The Aircraft

So much has been written about this famous fighter that I will not add to it.

Specifications (F-86A)

General characteristics

Length: 37 ft 6 in (11.4 m)
Wingspan: 37 ft 1 in (11.3 m)
Height: 14 ft 8 in (4.5 m)
Loaded weight: 13,791 lb (6,300 kg)
Powerplant: 1× General Electric J47 turbojet, 5,200 lbf (24 kN))

Performance

Maximum speed: 685 mph (1,100 km/h)
Range: 1,200 miles (1,900 km)
Service ceiling: 49,000 ft (14,900 m)
Rate of climb: 7,250 ft/min (36.8 m/s)
Time to altitude: 6.3 min to 30,000 ft (9,145 m)

Armament

Six 0.5 in (12.7 mm) machine guns and eight 5 in (127 mm) rockets or 2,000 lb (900 kg) of bombs

Preamble

I have a number of Matchbox F-86A kits in my Sabre stash as they tend to pop up at most swap meets, club sales and eBay.

I decided to build this kit as a partner to my Hasegawa F-86D Sabre Dog build and for the second entry of the Aircraft Resource Centre (ARC) Matchbox Madness Group Build of which I was moderating. As it is a pretty basic build, I decided also to experiment with the various shades of Tamiya spray can metallics.

An old Microscale sheet “F-86E Sabre” brought forth from the decal dungeon was an ideal replacement for the kits imploded decals. I also had a standby donor decal sheet from a Hobbycraft kit (black boxing)

The Kit

A typical Matchbox side opening box, with dramatic artwork of an ANG “Sword” in flight. The box proclaims “1:72 in two colours” with the two finishing options printed on the rear of the box.

So what is in the box? There are three sprues within the typical box, one azure blue, one grey and a clear sprue for the canopy. The one piece canopy is rather thickly moulded but with nicely defined framing. Two decal options are provided, along with an instruction sheet with painting instructions for two aircraft printed on the back of the kit box in typical Matchbox style.

The decals from this Revell AG released Matchbox kit were simply horrible and were immediately consigned to the round filing cabinet.

The kit is typical of Matchbox, with deep trench like panel lines and heavy moulding to smaller detail parts. Well I was not after a contest winner here at all, so I could safely ignore all the shortcomings built into the kit or otherwise.

Construction

Assembly started with the cockpit, which consisted of a seat, floor and rudimentary instrument panel with no detail. I closed up the resulting gap between the front coaming and the instrument panel, and then added an instrument panel decal from the Microscale sheet. Seen through the thick canopy, this basic detail was good enough for this build.

I used some thin plasticard painted black to blank off the nose air intake, thus preventing a major see through look issue. The only downside is the slightly shallow look of the intake but this certainly was a more preferable alternative to seeing into the hollow insides complete with fishing sinkers and plastic shavings.

The kit provided jet exhaust was replaced with some Squadron tubing of appropriate diameter and thickness.

The remainder of assembly proceeded smoothly and rather quickly, with only moderate amounts of filler required to smooth out ill fitting joints. At this point I cleaned up, polished and masked the canopy. The masked canopy was offered up to the fuselage and cemented into place with clear parts cement, reinforced with a careful application of liquid cement; this filled any gaps between the fuselage and the canopy. A quick application of white glue, with excess wiped away with a wet mk1 finger, smoothed out any remaining gaps along each fuselage side while the rear and front of the canopy needed some filler work to remove the joint.

Matchbox mould the wing assembly in two sub assemblies (top and bottom – starboard/port) which made for careful alignment to achieve the correct dihedral. Once this had set overnight and the wing/fuselage joints corrected I added the horizontal stabilizers. As mentioned earlier the Matchbox kit is an F-86A OOB, however I wanted to build an F-86E and research had confirmed the only difference externally between marques were all moving horizontal stabilizers fitted to the F-86E. Careful attachment of the kit parts was the only thing needed to represent this change.

Painting and Decaling

Now that construction was finished I could settle down to painting. I decided to use a spray can of Tamiya AS-12 BMF, .It took several light coats from the spray can until I was happy with the overall finish, with areas needed re-sanding and reapplying to eliminate imperfections. In the end I got close to the result I was after, but not entirely satisfied with! Once the AS-12 had cured, I masked off different panels and applied Tamiya Polished Aluminium. The difference between the different metal finishes was subtle but certainly noticeable. Other panels were painted using Humbrol Aluminium Metalcote.

The painted and completed airframe was put aside to cure prior to application of a thin coat of Johnsons “Super Stride” with a wide flat brush kept especially for this purpose. This sealed the metallic paint but did not change the sheen or appearance of the BMF finish.

The decals turned out to be a really big problem.

As mentioned earlier, the kit decals were discarded and I then chose to do “The Huff” from an old Microscale decal sheet I had in the decal dungeon. Knowing the propensity of Microscale decals to shatter when placed into water, I had a set of decals of the same subject from a Hobbycraft black boxing.

Sure enough the Microscale decals shattered even after an application of Microscale Decal film with the only salvageable decals being some warning placards. Better than nothing I guess!

So the Hobbycraft set was used with great success including the yellow theatre bands over the fuselage rear and wingtips. “The Huff” nose art consisted of three separate decals which when overlaid looked fantastic. The only issue was the decals reluctance to settle into the panel lines. However Matchbox panel lines are quite deep so perhaps this would not be an issue on a more modern kit.

I then applied a Jo Sonja acrylic Paynes Grey grunge wash through the panel lines rather than my more usual 6B pencil treatment. Another experiment which looked awful while being applied but not so bad once cleaned up.

Everything was then sealed in with another coat of Future resulting in a nice looking uniformly finished Sabre.

Finishing Touches

Canopy masking was removed and I then began to add the pre-painted and weathered undercarriage. This is where I found a flaw and a glaring error in the instructions. The instructions show the undercarriage installed in such a way that the protruding wheel hubs face outboard rather than inboard. Installing the undercarriage this way will cause major issues with the bay doors, not to mention make the finished model look rather strange.

So I picked up this problem but did not see the other undercarriage issue until far too late. Once all was built and the model sat on its legs, I discovered that once undercarriage leg was moulded shorter than the other one which means my Sabre has a slight lean to the left….Oops…

Overall

A quick build that looks fine once done. If you want a better build then Hobbycraft or Fujimi come highly recommended Crikey, even the older Airfix/Heller release is better.

I also decided that the Paynes Grey panel wash is worthy of another experiment although I must admit that the pencil panel line treatment looks more subtle, much more to my taste.

References

World Aircraft Files
F86 Sabre in Action
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