From ysi-maniac’s cyber drawing of a straight wing Hunter I have commenced to build something similar. A salvaged Matchbox Hunter fuselage, some wings from an F-86 donated by Ron from IPMS Duneland, an old 1/32nd scale F-16 centerline drop tank, (where would we be without drop tanks!) a Jaguars tail and junk box parts should be able to do it. Further inspiration was found in the Boeing Skyfox aircraft proposed back in the 80’s. I’ve mentioned this in a couple other threads but I figured it was time to start a real thread.
My stumbling block right now is what should the two engines look like? Is there 5000+lb thrust dry British engines from the 80’s or earlier that would work mounted A-10 style? I’ve been looking around and haven’t found anything that would look right except for some 1/100th scale A-10 engines.
The concept here is Hunter airframes with previously undiscovered wing cracks are recalled from everybody that ever bought them and rebuilt with straight wings to reinforce the Harriers in their ground attack missions. This is from a build up of events leading to the war in 1985. See the novel ww3 1985.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1375759.The_Third_World_WarSo if anyone has suggestions about engines I’d love to hear them while I sand putty for awhile.
First is the starting pile of junk.
Not all of this will be used, just different options.
Here's some parts glued up after paint stripping with Easy Off oven cleaner in the yellow can.
I've added the old F-16 fuel tank cut close to the original Hunter fuselage length. Also the tapered end of a gas bag for a Harrier style laser nose.
This is an overall shot of the future configuration.
I don't know if I should square off the F-86 wings or leave then the way they are. They will receive winglets pretty soon. I replaced the first Jaguar tail with a different one that had the ECM gear already on. The engines are from the old box scale Hustler from God knows when. Very brittle plastic. I cut off much of the front and rear of each pod and glued extra plastic on to have something to shape into an inlet and exhaust. I'll have to do something with the canopy as a very small portion of the rear edge was short shot. Probably fill it and paint something over it. With the laser nose I'll add some GBU laser guided bombs and/or a couple of Mavericks. Landing gear is going to be a problem. The original main gear wouldn't work with the F-86 wings and I don't have the wheel well covers anyway. The nose Gear I can work around as the gear doors are pretty simple but for the main gear I'm thinking something that retracts forward like the A-10. I'll have to see what else I have in the junk box.
Here's a couple of pics of the Skyfox so you can see some of my inspiration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Skyfox