C&H Aeronautical Miniatures

1/48th RF-8 "Photo Crusader"
by Chris Ishmael
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     The idea of observing what your friend & enemies are doing by means of aircraft dates back to the days of when the hot air balloon was the only aircraft available for such a mission.  Fast forward a century, & now you will find that the photographic reconnaissance aircraft still occupies an important role in today’s military organizations. 

     C&H Aeronautical Miniatures, out of middle Tennessee, brings us a resin conversion kit designed for the venerable Monogram 1/48th scale kit.  Its features include:

     The quality of the castings is good, with only a few pinholes & such.  The modeler will have to do some clean up work though. 

     The main part of the kit is the forward fuselage section, which extends back to about the forward bulkhead of the MLG bay.  This is also cutting point for the Monogram kit to be mated to the new resin fuselage.  The panel lines are finely engraved, although the Monogram kit has raised panel lines, so rescribing of the aft fuselage might be in order.  The nose lading gear bay is covered by resin, & must be opened up by the modeler.  The cockpit sidewalls have details molded onto them, which are similar to the details on the Monogram kit sidewalls. 

     The single-piece wing center section is a direct replacement for the kit center section.  It’s interesting to note that the resin wing section has raised panel lines, not recessed.  Both of my examples were free of warpage, & had the correct anhedral. 

     The camera fairings are all cast on one sheet, allowing you to duplicate any camera arrangement found on the actual aircraft. 

     Like all other military aircraft, the external antenna configuration changed over its service life.  The kit comes with fairings for the fuselage, & vertical tail, so just about any configuration can be modeled. 

     The nosecone (the RF-8 had no traditional radar under there, just another camera) is by far the most accurate example I’ve seen for the small nose F-8 variants.  The monogram kit radome is only accurate for the E, E (FN), & J models.  All the other versions have the smaller nosecone.  The C&H nosecone comes with the pitot tube molded on, & is quite delicate.  I managed to break off one during handling.  A metal replacement tube might be better.  

     The decals depict an early RF-8A from VMCJ-2 in the gull gray/white scheme during the Viet Nam conflict, with the large full color markings, and a late model RF-8G in the tactical gray scheme, with small, subdued markings.  The G model decals are from VFP-206, the East Coast reserve recce unit, which had the distinction of being the very last US F-8 squadron.  The decals are for the a/c that flew the very last US F-8 flight.   The fuselage camera windows are represented by black decals.  

     If these decals don’t do it for you, many RF-8s had very simple markings, which might not be too hard to replicate, and a few examples had marking very similar to the fighter versions (VF-24 & -211 come to mind).

 

      These are images for decal placement ....click images below to see larger images

Overall, this is a complete kit, which experienced modelers should not find overly challenging.  From my own fiddling with the kit, the KMC resin cockpit tub (if you have one in your stash) will fit, after you trim down the width of the tub & remove some resin from inside the fuselage.  I can’t comment on the Black Box F-8 cockpit yet, as I have not bought one yet. 

     The price might turn away a few modelers ($45 back in 2000), but if you want to make the longest serving version of all the Crusaders, this is the best game in town.  I highly recommend it.

Chris

Click on images below to see larger images

 Photos and text © 2002 by Chris Ishmael