I went to the hobby shop in the mid 1980's just to look around.  I spotted the XF-91 and bought three of them!  Man what a kit!  At home, I opened up one of the kits and was surprised at the lack of everything, I mean everything!  In those days, I was a fair builder, with not too much experience in all this detailed "scratch building" stuff! (Hope I
spelled Linberg right?)

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I used some super glue and slapped one kit together real fast!  The enclosed digital images shows that kit as she look's today.  The landing gears are not too good, and there are no wheel wells, cockpit, intake, nor exhaust!

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crude exhaust detail	you can see right through the plane	view through fuselage from rear

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nose gear	main landing gear	simplistic cockpit detail.....if any

Here are a couple of photos of the real aircraft I have.  

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It was an experimental aircraft with one jet engine and four rockets!  It had about 20 minutes of flight time.  With the addition of the big drop tanks, its' flight time increased.  It seems that Republic only made two of them.  This aircraft was later fitted with the nose cone, and was @ the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio when I went there in 1987.  I read that they scrapped the first aircraft!  While at Dayton, I took a few photos of it, and have them in my scrap book.  After I finished the model, a friend sent me more photos of her on the tarmac, including some of it flying!

I hired a guy in Dayton to take some photos for me before I went to Dayton in 1987.  He said the wing flaps were what they call "split flaps."  Meaning that just the lower part of the wing came down.  These photos show the split flap wing, and the whole flap wing, which is correct.  

I took photos and measurements of the wheel wells, so I started on the second kit and made them right! 

The kit drop tanks were to long, so I cut out the center section, so I could make them 20' long.  The other photo shows the tanks finished.  I used .005" thick aluminum for the fins.  The tanks were painted with white gloss enamel, then I dusted on the SnJ powder, and polished out the tanks to an extreme high gloss finish.

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I used some parts from the F-84 for the cockpit, (instrument panel and seat) and a after market part for the tail exhaust system.  Since the kit had no intake, I hand crafted all these parts to fit with the F-84 cockpit tub.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this article.