Fiddlers Green

Building a Panther the other night as a prelude to some wing tip tank experimentation, I came to the horrible conclusion that the wings were out of proportion to the rest of the model. Even though the WSAM says 94%, the fuselage is much closer to 122%--maybe the wings are 94%--what the heck, something's gotta give. Rather than just whine about it--I decided to see what was needed to correct it.
I reduced the wing by about 20% and they now appear to be perfectly proportioned. The catch is, that the inboard part of the wing still needed to be stretched back to it's original width to properly fit (carry the trailing edge line back). After making these adjustments, I ended up with a pretty nicely proportioned model. The wing should be centered where the landing gear door presently is on the fuselage. You'll have to color out the wing/fuselage alignment lines on the fuselage where the wing no longer goes....should you attempt any of these mods.

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-Rob-

Currently working on: see avatar

Addendum to the previous post...once the wing are glued to the fuselage, you'll still have an anhedral angle to the wings. To correct this to a dihedral, , take a sharp exacto knife and carefully slit the upper wing, at the fold line, to within a quarter to an eighth on an inch from both the leading and trailing edges. You can then tuck the outer panel under the inner section, bend the wing up to about a three degree dihedral, apply a couple drops of glue and your Panther will be sittin' pretty.

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-Rob-

Currently working on: see avatar

Hey rob does something like that need to be done to the cougar as well?

Barry

No--It was OK. I redrew both about the same time, and the Cougar's proportions were quite close. There were several Cougar variants, the -6 and -7 had a slightly different wing than the -8. The -8's leading edge was extended a bit outboard of the stall fence--giving it a bit of a 'sawtooth' appearance, and the leading edge slats were eliminated. The extension became an integral fuel tank. there were some fuselage differences as well.

The Cougars I redrew, with the exception of the two seater, were the -6 or -7 variants, because the wing would be simpler to build and the fuselage a bit less complicated.

In my younger years, I worked on the Cougar, and, for two years, flew in the backseat of the F9F-8T--two seater. I am intimately familiar with both types. My cousin was an engineer at Grumman, and was part of the Cougar design team. We used to have some spirited debates over design vs maintainability.

_________________
-Rob-

Currently working on: see avatar