Okay, I have to admit that it's a pet peeve of mine. I've lost count of the number of beautifuly done Sabres I've seen over the years which are spoiled by airbrakes attached in the open position as though they belong to an F-84 rather than a Sabre. This rant was triggered by Emre Efli's Sabre 5 feature. Emre, I'm not picking on you personally. Your workmanship and finishing are realy excellent, as is your choice of subject. I think you were let down by poor instructions.

Sabre airbrakes are strange beasts that droop downwards when they open. The lower edges move forward relative to the upper edges so the entire surface is tilted relative to the airstream. North American's engineers obviously had a very good reason to do this. Not knowing what it was I can only speculate that it's got something to do with maintaining trim forces and not upsetting the aircraft's flying characteristics. Whichever the reason, Sabre airbrakes do not open at 90 degrees to the fuselage datum line.

Of course, when they're closed, the two hinge arms are the same length and kit makers have to mould them this way to preserve the lines of the fuselage should the modeller assemble the parts in the closed position. This is the trap that causes all those incorrect builds. One must trim the lower arm by about half in order to make the airbrake sit properly when it's open. Kit makers and Instruction artists seldom seem to pay attention to this and I really don't know way; it doesn't take very much to find pictures of Sabres with open airbrakes to find out what they look like in 1:1 scale. Here are just a few that I found after one Google image search ("f-86 Sabre airbrakes" were my search parameters) this morning:

http://www.williammaloney.com/Aviation/NewEnglandAirMuseum/NorthAmericanF86FSabre/images/04F86FSabreAirBrake.jpg
http://www.williammaloney.com/Aviation/NewEnglandAirMuseum/NorthAmericanF86FSabre/images/03F86FSabreTail.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldatoj57/431453041/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/philonious/4912546337/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/philonious/4913148796/
http://www.air-and-space.com/20100515%20Chino/BL2_4962%20F-86F%20NX186AM%20left%20side%20l.jpg
http://www.airliners.net/photo/North-American-F-86F/1250487/L/


Folks, when you build your next Sabre, two little cuts will make it look so much better.

Point taken Jessica, I thought for a moment that you were getting a little "gaston" on us A good point though, which I'll look out for when I next build a Sabre, which will be in 1/32. I have built one but that was a long time ago and it is in 1/72, thankfully with the airbrakes closed, phew

Tamiya San forbid!

Cheers Jessie

I couldn't really see your point from the first few reference shots, but then I got to the second and third from last and it's WOW! - that is in-your-face obvious!

I'll move the thread over to Cold War as a very useful heads-up for Sabre builders.

All the best

Rowan

Well there are two points I'm making. First, the airbrakes make a very obvious anhedral with respect to the horizontal axis of the aircraft, and they also tilt backwards when viewed from on edge. Both of these effects can be achieved by trimming the lower hinge arm by about half. All the kit instructions would need would be one drawing showing where to trim, but I've very rarely seen it done. The Academy kit has a very small, easy to miss drawing, Monogram missed it, Heller missed it, Airfix missed it with their F-86D from years ago and since I've never done one I can't speak for any of the Hasegawa kits. I think the Pro-Modeler/Revell F-86D kit got it right though.

Imagine being rich enough to own and fly your own Sabre...

Like this one?

And to keep it on topic, note the airbrakes in those pictures...