One of my goals with building airplanes is to make them stronger and lighter. It is of benefit to have things break predictably as with the BVM models having “flex plates” holding the landing gear so only the plates break on a hard landing. They are easy to replace as well. In all cases a lighter plane is always a better plane. For this T-38 project I am starting with the cockpit.
I will use two astronaut pilots. I removed the plastic legs with boots and will stuff the pants with cotton. You cannot see the feet anyway - they were comparatively very heavy. I saved about 2oz. per pilot this way. I am planning on buying NASA blue colored material and making proper uniforms. In the interest of time I may try to farm out this project though I actually can sew fairly well.
The supplied two seat cockpit tub is made of brittle plastic and thick heavy plywood. It probably weighed at least two pounds. The details were well done and fully included but it fit poorly and needed a lot of “plastic surgery” to make it fit. I chose another route. I am making one from scratch. The plywood instrument panels alone weigh about 3oz. each. Though very nice looking, detailed and 3-dimensional, they are for the military version of the T-38 so I did not use these. That’s another 6 oz. savings. More to come:
