Here's my recently completed TF P-47. (my first warbird) It has an OS 91 FS, Spring Air retracts and is finished in fiberglass/epoxy and Perfect Paint. A very enjoyable project.

First flight was quite a thrill. I flies very nicely and looks great with D-day stripes under the wings. Sorry no photos of the first flight, but here's a couple of others.

Nice looking bird.....P-47...one of my favorite warbirds.........welcome to the Warbird..."Band of Brothers"............Bill...........

Looks very nice! I like your choice of unit markings. Not the run of the mill kit markings. Which on next ?

Thanks for the kind remarks. My next project is a Skyshark Bf 109E.

Paul,
Terrific Thunderbolt you have there---Let us know a little about application of your "Perfect Paint" finish: equipment and application;I have been considering using it on a Luftwaffe bird. And again Paul> super P-47 you have there.

Congratulations, looks very, very realistic!

good lookin' bird!

If you would like to see a finished Skyshark 109E, go here

http://www.*************.co.uk/4um/i...?topic=11030.0


Its a UK forum, which you might find of interest. Your T-bolt looks great, a nice paint job and well done too, shame about no pilot though.

looks good, iam planing on building one for my second warbird

Thanks Richard,

I found the Cheveron Perfect Paint very easy to work with. I primed using spray can auto primer. The Cheveron was allied to larger areas using an auto touchup spray gun that holds about 1 cup of paint. This gun runs off a small compressor and tank. I used a Badger 300 airbrush for weathering and panel lines. The final flat coat was also Cheveron. Used Cheveron thinner throughout.

I applied paint as sparingly as possible to keep the weight down.

Paul

I am just in the final stages of my P-47 with Spring Air retracts. I do not see how the gear doors can be flush with the bottom of the wing with the Spring Air units. Did you encounter this problem, and if so, how did you correct it?

Thanks - good looking plane

Great looking �Jug�.

I made Capt. Walker Mahurin´s �Spirit of Atlantic City� who also flow in 56th Fighter Group, 63rd Fighter Group.

[link=http://www.henrikrosen.com/newp47-6.htm]My P-47[/link]

Milkman

It took a lot of tinkering to get a reasonable fit on the gear doors, but they still do not fit totally flush. The fiberglass gear doors extend over the bottom of the wing. They are about 1/32 of an inch thick. Here's how I ended up with this result.

One of the keys is to use thin wheels. I used Dave Brown light wheels, 3.5". These are mounted on Robarts struts using the pin that comes with the struts. I reversed the pin so it goes through the wheel first, then through the strut. Then I soldered a cap on the pin to hold it in place. All this keeps the thickness of the strut and wheel to a minimum.

The gear doors are made out of epoxy and fiberglass and reinforced with 1/16 ply. I moulded the fiberglass over the curve of the lower wing, using two layers of 6 oz cloth. I used the 1/16 ply to reinforce the doors on the inside is such a way that the struts fit tight against the fiberglass to minimize the thickness of the strut, wheel and door combination. The ply does not extend to the edge of the doors, this allows for a thin layer of glass to overlap the wing at the edge of the wheel wells.

The doors are not scale size, but they are basically the right shape. They are attached to the struts using bolts tapped into the struts. When the gear it fitted, shim the attachment points to get the wheels as far into the wells as possible. When the gear is closed only the thickness of the fiberglass, about 1/32 of an inch thick overlaps onto the top of the wing.

Inside the wheel well I removed all the wing rib and added a 1/32 layer of balsa running at 90 degrees to the grain in the wing top. This reinforces the wheel well.

Finally the Robarts struts are about 1/2 too short to be scale length. I had some steel extensions made to entend the struts to a more scale length. These longer struts cause the gear to close further in towards the wing root, where the wing is thicker, allowing more room for struts.

If you use the spring struts that come with Spring Airs you could probably get a completely flush fit.

Sorry it isn't easier!

Good luck.

Nice build.

Do you know its flying weight??

Steve

Its under 10 lbs.

Hi Paul W,


A fantastic looking P-47 i must. In matter of fact I´m currently building the same one myself and iyou got me more enthusiastic when i saw your bird.

However, i got a question for you regarding the color scheme you´ve choosen. I can see that you have the panther eating a german fighter. This plane was part of Zmeke´s wolfpack the 59th fighter group. I know that this group attended to the normandy campaign, but do you if this particular plane was attending to the invasion?

I have also seen several pictures of this plane painted in a olive green color on the top of the fuselage and wing. You are having something brownish, do you know if this plane had this color orignally? Was it before or after it had the olive color?

Thanks for any answers.

Best regards

Hi Oistein,

I consider my plane a sport scale project, so I didn't go all out on the scale documentation. I do not have a lot of references for this particular plane. There is one colour photo in the Detail and Scale book by Bert Kinzey, published by Squardron/Signal, on the P-47. I shows an extremely weathered plane, with lots of paint flaking off, esepcially on the tail surfaces. The plane's original olive drab finish appears to be partly overpainted with other colours of green, particularly the d-day stripes on the wing and fuse tops. Whether they used a darker green, like the colour used on Spitfires, is hard to say. Certainly some in the 'Wolfpack' did. The original plane also had a natural metal canopy frame.

The other reference is in P-47 Thunderbolt Special published by Flight Journal. I shows a restored aircraft in the darker British green. According to the text the plane was flow by Lt. Marvin H. Becker of the 63rd fighter squadron. Between March and June 1944 Becker scored 2.75 kills.

Flight Journal has a website at www.flightjournal.com.

Good luck,

Paul

Paul,

Thanks for answers. Due to lack of scale documentation I might go for the Little Chief or Little Damon scheme. Can I ask you where you get the custom nose art from. Is it standard decal, waterslide,... ?

Rgds

Oistein

The nose art is made from trim film. Not the best solution, but its ok.

Here is a website with some P-47 scale model decals that might offer a few other ideas for paint schemes. http://www.aeromaster.com/

Paul