much Mike 

I invested in the circle cutter via Amazon but tracking down the center locator is a bit harder. It looks like a handy couple of tools 

 

I hope I’m not derailing your log but I thought this was interesting 

https://www.aerosociety.com/news/seaplane-renaissance/?utm_campaign=2694788_9 February - Insight Blog Roundup&utm_medium=email&utm_source=2694788_9 February - Insight Blog Roundup&dm_i=4OGU,1LRB8,33UWYK,7IVSU,1

 

I’m not convinced that there is a huge amount of engineering behind some of these concepts. Some smack of a group of enthusiasts with fancy graphics packages 

 

alan

 

 

 

[Landlubber Mike]

Good luck with the center locator.  Sometimes buying from China on eBay is the easiest and most cost effective way to pick these tools up.  Or you can try Gundam shops here but they are often sold out of Dspiae stuff I've noticed.

 

Thanks for sharing the link, and no worries about doing so!  Pretty interesting, would love to see them make a comeback!  I love their shapes and designs. 

[Landlubber Mike]

This week I've been able to put in a lot of work on the JRS-1.  Though, from the pictures it probably doesn't look like it!  You can probably slap this kit together fairly quickly, but there are a lot of fit and other issues that I'm spending the time addressing along the way.

The external Eduard photo etch has some nice details, including the main wheel well.  You can see the kit part instead gives you a present of a hard to access ejection pin.  I ended up using the CMK part instead of the kit part because it had a clean bottom edge and seemed to fit better.  The CMK part gives you a little more detail than the kit part, but you have to remove it to add the Eduard photo etch:

 

 

The kit has five bulkheads, and each of them is a bit too small.  I spent a lot of time adding material so that the fuselage halves and the front half top parts can sit properly supported on the bulkheads.  Might be overkill, but better than chancing a cave-in of the fuselage during my clumsy handling:

 

 

Here is where things stand now - I've inserted the rear four bulkheads and floors into the starboard fuselage half, and the interior is ready to prime and paint.  Since I had to test fit the bulkheads and cockpit dozens of times, I taped the parts in this way so that I could quickly test fit and make adjustments.  I'm using a mixture of the CMK and kit parts.  The CMK parts certainly have more detail, but one of the rear bulkheads was warped and one of the sliding fuselage doors had the window drilled off center.  The kit doors were a little too thick I thought, so I thinned them down.  

 

 

Looks like all the pre-work helped, as the fuselage closes up fairly nicely:

 

 

Thanks for looking in!

[Javlin]

Looking Good Mike the paint for the interior shall liven it up nicely.

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks Kevin!  I've got the interior painted up.  I'm going to weather the cockpit area a bit and then assemble it.  You can't really see anything inside given the very small windows, but still worth a little extra work.  

[Landlubber Mike]

Interior is all painted and ready to be buttoned up:

 

 

Half of the Eduard resin passenger seats had broken arm rests.  I ended up cutting them all off, then replacing them with brass wire.  Won't be able to see them, but for some reason I feel better knowing that they are there:

 

 

Thanks for looking in!

[Landlubber Mike]

Made some good progress on the JRS-1 the last few days.  First, installed all the interior components - bulkheads, cockpit, seats, windows, window frames, curtains, etc.  Given that you can't see much of any of the details from the outside, I didn't bother trying to make everything look pristine.

 

 

Then managed to get the fuselage buttoned up.  Surprisingly, very little filler or plastic strips needed, though the canopy is going to require plenty.

 

 

 

 

 

The top was a pain because you had to insert the rectangular piece in between the fuselage halves (you could cut this in half and model it as open), as well as the two forward top fuselage halves.  Not exactly easy to do, but eventually got there.

 

Thanks for looking in!

[yvesvidal]

12 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

I like the interior with the room for the crew in the rear, and the luggage/freight compartment in the front. You can tell that this was better designed than modern airliners which are solely equipped for greed and maximum profit.

 

Yves

[Danstream]

Very good progress with the fuselage. Looking forward to seeing this plane building up.

 

21 hours ago, yvesvidal said:

I like the interior with the room for the crew in the rear, and the luggage/freight compartment in the front. You can tell that this was better designed than modern airliners

I like the interior too. I suspect that the luggage compartment in the front has to do with keeping the C.G. in the right place.

 

Best regards,

Dan

[Landlubber Mike]

I've been making slow but steady progress on this kit.  Part of the slow crawl is my fault in using the very nice CMK aftermarket set.  But the main reason is that there are a lot of fit issues and other things like lack of connection points for important parts like the struts holding up the tail section and the main wing.  For some examples:

 

- Main wing tips are separate parts (in halves) that you have to glue together and then do some cleanup.  I ended up adding brass rod to help secure them:

 

 

- Engine cowlings are too small, so I added thin plastic strip between the halves to fit the engines.  Figured that was much easier than filing down the engines:

 

 

- CMK tail isn't quite right, needing extra plastic on the fixed part of the tail:

 

 

At the moment, I'm mostly done with the wing.  The CMK set is nice in that it gives you the control surfaces, but still quite a bit of work to add them.  I have a few bits of PE to add along with the exhausts, and then of course the pontoons:

 

 

The body is close to being done as well.  I have a few more pieces of PE to add, along with the cockpit and landing gear and some other odds and ends that I'm waiting to add as they are fragile and will likely bust off.  But, I think so far it's looking pretty good:

 

 

I'm still debating how to go about staging the painting sessions.  I might end up painting the wing separately, then adding it to the body and painting the body once the wing is installed.  Because the wing struts don't have attachment points, I'm a bit worried about glue getting where it shouldn't be.  Still a bit to go before I get to that stage so I can think on it a little more.

