11.01.2012

St. Roger, the patron saint of wayward aircraft bits delivered unto me a windscreen and canopy last night!

 

As you can see, it’s pretty rough.  We figure it was either ejected or purposely damaged for whatever reason.  It CAN be salvaged however.

Finding a replacement glass section (lexan actually) is essentially impossible.  That is ok however, because since I don’t have the part of the fuselage where the hinge mounted, I really can’t make it an articulating canopy anyway.

What I’ll do is remove the broken lexan parts and then mount the canopy in the closed & locked position to the F-15.  Without the forward canopy glass there, you can just step over the rail to get into the cockpit.

The canopy is also bent a bit in the middle, but I’m sure I can straighten it out well enough to get it installed.  I’ll have to fabricate a replacement trim strip as the one on the left is broken where the canopy is bent.

The good news is that the mounts for the compass and lock/shoot lights are still in place.  The side handles are present as well.  I can’t wait to get this thing fixed and installed!  It’s gonna look kind of odd without the forward glass, but who cares!

Here’s a shot of the new windscreen:

The windscreen has a few gouges in it, but it’s actually in a lot better shape than the A model windscreen that came with the cockpit when I originally got it.  I’m going to test some Novus polish I have to see how well it works fixing some of the lighter scratches.  I think Novus also makes a fill that will handle the deeper gouges.

[Update: 20Nov12]

Thanks to Matt who sent me a link to a Craigslist ad for an F-15 canopy, it looks like I may get it.  I’m working on making arrangements with the seller right now.  How’s that for cool? 🙂

I also got the images resized thanks to a new plugin I found for WordPress called ImagePro.

 

Comments

  1. Laura Reynolds on 11.09.2012

    Now that IS cool….. L

  2. Matt on 11.12.2012

    Found this on Craigslist thought you might be interested. http://capecod.craigslist.org/for/3397396441.html

  3. admin on 11.12.2012

    That just leaves me speechless.

    The sad thing is, I might be able to afford the canopy, but I’d never swing the shipping costs. 🙁

    Thanks for the link though!

    g.

  4. Sebastian Arenram on 11.15.2012

    Hi!

    My name is Sebastian and I’m a swedish guy who is sharing the interest for fighter jets. Your build looks extremely promising!

    I have started planning my own home flight sim cockpit of the 1st pilot space of a F-15E. I will make a cockpit replica out of mdf and aluminum plates etc. since it’s unlikely I will find a real F-15 fuselage laying arond somewhere in Stockholm :-). Do you have any tips that could be useful? Especially information on where I can find knobs and switches similar to the real thing.

    I’m prepared to order everything from the US if required.

    With kind regards
    Sebastian Arenram

  5. admin on 11.20.2012

    Good luck on your project Sebastian! I don’t think anyone has built a Mudhen cockpit yet.

    You should keep a sharp eye on eBay – things appear periodically. If you don’t require the fidelity of real parts, I would strongly recommend getting your hands on the Suncom F-15 throttle & grip set. They’re very good replicas of the F-15E flight controls and the grip is easy to modify. Knobs can be made from resin pretty easily and if you’re not fitting real hardware, there is plenty of wiggle room on the correct sizing.

    g.

  6. Jason on 11.22.2012

    Hi, congratulations on the canopy that’s awesome. My cockpit has a real F/A-18A windscreen that I got all scratched up.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adYxK4b3r8A&sns=em

    To get it clear again like in the video, I used wet and dry sandpaper. I think the grades were 600 (on the really bad ones) 800 & 1200. Then I used meguiars PLASTX and Clear Plastic Polish.

    Cheers, Jason

  7. admin on 11.29.2012

    Your cockpit is fantastic! Thanks for the tip on polishing the windscreen. I’ve got a lot of real estate to polish the scratches out of. 🙂

  8. Arno on 10.22.2013

    Hi Gene,
    here’s Arno from Classiccmp (though not very active there, recently).
    In case you should need or want to replace that broken section later, it might be worth ringing up ATM, Inc. (Acrylic Tank Manufacturing) in Las Vegas. They’re the guys who featured on the TV series “Tanked!” (which was recently run on german TV) and you could see them bringing acrylic into some quite unusual shapes, like that of an old-school wooden beer cask for an Aquarium for someone’s “Man Cave”. They bolted together a sort of wooden support which was then covered with padding and some kind of tissue, strapped a flat piece of acrylic onto that and put it into a heated chamber until the material drooped and took the form of the support.
    GTX and all the best,
    Arno

  9. admin on 10.23.2013

    Thanks for the tip Arno. The glass is actually obtainable, but at about $3600 is out of my reach for the forseeable future. 🙁

    g.

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