BUILDING A COMPETITION WORTHY SCALE COCKPIT

Scale competition is a segment in this hobby that I really enjoy.

- CHRIS WOLFE

Like many, I grew up wanting to be a fighter pilot, but when I had to get corrective contact lenses in junior high school, those dreams ended so I decided to become an aerospace engineer instead. A big part of why I enjoy scale modeling so much is that it provides me the opportunity to fly and experience the airplanes I would otherwise never get to experience in full scale. So, when the U.S. Scale Masters Championships came back to California in 2019, I knew that I wanted to give it another go.

In the absence of a fresh new competition airplane, I wanted to give the championships a try with my Jet Hangar Hobbies A-7 Corsair II, but to be competition ready, it needed a few upgrades. Most notably, the airplane needed a whole new cockpit with the proper model ejection seat, along with some additional details on the landing gear and around the airframe. These were things that I had wanted to do for quite a long time, so it was a good excuse to get them done at last. After all, you know what they say, a scale project is never done … you just stop working on it! For this article, let’s talk about the cockpit and the finishing techniques used. I used a combination of traditional techniques and 3D printing, but the finishing and painting methods are applicable to any type of cockpit model, foam, plastic, or otherwise. With the advent of 3D printing it has simplified the process for scratch building many detail parts and that’s especially true for cockpits.

A NEW COCKPIT