 

Thanks for looking in!

[Landlubber Mike]

In case anyone is interested, I found this short video on the JRS-1 subject I'm building and how it went looking for the Japanese fleet after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Amazing bravery for these guys - the JRS itself did not carry any armaments - the only weapons carried were rifles that Marine and Army volunteers planned to shoot out the back windows if they had to 🇺🇸

 

 

Edited April 8 by Landlubber Mike

[lmagna]

Hi Mike

I am jealous that you have taken your JRS-1 out and started building it. ALas mine, like all of my other stash and flying boats is sitting neglected and lonely.

 

That has not stopped me from doing some research now and then though. I would have probably kept the original wheels as the plain surface and lack of any real details in the real aircraft wells is very obvious even though possibly less interesting.

 

I saw a mention in a prior post about the cabin layouts. According to the only cut-a-way drawings I have been able to find these sections are the cockpit, with the bulkhead opening to the rear of the aircraft. 

 

Just to the rear of that bulkhead is the 'Stewards/mail" cabin. on the port side just behind the pilot the steward has a chair that sits against the outside hull and I believe folds down. This is so that it can be used as a stepping platform when the crew uses the top portside hatch to enter the aircraft. Next aft on the portside is the mail locker that coule possibly also serve as a table for food or drinks? Just aft of that the remaining portside space is taken up with the head that extends to the next bulkhead just in front of the landing gear section. The starboard section of this compartment is identified as baggage compartment, even though it appears to consist of lower storage, counter top and upper compartmented cabinets. The winow ports on that side have slatted covers in the drawings.

 

Next are the two bulkheads that enclose the foward and aft area of the wheel gear area and could possibly also provide limited access to the wing root from within. It appears that only the forward bulkhead had a door but that one looks to be a watertight door. 

 

Next is the main passenger cabin that had seating for 11 passengers with two seats on the starboard and one on the port with the last seats aft being single.

The aft cabin bulkhead opens into the forth compartment just forward of the rudder. This compartment is labled as the "Smoking" pasenger compartment and has two seats facing aft on each side of the forward bulkhead and two facing forward at each corner of the aft bulkhead with the collapsible companion way between them.

 

This is clearly the civilian configuration of the S-43 and I would think the military JRS-1 would have had differences, but I have not been able to find anything to date.

 

Really looking forward to seeing your results on this aircraft Mike. It is looking great so far.

Edited May 10 by lmagna

[Landlubber Mike]

Hi Lou, great to hear from you and thanks for the kind words.  I have the following book which has a lot of great pictures of both the civilian craft (including the Howard Hughes plane) and the military craft.  It's definitely worth buying if you're going to build this kit I think.  

 

Interestingly, the interior of the military craft looks very similar to that of the civilian craft, down to the interior curtains.  I decided not to open the model up in part because I wasn't too certain about whether the interior from the kit was accurate or not.  

 

For the wheel wells, the photo etch actually adds some nice detail like the rivets and the panels which seems very consistent with the pictures I've seen of the actual wells.  The PE is also really helpful to cover up that dreadful, hard to get to, ejector pin mark in the deep recess of the well.  Though, this is not an issue if you use the CMK wheel well replacement parts which actually fit better.

 

The kit is ok, and the CMK set is a nice add-on, but things like the need to clean up pretty much every piece, as well as the fit of the pieces, including the windows, the canopy, and the engine cowlings, make this a bit frustrating.  There's also the issue of no interlocking connecting points for the wing and tail struts (as well as a number of other detail parts) which is annoying.  Then there is the matter of certain details that are helpful to add, like the nose center rib in the book picture above, and the location and angle of the antenna mast in the center wing that is different from plane to plane.  Also, the tail wheel in the kit looks nothing like either of the two versions of the tail wheel on the real thing, so of course now that I've seen the actual pictures (the book above has great close-ups)  I feel obligated to scratch build a more accurate one, though not really looking forward to it.

 

I've started to lose interest in finishing the model, but am going to try to push through to get it finished by the beginning of June for the group build on LSM.  It didn't help that the model took a nose dive off the table last week and three of the interior windows fell off.  Thankfully the top two pieces of the fuselage had also loosened, so I was able to take them off and reinstall the windows.  If it was one of the windows further back I probably would have had to junk the model.  If you end up building the kit, I'd probably try not to be as OCD as I have been and just enjoy building it.

 

 

Edited May 12 by Landlubber Mike