Converting a Monogram A-37 into a T-37. I have rock solid references, which turns out to be not as helpful - I can see this is more work that just leaving off the weapons and fuel pods. For its age, this is a great kit. The fit is impeccable - I may not have to use any filler, although I have not permanently attached the wings yet.
It looks as if Monogram may have intended to produce a T-37 from the same molds. The biggest change to the kit will me modifying the inlets. On the real thing, inlets were changed to accomodate newer engines. The kit has a faint raised outline showing exactly how some Evergreen cafrdstock need to be shaped:
Similar actions need to be taken on the other side. I’m not bothered by the raised panel lines. They’ll just get sanded off. They don’t even need to be rescribed - it would look too toylike on this kit. I may tone down the raised rivets on the vertical stabilizer a bit, but they’re there.
Nice! I have seen the Aurora 1/48 T-37. Very basic. Watching with interest. The past few years I have been wanting to build the series of Monogram 1980s kits that I never did. A-37 is one such bird.
There was an Aurora kit on eBay but I didn’t want to chance it. Now I want another one of these to do as a Dragonfly. There are two different restored ones fairly close to me.
I figured as much. It’s gone from “Holy crap, what an ugly little plane” to one of my favorites, now that I know its history and the fact I’ve been working on it.
T-37, it was a fun little airplane to fly. I wish I had made it to the t38 at least. The t-37 was designed for spinning characteristics. Entering into and recovering from a spin was straightforward in usually pretty mellow, but if you screwed up on spin recovery, it would wrap up pretty viciously. (Don’t ask me how I know.).
The Tweet was slow. If I recall correctly, it’s limiting speed was 286 knots. (I still have my manuals for it, they’re packed away somewhere. One of these days I’ll dig them out.). 286 was limiting not because the airframe but because the design of the cockpit was such that a shock wave would come off in blank out the empanage.
The engines had an unresponsive spool up time. I think it was something like 20 seconds to go from idle to full power. Also, the RPM and percent of thrust was not the same. I think it was around 78% RPM to produce 50% thrust. So in the traffic pattern you kept your power setting high. Now keeping your power setting high, the airplane does not want to slow down. So with that in mind, Cessna built it with thrust attenuators. Those were small air brake-style panels to be extended in the traffic pattern. For some reason I remember them being called ping pong paddles, being somewhat like the shape, but I’m not 100% if I remember that correctly. The actual air brake was on the bottom of the airplane.
The other interesting bit of trivia I recall is the operation of the ejection seats. They are definitely not Martin Bakers or ACES. I was telling somebody about this the other day but I recall that the minimum envelope was 200 ft and 180 knots, straight and level, and if the seat functioned as intended you were “guaranteed” one swing under the chute, then you’d hit the ground.
