SPA Modeler

Isn’t this MK 16 the seat being used or was something else used for the prototype? The few photos I found of the X-35A show the pilot seated in a seat like this one. Cheers.

The X-35 had a different seat...

I’m not sure of the type...

Wow, my knowledge of this plane surely got cramped! I never knew any of this about the F-35. I knew they were at Eglin, because when I flew into Fort Walton Beach, I saw two of them waiting for our plane to clear the runway so they could take off. I knew the British and Japanese had bought them for their newest aircraft carriers. I never knew the Israelis had these. I gotta get some built.....



Looking forward to seeing more.

Within a couple more years these things are gonna be like F-16s and flying in a lot of different air arms. Eglin and Luke are the two primary training bases for these, but I think that Luke is also the host for all foreign air forces.
It’s too bad that the Luftwaffe did not choose these, as it would be nice to have a German presence here again. We have or have had Brits, Dutch, Aussies, Japanese, and Israelis... At least their instructors come here to learn to fly it, then go back to teach it there.

So my afternoon session at the bench yesterday was spent improving the kit ejection seat and cockpit rear shelf. I was able to track down the actual seat type used on the X-35, a variant of the SJU family, and based my updates to the seat on photos of those. I had to change the shape of the sidewalls, the head rest, and add quite a few little details.









I just need to add a harness now... I also added the prominent “black boxes” visible on the cockpit rear shelf along with some wiring...



And a test fit...




some adjustments needed, one more item to add, then on to the IP...

Nice work Stik!

Thank you Mike... much better than what came in the box...

Nice but of scratch building Carlos

Thank you Clint. That is always an enjoyable phase trying to figure out how to come up with something from scratch.