1/48 Monogram/C&H F-101C Voodoo

by Darius Aibara

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Having built the 1:48 Monogram F-101B a few years ago and a 1:72 Revell F-101C way back in the early 1970s I had always wanted to have a single seat Voodoo in my collection - it looks meaner and sleeker than the two-seater.  I had seen reviews of C&H conversion sets in the UK model press but there were no UK stockists.  Last year a thread in the ARC forum had a link to Victory Models website with some C&H sets available.  I bought four on the spot!!!  A few weeks later they arrived in the UK (many thanks to Paul Cotcher).
With the C&H set you get a new one piece hollow resin nose, vac-formed canopy, resin wheels, u/c doors burner cans, rear under fuselage spine and NACA style air intakes to replace the F-101B types that come with the Monogram kit.  You also get a very nice decal sheet with markings for a 81st TFW, 91st TFS aircraft stationed at RAF Bentwaters in the 1960s.  The instructions are clear with illustrations explaining how best to carve up the Monogram kit.  That I duly did - the worst part was removing the moulded on slime lights without obliterating the raised panel line detail.  I masked
around the area to be removed with a couple of layers of masking tape and sanded away the raised lights - the masking tape was somewhat torn but did the job of protecting the surrounding detail.  The Monogram forward cockpit and nose gear well were fixed to the resin nose and the whole grafted onto the main fuselage with cyano glue and Humbrol filler.

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The Monogram kit was not 100% complete as the starboard intake splitter plate part was missing and the tail of port fuselage half had a deep rut diagonally across it as if it had been seared with a hot poker.  Some filling and sanding was required before this part was ready for use.   The completed fuselage (including a starboard splitter plate made form plastic card) was spray primed with Halfords Grey primer and then various panels masked before a spraying a couple of coats of Halfords Nissan Silver.
With the masks removed the whole was polished using SNJ powder to give a multi-toned bare metal finish - not as good as Alclad but the best I can achieve without an airbrush.  The painting complete the decals were applied and then the undercarriage was attached.  Monogram's kits are usually well engineered but the undercarriage on the F-101B kit is an exception.  The nose gear needed to be chopped and re-assembled to fit properly and the main gear retraction struts needed to be completely rebuilt.  There is no positive location point for the main gear legs so inserted steel pins in pre-drilled holes to reinforce the connection.
That done I was sufficiently inspired to scratch build a boarding ladder using reference photos in an F-101 article in Wings of Fame Vol 1.   At some point in the future I will attempt the C&H RF-101G/H conversion, but for now I will try something a little less complicated! 

Darius

Photos and text © by Darius Aibara