Trumpeter North American F-100F Super Sabre 1:32

On With the Build

This begins with the ejection seats. Each one builds up from eight parts plus four PE straps. The front and rear seats are slightly different so take care not to mix them up! Painted up, they don’t look out of place to my eye although I did add a couple of extra harness straps for a better appearance.

The two instrument panels have some nice raised detail and a number of decals are provided which settle down well with the aid of Micro Set. The cockpit tub again has raised detail for the side consoles and four more decals can be applied here. These look a bit over-colourful once applied but when toned down with a dark wash they become acceptable for this stage. I intended to wait and see how they looked through the closed canopy later in the build. The basic cockpit colour I used was light gull grey. To the tub are added two sets of rudder pedals, the two control columns, the seats and the instrument panels.

(Photo: Seats installed and the side console decals applied)

(Photo: Instrument panels added along with the rudder pedals)

Putting the cockpit to one side, the next stages of the build cover the J57 engine. If you intend to display the engine then you can really go to town here and Trumpeter even provide an engine stand on the sprues. The engine casing is in four quadrantal parts with a ring of inlet guide vanes on the front and a separate built up single-stage turbine and afterburner ring on the back. Trumpeter even provides all the axial compressor stages in the form of photo etch which requires careful bending of the blades to look anything like. After doing all this, they will never been seen again of course! There are various ancillaries to add to the casing before the four piece jet pipe and exhaust nozzle are built and added to the engine casing. I was not opting to have the engine exposed and so omitted all the frills to end up with a ten inch long unit which would serve as a fancy bracing part for the fuselage.

(Photo: Basic engine without the ancillaries)

A full intake duct which runs from the nose all the way back to the compressor face is provided in the kit. The nose-wheel bay is moulded into the bottom of the duct and if intending to display the two cannons, they can also be added at this point.

(Photo: Intake ducting with the nose wheel bay and port cannon bay visible)

The inner seams on the forward part of this duct are easy to clean up. The cockpit tub can now be retrieved and cemented to the four pins on top of the duct.

(Photo: Cockpit mounted to the ducting)

The forward fuselage halves have a couple of additions in the form of the front instrument coaming with gunsight and the airbrake bay before the intake duct and engine unit are cemented to the starboard half. Trumpeter recommends 28 grams of weight to prevent tail-sitting and there is plenty of room above the duct for this. I used divers shot wrapped in kitchen paper here.

(Photo: Intake, cockpit assembly and engine cemented to right forward fuselage and the nose weight added)

The location points here are very positive and after offering up the port fuselage half, I found that everything fitted very nicely so this was cemented in place.

(Photo: The complete forward fuselage)

(Photo: The cockpit tub with the fuselage together)

Read on…